Thomas Schaller: How Failure in the War Has Meant Success for Conservatism

[marmar]

from the Baltimore Sun, via CommonDreams:


Published on Wednesday, February 21, 2007 by the Baltimore Sun (Maryland)
How Failure in the War Has Meant Success for Conservatism
by Thomas F. Schaller

Last week, I argued that President Bush's Iraq war has demolished the foundations upon which the Republican Party had, until 2006, built a national majority. Paradoxically, the war has nevertheless been a huge victory for conservatism.

To explain this paradox, we begin with William F. Buckley's famous definition of conservatism as "to stand athwart history, yelling, 'Stop!'"

Setting aside the dismal implications of this mantra for conservatives - a life where change is inherently bad, new ideas and peoples are threatening, social and technological advances must be resisted, and the future always frightens - conservatism's first principle is that slower is better, particularly in matters of governance.

By this standard, the Iraq war will be remembered as the great conservative triumph, for the focus and fortune diverted to Iraq have stalled so much else on the nation's agenda.

Travel back a moment to the 2000 election, the last of the pre-9/11 era, and recall the critical national issues then under discussion: energy, education and health care, to name just three. .....(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.commondreams.org/views07/0221-27.htm

[Sammy Pepys]

1. Too be fair in analysis....

I don't think the author wrapped "standing athwart history" in there very well. I'm not sure that what's going on inIraq and the idea behind "standing athwart history" are actually all that compatible...which wouldn't make it a victory for conservatism.

[applegrove]

2. I agree. Big Oil especially had doomsday stalled for quite a few years.

[TrogL]

3. Exactly - their goal all along as been to bankrupt congress

so they can't exact social programs