the Greater Nomadic Council

Review: Patrick J. Buchanan - "Where the Right Went Wrong"

Politics makes strange bedfellows. As a teenager and young adult watching Pat (now, apparently, Patrick J.) Buchanan's various runs for President, my instincts led me to conclude that he was pretty much a racist and a bible-beater, albeit wearing a better suit than I was used to on his kind. But with the recent rise to power (and the swiftly approaching hilarious implosion) of neoconservatism, Buchanan has shifted his focus from breathing fire about immigration to championing a broader "traditional" conservatism in opposition to what he sees as the neocon's co-optation of the Republican power base. Just as some of my liberal friends have recently been heard conceding that Bush I was "not so bad," the Buchanan of Where the Right Went Wrong comes across as pretty darn sensible in this day and age, even when he's not directly attacking the administration that's done so much to make him look good.

For a short book (about 225 pages), Right is incredibly broad in its analysis, and to be honest Bucky doesn't quite succeed in drawing each and every element of his argument together into a tight weave. Nearly every page, though, shines with nuggets of insight on the current world situation. What surprised me most was the level of useful historical background provided – I learned more about Islam, terrorism, the IMF, China, and judicial activism than I think I have from any other single source (though admittedly that's not saying much). All of this history is marshaled in a critique that lambasts those he describes as "Conservative Impersonators," "Hijackers of America Foreign Policy" who are committing "Economic Treason" (all chapter titles). He contrasts the interventionist, nation-building, deficit-spending neocons with the Goldwater/Reaganite conservatism that formed him, and which he sees as the true faith. The Bush/Neocon axis, in contrast, are to him appeasers on the social front and heretics on economic, domestic, and international policy, whose decisions are based not on the self-interested pragmatism of the true conservative but on the utopian vision of a global "democratic empire" in which American political values will be universal, and American superiority will be unchallengeable. In this scheme, as Buchanan points out, the Iraq war is not a one-time misstep, but part of an overall policy of continued global military engagement. This policy has little to do with the war on terror, as it was hatched in neocon policy institutes and then outlined in documents by Rumsfeld and Cheney years before 9/11.

Lefties will draw great satisfaction (and ammunition) from the sections of the book that draw a bead on Bush II. On Bush's assertion that Islamic terrorists attacked us because "They hate our freedom," Buchanan comments that "these answers insult the intelligence of second graders." But Right isn't just a "see, even his own guy hates him" book – Buchanan contributes critique that is different from the standard Left line, and therefore both enlightening and challenging. He paints Il Buche as a puppet more effectively than most leftists have been able to, by casting William Kristol and Ariel Sharon in the role of puppeteers rather than Dick Cheney and Haliburton. He gutpunches Bush on the current budget deficit, not by pointing to Clinton's past fiduciary glories, but by pointing out that most recent increases in spending have not been in military or security categories. He deconstructs Bush's "good vs. evil" rhetoric by laying out all of America's Middle East interventions – but he avoids the accusations of anti-Americanism so often lobbed at liberals by encouraging disengagement not on moral grounds, but on grounds of national self-interest. Buchanan asks, in a phrase whose mix of exasperation and hopelessness is representative, whether "a permanent imperial presence in that part of the world [is] worth the price of repeated acts of terrorism against us"?

I wasn't old enough in the Reagan, much less Goldwater, eras to bring much real historical perspective to bear here. But the ingredient of Buchanan's analysis that seems most missing from that of the neocons is, quite simply, an ongoing engagement with reality. While Grover Norquist seeks to convince the nation that we are in a "War on Terror," Buchanan unflinchingly informs us that a war on terrorism is unwinnable, because in this case "the enemy is a cause, a movement, an idea." He also delves into the semiotic depth of the term "terror," pointing out that "governments applied the label 'terrorists' to criminalize insurgents and justify a refusal to address their demands," and citing the many instances in which governments have engaged in terrorism by any other name. Buchanan's call for a realpolitik sometimes goes to far, as when he encourages cooperation with friendly despots when it is in the United States' interest, but it is certainly preferable to castles in the sand.

Far less comfortably for leftists, Buchanan states that our enemy, instead of terrorism, is 'militant Islam'. His historical recounting of the rise and fall of the Ottoman Empire has undoubtedly been bested elsewhere, but it is enough to make the point that many have agreed on – that, in addition to the more immediate indignity of Western imperialism, it is the preserved memory of the Arab world's past glory that fuels the resentment of some of its citizens towards the West. But he does not commit the great fallacy of blaming the current balance of power on Islam itself, asking, "How can Islam be the cause of the decline of that world, when Islam was, for a thousand years, the faith that sustained the most advanced culture and civilization on earth?" The current breed of Islamists, he seems to argue, are not the result of Islam acting on geopolitics, but vice versa.

There are, inevitably, moments present (perhaps even intended) to remind liberals that Patrick J. isn't our new, slightly churlish but lovably useful sidekick. When he lists "women's liberation" alongside sex and drugs as culprits in the decline of American cultural stability, or when he flatly endorses cooperation with brutal dictators who share our goals, we are reminded of what was not to love about Reagan. His sorrowful and sharp section on the folly of judicial activism devolves rather pitifully into a screed against the separation of church and state, and against equal rights for homosexuals. In his recitation of anti-Keynesian dogma and lionization of the past over the present, Buchanan does overlook a few inconvenient facts – for example, that Reagan ran record deficits in peacetime.

These deficits, as well as more recent ones, lie at the heart of the most frightening portion of the book, in which Buchanan chooses to acknowledge the twin 900 pound gorillas in the room – America's ballooning trade and budget deficits. His searing critique of globalization and its proponents is full of juicy tidbits ripe for plucking by the street-protest set (most dramatically, the fact that the International Monetary Fund was founded in the 1940's by Harry Dexter, a Soviet spy), but the argument is miles different. Most leftists agree with free trade in principle, but abhor the working conditions of the global workforce and seek to improve them through protest and direct action. The forces of economics, after all, will ultimately push global wages to a state of equilibrium, and how is it that U.S. workers deserve wages any better than those of their international counterparts? But Buchanan points out the flaw in this reasoning – that those who implore our trading partners to raise their standards of worker pay and treatment are whistling Dixie, and that globalization is intended by its architects not to raise the wretched of the earth, but to offer them up to the machinations of international capital. With good work safety standards, pay rates, and representative government already established in the U.S., good liberals must ask themselves why it advances our dearest values to allow U.S. companies to transplant jobs to places where workers are abused and denied their freedoms. Does it not, after all, make the most sense to defend the justice we have?

Buchanan provides the conservative bookend to this question by arguing that trade liberalization, more than just reinforcing despotism abroad, is destabilizing our own republic. The chilling conclusion of Where the Right Went Wrong outlines the "perfect storm" that he sees on the economic horizon as a result, in large part, of continued neoconservative profligacy. In this scenario, the entry of the baby boom generation into the pool of social security recipients eliminates the possibility of a balanced budget for the foreseeable future. The continuing trade deficit results in majority foreign ownership of American assets. The departure of heavy industry erodes the American economic base. Falling revenue and rising debt make America a less and less worthy credit risk, and our Asian bondholders begin to call in their principal. You can perhaps imagine how things go from their – and all of this, Buchanan asserts, is quite likely to happen in the next fifty years unless serious measures are taken to stop the bleeding.

This sort of reasoning and forethought, not the cowboyish declarations and imperialist fever dreams of the neocons, represent the best that conservatism has to offer the political dialogue. While leftists should have better things to do than work, or even hope, for a Reaganite restoration, many signs point to a shakeup of some sort on the Republican horizon. The political debt for Iraq must be paid, and Buchanan's convincing case for the culpability of the Weekly Standard set is part of a chorus emerging in recent months. It seems likely it will become the standard line used by Republicans to distance themselves from the debacle – "We've been hijacked!" However, Buchanan also points out why even such a public reversal would be unlikely to be accompanied by a genuine policy reversal – quite simply, true economic conservatism is no longer politically popular. Small-scale pork barrel has long since crossed the aisle, but with huge social programs like No Child Left Behind and programs to promote marriage, the Bush administration has crossed the Rubicon, joining with the left to declare that, rather than being the problem, government is, indeed, the solution. Such a declaration having been made, it will be difficult for any true fiscal conservatism to rise again in the Republican Party, since, with the Laffer Curve still taken as gospel, an end to relentless and foolish Republican tax cuts is nowhere in sight.

Dedicated leftists should have a well-established disdain for George W. Bush, but this book will supplement and deepen it – and it will also provide all that a true conservative should ever need to feed a similar, and perhaps even more bitter, ire.

Gaming Update

Rome: Total War kicks serious ass. It's Civilization and Warcraft combined, but with nicer graphics and easier control.

Philosophy and Football

Never one to let a long (in blogtime) absence deter me from a frivolous post, I thought this paragraph from Easterbrook's TMQB noteworthy, particularly after spending an hour or so studying Latin:

There is no sure way to switch from levity to seriousness, but the loss of Reggie White at age 43, coupled with the loss of untold tens of thousands in the Indonesia earthquake, should remind us of the Roman saying memento mori -- bear in mind, you too shall die. It may happen tomorrow, it may happen in 50 years from now, but it will happen.

Remember, also, verbum satis sapienti est—a word to the wise suffices.

Joyous Winter Solstice

It seems we're mostly shutting down over the break. People traveling (or too lazy in my case) and such. Remeber, it's all about the presents.

O the Weather Outside

...is ridiculous. Yesterday, it was 50-60 degrees outside. Today, it snows. Naturally, Texans have no idea what to do when even a little ice hits the ground, so there's nobody on the roads. Picture below the fold...

Save yourselves! It's a blizzard!

I have no legs. I have no legs.

The obligatory snow shot.

The Last Meal

I've never had strong feelings on the death penalty - I just never thought about it that much, which is pretty weird considering how political I am in general. But this two-minute animation really got my attention, mostly by putting a few faces to the statistics. Hopefully it will do the same for you.

The Last Meal

Tha Monsterpiece

I usually confine my self-promotion to my own little internet backwater, but my latest piece of music just turned out so darned nice I fell the need to share it. This is from my new industrial/new wave band, which at the moment is just me and is called Towers Open Fire. If you're in the Iowa area and looking to tear shit up, I can be contacted below.

Towers Open Fire - Kill The Masters, Then Kill The Slaves

I should actually be releasing something from this project within the next month or two. I'm debating whether or not to call it the Tubgirl EP.

Free Fleischer Superman Cartoons

Cartoon Network is posting a Fleischer Superman each day between now and the end of the year. I think I've posted on this before, but allow me to reiterate: no matter how much you hate Superman (worst . . . superhero . . . ever), these are just awesome, awesome cartoons. Arguably, in fact, the best.

Pictures from Earlier Tonight

Below the fold, Dallas, TX between 10:30pm and midnight. Current song: Marvin Gaye—You Sure Love to Ball...

From my backy—er—parking lot.

Bejewelled fingers.

O Tannenbaum, O Tannenbaum, Wie treu sind deine Blätter.

Dallas Hall at SMU. Just got off work, been doing book editing things.

On the way to the car.

Opinions or suggestions? Also, please tell me if any are too big so I can resize them.

Where's the Bunsen Burner?

From the usually excellent 2blowhards comes this rather disappointing post. It's essentially a retread of the "leftists in academe" debate that's been wending its way through the blogosphere for years now. The part that I really find objectionable, though, is this:

By the way, is anyone else sent into the same fits of hoots and giggles as I am by the idea of English Department types being engaged in "research"? (We know that by "research" they don't mean, for example, "looking deeply into the way the publishing business worked in colonial America." We know that what they really mean is "doing Theory" -- doing research into their own thought processes, in other words.) English-dept. types (some of them, anyway) really want us to believe that they're involved in something as exciting, demanding, taxing, and mind-boggling as ... I dunno. Genetics, or computer science, or physics. They expect us to buy the idea that English profs are right out there on the most abstract frontier, alongside the most radical string theorists. English profs!!! A-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!!!! ... Pardon me while I wipe the tears from my eyes ...

They can't really believe this silliness themselves, can they? They do? A-ha-ha-ha!!! ...

OK, Sorry. A-ha- ... Giggle giggle giggle ...

First off, I guess he hasn't heard of Marxism, New Historicism, or a few other them new-fangled schools of criticism since you regularly find critics doing things like "looking deeply into the way the publishing business worked in colonial America" when engaged in those sorts of research. Even so, that doesn't mean other forms of research are less valuable. From his post you get the impression that all research requires a laboratory. Yes, there is a difference between the research of a string theorist and a literary critic (the former is most certainly more difficult), but that does not mean that literary research is easy or dismissable. A quick glance at the back of any peer-reviewed book will show the staggering amount of time critics spend reading and thinking about highly specific topics. I challenge Michael (for whom I have great respect, having read his blog for a couple of years now) to author a short 150 page book on a literary topic and then laugh at the notion that what critics do is research. Furthermore, yes, much of what critics do might be called "research into their own thought processes." Shouldn't this be lauded rather than mocked? Sustained and profound thought is incredibly difficult and worthwhile whether it's in service of science or literature. To dismiss the latter is to dismiss the importance of literature itself. Of course, when I defend critics, I'm defending the best of them, not the hacks. Just as in any other field, some people are simply smarter or more worth-while to listen to than others. Criticism is no different. That you can find examples of poor criticism does not invalidate the whole field. You can also find excellent, invigorating, and challenging works that expand your understanding of the given problem, text, subject, etc at hand. Academics surely are partially to blame for their poor public image, but no more so than attitudes like Michael's.

Brazilian Exports

Brasil now exports more beef than the US. The article doesn't mention it, but I seem to remember that a lot of Brazilian cattle grazes on clear-cut rainforest land. The soil washes away easily, so they have to cut down more after a few years. It's ok, though. We don't need carbon dioxide filters.

The Truth about Liberals in Academics

What Michael Bérubé says:

First of all, you have to understand that there are literally thousands of politically conservative Ph.D. candidates in the field of English language and literature, just as there are untold thousands of political conservatives applying for academic jobs in the visual arts, in special education, and in philosophy.

It's certainly true that most (all?) of my professors are liberals. Some even discuss their own political beliefs in class. It's scandalous.

(via Majikthise)

Tonight the Moon

Is a fat, gold watch
Born of mechanical irritation—
Long traffic lights,
A shirtless fool dashes
Before dark fast cars—

Tick across the turning sky
To signal. . . what?
The honeyed end of a bad day?

More likely, nothing. Wound
In the purple-stained sky,
Golden gibberish homelessness,
Implacable, unpluckable.

No, love did
Not set you going,
But ancient violence,
A cosmic pummeling
Amid silent stars
(No harmonies here).

O pock-marked and tethered stone
You are luminous as cement!

Nothing more

Yet,
You drip from the horizon like wax
And congeal overhead,
A yellow splotch urging patience.

The New Batman could be Awesome

Check out this trailer . . . I nearly cried.

h**p://www.bluetights.net/videos/batmanbegins.asf

Courtesy of SE (NSFW).

Je Suis Fini

Last (and only) final last night. No more thinking for a month!

Happy Blogiversary

Thursday was the one year anniversary of the Greater Nomadic Council's inception. Hooray.

Btw, we had some minor server problems earlier today preventing the ability to post comments. Everything should be fixed now, though. I know you were all twitching from not being able to post earlier.

Defending Ashbery

Mike Snider, mystified by people who enjoy Ashbery, sparked a discussion that has Ashbery fans falling over themselves to state why they find his poetry good and valuable. I've already posted some of my comments there, so I won't repeat myself, but check out the discussion. Although I don't think Ashbery is among the highest ranks of poets (difficult company to break into), he's nevertheless an excellent and highly unique poet. His best poems do something stunningly original and remarkably well.

Holy Shit - Dimebag Darrell murdered onstage

Pantera were a small part of my high school experience, mostly because of how much I enjoyed seeing people wear the "girl with a drill up her butt" T-shirt without any administrators noticing. I didn't come to really appreciate their music until college. Regardless of whether you liked them or not, they were our fellow Texans, and this is insane:

MSNBC

Random Links from Email

Star Wars car.

Buy feces now (vacuum-wrapped).

This place is for bikes (video).

How various artists work; check out Umberto Eco's, in particular (this one via Boing Boing).

Add more in the comments, please.

UPDATE: Our minds are physical (via Mind Hacks).

The Definitive Response

How to get out of going to church. Excellent riposte, worthy of memorization. My relatives no longer ask me to go—for which I am thankful. Although the sermon can be interesting, it's usually not. Either way, I prefer not to sit through 1.5 hours listening to bad singing and opinions I either disagree with or find outright offensive.

More on Academic Bad Writing

2blowhards gets into the fray discussing the article for which I created an incredibly clever title. There's a good comment:

The goal of scientific writing is to be clear, accurate, and concise. We use jargon to forward these goals. These writers, on the other hand, are using jargon to obfuscate, to create an exclusive class of professionals. They simply cannot convince me that this style of writing is intended to convey information, other than the message that the writer is a deep thinker.

Although I agree that many of the winners of the Bad Writing contest offend egregiously, a certain amount of jargon is just as necessary to literary criticism as to science. Otherwise, critics would be forced to re-explain whole schools of thought every time they began a new article. The reason Butler's passage is bad writing is not the obliqueness of the jargon, but her long-winded, overly-complex style. The entire quoted section is one sentence. Even if you know all the terms she tosses out, it's simply difficult to keep all those clauses in mind at once. I've read quite a bit of well-written and easy to read, yet still complex and interesting criticism. Critics and theorists who cannot or will not write clearly either think that makes them sounds smarter or simply have not learned anything from literature. Style counts.

Yushchenko Poisoned

You know, sometimes you think politics are bad here, then you see crazy sh!t like this. The best part is this bit of opposition spin, worthy of Rove:

Mr Yanukovych’s supporters ridiculed the opposition, saying the illness was probably caused by bad sushi, too much cognac or a severe case of herpes. A parliamentary investigation found no evidence of poisoning.

And now, an IM transcript:

psychometrix says: thats awesome press
psychometrix says: bad case of herpes
psychometrix says: WOOHOOO
psychometrix says: the man has no morals! And we don't have to prove it!!!!

Indeed.

The Creation Museum

I might have mentioned this before, but I'm beginning to suspect that religious ideology can, in some cases, make people insane.

Super Villain

As Majikthise mentioned a rogues gallery, here's a villain:

Julius Jones is for Real

Even if the Cowboys don't make the playoffs this year (and, pathetically enough, they have a decent chance at 5-7 and a moderately easy schedule coming up), discovering that Julius Jones is the new running back is exciting. Against the Ravens, one of the top run defenses in the league, he ran for 80. Four days later he ran for 150 and 2 TDs. Tonight, he ran for 198 yards and 3 TDs, one of which won the game. Now the Cowboys just need to figure out who their quarterback is going to be and find a strong safety to replace Woodson (I doubt he'll be back) and maybe next year they'll be able to move at least one game further in the playoffs. Alas, the defense still blows. They've shown some improvement lately, but not against really great teams so it's hard to judge.

Superhero Generator

It seems like this has been posted before, but google says no, so here it is. The HeroMachine. Here's mine:

Check out Dr. Pharyngula, as well.

And, yours truly:

They didn't have any books for me to hold, so fire seemed the next best thing.

An X-Ray of Jesus

Found in a dental X-ray. There's also the Virgin Mary in a grilled cheese sandwich.

(via Boing Boing)

War Pics

Browsing images.google.com for pictures of coffee, I came across this open directory of WWII photos, primarily in black and white. This is the one google found me.

Obfuscatory Utterances Rendering Epiphenomenal Traces of Castration Disavowal in Subject-Denizens of Academe

Long one of my pet peeves, poor academic writing persists. Critical Mass points out a nice article lambasting the worst offenders (a sample of whom may be found winning the 4th Bad Writing Contest). Clear prose often signals clear thoughts. The better mastery one has of any given subject matter, the more lucidly one should be able to express it. Conversely, jargon-laden (unfortunately some jargon cannot always be avoided), dense, and syntactically tortured prose marks confused thoughts and the author's desperate desire to appear intelligent.

The linked article's argument amounts to calling for clearer critical and theoretical writing so that the works might become socially relevant, but I really feel that misses the point. Good writing is an end in itself and a simple courtesy to one's readers. I am consistently amazed at the number of literature critics who cannot construct a decent sentence. It seems as if they have learned nothing from literature itself and too much from other critics, the parasites of art. While I do think critical work should strive for a more formal register than other works, that does not preclude comprehensibility. These certainly are all obvious points, but I enjoy making them so nyah.

Emulating Gonzo the Great

You thought Gonzo's flight via balloon cluster in The Muppet Movie (one of my all-time favorite films) was just a joke? Think again:

The most famous cluster balloon flight took place in 1982. Larry Walters, with no prior ballooning experience, attached 42 helium weather balloons to a lawnchair, intending to go up a few hundred feet, but instead soaring to 16,000. Surprisingly, Walters survived his flight.

That part made me laugh. Just imagine some clueless fellow sitting in his lawn chair, suddenly ascending more than three miles into the air.

Writing vs. Chess

I'm not sure if the two are mutually exclusive or not, but as my writing output has increased due to papers due, my chess skills have declined rapidly. My blitz rating (which has never been very good) dropped from ~1550 to just under 1400 in about two weeks. I suppose it's also possible that I've just been unable to concentrate, but I was able to write close to 11 pages today which requires at least a modicum of concentration. This leads me to hypothesize that there is something antithetical to the modes of thought required for writing and chess. The latter is primarily visualization and calculation, while the former is necessarily verbalization and intuition. Some intuition is certainly needed for chess (that's how you prune the branches, after all), but of a different kind than that for paper-writing. As I've increasingly been thinking in the way of words, my prowess at the board has diminished.

More on "A Fighting Faith"

Although I could just update ludwig's post, that seems a bit rude. So, here's another long post on Beinart's article, this time from Kevin Drum.

Relaxed Fit

As you've no doubt noticed, the posting schedule here has become far, far more relaxed than it was. Rather than 5-10 posts a day, we'll see that many (or fewer) in a week sometimes. It's certainly made blogging more enjoyable for me now that I don't find it an obligation. That is all. Back to my paper, despite my headache due to eye strain. Fight on, Muncy!

UPDATE: The headache was from caffeine withdrawal, not eye strain. We ran out of coffee yesterday.

On Beinart’s “A Fighting Faith”

I don’t exactly have much free time these days, but I can’t resist a few comments Peter Beinart’s call for a more militant or “fighting” brand of liberalism. Specifically, Beinart seems to advocate an inner-left showdown that would conclude with the purging of Michael Moore and MoveOn and the adoption of militant anti-tolitarianism and anti-fundamentalism as a litmus test for decent Democratic politicians or organizations.

I appreciate the desire for a more militant Left and the call for more optimism about the emancipating power of enlightenment and democracy. But the historical parallel he tries to erect between the Democrats of postwar America and the Democrats today is flawed in a number of ways.

First of all, if TNR-favorite Al Gore had been president when 9/11 occurred, we wouldn’t be having this discussion. Gore would have surely resorted to military action against Afghanistan and there would have been something similar to the Patriot Act. If the anti-war Left had been pissed enough about it, perhaps they would have mounted a 3rd party challenge strong enough to throw the election to the GOP (in fact I think the Greens would have likely done even better in 2004 had Gore won the election). But we certainly wouldn’t be worrying about the public perceiving the Democrats as weak-kneed on terror. We Democrats ought to face up to the fact that the GOP was simply favored by luck and now, unjustly, we are perceived as weak.

Conversely, at the time of Pearl Harbor, the Democrats were in power. They were favored by the muse of history enough to not only become the party of social justice, but also the party of national defense and patriotism (as opposed to the relatively isolationist GOP) for decades. At the time, Truman didn’t have to forcefully differentiate himself from Wallace in order to prove his patriotism. It was rather the other way around—Wallace disagreed with Truman’s cold war policies. Now I suppose Truman could have moved left to satisfy Wallace and there was probably a large portion of the intelligentsia that backed this course. Still, even if Truman had been sympathetic to this course (and he probably wasn’t) moving leftward would have weakened him with regard to his GOP opponent. Moreover, Truman had the advantage of a society that had coalesced around the pro-democracy messianic ideology of WWII. That is, the innate superiority of liberalism over “tolitarianism” was already widely acknowledged, and the unlucky GOP was suspected to be isolationist.

Not only is the comparison between 1948 and 2008 misleading, Beinart doesn’t give us adequate reason to believe that purging MoveOn (or MoveOn purging itself) will improve Democratic chances. He cites the example of the CIO expelling its anti-communist elements. But we don’t have an exact analogue in contemporary politics—the communists at that time were affiliated with the Soviet International, which was thought to be working to undermine American democracy. There are no pro Al Qaida or pro-Saddam groups with any influence on the Left today, and certainly not within MoveOn.

Further, MoveOn doesn’t represent any particular ideology but is rather a grassroots organization. For my part, I had no idea that MoveOn was involved in opposing the war in Afganistan. And I don’t particularly care, because that position doesn’t reflect the hegemonic ideology that constitutes MoveOn today. As for Moore, I agree that he shouldn't have been associated so closely with the Dems (he didn't deserve it after helping the Greens in 2000 anyway), but following Matt Taibbi's reasoning, open hostility towards him makes about as much sense as it would for the GOP to openly disavow Dobson.

So what is Beinart’s analogy getting at? It would seem that Beinart is recommending that a pre-condition for being a liberal ought to be a militant attitude, or at least a fundamental commitment, towards converting the world (particularly the Arab world) to liberal democracy. One ought to at least subscribe to the belief that places like Iran would be better off under liberal democracy and hence we ought to do something about it, if not attack them directly. To this I would say 2 things. First, this position already seems pretty widely adopted among Democrats. But second, there is a crucial historical difference here. Advocating liberal democracy is not so much a matter of self-defense as it was in the communist era, since the terrorist enemy is not really bent on world revolution, but rather on forcing the West to abandon the Arab world. And then there is the problem that many liberals have—that places like Iran seem to be better, freer, and more culturally diverse places to live than those Islamic dictatorships already under US hegemony or who have earned the favor of the US through economic cooperation (Egypt, Saudi Arabia, etc). Or in other words, the abject hypocrisy of application of US power until now makes liberals cynical about the potential of US power to do any good at all.

Finally, Beinart shows some sympathy for the notion that Iraq=Vietnam; that is, that Iraq was and probably remains a fundamentally mistaken and unproductive venture, but he doesn’t draw the logical consequence that opposing it doesn’t mean being anti-freedom. In this vein, those of us repulsed by the rhetoric of the likes of Lieberman are not weak liberals, but on the contrary are expressing our distaste for the unjust and unwise implications of Bush’s stupidity and the crude imperialism that motivated his war. By this reading it is people like Beinart (and the rest of the TNR/Slate/liberal hawk intelligentsia) who stand in the way of a just, morally consistent and electorally popular Democratic foreign policy agenda.

But let me get back to the larger question raised by Beinart’s essay—the question of liberal militancy. I support the notion that more Westerners ought to join organizations like the Peace Corps to help bring the message of civilization and Enlightenment to those who have no opportunity to pursue it within their own society, but I’m hard pressed to convince those people who believe we have no right to force our ideology on others—that the basic principle of a just world order ought to be self-determination. It seems to me that Beinart’s notion of “hard” liberalism specifically embraces the option of unprovoked military aggression to “free” oppressed peoples. One is faced with the paradoxical dilemma of whether or not people who don’t live in a democracy have the ability to self-determine at all, or whether self-determination can be understood as a collective will that might include old-fashioned (reactionary) political forms. Every potential intervention has to be judged separately, but on the principle of whether unprovoked military aggression in the name of freedom can be justified at all—there needs to be considerable debate.

There is one last thing to keep in mind though. The messianic attitude that Beinart proposes is part of the GOP’s success. Messianism is attractive—for pretty obvious reasons. For the masses in the contemporary world, messianism=optimimism. Look at the popularity of communism, fascism, fundamentalism….if one sees contemporary history through this lens, it is a wonder civilized liberal democracy has lasted so long at all. Even if we, as an honest and skeptical and ultimately unmilitant people, cannot ground a liberal messianism in the facts of reality or in some higher notion of truth, I think there is an argument to be made that liberal messianism at this point in history may be the only way to halt the ascension of other messianisms.

SCOTUS Declines to Hear Gay Marriage Case

I'm not sure whether to give this one a full-fledged "bwahaha" or the more subtle, but equally disdainful, Nelsonesque "haa-haw!" I'm quite sure, though, that an "LOL" isn't what I'm going for.

I'm sure some of our regulars can clarify, but I don't believe this sets a precedent, so I'm not getting too excited. Still, a modest victory for equal rights. And as Andy points out, in this case it was the conservatives who engaged in dark, satanic JUDICIAL ACTIVISM!!!! BOOGA!!!

EDIT: In related news, if you've got a good imagination - highlight your year with the Calendario Romano 2005, adorned with a hot Catholic priest for each of God's month's. But remember, fellas - they're celibate!