Conservative Defense of the Current Republican Leadership: Mere Partisanship? Or Something Truly Frightening?
This is just a brief, preliminary version of a real post, but I've been worrying about this lately and wanted to get the idea out.
For a long time I took it for granted that conservatives were just being partisan when they defended Republican actions in the recount debacle of 2000, defended the divisiveness that has been the hallmark of this administration from the beginning, defended its pre- and post-9/11 incompetence, defended its loss of bin Laden at Tora Bora, defended its incompetence and dishonesty concerning the invasion of Iraq, defended Tom DeLay, the K Street project, and the associated culture of corruption...
But then I started to worry that there may be something much, much more frightening going on here:
Maybe American conservatives are being honest.
That is: maybe they really do think that this is what counts as governing well.
Maybe this really is what they consider the right way to do things; maybe it really is the way they plan to do things in the future whenever they are put in power.
It's bad enough if they're just being dishonest and partisan about all this. But the other alternative is the one that'll really keep you up at night.
This is just a brief, preliminary version of a real post, but I've been worrying about this lately and wanted to get the idea out.
For a long time I took it for granted that conservatives were just being partisan when they defended Republican actions in the recount debacle of 2000, defended the divisiveness that has been the hallmark of this administration from the beginning, defended its pre- and post-9/11 incompetence, defended its loss of bin Laden at Tora Bora, defended its incompetence and dishonesty concerning the invasion of Iraq, defended Tom DeLay, the K Street project, and the associated culture of corruption...
But then I started to worry that there may be something much, much more frightening going on here:
Maybe American conservatives are being honest.
That is: maybe they really do think that this is what counts as governing well.
Maybe this really is what they consider the right way to do things; maybe it really is the way they plan to do things in the future whenever they are put in power.
It's bad enough if they're just being dishonest and partisan about all this. But the other alternative is the one that'll really keep you up at night.
posted by Winston Smith at
12:44 PM
5 Comments:
The current Republicans aren't conservatives. OTOH it's surprising more actual conservatives haven't gone Independent. Thanks, OBL.
A question: how much skullduggery would have been justified in opposing the Bush admin, and would we have defended it?
Maybe American conservatives are being honest.
That is: maybe they really do think that this is what counts as governing well.
Maybe this really is what they consider the right way to do things; maybe it really is the way they plan to do things in the future whenever they are put in power.
I assume that this is true, given that returning the country to the days of the McKinley administration is the stated goal of the Republican Party, by which I mean Karl Rove.
The polemicist has a structural advantage over the apologist: his starting point is one of abstract perfection.
The poor apologist has only the crooked timber of humanity as raw material with which to build his case.
I just ran across this, which puts it more eloquently:
“Barbarism,” Evelyn Waugh wrote in 1938, "is never finally defeated; given propitious circumstances, men and women who seem quite orderly will commit every conceivable atrocity. The danger does not come merely from habitual hooligans; we are all potential recruits for anarchy. Unremitting effort is needed to keep men living together at peace; there is only a margin of energy left over for experiment however beneficent. Once the prisons of the mind have been opened, the orgy is on.
There is no more agreeable position than that of dissident from a stable society. Theirs are all the solid advantages of other people's creation and preservation, and all the fun of detecting hypocrisies and inconsistencies. There are times when dissidents are not only enviable but valuable. The work of preserving society is sometimes onerous, sometimes almost effortless. The more elaborate the society, the more vulnerable it is to attack, and the more complete its collapse in case of defeat. At a time like the present it is notably precarious. If it falls we shall see not merely the dissolution of a few joint-stock corporations, but of the spiritual and material achievements of our history."
Tony,
Interesting point, man.
Tom,
Oh, c'mon. Those things might be relevant under normal conditions, but we've gone way beyond such conditions. You're starting to confirm my fears, bro...that you guys think that Bush is really doing a good job.
I don't demand perfection, and I don't just like sitting around and sniping. But these guys are completely out of control.
Worse than Nixon.
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