Rough notes > Politics > Conservatism > cons
Conservatism
[All this despite the fact twice as many voters are conservative as liberal – Harris Poll ’86].
/la times poll nr time of dem conv in atlanta [sum 87?] found 29% of reg voter lib and 36% [same oas 9 yrs ago]. sig
/cons – 40% mod-38, lib l8. about 2/88
/cons majority said p? dupont 87
/ethnic breakdown of cons. 39% of anglos are. 39% mex are. 47% pr’s are. 5l% cubans. but all latinos want gov help.
/l/4th blks are cons tho they feel gov has resp toward poor.
freedom
/with freedom comes dig
/gove has to force em to be free .. & take resp.
issues
lic – cut hair. esl
/biz burdened with: health insur, paid vac, uib, ss, maternity, 60 day, hi insure, wk comp? quotas, min wage, . now they want child care, maternity leave, comp worth.
*anti: pollution controls, fda, consumer protect, hiwys, nat prks. pub hsing fosters jd +. ex rates twix currencies should be set by supply and demand. slow, steady, predictable growth of $ supply = key to prosperity. econ freedom basic to pol freedom. gov to defend, watch $, l & o. & not consumer protect, hiwys, nat prks. neg inc tax could end wel bur. this from fried #
principles ========
-freedom over equality.
-falibility of majority rule.
-pri prop for free, order, progress.
principles w/am twist ==========
-natural inequality.
-rights are earned. 0000000
-bal of rights and duties, of freedom and resp.
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seems like some of these belong on soc
what would fried say bout indians and other minorities round the world
/once gov gets in, then everything is gov’s resp and fault.
/control over your sch, housing, job?, serv?
/robert w. poole jr. may 88. in 68 you could get into trouble for hooking up an answer mach or designer ext. [streching it] only l long dist tel com. cable tv was banned in the largest 200 cities [to protect ..] and you couldn’t send a package to be somehwere they next day. self=serv gas sta were illegal. cars got bout l2 mi / gal. if you wanted cash, you had to go to your bank twix l0 & 3 and stand in line. could earn only 5% on savings. no $ market accounts. you called the airline for THEE price. Gays lived in fear. the draft hung over all. was illegal to own gold. drs and lawyers couldn’t ad. no legal clinics, nor hmo’s. in eur, soc. was dominant. idea that the 3rd world was made poor by colonial exploitation was in vogue. [seems like l/2 on many of these]
/big is bad – collect..
/nip in the bud -disc – give an inch, they take a mile
/cons are more for the status quo.
/more jobs created in eng than in eur. when. source.
/cons aren’t in such a hurry to advertise their caring.
*/cons probably consistently worse toward minorities.
/cg-waste – collectivist
/la 4/26/89 competitive Enterprise inst: gov policies add l0 bil/yr to food bills. sugar import quotas add 3 bil/yr. quotas in for dairy products mean our milk, cheese, and butter are 2-3 times world prices. gov even restricts trans of milk to boost prices. farmers have to abandon or squander tons of lemons, orange, raisins, almonds, filberts. to drive up prices. trade barriers cost us 70 bil/yr. same adds $2500/ jap car.
steel quotas cost us 7 bil and textile quotas l9 bil. protectionism cost the average am fam over lk/yr. =======
/better miliage means smaller riskier cars.
/drug innovation down l/2 last 25 yrs. st lic restrits entry info some jobs and ups prices. ftc says this adds $700 mil to dentl care.
/gov housing “protection” had ruined supply: rent control.
/min wage has cost l000’s of jobs.
gov should go after thos who violate contracts, not restrict the type of contracts. consumers need more choice.
/cons know that experimenting is dangerous vs ……………..
/could one say that cigs were legalized? re alc, gambling, and drugs
/which old ways ARE bad
/cons bibles: bks by ban, gold, fried, sow? gild?
/research: how many things where gov caused biz to quit like: gov telling growers to upgrade housing for migrants. growers quit
/india has l5 official languages. what does “official” mean?
i/mandatory retirement
*/soc shifts resp – sig
/maybe we were all better off when the gap twix rich and poor was wider. in fact when were the best times.
/fried said goldwater’s ideas in 64 are now much more acceptable – country has changed that much.
/rhenquist was resisted as arch cons. now he’s chief justice.
/cons stickler for rules? but trying to bend em for rr over iran contra.
/sidney hook athiest, socialist. said catholics are not great believers in dem.
/fairness act ? in fcc being repealed in broadcasting [like papers]
/have to play hardball to get some people’s atten.
/so and west more cons
/blks more cons on soc issues than whts
/houston vs mass
/if oc were blindly cons, there wouldn’t be so many asian here. a
/cons – were slow w/marcos
/uncle sam is santa claus. frankenstein
/fried. no major? reviews of his views in 62 but lots in 80 prevented from speaking on campus said aia
/40 cons stu papers
/joseph bell said cons = rr=god, prayer, aids, hmless, homos, gun reg. & don’t expect libs to take fam on am heritage trip to dc.
/con: gov is over spent; libs: gov is undertaxed dup?
/cons: gov as nec evil vs libs as a good
/g. will said fdr saved cap from itself – shroder $%#$@$&|+*^
/you don’t have to go to wash to feed kids. hart said you do.
/in us. chile developing better ss – buckley. #$%^&*((*&&^%$#
/w. williams. – tolerate vice. libertarians are hang up on minutia. drugs are small part of our decline.
/heritage proposing nat health care for 37 mil.
/who ever paid for nationalization.
/best soc program is a job. p. wilson
/look at the way they use words – lib, sw, psych?, unions
/reason- gov not growing as fast as before. 3/89
/cap is sig for resp.
/cons leadership conf – in dc. – nutballs
gen emphasize defense
risky world
/sanctions didn’t work against ussr and panama
/with gov doing less, pri donations went up around 86
*-l/2 say am. f.p protects am biz cons dictators treated better by our gov than soc. ones.
*/3-l cons over libs in oc. 3/89.
/pluralism means progress. free market require some pol freedom and they generate demands for more. g. will
/soc darwinism
/what do quotas do for qualified blks and hispanics [hurt em].
/humane for person to pay hosp bills
/good and bad times to be alive
/bias “archie bunker w/ phd” title newswk used 6/90 re jon silber who said “phenominal” racism of some jews. cambodians to mass for wel. st workers amount to wel recipients. dem leaders = white supremacists. strip wel from teen ma’s who get preg again. no self-doubt. /silber [a lib dem, who believes in priming the pump].
/silber: life is real, earnest, short.
/reality is often cold and harsh.
cold blooded realism = dried eye view of reality
/silber: whims are needs, then rights on the assumption that sincerity creates values.
/cities starting to write off the hmless. atlanta sweeping them away form downtown. nyc banned subway beggars. dc cutting support. whites and some mc blks giving up on blk underclass. un news 6/25/90
/do cons believe more in preventative police wk than libs. of course.
/libs say cons running out of enemies.
/stupid r. novak said rr lst to stand up to comm which caused its fall. 000
/are reviving the cons tradition of isolationism. newswk sep l0/90 [but a number are not]
/g. will blowing it by knocking ir law. 9/90
/gingrich says dc is a lib city. sig
/don’t both libs and cons claim mods?
/goldwater told cons at 60s conv to grow up and work with mainstream rep
/status quo /laizze faire
/entrepreneurs are the heros, who take big losses
who came out of a cave to put down every change. john birchers who look under their bed every night for a communist.
Goldwater and Reagan were initially portrayed as extremists with stone age ideas. Their ideas, in fact, were represenative of middle america and, in the 80s, were put into practice, and only begrudgingly acknowledged by the media.
/used to do preventative detective wk said eddie eagan. cop talk 89.
nip it in bud. sig
/hershenson: all commentators were lib for yrs.
*/rusher, william-libs said we just have to understand em, cul ex, get along. that comm had done a lot of good, probably wasn’t so bad, our defense buildup was just bugging em. vs
-cons said they’re a big threat, taking over, got to fight and gain victory. what if we’d stopped em early? war mongering
/reagan’s dereg of fcc permitted infomercials, which papers have done for yrs. la times mag
/con rating sheet – devise one. around issues, lists.
– Conservatism should be given more legitimacy, if only to balance liberalism. = an assumption
/wash mo said “wealth and pov” was hyped and fell.
/fee: ss weakened one’s sense of resp for one’s folks and grandfolks, vs has helped people save for their retirement. fix
/food stamps led to a reduction in private efforts to feed the hungry.
/gov housing has help create a low-inc housing crisis.
/the cent and bur of pub schs has taken control over ed from folks
/cons more int in preserving the past
/i say supreme court should strike down rent control, mw, tarrifs?, etc
/does becomming older make you more tolerant and lib sig
no address, faright, etc. didn’t use l/90
Am. Op, 395 concord ave, belmont mass 02l78 probably faright
comm for the Free World (Midge Decter)
comm for Study of Public Choice,
wash times
New Guard, ‑l.5,/ l4‑39, expose, op
Con Dig (2?) 750‑l.2 / expose / rabid, FAR right, religion, hate?
Con Reg l‑lK / expose, Christian / yr to reply/ media, nasty, uptight, gild liberty
Shavano inst (far right) Hillsdale college, Mich /Imprimis=newlet
===================
/libs less violent said gene – more willing to talk it out.
/jessie helms = whipping boy what parents should provide, gov should not. /debbie boone, julie nixon,
/you have to have cap to have dem.
/dic of ideas: said cons: circle of marriages kept small, they don’t overlook diff of faith and ed.
parents and teachers are right.
individualism is AS suspect as egalitarianism.
universal freedom and equality are 0.
social origin more sig than earned status.
inherited prop more sig than acquired. hierarchy.
/l2/90 la new right [?] wants tenant mng of pub housing. later ownership. ed vouchers, health vouchers, enterprise zones in inner cities.
*/la on jessie helms l limited gov 2 priv prop 3 indivi resp no collect.. bargaining. no safety net, food stamps nor wel, no milk for poor kids in sch. what parents should provide, gov should not. 4 no charity.
-yet super nutty one by him via am ed l… ael
/libs feel cons have to have an enemy.
/cons believe we’re not all created equal and those better off must care for those less. d. broder. heritage is a respected force. l7 yrs old l/9l
/geo will gave stupid comments on war l/9l
/j kemp: if something’s wrong with your biz, don’t blame consumers. @#$%
/leave $ to kids as they will spend it better than gov. weak?
/post war purge of leftists from spy comm. in us. la
Hoffer, Eric ?
/j kemp: left is more worried about someone getting rich than about uib or infl. unabashed cons. says lot of union people, reps can win away from lib agenda
/cons not for rich, but for human nature
/Like ed, it’s not the job of the mil to work on soc problems: illiteracy, patriotism, sub parent, quotas = to “distribute” the task among social classes and racial groups.
/oc pols anti gay
/people should help selves. [bush’s view], said tv’s jon corcoran
/jimmy le blank’s observation
/chr sci mon 2/65: well know author said cons is dead. the mon disagreed: lib/con tug is sig. without con, the nat train might jump th track, without lib, it might stall at the sta. sig. they compliment each other. cons less easy to explain. the demand for unjustified change tends to look more dynamic. cons say libs are pie in the sky. libs say cons put prop right before human rights. [they call for a bal !!!]
*/limited gov vs wartime
/64 cons didn’t like rocky’s divorce and remarriage. they didn’t like dominance of the east. never expected to lose so badly. gold wanted victory at the risk of war. chancellor: cap better, but it didn’t win, comm fell. cons wanted to bomb kremlin. nato held back.
/ever remember how some crisis taught you a lesson you never forgot – like big debt, no $ or whatever.
/w.r. grace: lst resp of biz is to make $. worst corp. soc. resp. is to lose money as then fewer jobs for all…etc.
/libs feel cons have to have an enemy.
/the movie joe/
cons pitfalls start with faright
/The heroic [crap] age of conservatism came to a close with thatcher’s exit. g. will nwswk l2/l3/90
/buckley takes credit for wrenching pol to the right over past 30 yrs. seen in past as crackpot. said goldwater carred 5 states in 64 and rr 49 in 84 saying same thing. buck is moralistic re pers beh. galbraith, kennedys, pilpel are friends despite diffs. kept debates impersonal. he legitimized the right. la 7/9l
/cons: no free lunch, nice guys finish last.
/mandate for leadership III by heritage
/Prime Time Crime by lichter on smut probably biased.
/any idealism from the right
==============
/c rossiter BLEW it in bk, cons in am [eurodite, aloof]: cons is;
p l98. very little of worth. thus bk must be 0. just like buckley.
/basic rights vs rights one earns.
*/chancellor: cap better, but it didn’t win, comm fell. cons wanted to bomb kremlin. nato held back.
/which class is becomming more cons. or does so during cons swings?
/our taxes go to pay for or subsidize stupid recreation programs. they people that go should pay.
/stop sharing the cake and share the recepe with ussr – phil gram
/pat buchanan is an isolationist.
/russ limbaugh. cons. biggest talk show host. am in aft. he says libs always wringing hands. never have time for fun. 640 am 9-noon kfi.
/’76 networks at their height. average hm had 7 channels. now it’s 33. this is probably one of the most sig free market principles – comp in the media.
gingrich – cons won’t comp and thus lose all.
/m. fried: vol army, no tax-exempt insts. no mw. cash grant instead of wel. only soc resp of biz is profit. tax witholding [‘4l]
/cons were slow with marcos.
/econ man said in trade talks you have to get as much as you give.
/we need more competition in media, c, iq, tanks, church.
/cons missing pt by not pointing out the impracticality of much of our ed. and conversely getting stu in contact with reality.
/best news yet – flight from public schs. us news l2/9/9l
/conservatives should do a better job of showing what worked in past.
/mitchner said irving kristol dumped on tom jeff…
/hoover inst. dr. baluska? l2/9l. hong kong: l5% max tax [which is grad.. as most have none]. no cap gains tax. no int witholding tax. 8-9% growth since 50s = econ has grown 32 times.
pub trans has to compete with pri.
mexico is one of best examples of dismantling gov.
argentina’s stock market’s done well. l2/9l
/own your own mail box –
/reagan warm, pos, underated, didn’t explain, blew deficit, overdid defense
/cons says what SHARE of hmless, what % to charity, rehab etc.
/rikers island. guard said you want to help em till it happens to you – get attacked.
/moral majority got playboy taken off 7-ll newstands.
/laffer is anti bush. said raising taxes costs jobs and services?/why don’t cons sue libs and ed for grad functionally illiterate/peace dividend; cons want it to go toward debt or returned to people and free market.
/buchanan diff as most pols don’t attack the head of their party, touch seniors, or shoot from the lip. he had a pugnacious beginning. aids punishes gays. cath. with nix he lashed out at leftist drift of pbs, criticized integration, attacked ml king. plays hardball like nix. pro contras. get tuff with jap. anti multiculturalism in c./libetarians 540 5053
/need citizens grp to sue schs, juv hall. for dress codes, etc.
/cons slow on women, homos, minorities,
/in tex, child support was shifted from wel to justice. it worked. ’92 /nix some cons too afraid of risk. want to keep all.
/fee types: i kirzner – nyu, doug bandow – cato.
/modern cons often aligned with religious right. la 92
/cons ban snow white, wiz of oz, catcher in rye, huck finn
/to conserv is to hold on to ones vals, past, which is not less caring
/woodsen: 92 no outsiders should do more for us than we will do for ourselves [l/2 way] /woodsen: 92 no outsiders should do more for us than we will do for ourselves [l/2 way]
/you never hear of an hispanic cons./cons: retiring the blackbird. deck of the missouri. macho. my country right or wrong.
/most freedom within a certain framework.
/scholarships not vouchers ?????????????????/nat debt close to 4 trillion – 92/does gov support the pri sector or visa versa.
/gov should be referee, but not own the team.
/gov take money from pri sector to create job in pub sector which is a worse job. army. pri is rational; the gov is dumb.
/adam smith said gov provides for infrastructure. but i wonder/we have an industrial policy with agriculture. d. army 92
/cons are eng only?
/[con claim credit for ending cold war, when if not gorby, no end]
/l% pay 27% of taxes and 50% pay 95%? of taxes wfb.
/don’t have to work for uib. /hatyek pubed the rd to serfdom. in ’44. it outraged conventional wisdom by saying cent planning led to despotic gov. it was seen as heresy in eng. he wrote another bk; the const of liberty. which set j kemp off. d. broder w post 4/6/92
/dr. allen of sd? pub ed is just of the last 80 yrs. was experimental. 92
but carved in stone. we’re not getting serious with drug users.
/cons – sch. prayer.
/cons policies of 80’s: results: rich richer, poor poorer. mc squeezed, nat. debt.
/buchanan see a religious war. – battle for the soul of am.
/gov redistri.. cannot give dig and respect.
/chasing libs is like chasing criminals – kick.
/some cons org should head off b & c hms.
/cops said after you’ve enuff wrecks from drunks, etc, you do more preventative police work. sig 92 vs comm relations approach. sig.
/cons like to blame recession on carter and take credit for recovery. wrong. both were the resp of paul volcker’s fed. us news 6/92
/kemp: no cap gains for those in inner cities. increase earned income tax credit. reward those who take jobs to work their way off wel. skipping. vouchers. 5/ll/92 w post.
/g. will pbs . gov not obligated to increase [or support?] it.
/terrel: cons started late 40 due to libertarianism, … , and anti comm.
the end of liberalism by theodore lowey? consumerism is soc. feminist complaints are fanciful.
/founding fathers knew gov is the enemy of the people. w. williams
/kemp said libs afraid if poor own their apts they might sell them for a profit. said wel penalizes saving, wk, and ownership?
/cons unec see the fam threatened as if it’s the only pillar. fam val- being about to disc? have their vals reflected and reinforced in the sch.
/charge that cons love to hate? [do they?] or fear or mad? well do you hate crime, dictatoships, folly, waste, famine, war, needless suffering, tragic idealism./600 enterprise zones. seem to not be working so well. 92
/rippon soc is now mod. used to call selves progressives. ruckelshaus, hudnutt, leach, mary louise smith, gregg edwards [nj], the pillsburys, hillmans, & goodyears. dolly madison mckenna, roukema, weld, pete wilson, mekernan, kean, sec jim baker. the fundamentalist christians beat the moderates in the rep party. w post 9/6-/92 dem
/no zoning in houston
/wall st favors rep.. party. wsw 92
/prison pop had nearly quadrupled in past 20 yrs. wash mo 9/9l
/apply anti trust to unions !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!/justice shouldn’t have to rely on gov. libertarian. sig.
kemp touched a nerve – aud. got roused on free market. said
-enemy is dc as we are one of the most productive countries.
-dc raises the prices of $ and labor. we have highest cost of capital. over reg.
/armie says tort laws are holding back boeing and douglas.
/if we don’t move to mex. others will.
/all quintiles made more in last 8 yrs. [but probably not in real terms]
in 80’s we created 2l mil jobs. said kemp. no one else did [creat jobs?] l7% of those jobs were low wage.
/kissinger said it’s job of gov to allow pri sector to compete, etc.
/why isn’t there a top cons univ?/gov is the solution … it’s the problem.
/robber barons were also the robber builders. [what carneige built and endowed]
/modern maturity oct 92.
robert l. bartley [cons]: before 89 possible to think com and cap would converge into something like sweden. since 83 big change. most cons policies. sound money, tax cuts, dereg. 7 fat years. called greed. after 90 it was ground down by overeacting to s&l. since ’52 fed revenues twix l7-20% of gnp./repeal the earnings test on ss. it is a prohibitive tax on working after age 65. tax on cap gains can reach over l00% of real profit as no adjustment for infl. thus capital frozen in old investments.
we pay taxes once on income. if we put it into savings, we pay taxes on it again [re int earned? or what]. medicare keep drs fromk charign more than so much from anyone over 65. thus forcing med insts to charge the workers more. parasitic tort law system. to beat this losers should pay crt costs. egalitarian phil forbids grouping stu by ability or beh. jd’s get no disc till an icorribible age. planning vs market/gatt frees only a fraction of world trade, THUS pressure building for biggest mass migration ever. atlantic l0/92 jack miles
/let countries use the currency they want. dollars big in ussr. l0/92
/gore said bush has doubled deficit in 4 yrs.
/libertarian: ed is not a right ??/libertarian: no personal income tax in alaska. no drug laws before l9l4. alc and crime went down since end of prohibition.
/most ams don’t believe in the redist of wealth. eur tried it and it didn’t work. sec. of labor lynn martin l0/92
/kemp said cons haven’t shown they understand the necessities of gov.
/tradval? am of 30s, 40s: anti, semitic, foreign, & blk. blks in ghettos, most prevented from voting.
/cons have never taken a stand on classes. they should.
/gov out of pocketbook, home, bedroom [vs kids], biz,
/cons who got into trouble with sex: al cap. rep bauman.
/w. bennet. the all needs gov. our nanny gov.
/w. bennet: parents have to swim upstream against decline of val.
/restaurants should have the right to refuse biz to anyone, as pri club?
poor woman utters “my business” when camera crew comes in her restaurant 93
/morita? of sony said if you want to help the am econ, dereg.. 92
/laffer: deficits are the only thing that holds down spending. thus better to run deficits than raise taxes. if you increase taxes, pols just increase spending. c weinberger said same.
/programs that help all do more for the poor than programs for the poor. /l000 pts of light/do cons get credit for a vol mil
/menken: less gov. anti wilson, tr, fdr. anti socialist authors like upton sinclair and hg wells. socialists were infatuated with stalin, but mencken saw thru the fraud as early as 28. /[poor, etc. like kids; you can’t be too easy]/gov. of mich endler. infringement on states rights to require so much money from em. dc good at spending money it doesn’t have. states can’t do that.
/kemp: nader predicted rationing for gas. later rr decontolled and price went down. free market makes econ sense and is morally right.
deficit as % of gnp dropped under rr. tradvals and econ growth are the same. kemp. sig. libs in ussr are good guys. g. mcgovern said rich were over l7k in 7l [and bad?]. lost as lot under l7k wanted to be over. he assumes as soon as people own something, they improve it. a a. black kid said will a black baloon rise to the top. yes, it’s what’s inside.
/free $: wel, stamps, uib, ss, disability, /no civil rights without econ power. entrepreneurs are being taxed at 37%. 90% uib at cabrini green. kemp
ann rand her lexicon. cap is anti war. cap gave the world longest peace l8l5-l9l4. also some period in which pop of eur skyrocketed. cons based on faith [over reason], tradition, depravity. in 30s they proposed bigger gov as temp. they denouce pol concepts as labels. they loved mankind and ignored the terrible injustices in ussr. 253. hippies: whim. loneliness is not being about to share. thinkers seek equals; conformists seek protection. wrong on mccarthy. uc is the past. 0 on class. cap is best for pov 335. key to cap is freedom 376. wrong on un. can’t redistribute money unless its yours. it’s not yours, nor gov’s, nor society’s. 4l0 /uib is due to unions, mw, +, 5l3. rand. unions are part of mc. dictatorships is greatest evil. war is 2nd greatest evil. wealth in a free market comes from “dem” vote – the sales and purchases of those who take part. 173 econ freedom nec for pol free.., pol freedom nec for iq freedom. thus a free market and a free mind are nec. free market doesn’t level men down to lcd. all the evils … ascribed to bizmen and cap were caused by gov, not by a free market. the better the mind, the longer the range. tremendous misunderstanding, distortion, etc of cap. 59 cap didn’t created pov; it inherited it. cap helped and pop of eur up 300% in l9th cent. vs 3% of previous cents. cap can’t work with slave labor. it was the cap no that wiped out the feudal south [us]. 60 cap imperialis, war profiteering, or notion that cap has to win markets by mil force are all myths. 6l. cap was damned from the start. 62 /cap vs altruism 96. some cons mix religion and cap and should NOT. 97 no mono ever created by free market. was done by gov. 29 she’s against anti trust laws. altruism. 4. can only justify your existence thru service to others. goes on to mess it up and lose your atten. that happened thruOUT the bk./cons are show me types/what would be a cons bias
/bottom line, shape up or ship out, values, standards, ratings, no free lunch, meet l/2 way./cons anti pc
/can reduce complex matters to basics (with out being simplistic)
/republicans fight over taxes, spending, deficits, abort, privacy, indust policy. 3 factions of reps: [not clear]
l) rel right: tax cuts, dereg, strict fam vals=?, censor.
anti abort, gay. protectionist on econ and trade.
2) progressive cons: jobs, ed, health, via tax breaks and vouchers, not thru bur. kemp, du pont, bennet, pinkerton.
3) center-right: fiscal restraint & f p stewardship [?]. cheney, phil gramm. cut medicaid
4) pragmatists: social mod. abort. p wilson. w. weld.
/all reps want less gov and more growth. us news? 93
/schultz said rr and thatch had backbones. 93
/issues cons are missing, i say: tradval, practical ed, biz, mw,
73 fried got nix to end draft. simon’s A Time For Truth – bestseller. free to choose was too – for a yr. g stigler won nobel.
/the Economist is free market, with no apologies.titles
/where cons miss the boat, where cons should counter libs.
/golden opportunities for conservatives.
where cons should make their case,
/advantages cons miss/opportunities cons could take advantage of/have to pt to good cons program. maybe THEN libs will get idea.
/mises anti central banking [sig]. thus anti fed reserve. pro gold standard. he wrote Human Action. Socialism. the Theory of Money & Credit. hayek was a nobel laureate.
/if cons admitted mistakes, they’d be ahead of libs/cons want to hold everything till some things get cleared up. you can’t hold back the tide./cons should pt out: pov’s not that bad. how to get out.
/ent zone should be a free zone: mw, lawsuits, regs, etc. and shown by hong kong or whatever.
/cons need to pt to country of no pov line, no mw, low taxes.
/hmowers assoc have probably sprung up BECAUSE of the lack of spine of gov agencies?/disney was arch cons./goldwater didn’t retract his extremism statement of 64./econ “tradvals” must be apply to econ sphere.
/soc hate the gold standard. it and econ free.. are one. chronic deficit spending is incompatible with gold stan.. Abandoning it made it possible for the soc. to use banks for unlimited credit. jul 93 free market [via von mises] rockwell
/goldwater: pro choice. anti rel right. said if cleric becomes a pol, leave the bible at the door.
*/cons missing out on morbid egalitarianism. rich richer, etc.
/lot of rush’s aud feel laughed at and made fun of by sitcoms, and in flics. us news 8/93, but someone’s watching it.
/cons should admit mistakes faster than libs as accountable.
/treat taxpayers like customers.
/cons did not like the counter culture [define]. dionne.
/leadership inst. 800l braddock rd #502, springfield, va 22l5l. trains cons j stu. there are l03 cons pubs on c’s – 93./ma said cons are thick skinned and hung up./cons have an inordinate influence in spec elections. w post/from dem to rep: reagan, kilpatrick, phil gram,
/remember, good conservatives aren’t supposed to enjoy sex./libs for good econ and sec always – thus self pity. cons say prepare for cycles. a a a a/why only one cons college – hillsdale.
/find the good and praise it. cons.
=============
/cons big on fam. monogamy, 2 parent families in here somewhere. so if they divorce they hypoc.. 00. e tyrrel divorced. g will on 2nd wife. 00000
-cons rank and file go to church; cons elite are agnostic, but use religion to mobilize followers.
-rel cons don’t have much of a tradition of speculative thot.
[= not iq]. they are mc or lower: evangelicals, trad catholics, ortho.. jews. they don’t demand strict rel in their pol leaders. but like their leaders to be open to rel. [=?]
-umc rep differ with libs on taxes, econ, gov size, and some fp, but not on social issues. like abort and work centered lifestyles vs home centered.
-cons leaders use tradvals to claim a following like lib leaders have? a solidarity with wc.
con leaders can’t save the rep party. c allen. w post. she writes for cons pubs. w post oct 25/93. so what’d she say?
===============
/black cons but no hispanic cons
/keene of acu: stoggy, drag, officious,
libs are more fun, alive
/cons are for term limits. w. mo.
/singapore: low crime, orderly, no pov, hmless, nor uib. no traffic congestion. clean subways. detectors for urinating in elevators makes em stop. no guns, cept cops. no spit, litter. flush toi. something bout gum. death for drugs. indef detention. censor: no playboy, no cosmo. no mobs. say go hm or they will open fire and they do.
/why hasn’t the r given mater dei more credit?/nr has strange nasty humor.
/hostile takovers are often beneficial. trade imabalence is a sign of strength. reason.
/cons make their own luck.
/cons give the poor one chance, but the rich many chances. when poor fail, they say, see i told you so.
/dennis prager said you hear of ultra cons but no ultra libs.
/frank luntz – most ams are cons.
/mod upper mc republicans want econ and f.p over soc. fred barnes. 3/94
ans mach with mail boxes superb for my hse. and it will break the telephone co’s MONOPOLY! /in 50s we were l/3 soc, now we’re half, said fried 267. of rush
/with no benefits, there are more jobs – in bolivia.
/for 20 yrs the reps have owned the crime issue. 94 tv
/con know there are reasons for the status quo.
/pursuit of egalitarianism leads to mediocrity.
/ UL been in biz for l00 yrs. 94 6 bil products certified.
/cons that hate wel ought to allow abortion.
/l980. dereg of trucking cost lot of teamster jobs. more congestion and accidents.
– skip all references to classical liberalism.
/right wing reps, taft, wanted to drop tva, ss, new deal, but ike wouldn’t.
cs over…..? ‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑ @b disect this
In the political sense, conservatism means:
maintaining established values and institutions. rapid change is likely to bring more harm than good, especially when it attacks ways of life that have developed over a long period of time. They tend to be pessimistic about the chances of improving people’s behavior through social change and are often skeptical of popular democracy ??????
and what they may see as excessive personal freedom.
cons seek to prevent erosion of important values and institutions.
whereas reactionaries want to turn society back to a supposed golden age of the past. @b
Conservatives usually favor traditional religion, even though they themselves may be nonbelievers, ????????????? and
-in capitalist countries they tend to be probusiness and antigovernment. –In Communist societies, however, they are likely to be opposed to those who desire change in party and state institutions.
-In nonindustrial societies, conservatives are likely to favor agrarian policies and oppose industrialization. @b
Modern conservatism traces its roots to the French Revolution (1789) and the reaction against the excesses that occurred among many who had sympathized with its aims. Burke strongly rejected what he considered the inevitable violence, arbitrariness, and radical destructiveness of the Revolution. Unable to accept the suggestion of Jean Jacques Rousseau that government is merely an arrangement among people living in a certain society at a certain time, Burke saw government as a contract between generations past, present, and future; the political inheritance, in his view, was not to be squandered with experimentation. @b
The conservatism of the 19th century was also [?] a reaction against the Industrial Revolution and the assumption that reason could improve, if not perfect, all social interactions and institutions. Coleridge opposed extending suffrage to businesspeople because of their pocketbook politics. Metternich and Dostoyevsky deplored the passing of traditional monarchies, the irrationalities of the mob, and the shallow rationalism of the modernizers.
Conservatism in the United States: framers of the U.S. Constitution, sought to avoid direct election of the pres; they distrusted democracy. To the aristocracies of Europe, however, they appeared quite radical because they proposed to do away with the monarchy and inherited privileges. Alexander HAMILTON and other Federalists favored a strong central government and a strong president, interpreted the Constitution very freely, and wanted the government to play a decisive role in the economy. @b
Under the impact of the Industrial Revolution, in the 19th century American conservatism became more identified with agrarian, populist views and a distrust of the central government.
By the 20th century conservatism was represented by business interests who had generally secured their political and economic position and were concerned about maintaining the rights of property and the prevailing free‑enterprise system both out of self‑interest and out of a belief that the system that had allowed them to advance would allow others to do the same. They therefore opposed the extension of governmental authority in regulating the economy and providing social services. Modern conservatism has thus adopted many of the laissez‑faire views of 19th‑century liberalism. ah ha. @b
Bibliography: Buckley, William F., Jr., and Kesler, C. R.,eds., Keeping the Tablets: Modern American Conservative Thought (1987); Covell, C., The Redefinition of Conservatism (1985); Kirk, Russell, The Conservative Mind (1953; repr. 1986); Nash, George H., The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America since 1945 (1976); Nisbet, Robert, The Twilight of Authority (1975); Oakeshott, Michael, Rationalism in Politics and Other Essays (1928; repr. 1981); Rossiter, Clinton, Conservatism in America, 2d ed. (1962; repr. 1982); Steinfels, Peter, Neoconservatism (1979); Tyrrell, R. Emmett, The Conservative Crack‑Up (1992).
/hayek won nobel in 75
‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑ @b
Laissez‑faire (French, “leave alone”): let businesses make their own decisions without government interference. as a reaction against the restrictionist policies of MERCANTILISM. Linked with the concept of FREE TRADE, it became the basis of Adam SMITH’s classical economics. Later, Laissez‑faire principles were strongest in mid‑19th century, but increasing monopoly and the Industrial Revolution brot reg.
Modern proponents of laissez‑faire stress the importance to economic growth of the profit incentive and the undeterred entrepreneur. The phrase has been largely supplanted by such terms as market economy or free enterprise. @b
Bibliography: Hirst, Francis W., ed., Free Trade and OtherFundamental Doctrines of the Manchester School (1903; repr. 1968); Kuttner, R., The End of Laissez‑Faire (1991); Thirwall, A. P., ed., Keynes and Laissez‑Faire (1978).
/why no brown cons?
/cons are NOT reactionaries. classical lib became cons…
/becoming more diverse so we need unifying factors. crap. out strength is our diversity. its shows our need for less rel, i say.
/biz hurt by reg, litigation, taxation – newt.
/gov bur are anti biz, anti entrep…
/racial quotas for death penalties.
/retreat of soc round world. newt.
said man’s struggle is to free himself from insts he created. dos passos/cons always looking back.
said man’s struggle is to free himself from insts he created. dos passos/rel cons becoming the most powerful int grp in gop – the equivalent of unions within the dems. they are l2%-25% of pop. 94
/con want gov out of everyone’s life yet want to stop abort and gays.
/cons – ir – resp/protection helped cause and prolong the depression. d armey/saffire said ussr needs dem and cap. 94?
/goldwater said cons support gays as not hurting others, individ rights, need em in biz, can’t discrim. seems like he’s twisting logic? 7/94/cons pol is anti gov as nanny. /enuff asians have succeded in biz that asian-ams have become “the darlings of white cons,” says prof lynch of cmc.
/bal budget/rel right gaining power in rep party. 8/94 more effective in mid term elec as lo turnout. think tank.
/rel. element was on left spearheaded anti slavery, pop, nat the rr, prohibit alc. but left after the embarrassment of the scopes trial. [later civil rights?] came back in late 60s, 70s.
/rel rigth started with evangelical protestants. others rels in. they feel displaced.
/with exception of anti abort, they are close to mainstream am.
/we define ourselves by having an enemy. with russia gone, we cast about. cul war [=?]
/lib media can be intolerant said panelist on tv.
/rel right are learning to compromise. some support abort.
/62 and 63 decisions on sch prayer and pri schs bugged the rel right.
/do cons have to have an enemy more than libs?
/rel right not apocalyptic – prophetic. these delcines were foretold by monihan, murray, & w raspberry.
/the 92 rep conv mocked cul diversity.
/is judeo-christian tradition exclusionary?
/intolerance on both sides: secular left and rel right said rel guy. [wrong]
/36% turnout during midterm tv so rel right will make more diff.
/unions not as powerful in dem party as before. 94
/rel right learning reality not ideology, learning to compromise. becoming more soph in pol. they and reps need each other.
/cons blowing it on morals, virtue, etc. when they could use tradval. 94/growth of the imperial presidency began with fdr. d shore on w gate program. sig sig re soc.
/russel riley said the good ol days are figments of a good imagination and a poor memory. /rockwell [n] in r: child labor: l3 yr old wks all day. makes $ for his sch clothes. for child labor, the labor dept fined hardees, burger kind, a&p, etc. wk teaches youth: follow instructions, be polite, come in on time, service, coop, but mostly link twix work and reward. more wk habits, skills, resp = more $. fed sayd l5 yr old can’t wk more than 3 hrs a night during wk, and not after dinnertime. can’t work past 9 pm. never more than 40 hrs/wk. this aids unions who support child labor laws, which lifts their wages. 8/l4/94
/preventative measures covered under nip …
/cons say communities took care of own problems better before big gov. they like ed burke.
/w bennet: gov: do no harm./h jarvis said don’t let gov have the $.
/environment Protection through private property.
/cons say, wouldn’t you love to go back to a rates of crime, illegit, taxes [the key], wel, infl?, debt, reg, gov involvement, and higher rates of ed. you could via tradval of less gov
/we’ll never compete globally with our false bottom.
/92 election meant [bad] cons gains: nra, christian anti abort. and easing off on anti smoking leg. but rel right voted off vista sch bd. la
/no industrial policy. cut wk com, uib, /best economist is a pri owner.
/jessie helms will pull back from ir resps. tv 94.
/helms wants to delay gatt. 94
/cons are asking questions of hill staffers employers can’t ask re sch prayer, abort, gays in mil,
/newt’s gop 94: $500 per child credit [as tax cut]. bar gays from schs, do nothing to promote gay lifestyle, roll back don’t ask, don’t tell in mil. anti abort. end fed support for the Arts. modify brady bill and ban on certain assult rifles. reverse pref hiring and fed contracting.
/ll/94 rep. hill staffers being asked op on: aclu, com cause, nra, right to wk, nea, now, pro life, planned parenthood, sierrra bluv, un, and some pols./after ll/94 election. cons want to build defense, ease off gays in mil, fam leave?, tobacco?,
/l87 passed. now calif’s thinking of const amend not granting auto citizenship to those born here. ll/94
/if you want less fed gov, you have to take more resp back hm, said newt. 94
/the 92 rep conv mocked cul diversity.
/rel right learning reality not ideology, learning to compromise. becoming more soph in pol. they and reps need each other.
/newt is anti l87. anti am troops under un command. reps are going to back off on smoking lobby. l2/94/newt’s l 800 2 renew 73639 is not enuff nos./rr: s&l, hud, deficit
/gov: do no harm.
/alt cert. & merit pay for teachers. rescine no fault divorce laws. make adoption easier. child support, id of pa’s.
/dems in us and social dems in eur have since ’45 expanded mc and enhanced its sense of sec – pub works, mw, fiscal policy, unions, but these have smashed against a globalized econ. sig la mag l2/4/94
/newt said no freedom FROM rel. ass.
/they will say newt is power hungry, but he wants power passed back to the sts. flaw
/newt’s extremes: future of civil.. , human race, only am can save ..
/the old rep way of blowing it is to be for the top l%, said K. phillips.
/lynn chaney a bit to the right. think tank l2/94
/later death threats for newt.
/brent bozell: so angry and indignant. gets old quick. r novak so unhappy and disgruntled like he just finished a bad meal. comes on too strong.
/titles of the acts in the contract for am are off.
/new cons are: optimists, moralists, nationalists, ea led by kemp, bennett, buchanan. l/95
/support only what’s proven. rehab hasn’t worked.
/goldwater: sch prayer is a waste of time. he’s for abort, gay rights, right to die. vw was usless he found out later. nor in haiti. l/95
/m novak too defensive and melodramatic on rel. has to be cath.
has teen kids. always seemed gay.
/cons more int in the practical – what HAS worked.
/herb stein wants gov cut WAY back – ss, med – good for him. 95/guiliani’s making biggest cuts in 60 yrs. 95.
new gov, pataki, making bunch.
/the pri econ in another term to use [like the pri sector]/gen speaking, no gov $ should go where pri $ won’t. cons- Read FREE TO CHOOSE by Milton Friedman, THE CONQUEST OF POVERTY by Henry Hazlitt, THE UNHEAVENLY CITY REVISITED by E. G. Banfield.
/you don’t hear much about the effective min wage having dropped. /should point out where cap is bad and unions are good. and that all ain’t so gloomy.- Read FREE TO CHOOSE by Milton Friedman, THE CONQUEST OF POVERTY by Henry Hazlitt, THE UNHEAVENLY CITY REVISITED by E. G. Banfield, and books by Thomas Sowell, Barry Goldwater, and William F. Buckley.
/ams to the right of center. said w saffire. 3/95
/cons split twix traditionalists and libertarians. saffire 95
/kemp: rr’s ideas are being adopted round the world. 95/mccarthy era/cons kept us from playing china off against ussr earlier./contract with am: congress follow same employ laws as pri
bal budget, lin item veto, crime …., wel to sts, 5 yr max; fam: child support, tax incentive for adopt, mc: 550/kid … sec: no us tropps under un; seniors: … ; unfunded mandates; cap gains cut; tort reform; terms limits. 4/95
/on the mil, we spend as much as rest of world combined and maintain it at a level of mil prepardness, in relative terms, that exceeds what we maintained with russia at its height. us news 5/95. /far less of a cons base in the country when rr was in.
/reps have been pentagon’s best friend for yrs. tv 95
/ivy league softies didn’t let mil do job in viet./cons always think its the end of morals.
/wfb said dems made the depression long. sig. in nr 4/3/95/reps want people to work for food stamps. chile privatized ss./michael markum [tradvals] fits in totally with boot camp, ed, wel, jd, im, and what else?
/michael markum’s thing would support my theory: no wonder there are more gangs, crime, etc.
/am pol network publishes hotline newslet.
nat. journal<c‑news@world.std.com>
Here is a list I have been compiling on what I call “required reading” for conservatives. Feel free to send it along to everyone. Most are available from the Conservative Book Club ‑ 33 Oakland Avenue ‑ Harrison, NY 10528 (no ‑ I am not affiliated with CBC ‑ just a big fan).
_________________________
Shaun A. Maher, Esq.
The Conservative Scorecard
avb@cais.com
____________________________
“A wise man’s heart inclines
him toward the Right, but a
fool’s heart inclines him
toward the Left.”
Ecclesiastes 10:2
____________________________
REQUIRED READING
____________________________
Economics
Reagan’s Terrible Swift Sword (*) Donald Devine
Money Mischief (*) Milton Friedman
Capitalism and Freedom Milton Friedman
Monetary History of America Milton Friedman
Road to Serfdom Friedrich Hayek
Constitution of Liberty Friedrich Hayek
The Calculus of Consent Buchanan and Tullock
Grand Illusions George Grant
Wealth and Poverty George Gilder
The Spirit of Free Enterprise (*) George Gilder
Takings Richard Epstein
Money of the Mind (*) James Grant
The New Politics of Poverty Lawrence M. Mead
Three Cheers for Capitalism Irving Kristol
Economics In One Lesson Henry Hazlitt
Human Action Ludwig von Mises
Socialism Ludwig von Mises
Risk, Uncertainty and Profit Frank H. Knight
Harvesting Dollars (*) L.L. Eastland
Say’s Law (*) Thomas Sowell
The Coming Economic Earthquake (*) Larry Burkett
Out of Work (*) Vedder & Gallaway
Recapturing The Spirit of Enterprise (*) George Gilder
Environment
Free Market Environmentalism (*) Anderson & Neal
Trashing the Planet (*) Ray & Guzzo
Environmental Overkill (*) Ray & Guzzo
Trashing The Economy (*) Arnold & Gottlieb
Education
Illiberal Education (*) Dinesh D’Souza
N.E.A. Trojan Horse (*) Samuel Blumenfeld
The Crisis of Western Education Christopher Dawson
How To Start Your Own Private School Samuel Blumenfeld
The New Illiterates Samuel Blumenfeld
Is Public Education Necessary Samuel Blumenfeld
Why Johnny Can’t Read Rudolph Flesch
Learning To Read: The Great Debate Jeanne Chall
A Question of Intelligence (*) Daniel Seligman
Shut Up and Let The Lady Teach (*) Emily Sachar
The Last Angry Principal (*) Howard Hurwitz
Liberating Schools (*) Various
Dumbing Us Down (*) John Taylor Gatto
How Professors Play The Cat (*) Richard Huber
Why Johnny Can’t Tell Right From Wrong (*) William Kilpatrick
Inside American Education (*) Thomas Sowell
Imposters In The Temple (*) Martin Anderson
Inside American Education (*) Thomas Sowell
The Fall of the Ivory Tower (*) George Roche
What Are Your Kids Reading? (*) Jill Carlson
The Right Choice (*) Christopher Klicka
Socialized Education (*) Various
The Crisis of Western Education (*) Christopher Dawson
Why Johhny Can’t Tell Right from Wrong (*) William Kilpatrick
Imposters in the Temple (*) Martin Anderson
Public Education (*) Myron Lieberman
White House Daze (*) Charles Kolb
+
Sex and Morality
Forbidden Grounds Richard A. Epstein
Enemies of Eros
Sexual Suicide George Gilder
The Abolition of Man C.S. Lewis
The Case For Christianity C.S. Lewis
Kinsey, Sex and Fraud (*) Reisman & Eichel
Christians In A Sex‑Crazed Culture (*) Bill Hybels
Power in the Blood (*) David Chilton
Decent Exposure (*) Connie Marshner
“Soft Porn” Plays Hardball Judith Reisman
Homosexuality and Natural Law (*) Harry Jaffa
Romanced To Death (*) Paul deParrie
A Nation of Victims (*) Charles J. Sykes
The Book of Virtues (*) William J. Bennett
Against the Tide (*) Tim & Beverly LaHaye
Conservativism v. Liberalism
Intellectuals (*) Paul Johnson
Conservative Mind (*) Russell Kirk
Prospects For Conservatives (*) Russell Kirk
Right from the Beginning (*) Patrick Buchanan
The Conservative Crack‑Up (*) R. Emmett Tyrrell
The Way Things Out To Be Rush Limbaugh
Right Reason William Buckley
The Conservative Affirmation Willmoore Kendall
Conservatism in America Clinton Rossiter
Confessions of a Conservative Gary Wills
The Conservative Intellectual Movement George Nash
The Rise of the Right William Rusher
Dictionary of American Conservatism Louis Filler
Right Minds Gregory Wolfe
First Things Hadley Arkes
The Philosopher in the City Hadely Arkes
Portable Conservative Reader Russell Kirk
Reflections of a Neoconservative Irving Kristol
Anarchy, State and Utopia Robert Nozick
Keeping the Tablets Buckely & Kesler
Conservative Thoughts (*) Various
Rise of Radical Egalitarianism (*) Aaron Wildavsky
Suicide of the West (*) James Burnham
Liberalism in Contemporary America (*) Dwight D. Murphey
Modern Age (*) Various
Deconstructing the Left (*) Collier & Horowitz
The Blessings of Liberty (*) Charles C. Heath
The Tempting of America (*) Robert Bork
The Conservative Movement (*) Paul Goldfried
Beautiful Losers (*) Samuel Francis
The Conservative Manifesto (*) William Hennessy
God & Man at Yale (*) William F. Buckley, Jr.
Devaluing of America (*) William J. Bennett
History
Modern Times (*) Paul Johnson
Birth of Modern: World Society Paul Johnson
Reflections on the French Revolution Edmund Burke
A Constitutional History of U.S. Forrest McDonald
Chappaquiddick Revisted (*) Kenneth Kappel
Under Fire (*) Oliver North
The Great Reckoning (*) Davidson & Rees‑Mogg
The Seven Fat Years (*) Robert Bartley
With Reagan (*) Edwin Meese, III
The Closing of the American Mind (*) Allan Bloom
What I Saw At The Revolution (*) Peggy Noonan
Microcosm (*) George Gilder
Faith and Freedom (*) Benjamin Hart
Roosevelt’s Road To Russia (*) G.N. Cocker
The Big Fix (*) J.R. Adams
Behind The Scenes (*) Michael Deaver
The Roots of American Order (*) Russell Kirk
Wise Men Know What Wicked Things Are Written (*) Russell Kirk
McCarthy and His Enemies Bozell & Buckley
The Crisis Years (*) M.R. Beschloss
The Legacy of Chernobyl (*) Z. Medvedev
The World of Patience Gromes (*) S.C. Davis
The Withering Away of the Totalitarian State (*) Jean Kirkpatrick
The Great Terror (*) Robert Conquest
The Cause That Failed (*) Guneter Lewy
1492 And All That (*) Robert Royal
The Campaign of the Century (*) Greg Mitchell
The Dream and the Nightmare (*) Myron Magnet
A Death In November (Vietnam) (*) Ellen Hammer
The Rewriting of America’s History (*) Catherine Millard
Silent Coup (*) Colodny & Gettlin
The Real Anita Hill (*) David Brock
What Ever Happened To The American Dream (*) Larry Burkett
Abandoned (*) W. Quirk & R. Bridwell
What Went Right in the 1980’s? (*) Richard McKenzie
Senatorial Privilege (*) Leo Damore
Government and Political Parties
Parliament of Whores P.J. O’Rourke
Republican Party Animal P.J. O’Rourke
The Tempting of America (*) Robert H. Bork
Dictionary of Congressional Voting Scores (*)
Democracy and Leadership (*) Irving Babbitt
Populism and Elitism (*) Jeffrey Bell
In Pursuit of Happiness and Good Government (*) Charles Murray
The Farm Fiasco (*) James Bovard
Mandate For Leadership (*) Heritage Foundation
Hill Rat (*) John L. Jackley
Undue Process (*) Elliot Abrams
Government Racket (*) Martin L. Gross
Anti‑Americanism (*) Paul Hollander
Directory of Congressional Voting (*) N/A
HUD Scandals (*) Irving Welfeld
Making Government Work (*) Tex Lezar
The Ruling Class (*) Eric Felten
Cleaning House (*) Coyne & Fund
Unaccountable Congress (*) Joseph DioGuardi
A Call For Revolution (*) Martin L. Gross
The Antitrust Paradox (*) Robert Bork
Marriage and the Family
Men and Marriage Elizabeth C. Mooney
Family Questions (*) Allan C. Carlson
Point Man (*) Steve Farrar
Can Motherhood Survive (*) Connie Marshner
The Retreat From Motherhood Samuel Blumenfeld
Hints on Child Training (*) H. Clay Trumbull
Who Will Save Our Children (*) Beverly LaHaye
The Hidden Value of a Man (*) Smalley & Trent
On Divorce (*) Louis De Bonald
Our Journey Home (*) Gary Bauer
Civil Liberties/Rights
Civil Rights Thomas Sowell
Forge Of Union Anvil of Liberty Jeffrey St. John
Political Correctness (*) David Thibodaux
Who Owns The Children (*) Blair Adams
Trial and Error (*) George Grant
A Nation of Victims (*) Charles J. Sykes
Madness In The Streets (*) Isaac & Armat
Forbidden Grounds (*) Richard Epstein
The New Freedom (*) William Donohue
The Imperiled Academy (*) Howard Dickman
Paved With Good Intentions (*) Jared Taylor
Pro‑Life
Abortion‑Free America (*) Thomas Glessner
Confessions of a Pro‑Life Missionary (*) Fr. Paul Marx
A Mother’s Ordeal (*) Steven W. Mosher
Why Does A Nice Guy Like Me Keep Getting
Thrown In Jail? (*) Randall A. Terry
Abortion (*) Paul B. Fowler
Religion and Natural Law
We Hold These Truths John Courtney Murray
Natural Right and History Leo Strauss
Uncommon Sense (*) Cal Thomas
Conscience and Captivity (*) J. Broun
Mainline To Sideline (*) K.L. Billingsley
Real Threat and Mere Shadow (*) D.L. Dresibach
Book of New Age Cults and Religions (*) Tex Marr
The Politics of Prayer (*) Helen Hull Hitchcock
Race
The Politics of Race Thomas Sowell
Ethnic America Thomas Sowell
The Content of Our Character Shelby Steele
Paved With Good Intentions (*) Jared Taylor
Media and Media Bias
And That’s the Way It Isn’t (*) Brent Bozell
Life After Television (*) George Gilder
The Media Elite (*) Lichter/Rothman
Watching America (*) Lichter/Lichter
Hollywood v. America (*) Michael Medved
Touch That Dial (*) Hattemer & Showers
Seductive Image (*) K.L. Billingsley
Science
The Origin of Species Revisited (*) W.R. Bird
Deadly Compassion (*) Rita Marker
Freudian Fraud (*) Fuller Torrey
Science Under Siege (*) Michael Fumento
The Myth of Neurosis (*) Garth Wood
Feminism
New Chastity and Other Arguments Midge Decter
Against Women’s Liberation (*)
Weak Link (*) Brian Mitchell
The Feminist Gospel (*) Mary Kassian
Law, The Constitution and Our Legal System
The Litigation Explosion (*) Walter K. Olson
Tempting of America (*) Robert H. Bork
Trial and Error: ACLU (*) George Grant
Crime and Drugs
Take Back Your Neighborhood (*) Richard Neely
Cocaine: The Great White Plague (*) Gabriel Nahas, MD
SCREW (*) McLaughlin, Dynda
Presumed Guilty (*) Koon & Dietz
Foreign Policy
Rebuilding Russia (*) A. Solzhenitsyn
The Enigma of Japanese Power (*) K. Van Wolferen
Lords of Poverty (*) Graham Hakcock
This Hemisphere of Liberty (*) Michael Novak
The Future of the Soviet Empire (*) Rowen & Wolf
Prisoners of a Dream (*) Leo Radista
Fair Trade Fraud (*) James Bovard
Welfare
Tragedy of American Compassion (*) Marvin Olasky
Losing Ground (*) Charles Murray
Out of Work (*) Vedder & Gallaway
Immigration
Illegal Immigration (*) Daniel James
Health Care
What Had Government Done To Our Health Care? (*) Terree Wasley
Code Blue (*) Edward R. Annis, M.D.
Anti‑Semitism
In Search of Anti‑Semitism (*) William F. Buckley
(*): Conservative Book Club Selection
Reply‑To: c‑news@world.std.com
The following is a draft conservatism FAQ that I’ve been circulating on
alt.society.conservatism. It is intended to deal with the more basic
questions and objections we hear from critics. It is more abstract than
the things net conservatives usually write, which may be either good or
bad. I would be grateful for any comments; it has benefited enormously
from those I have already received.
QUESTIONS
1. Q‑‑What is conservatism?
2. Q‑‑How do conservatives reject both rationalism and irrationalism?
3. Q‑‑Isn’t conservatism simply a blend of obstinacy, bigotry, and
obscurantism?
4. Q‑‑Why isn’t it better to reason things out from the beginning?
5. Q‑‑Why are most people seriously involved in studying and dealing
with social issues liberals?
6. Q‑‑Why not just accept change?
7. Q‑‑Wouldn’t we still have slavery if conservatives had always been
running the show?
8. Q‑‑Isn’t conservatism simply about maintaining wealth and power?
9. Q‑‑Aren’t conservatives racist sexist homophobes?
10. Q‑‑Why do conservatives always want to force their values on
everybody else?
11. Q‑‑Why can’t conservatives just accept that pÃÃ?ra/àää)èæves think government should play in
enforcing moral values?
13. Q‑‑What happens to feminists, homosexuals, racial minorities and
others marginalized in a conservative society?
14. Q‑‑Why don’t conservatives care about what happens to the poor,
weak, discouraged, and outcast?
15. Q‑‑Why do coraervatives favor say they favor virtue and community
but in fact favor laissez‑faire capitalism?
16. Q‑‑Why do conservatives always act as if the world is coming to an
end?
17. Q‑‑Shouldn’t conservatives favor well‑established liberal reforms?
18. Q‑‑Wouldn’t it be conservative to stay true to the liberal
positions that define Americanism?
19. Q‑‑I was raised a liberal. Doesn’t that mean that to be
conservative I should stay true to liberalism?
20. Q‑‑What’s all this stuff about community and tradition when what
matters today are interests and perspectives rather than traditions?
ANSWERS
1. Q‑‑What is conservatism?
A‑‑Recognition of tradition as a source of wisdom greater than that
of any individual or faction.
5. Q‑‑If conservatism is so great, why are most people seriously
involved in studying and dealing with social issues liberals?
Academic and other experts
and officials in social service agencies are participants in that
project and owe their social position and income to it.
7. Q‑‑Wouldn’t we still have slavery if conservatives had always been
running the show?
slavery disappeared in Europe long
before the modern revolutionary age,
8. Q‑‑Isn’t conservatism simply another way of saying that the people
who currently have wealth and power should keep it?
9. Q‑‑Aren’t conservatives racist sexist homophobes?
A‑‑That depends on what those words mean.
“Racist”‑‑Conservatives consider community loyalty important. The
communities people grow up in are generally connected to ethnicity.
That’s not an accident, because ethnicity is what develops when people
live together in accordance with a common way of life for a long time.
Accordingly, conservatives think some degree of ethnic loyalty and
separateness is OK.
10. Q‑‑Why do conservatives always want to force their values on
everybody else?
A‑‑Conservatives aren’t different from other people in that regard.
14. Q‑‑Why don’t conservatives care about what happens to the poor,
ransÅùyÜ
A‑‑Conservatives do care about what happens to such people. That’s
why they oppose government programs that multiply the poor, weak,
discouraged, and outcast by undermining and disrupting the network of
social customs and relations that allow people to carry on their lives
without being reduced to dependency on a soulless bureaucracy.
It is the weak who suffer most from moral chaos. Those who think
interventionist liberalism makes the problems such people face less
widespread and serious should consider the effects on blacks, women and
children of trends of the past 30 years, such as family instability,
increased crime, and lower educational achievement, and of
the reversal
since the late 1960s of the older trend toward less poverty,
all
coinciding with a period of large increases in social welfare
expenditures. They should also consider the increase in charitable
giving during the Decade of Greed and its subsequent decline.
15. Q‑‑Why do conservatives say they favor virtue and community but in
fact favor laissez‑faire capitalism? Doesn’t laissez‑faire capitalism
promote the opposite?
A‑‑Conservatives are not fans of pure laissez‑faire capitalism. ??????????????????? stopped here.
They have no opposition in principle to the
regulation or suppression of businesses that affect the moral order of
society, such as prostitution, pornography, and the sale of certain
drugs. Conservatives do recognize that an advantage of the market over
bureaucracy is that the market (like tradition) reflects people’s
infinitely various and often unconscious and inarticulate perceptions
and goals far better than any formal bureaucratic process could. They
believe that the world as a whole can’t be administered, and so tend to
think that government intervention in markets is likely to cause more
problems than it cures. Also, in the United States in 1994 they view
economic liberty as one of the traditional liberties of the American
people that on the whole has served that people well.
In any event, it’s not clear laissez‑faire need undermine moral
community. While social statistics measure such things only very
crudely, crime and illegitimacy rates in England fell by about half
during the heyday of untrammelled capitalism, from the middle to the end
of the 19th century. Also, the effects of a system can be discussed
only by reference to practical alternatives. Conservatives do tend to
favor free markets when the alternative is expanding bureaucracy to
implement liberal goals, a process that clearly has the effect of
damaging virtue and community.
16. Q‑‑Why do conservatives always act as if the world is coming to an
end? People have been saying that for a long time, but things don’t
seem so bad today.
A‑‑The world is still with us, but there have been a great many
catastrophes along the way. The history of Marxist regimes displays the
results of energetic attempts to implement post‑Enlightenment
radicalism. Less energetic attempts, such as modern American
liberalism, do not lead to the consequences predicted by conservative
theory as quickly. However, social trends toward breakdown of
affiliations among individuals, centralization of political power in
irresponsible elites, and increasing stupidity and brutality in daily
life suggest that those consequences will come just the same. Why not
worry about it?
17. Q‑‑Many things liberals favor, such as the welfare state and steady
expansion of the scope of the civil rights laws, are now well‑
established parts of our political arrangements. Shouldn’t
conservatives favor things that have become so well‑established?
A‑‑Yes, to the extent they are consistent with the older and more
fundamental parts of our social arrangements (such as family, community,
and traditional moral standards) and contribute to the over‑all
functioning of the whole. Unfortunately, the particular things
mentioned fail on both points.
18. Q‑‑I was raised to believe in certain substantive liberal positions
(the color‑ and gender‑blind ideal, for example) on the grounds that
those are the positions good Americans should hold. Wouldn’t it be
conservative for me to stay true to them?
A‑‑Yes, if those are the views the people among whom you grew up
really lived by and experience does not drive you to change them. Such
a situation can’t arise often, because liberal positions (affirmative
action is an example) typically are developed centrally and propagated
through the mass media and the educational system, are adverse to the
connections between people that make community possible, and in any case
are less suited to be incorporated into people’s informal day‑to‑day way
of life than applied to society as a whole by a bureaucracy.
19. Q‑‑I was raised a liberal. Doesn’t that mean that to be
conservative I should stay true to liberalism?
A‑‑If you were raised an ideological liberal, you were raised to
reject tradition and follow reason. How can you feel bound by loyalty
to a viewpoint or way of life that does not value loyalty? Similar
comments apply to some other views people are raised with, for example
the view that career success and self‑fulfillment should be valued above
all. Such views can not give rise to binding traditions because they
contain no principle of loyalty to things that make a decent life in
community possible. If you were raised in one of them, the conservative
approach would be to look to what it was that the people you grew up
with really relied on in their lives, and also to the traditions of the
community upon which the group among whom you grew up depended for its
existence.
20. Q‑‑What’s all this stuff about community and tradition? The groups
that matter these days are groups like yuppies, gays, and senior
citizens that people join as individuals and are based on interests and
perspectives rather than traditions.
A‑‑To the extent that is true, can it remain true? When times are
good people can follow their own impulses and imagine that they can
define themselves as they choose, but when times get hard they have to
base what they do on things for which they would be willing to
sacrifice. Membership in a group with an identity developed and
inculcated through tradition serves the purpose far better than life‑
style option, career path, or leisure‑time activity. One of Bill
Clinton’s problems as president is that everyone knows he’s a yuppie and
there’s nothing he would die for. At some point that kind of problem
becomes decisive. Conservatism doesn’t claim to be the philosophy that
is always easiest to apply; it just claims that it works long‑term and
other views offered today don’t.
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
==================
==== What Went Right in the 1980s ==========================
c‑news‑approval@world.std.com
‑‑ During the 1980’s, national production of goods and services actually rose
in constant dollar terms by close to 1/3, which is equivalent of annexing
the entire German economy (East and West) or adding once again the production
of Connecticut, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Missouri,
Nebraska, New Hampshire, New jersey, New York, North Dakota, Pennsylvania,
Rhode Island, South Dakota, and Vermont.
‑‑ Contrary to the belief that the country was deindustrialized, the industrial
production index rose during the 1980’s in line with the overall economy and
stood at an all‑time high in 1990. The country’s manufacturing output in
real‑dollar terms rose faster than overall activity during the 1980’s and in
1989 represented a slightly higher percentage of national production than in
1980 and any year since the late 1940’s.
‑‑ Contrary to the belief that U.S. production declined in comparison to
world economies, while it did decrease in the 1960’s and early 1970’s, our
comparison increased and held its own vis‑a‑vis the total production of
all other major industrial countries COMBINED (with Japan being the notable
exception). however, U.S. output vis‑a‑vis Japan didn’t decline, but was
the same in 1989 as it was in 1975.
‑‑ Although detractors call it the decade of greed, if charitable giving is
any indication of selflessness, then the 1980’s were anything but greedy.
Charitable contributions in inflation‑adjusted terms rose substantially
faster in the 1980’s than the previous 25 years. Philanthropy outpaced
consumer debt as well as purchases of goods and services that supposedly
represented the mood of “me‑ism.” even corporate giving, as a percentage
of corporate income, rebounded in the 1980’s, and doubled from 1.5% in the
70’s to more than 3 percent in the 1980’s.
‑‑ “Ah, but the rich got richer while everyone else got poorer.” Certainly,
the rich got richer, but so did most everyone else in lower and middle‑
incomes. The number of poor people fell by over 300,000. And during
teh decade, a family of four at the poverty level saw its federal tax
liability slashed by a whopping 75%.
‑‑ Surely the 1980’s were a decade of debt, critics say. First, it is wrong
to assume the rise in private debt was unwarranted. A major unnoticed
reason for debt expansion in the 1980’s was the collapse of American’s
debt‑to‑asset ratios in the unstable, infaltionary 70’s. Much of the
assumption of private debt, additionally, went to real productive assets,
i.e. houses and computers; which explains why American’s consolidated net
worth (not including considerable human capital) rose by 14 percent, or
$2 trillion, during the decade. Finally, although the defecit jumped to
265 billion in the middle of the decade, by the beginning of the Bush
administration it had decreased to the 160’s.
‑‑ Of course, critics point out the S&L debacle as the failure of Reagan’s
free‑market approach. Actually, the deregulation was proposed under Carter.
but more importantly, the S&L problems don’t represent free‑market approaches
gone awry. On the contrary, instead of people being responsible for the risks
they take, the free market approach, the S&L represents national industry
policy ‑ or more accurately national financial policy ‑ (i.e. governmental
control of the markets) gone awry. The S7L travesty was in the making for
over 50 years partly because the industry could not (and would not) diversify
its portfolio, which increased its risk of failure. In other words, the
decade of the 1980’s can only accept partial culpability.
====================================
/town hall should distinquish among mod, cons and far right./libs say people want their soc. goodies: uib, ss, med, etc. cons should show when people got used to less – war.
/joe clark: he’s big on rh. never carried bat – as no good against guns. never used profanity. you’re intially judged lst on how you look. 2nd on how you talk. bennet liked him. he’s anti wel.
/newt said founding pa’s were close to right. arrogant. $ to gov doubled under rr./cons see civ going to pot. libs don’t?
/p wilson said a mod is a cons who’s pro choice like goldwater. meaning the rest are far right? 9/95
/with a lot of cons, cap stops at the border.
/william kristol: there are original ideas. all does not go back to the classics. dems under rr were deliberately irresp with their spending. libs gave rr a bum rap. his bk of essays. writes only in am. said iq’s had naive, childish ideas about communism. h laski was socialist. privilege to hear this on c span.
/sen a damato, cons, but supports gay rights.
/mccarthy never found l commie.
/safire was a nixon insider.
/manchester union leader
/no courses on federalist papers. and up to ’70 no bk on them.
/sanctions don’t work, said herit
/sow: stop looking for saviors and look at what we already know from our exp. the past.
/cons consensus – amateurs
newt contract, lst wel reform in yr, lst serious talk of bal budget in yrs. to point of shut gov down, lst serious lobbying reform in yrs. /if you can’t do the job, you’re boss can dismiss you.
Positions of the far right ==============================
The U.N. and the Tri-lateral Commission are conspiracies.
Isolationism.
Our country right or wrong.
Society is a rigid hierarchy; leaders on a pedestal.
Men should never do women’s work; visa versa.
The poor are like kids and need guardians.
Issues are black and white ‑ sometimes the work of God, the devil, or communists. Compromise is selling one’s soul.
Hardened criminals are “evil”.
Anti: civil rights, evolution, intermarriage, premarital relations, abortion, divorce, homosexuals, women’s lib, and often anti-psychology.
English only.
Russia should have been kept out of the ’88 Olympics.
Gorbechev deserved no credit.
Reagan betrayed “conservatives”.
Each tax is a major incursion on our freedom.
Talking about sex is very difficult or taboo.
Homosexuality is an abomination.
We should not let children read: Romeo & Juliet, The Wizard of Oz, The Diary of Anne Frank, and stories with magic, witchcraft, and the occult.
America is God’s chosen country; the founding fathers were as virtually divine.
The bible, flag, constitution, and guns [are fetishes].
School prayer.
Semi-racist.
The U.S. was right to back Batista, Samoza, the Shah, Marcos.
The U.S. was right to back right wing dictators to protect American business.
The John Birch Society.
Lyndon Larouche.
Life is plodding, humorles, thankless “duty”.
Senator Joe McCarthy of the 50s was a hero.
====================================================
cons: released time christian ed,/the right said in 64 you couldn’t legislate morality; now they do, says pj orouke.
/joe arpieyo, sherrif of some tent jail outside phoenix. 95 ch 7? ll/95 on 60 min?
/cons have move toward cent on ir and interacial. 95
/paul c roberts at cato.
/r. sam.. saying they are newts are new reactionaries. psuedo cons.
/ m matlin said rush is more mainstream than ny or dc. sig 96
/not a lot of humor on the right – jeff greenfield.
/lot of labor strikes in ’34.
/most people are at the same level of happiness irregardless of their income. r samuelson.
/cons cut back soc programs vs abort.
/cons cut back soc programs vs abort.
/fdr was this cent’s most sig pres. geo will 00000
/in germ and israel the threat is from the right, [supposedly]
/how and where should gov stimulate pri. sig
/cons recs for recession: cut cap gains, regs, mw, uib, make wel work?, ag. abort, cheaper housing,
/cons feel that over time people have sorted themselves out.
/unions vs cap.
/guy on tv who made smoking acceptable for women.
. without resp… it’s all talk./rep conv of 64 didn’t like huntley brinkly. brinkly told lbj to stop the war./spread of freedom around the world has been extraordinary. walt wrinston. tv 96
/phil gramm: dems know [their pol control & future] depends on more people being dependent on gov. gramm: min wage is $8800/yr and safety net is $2lk/hyr. 3/95 diff twix tuff and mean./reps believe every day is july 4th; dems believe it april l5th. rr
/faright afraid of life.
/carnegie: harder to give $ away intelligently than to earn it./pink: best guar of truth is the stability of ordinary people and a free market soc to sep the glitter from the gold.
/any surplus should automatically go toward paying off the debt [dome and ir?] then they can quibble over what to do with the int saved./cons denegrated personal dip since yalta./investors daily [ed page?] is conservative.
/maybe the econ grows faster when the gap is wider. sig/natural order – classes/some places bill you for [search and] rescue. cg needs it.
/gov bur hurts poor the most. steve goldsmith. the 2lst cent = his bk./david kelly – philosopher in here. mike milken did more than ma teresa
/if aei seems so right on econ, but then their soc views are so bad, makes you wonder bout their econ views/the am ent. [mag] super hung up on marriage and fam, divorce, – like bondage. vs gay marriages, [combo fams – ag]./copac founded by pete dupont
/if we are collapsing like rome, then eur should be gone.
/macarthy never found a single communist.
/fee + never picked up on gramman?
/coors noble and scaife – names engraved at aei.
/cons have to have a color guard and choke up
/want to preserve what they [or soc] have.
/”ultra-conservative, far right, backward, stingy, mean-spirited, rigid, heartless, selfish, narrow, angry, and fearful”.
/ the extreme devotion of Republican conservatives to national sovereignty. Ny times
/ Here, “liberal” is used in its European sense, broadly epitomized by a preference for minimal and dispersed government, rather than in its current American sense which indicates the opposite preference for an extension and concentration of governmental powers.
/I might have sally satel’s info somewhere. Sent her ll4. she wanted anything qualified ssatel@aio.com she’s probably on net
/House Votes to Ban All Human Cloning
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
WASHINGTON, Feb. 27 — Warning that human cloning amounted
to a dark and dangerous step into an unethical realm of science, the House of Representatives voted today to ban all human-cloning experiments, whether for baby-making or to create cells that might be used to treat disease.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/28/politics/28CLON.html?th
/cons helped by talk radio starting l5 yrs ago, then cable with fox news 7 yrs ago, net, more con publish.. – la ll/03
/don’t trust humanity nor gov.
/bleak, flinty people [grim? Ag] not nice
/isolationists
/7/04 ny times – Shrimp and Mischief
An antidumping case against Vietnam and China shows how easy it is for protectionism to undermine our nation’s commitment to free trade. [ I wonder how long we’ve been committed.]
/America’s historic mission of extending freedom in the world. This brand of thinking is often called neoconservative.
/ http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Democracy/ConservThinkTanks.html
/la times glossing over bush and supporting war. Idiots l0/04
/searched ‘cons need a war’ but bout 0. try cons need enemies
/think tank: civil rights laws passed in 64 and riots in 65. how possible.
The Moynihan report made him a non person. Time passed and he came up with ‘defining deviancy down’ ow births, crime, drugs.
/What’s more, it was the isolationist right that never wanted to fight the war in the first place, which it conveniently forgot once it began attacking Democrats as being soft on communism.
Meet the Poor Republicans
By DAVID BROOKS
The Republican Party succeeds among the poor because it is seen as the party of optimistic individualism.
/faright feel under siege … at war? Rabid anti commies, nuke em.
/’need war’ came up with 0
/for… policy: cons split twix
1 realists – liberal dem won’t go much beyond the west. Ir orgs are weak
2 neocons: u.s. has the power and op to spread dem. To bring another pax Americana. [Another ??????]
Cybercast News Service, a part of the conservative Media Research Center
/am civil rights union is vs the aclu
/role of government in the U.S. has multiplied ten times in the last fifty years, and we are worse off in many important ways
Graduated income tax ……………… highly destructive
Passing Down the Legacy of Conservatism
By JASON DePARLE
Everywhere young conservatives turn there are conferences, seminars and reading lists that promote its core thinkers.
Ever since President Bush won reelection almost two years ago, liberals have been on the cultural defensive. We’re all a bunch of latte sippers; we don’t understand Real Americans; we should feel guilty for not caring about stock car racing, etc. Because we are but a tiny, alien coastal minority, representing an insignificant 49% of the public, the burden of bridging the divide apparently rests with us.
Buckley was a staunch critic of Eisenhower. Indeed, he founded National Review in no small part to organize conservatives in opposition to Ike. As he wrote at one point: “It has been the dominating ambition of Eisenhower’s Modern Republicanism to govern in such a fashion as to more or less please everybody. Such governments must shrink from principle.”
Eisenhower was a moderate who made his peace with the New Deal and accommodated labor unions. Buckley, on the other hand, was the definitive conservative hard-liner. In the 1950s, he defended Joe McCarthy. 00000000000 In the 1960s, he spoke up for segregation. 0000000
/why don’t cons sep selves from faright
Lessons From U.N. Week By DAVID BROOKS The worst people in the world now drive events while the best people do nothing. Probably silly. 9/2l
/Reagan built up the navy up to 600 ships. The big mo was outfitted. Now, 9/06 it’s part of a floating museum or memorial in Hawaii. I think it fired its guns in leb.
/ag: guiliani didn’t get enuff credit.
2008: The Prequel
By DAVID BROOKS
This is what politics looks like as conservatism wanes: feisty economic liberals against independent, party-bucking Republicans.
/lower taxes, less government spending, freer trade, freer markets, individual liberty, personal responsibility and a strong anti-Communist foreign policy.” His heroes were Thatcher, Reagan, Solzhenitsyn, Havel, Hayek and Orwell
/Goldwater, the nominal father of the modern conservative movement
The Right Has a Jailhouse Conversion By CHRIS SUELLENTROP How conservatives came to embrace prison reform.
A Failed Revolution By PAUL KRUGMAN The ideals of the Republican revolution of 1994 were always based on a lie.
/god and man at yale.
/lib robert kuttner said bush admin has tarred cons and iraq will hurt reps when it comes to foreign policy for long time.
/would like to think guiliani wouldn’t quash serpico like Lindsey did
/broken window theory is preventative, like with a car?
/ag: cons say free up the market and let it do what it can for people: net, ed, all fields. Sig
/conservapedia tries to be like wiki…
/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Arpaio
/patton, Lombardi, arpaio, dog,
/m. barone : 70’s were kensyian and the end, then came rr. And p Volker. Great since. No one under 40 lived when it wasn’t. property in Detroit was worthless. Mayor coleman young was 0.
Blacks prefer 50% mix in housing and white prefer __________ .
/you had the feeling the inmates gave joe arpaio respect. Some even wanted his auto…
/Last Term’s Winner at the Supreme Court: Judicial Activism
By ADAM COHEN
Conservatives have forgotten that they are opposed to judicial activism.
/the am conservative – a pub. Had I heard of it? Who puts it out?
/ arpaio – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Arpaio – REFRESHING
/eagle forum: new deal prolonged the depression. Marshall plan didn’t help said Thomas wood. His bk: the politically incorrect guide to am hist. cons are localists. Eagleforum.com
/club for growth – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Club_for_Growth
/l/08 w post: now favor more gov activism, raise mw, help poor, distrust big corp, less worried bout inc taxes, less for free trade & laissez-faire
/dumb: Be Afraid. Please. By WILLIAM KRISTOL You really should be alarmed about a President Obama rubber-stamping the deeds of a Democratic Congress next year.
Thatcher
/gave blowpipe missles to af that gave? Rr the incentive to give stingers
/prevented the eu from accepting the ussr from incorp… the baltics
/rallied eur to
/mckenzie: http://www.merage.uci.edu/~mckenzie/CONTENTS.HTML
/tea party protests are refreshing. I thot all had bot into obama
/cons feel rental housing is bad. Said barny frank
/the politically incorrect guide to am hist. By thomas wood. He’s the FIRST to question the marshall plan. For… aid programs have done nothing but damage.
/ www.rightonline.com ams for prosperit f. bloggers conf. c span
/believe in freedom, but in the mil, you are NOT free
/grove city college in penn is cons. Doesn’t take gov $? It and hillsdale are the only 2?
/the pilgrims were part of a corp sent here to make a profit. Said Michael medved
He’s against anti trust
/litigators for liberty on john stossel’s program sig 4 pillars
/dick armey was hse maj leader
/jon dean said cons… started in 50s.
/judge james gray on tv. Wrote a voters handbk
/dick armey was majority leader and never establishment
/scot walker is the gov of wis. Who’s putting it to the unions. Great. 20ll
/stossel: l of 3 in pr worked for gov. gov luis fortuno made big cuts. Similar in Canada. Said hoover inst. 6 to 1 spending cuts vs tax raises
/lst cons majority in 40 yrs.
/bit on wfb and god and man at yale: there 0 on the individ and on religion. He intertwined the 2.
/ wndbooks.com
/William kristol and another in 99? Said overthrow saddam and admin Iraq and thus tons of benefits
/quiet about gambling
/dartmouth review
/top cons mags: http://usconservatives.about.com/od/gettinginvolved/tp/TopConservativeMagazines.htm
/ireland has had 6 austerity budgets and is beginning to come around. L2/l2 economist?
/Bloomberg is for more co-pays as gives people a stake.
/fox news, canuto: 4/l3/l3 right to work states show great benefits: wel, uib as boeing or some big outfit will be bldg. a new plant there at great expense. search right to wk.
/stossel says air fares l/3rd now after …..yrs of dereg. Same with icc
/l/l4 2 rep women’s grps – one econ, the other social issues. Fits what I’m saying. Feminists vs …..
/stephan moore of wsj guy at heritage: annual econ freedom index report. Econ freedom is hurt by mw, regs, litigation, higher taxes … said pov is worse in countries that have less econ freedom. sig
He said something wrong with food stamps too. says all this hurts the poor. A tariff is a tax on imports.
/rich get richer with the superbowl. Where the top 1% gather. Soc for owners and cap.. for the players. Taxpayers pay for stadium, owners don’t. from cato to brookings – they are anti building stadiums.
/ann coultur says when cons go to a c campus to speak they need a bodyguard
/1-800-437-2268 – imprimus, hillsdale
/chas murray wrote losing ground & by the people
/what’s making us less competitive
/mike Farrell of mash said heartland was behind some bad causes
/paul ryan says we lead the world in development of life saving drugs. 0l5 he’s chairman of ways and means. R-wis. Now he’s spk of hse. Was he the running mate of mitt romney
/Koch bros of citizens united
/grover Norquist, 30 yr crusade, on stossel: fed is mono, states compete – sig. so states save, etc. people move to low tax, more freesom states sig. 5? States with no inc tax.
Educational savings accounts are dynamic forms of vouchers. setbacks: bailouts, stimulus, Obamacare,
/freedom works
/libertarians and the u.s. cham of c don’t get along
/goldwater didn’t vote to help the u.n.
/Russian hackers oing after cons think tanks. [an honor]
/woodson inst.
/they hate monos yet worship monarchy?
/sam: Unless you work for something and realize its worth to you, it will not be taken care of.
“You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich.
You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong.
You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift.
You cannot lift the wage earner up by pulling the wage payer down.
You cannot further the brotherhood of man by inciting class hatred.
You cannot build character and courage by taking away people’s initiative and independence.
You cannot help people permanently by doing for them, what they could and should do for themselves.” ~ Abraham Lincoln
/ vision of the anointed by sowell – vision of the anointed sowell – Bing
vision of the anointed sowell – Bing video l995 ben Wattenberg
/ uncletom.com – Search (bing.com)
/ Broken windows theory – Wikipedia
/ How New York Became Safe: The Full Story | Restoring Order in NYC (city-journal.org)
/good news pri, sch choice, boot camp, freer trade?, sat test +, affirm action – asians
/ workfare – Search (bing.com)
/ pri, sch choice, fried, right to wk, dereg, free market, voter suppression?
/ sig 2025 Republican Policy Proposals: Immigration, Taxes and More – The New York Times
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Cons… and judges
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April 15, 2005 |
COMMENTARY
Latest Assault on Judges Threatens Rule of Law
In the last half-century, conservative politicians have mounted three dramatically different attacks on the federal judiciary. The first attack, in which they emphasized the need for judicial restraint, was principled and coherent. The second, which called on judges to consider the original meaning of the Constitution, was more radical but still had honorable goals: to promote stability, neutrality and the rule of law. The third attack, however, is the most worrisome: a large-scale challenge to judicial independence, and we are now in the midst of it.
During the first of the three waves, beginning around 1955, conservatives attacked liberal activist judges for seizing on ambiguous constitutional provisions to strike down decisions of elected officials. The conservatives were concerned about Supreme Court rulings protecting accused criminals, above all Miranda vs. Arizona, which required police to inform suspects of their rights. The principals were Justices William O. Douglas, William J. Brennan Jr. and Earl Warren — the liberal leaders of the Warren court. The attack on the Warren court helped fuel Gerald Ford’s failed effort to impeach Douglas in 1970.
In this period, conservatives promoted judicial “restraint,” calling on judges to hesitate before interpreting the Constitution to strike down reasonable judgments of the people’s representatives. President Nixon, for instance, sought to end the era of judicial “activism” by appointing judges who scaled back protection of criminal defendants and who rejected efforts to use the Constitution to protect the poor.
The second attack on the judiciary, which began in the early 1980s, no longer emphasized restraint. Instead it built on the approach to constitutional interpretation known as “originalism” — the view that the Constitution means exactly what it meant when it was ratified. Some of these conservatives called for restoration of what they called “the lost Constitution.”
Of course, defenders of the lost Constitution oppose new protections of criminal defendants. They have no sympathy for the right of privacy enunciated in Griswold vs. Connecticut and Roe vs. Wade. But many originalists are far more ambitious; they also believe, for instance, that Congress should not have more power over interstate commerce than it had in 1787. Unlike those who called for judicial restraint in the 1970s, these originalists are perfectly willing to use the Constitution to strike down decisions of elected officials — if those decisions are inconsistent with the original meaning of the ratifiers.
On important occasions, this argument has found a receptive audience within the Rehnquist court, whose members have referred to the original understanding of the ratifiers in striking down the Violence Against Women Act and a key provision of the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, among many other laws.
Originalism is a radical program, but it has one admirable feature: It is designed to promote both judicial independence from the political process and the rule of law, by ensuring what Justice Antonin Scalia, the most prominent originalist, calls a “rock-solid, unchanging Constitution.” Scalia has deplored the fact that the “American people have been converted to belief in The Living Constitution, a ‘morphing’ document that means, from age to age, what it ought to mean.”
But now we are witnessing a third wave of attack, in which originalism is receding, and in which many conservative politicians want judges to read the Constitution, and the law in general, as if it fits with the Republican Party platform. After all, Republican presidents have succeeded in reconstructing the federal judiciary so that it is dominated by handpicked GOP appointees. Liberal activism is dying if not dead. Why shouldn’t Republicans take advantage of their dominance of the judiciary to ensure that their preferred policies are implemented by courts?
The problem, as the legal battle over Terri Schiavo demonstrated, is that whatever their politics, judges are unlikely to ignore the law. In that case, the law clearly did not authorize federal judges to order Schiavo’s feeding tube reinserted — but some Republicans are outraged that the judges did not have it reinserted anyway. On Wednesday, House Majority Leader Tom DeLay instructed the Judiciary Committee to investigate federal court decisions in the Schiavo case.
The attack on the judges who refused to order the feeding tube reinserted may be trivial by itself. But it is of a piece with something much more important. In recent years, some conservative politicians have been insisting that federal judges should strike down affirmative action programs, protect commercial advertising, invalidate environmental regulations, allow the president to do whatever he likes in the war on terrorism, use the Constitution to produce tort reform, invalidate gun control regulation, invalidate campaign finance laws and much more — regardless of whether they can find solid justification for these steps in our founding document.
Now, the battle over the confirmation process has become enmeshed with this third and most extreme stage of conservative thinking. What we are seeing, for the first time, is a fundamental challenge to the rule of law itself.
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Cons 4
Inside a Republican Brain By WILLIAM SAFIRE Published: July 21, 2004
What holds the five Republican factions together? To find out, I depth-polled my own brain.
The economic conservative (I’m in the supply-side division) opposes the enforced /redistribution of wealth
/lower taxes for all to stimulate growth with productivity, thereby to cut the deficit.
/cut nondefense spending
/stop the litigation drain
/reduce regulation but
/ protect consumers from media and other monopolies
My social conservative instinct wants to
/denounce the movie-and-TV treatment of violence and porno-sadism as entertainment; /repeal state-sponsored gambling
/slow the rush to same-sex marriage
/oppose partial-birth abortion
/resist genetic manipulation that goes beyond therapy. Vs
/libertarian impulse, which is pro-choice and anti-compulsion
/protect the right to counsel of all suspects
/right to privacy of the rest of us
/quiet cars in trains
/vouchers for education
/snoops out of bedrooms
/fundamentalists out of schoolrooms.
The idealistic calling grabs me when it comes to
/America’s historic mission of extending freedom in the world. This brand of thinking is often called neoconservative.
In defense against terror, I’m
/pre-emptive and unilateral rather than belated and musclebound, and would rather be ad hoc in forming alliances than permanently in hock to global bureaucrats. 000000
Also rattling around my Republican mind is the cultural conservative. In today’s ever-fiercer kulturkampf, I identify with art forms more traditional than avant-garde, and language usage more standard than common. I prefer the canon to the fireworks and a speech that appeals to the brain’s reasoning facilities to a demidocumentary film arousing the amygdala.
Do these different streams of conservatism flow gently together to form a grand Republican river inside the head? “Do I contradict myself?” asked Walt Whitman, singing of himself and answering, “Very well then I contradict myself. (I am large, I contain multitudes.)”
If these different strains of thought were held by discrete groups of single-minded people, we would have a Republican Party of five warring bands.
Social conservatives would fight libertarians over sex,
libertarians would savage neocons over pre-emption
neocons would hoot at the objections of
economic conservatives (traditional division) to huge deficits.
But think of these internecine battles not as tugs of war among single-minded groups; instead, think of them as often-conflicting ideas held within the brain of an individual Republican. What goes on is “cognitive dissonance,” the jangling of competing inclinations, with the owner of the brain having to work out trade-offs, suppressions and compromises until he or she achieves a kind of puzzled tranquility within.
What helps me work out that continual internal skirmishing is a mind-set. That brings us to those “values” that every candidate talks about. My values include
/self-reliance over community dependence,
/intervention over isolation,
/self-discipline over society’s regulation,
/finding pleasure in work rather than working to find pleasure.
Principles like those help me gel a mind-set that reduces the loudest dissonances among my fistful of clanging conservatisms.
Another aid to resolve the dissonance is every partisan’s need for a political home. Independence is fine for the occasionally involved, but if influence as a participant or commentator is desired, one political side or the other must be taken.
The political brain doesn’t have to go all the way to conform to either side because each side – Republican and its loyal opposition – contains this conglomeration of nonconformity. I’m a right-winger who is hot for gun control, dismaying all but the wishy-washies called “moderates,” but that specific dissent is made inside my Republican home. And home has been defined as the place where – when you have to go there – they have to take you in.
Finally, the dissonance inside my head will be forced into harmony by the need to choose one leader who reflects the preponderance of my views and my judgment of his character.
I will take my teeming noggin to both conventions, watch all the debates and cast my vote – careful, in the tradition of Times columnists, not to endorse anyone. But now you know how one Republican mind will be made up. I presume the liberal brain works the same way.
E-mail: safire@nytimes.com
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8-09-04: News Abroad
Review of Stefan Halper’s and Jonathan Clarke’s America Alone: The Neo-Conservatives and the Global Order
By Jim Sleeper
Mr. Sleeper, a lecturer in political science at Yale, is the author of LIBERAL RACISM and THE CLOSEST OF STRANGERS: LIBERALISM AND THE POLITICS OF RACE IN NEW YORK.
As prominent conservatives – diplomats, retired generals, commentators such as George Will – are breaking with the Bush administration over the military, constitutional and budgetary consequences of its foreign policy, two of them have published a solemn remonstrance assailing President Bush’s capitulation to a “small group of neoconservative policy makers,” whom they accuse of driving our national misadventures in regime change and nation-building even at the price of endless war and the loss of America’s “moral authority.”
Their jeremiad, America Alone, is the more telling because Stefan Halper and Jonathan Clarke are not left-wing populists or even Democrats. Halper, a White House and State Department official in the Nixon, Ford and Reagan administrations, and Clarke, a former counselor in the British Diplomatic Service now at Washington’s libertarian Cato Institute, mean to save a moderate, worldly conservatism that they say has been replaced by the
/neoconservative “special interest,” with its “endless mantra of ‘
/Munich’ ” – referring to the 1938 agreement – and
/obsession with the Middle East.
Neoconservatism is less a conspiracy than a powerful mind-set, modulated a bit in the varied styles of, among others,
/neocon godfathers Irving Kristol, Richard Pipes and Donald Kagan;
polemicists Norman Podhoretz, his son John, Daniel Pipes (son of Richard and director of the pro-war Campus Watch) and columnist Charles Krauthammer;
State and Defense department infighters Elliott Abrams, Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith;
foreign policy strategists Jeane Kirkpatrick and Robert Kagan (son of Donald and co-founder of the neocon Project for the New American Century); and
genial pundits William Kristol (son of Irving and PNAC’s other founder) and David Brooks.
In what they see as a Hobbesian dog-eat-dog world, the neocons demand what Halper and Clarke call a “values-based” foreign policy, grounded in classical virtues.
They dismiss as hopelessly ineffectual not only most
/ liberal internationalist thinking but also the
/traditional conservative “realist” approach taken by Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon.
In the authors’ telling, older neocons began on the left and carried their penchant for ideological warfare rightward without actually embracing conservative economics or the “great melody” of Edmund Burke’s conservative social thought. ?????
Halper and Clarke show that even as world communism disintegrated, the neocons’ obsession with it kept them
/oddly captive to its combative ways. Neocons miss the Cold War (“World War III”), which seemed to them to justify their demands for greater ideological clarity and aggression in U.S. foreign policy. They thrilled to Ronald Reagan’s “evil empire” rhetoric but were disoriented as he drew Mikhail Gorbachev into dismantling that empire peacefully; they scrambled to reproduce the Cold War’s good-versus-evil coordinates in the public mind and the corridors of power, working through the Project for the New American Century http://www.newamericancentury.org and the American Enterprise Institute. ????? sig
After a decade of post-Cold War scheming and bombast, their opportunity arrived on Sept. 11, 2001, which overwhelmed a naive president and, Halper and Clarke write, enabled the neocons to impose an “artificial clarity of their own invention on the highly complex network of interactions that constitute America’s relations with the rest of the world…. A preexisting ideological agenda was taken off the shelf, dusted off, and relabelled as the response to terror.” Nine days after Sept. 11, Bush got a letter from leading neocons applauding his “commitment to ‘lead the world to victory’ in the war against terrorism” and, remarkably, putting Iraq front and center. [ WHY?!! ] Neocons championed the now-discredited Ahmad Chalabi as a credible informant and likely leader for a U.S.-liberated Iraq. America’s post-Sept. 11 foreign policy was “conceptualized and promoted” preeminently by the neocons,
/”first by their advocacy of war against Iraq a decade before 9/11 [WHY] and,
/second, by their embrace of the concept of an endless, ongoing ‘World War IV.’ “
(The elder Podhoretz is writing a book tentatively titled “World War IV: How It Started, What It Means, and Why We Have to Win.”) The authors’ assessment of the costs includes doomed military and political strategies employed against the terrorists and a homeland-security patriotism that has turned the neocons’ idea of loyalty into a loveless lock step and their democratic creed into Orwellian sloganeering. ???
As foreign policy veterans, Halper and Clarke are acute on the
/collapse of multilateralism (we now treat allies “much as though they were Soviet-style satellites”) and the
/rise of a state-driven “war on terror” that
by targeting “senior leaders” misconstrues [fix] terrorist organizations so badly that it ends by empowering them.
They also protest the disruption of America’s always problematic balance of liberty and security, noting that “[a]s advocates of limited-government conservatism, we are /dismayed at the flow of power toward the center” and that “terrorism can be better addressed if we resist the temptation to cut constitutional corners.”
They expose the neocons’ use of journalism to spread disinformation and create “a climate of fear.” The more that people watched Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News cable network, the authors point out, the more likely they were to believe that Iraq and Al Qaeda were linked, that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction and that world public opinion supported the war.
—– stopped here ——
Administration officials “circumvented the usual … channels” to provide pro-war analysis to “sympathetic media outlets,” including the neocons’ Weekly Standard, which sometimes availed itself of “actual wording from allegedly classified documents.” William Kristol, its editor, asserted that the war’s aftermath would require only 75,000 U.S. troops and $16 billion a year. “Using ridicule and ostracism to attack dissenters,” Halper and Clarke write,
/”neo-conservative strongholds such as the Weekly Standard, the New York Post, the Fox Network, and the Wall Street Journal editorial page effectively stilled the debate. Those questioning … the neo-conservative rationale for war faced personal attacks on their integrity laced with allegations of disloyalty.”
If journalism is the first draft of history, neocons attacked the second draft too,
/rewriting Reagan’s foreign policy record to make it seem their own. Halper and Clarke describe William Kristol’s and Robert Kagan’s 1996 Foreign Affairs essay, “Toward a Neo-Reaganite Foreign Policy,” as a “muddying of the historical record,” arguing that Reagan’s outreach to China and the Soviets and cautionary standards for American intervention abroad reflected his belief that America could win more ground by setting an example than by aggression.
/Conservative moderation in foreign policy does have a long pedigree. But Halper and Clarke are reticent about
/conservatism’s decidedly mixed record: Conservatives did oppose most American interventions abroad, but often in racist or isolationist disdain. Their McCarthyism at home prefigured the
/current neocon obsession with national security. Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, William Rehnquist, John Ashcroft and the congressional hawks, whom the authors also condemn, are all longtime card-carrying conservatives. (The authors label Cheney and Rumsfeld “nationalists,” as if reluctant to acknowledge this.) What in American conservatism predisposed it to be so misled? No reckoning with that here.
The authors are not only protective of presidents Nixon and Reagan but also seem hesitant to slam a sitting president who may yet take their advice. Were they journalists, they might tell us more about why George W. Bush didn’t keep the neocons in check. They do show how reluctant he was, as a candidate and as president before Sept. 11, to project American military might abroad, repeatedly abjuring “nation-building” and seeming more “humble” than aggressive in foreign policy.
But why was he that way, and why did he change? Having observed him as an undergraduate (he was my neighbor in a Yale college and president of my roommate’s fraternity) and observing classmates who are raising money for him now, I recognize in Bush and his club an insularity along with the impish, frat-boy streak we saw in his stagy flight-deck landing and his Thanksgiving Day descent into Baghdad. The frat boys had, of course, a dim awareness of a harder, bigger world beyond the one that had always been their oyster. But Bush (unlike his father, who saw combat) contrived neither to fight in the Vietnam War nor to oppose it. Small wonder [aaa] that the rude shock of Sept. 11 made him susceptible to the neocons’ “artificial clarity.”
Now that the shocks of the war in Iraq and its aftermath have been almost as rude, might he replace them with wiser advisors? He awarded a Presidential Medal of Freedom to Norman Podhoretz on June 23, but Lyndon Johnson gave the same medal to his departing Defense secretary, Robert McNamara, when America’s failing war in Vietnam drove them apart. It was a send-off whose grandiosity masked its bitterness.
Most conservatives and liberals now agree that McNamara saw the light about Vietnam while LBJ was still marching deeper into the tunnel. If Halper and Clarke are striking a conservative nerve, might it be Bush who is inching toward the light, leaving Podhoretz & Co. behind in the darkness? Even if so, it may be too late for them all.
This article first appeared in the Los Angeles Times and is reprinted with permission of the author.
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A Bench Tilting Right
Appellate judges appointed by Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush show more conservative voting patterns than do judges appointed by any president in the past 80 years. As a result, the average vote of a federal judge has been growing much more conservative.
Ll/28/04 la: FOREIGN POLICY really bad. @@@@@ Deleted most. Hardly worth saving.
Tribal Warfare on the Right
Time to end the squabble that nearly brought down Bush
By Henry R. Nau, Henry R. Nau, 000000000000000000000 a professor at George Washington University, served in the Ford and Reagan administrations and is author of “At Home Abroad: Identity and Power in American Foreign Policy.” This article
In Camp 1, conservative realists, such as Brent Scowcroft, attacked President Bush’s policies for splitting the NATO alliance and chasing after democratic rainbows in the barren sands of the Middle East. +++++
In Camp 2, conservative internationalists — the notorious neocons — including Charles Krauthammer and Francis Fukuyama, quarreled about the urgency of the terrorist threat and the need for international approval. 00000
In Camp 3, conservative nationalists, such as Pat Buchanan, deplored the Cold War reflex to defend feckless allies and called for homeland and missile defenses to defeat terrorism. 000000
Neoconservatives advocate the most muscular strategy, one that encourages the U.S. to act without allies if necessary through flexible “coalitions of the willing.”
Realists would prefer to use existing alliances and patiently reorganize them to deal with new threats.
Nationalists expect allies to do more on their own and seek to keep U.S. forces at home, where America is still protected by two broad oceans. These disagreements are actually helpful.
What is most puzzling about neocons is not that they believe democracy is potentially possible anywhere, but that they believe we can export it without the help of our democratic allies.
What is not bearable is for conservatives as a whole to succumb to indifference, as nationalists are prone to do, or to intolerance as neocons are prone to do, or to cynicism ???? as realists are prone to do.
*
(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX) = crap
Snapshots of the Conservative Camps
Neocons
What they’re reading: Israeli Cabinet member Natan Sharansky’s new book “The Case for Democracy,” which argues that the world is “divided between those who are prepared to confront evil and those who are willing to appease it.” Sound familiar? Sharansky met with President Bush and Middle East advisor Elliott Abrams on Nov. 11 to discuss his book, which Bush is reading.
Favorite president: Ronald Reagan
Most hated president: Jimmy Carter
Favorite countries: Israel and Taiwan
Most hated country: France
Favorite U.S. war: all of them, except …
Least favorite war: Persian Gulf War, because the first President Bush didn’t go to Baghdad
Favorite word: unilateralism
Favorite part of the country: Manhattan
Where they buy their suits: Barneys
*
Realists
What they’re reading: Former journalist Anatol Lieven’s “America Right or Wrong: An Anatomy of American Nationalism,” a denunciation of messianic neoconservatism. Lieven declares, “America keeps a fine house, but in its cellar there lives a demon, whose name is nationalism.”
Favorite president: Richard Nixon
Most hated president: Woodrow Wilson
Favorite war: Persian Gulf War, because the first President Bush didn’t go to Baghdad
Least favorite war: Vietnam
Favorite country: Britain
Most hated country: none
Favorite term: balance of power
Favorite part of the country: Ohio
Where they buy their suits: Brooks Brothers
*
Nationalists
What they’re reading: Pat Buchanan’s “Where the Right Went Wrong: How the Neoconservatives Subverted the Reagan Revolution and Hijacked the Bush Presidency” and the late Sen. Robert Taft’s 1951 “A Foreign Policy for Americans,” which decries interventionists who “are inspired with the same kind of New Deal planned-control ideas abroad as recent administrations have desired to enforce at home.”
Favorite president: Andrew Jackson
Most hated president: Bill Clinton
Favorite war: Mexican-American War
Least favorite war: all the rest
Favorite country: none
Most hated country: everyone else
Favorite term: unilateralism
Favorite part of the country: Georgia
Favorite clothing store: Syms
— Jacob Heilbrunn
A House Divided, and Strong
By DAVID BROOKS
Conservatives have thrived because they are split into feuding factions that squabble incessantly. 4/05 nyt
Just How Gay Is the Right?
By FRANK RICH 5/05
Homosexuality is the ticking time bomb within the conservative movement that no one can defuse.
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Smile if (and Only if) You’re Conservative
Thursday, February 23, 2006; Page A19
To bemused conservatives, it looks like yet another example of analytic overkill by the intelligentsia — a jobs program for the (mostly liberal) academic boys (and girls) in the social sciences, whose quantitative tools have been brought to bear to prove the obvious.
A survey by the Pew Research Center shows that conservatives are happier than liberals — in all income groups. While 34 percent of all Americans call themselves “very happy,” only 28 percent of liberal Democrats (and 31 percent of moderate or conservative Democrats) do, compared with 47 percent of conservative Republicans. This finding is niftily self-reinforcing: It depresses liberals
Election results do not explain this happiness gap. Republicans have been happier than Democrats every year since the survey began in 1972. Married people and religious people are especially disposed to happiness, and both cohorts vote more conservatively than does the nation as a whole.
People in the Sun Belt — almost entirely red states — have sunnier dispositions than Northerners, which could have as much to do with sunshine as with conservatism. Unless sunshine makes people happy, which makes them conservative.
Such puzzles show why social science is not for amateurs. Still, one cannot — yet — be prosecuted for committing theory without a license, so consider a few explanations of the happiness gap.
Begin with a paradox: Conservatives are happier than liberals because they are more pessimistic. Conservatives think the Book of Job got it right (“Man is born unto trouble as the sparks fly upward”), as did Adam Smith (“There is a great deal of ruin in a nation”). Conservatives understand that society in its complexity resembles a giant Calder mobile — touch it here and things jiggle there, and there, and way over there. Hence conservatives acknowledge the Law of Unintended Consequences, which is: The unintended consequences of bold government undertakings are apt to be larger than, and contrary to, the intended ones.
Conservatives’ pessimism is conducive to their happiness in three ways. First, they are rarely surprised — they are right more often than not about the course of events. Second, when they are wrong, they are happy to be so. Third, because pessimistic conservatives put not their faith in princes — government — they accept that happiness is a function of fending for oneself. They believe that happiness is an activity — it is inseparable from the pursuit of happiness.
The right to pursue happiness is the essential right that government exists to protect. Liberals, taking their bearings, whether they know it or not, from President Franklin Roosevelt’s 1936 State of the Union address, think the attainment of happiness itself, understood in terms of security and material well-being, is an entitlement that government has created and can deliver.
On Jan. 3, 1936, FDR announced that in 34 months his administration had established a “new relationship between government and people.” Amity Shlaes, a keen student of FDR’s departure from prior political premises, says, “The New Deal had a purpose beyond curing the Depression. It was to make people look to Washington for help at all times.” Henceforth the federal government would be permanently committed to serving a large number of constituencies: “Occasional gifts to farmers or tariffs for business weren’t enough.” So, liberals: Smile — you’ve won.
Nevertheless, normal conservatives — never mind the gladiators of talk radio; they are professionally angry — are less angry than liberals. Liberals have made this the era of surly automobile bumpers, millions of them, still defiantly adorned with Kerry-Edwards and even Gore-Lieberman bumper stickers, faded and frayed like flags preserved as relics of failed crusades. To preserve these mementos of dashed dreams, many liberals may be forgoing the pleasures of buying new cars — another delight sacrificed on the altar of liberalism.
But, then, conscientious liberals cannot enjoy automobiles because there is global warming to worry about, and the perils of corporate-driven consumerism, which is the handmaiden of bourgeoisie materialism. And high-powered cars (how many liberals drive Corvettes?) are metaphors (for America’s reckless foreign policy, for machismo rampant, etc.). And then there is — was — all that rustic beauty paved over for highways. (And for those giant parking lots at exurban mega-churches. The less said about them the better.) And automobiles discourage the egalitarian enjoyment of mass transit. And automobiles, by facilitating suburban sprawl, deny sprawl’s victims — that word must make an appearance in liberal laments; and lament is what liberals do — the uplifting communitarian experience of high-density living. And automobiles . . .
You see? Liberalism is a complicated and exacting, not to say grim and scolding, creed. And not one conducive to happiness.
The Case for Conservatism
By George F. Will he’s way too hard to read
Thursday, May 31, 2007; Page A19
Conservatism’s recovery of its intellectual equilibrium requires a confident explanation of why America has two parties and why the conservative one is preferable. Today’s political argument involves perennial themes that give it more seriousness than many participants understand. The argument, like Western political philosophy generally, is about the meaning of, and the proper adjustment of the tension between, two important political goals — freedom and equality.
Today conservatives tend to favor freedom, and consequently are inclined to be somewhat sanguine about inequalities of outcomes. Liberals are more concerned with equality, understood, they insist, primarily as equality of opportunity, not of outcome.
Liberals tend, however, to infer unequal opportunities from the fact of unequal outcomes. Hence liberalism’s goal of achieving greater equality of condition leads to a larger scope for interventionist government to circumscribe the market’s role in allocating wealth and opportunity. Liberalism increasingly seeks to deliver equality in the form of equal dependence of more and more people for more and more things on government.
Hence liberals’ hostility to 1 school choice programs that challenge public education’s semimonopoly. Hence hostility to 2 private accounts funded by a portion of each individual’s Social Security taxes. Hence their fear of 3 health savings accounts (individuals who buy high-deductible health insurance become eligible for tax-preferred savings accounts from which they pay their routine medical expenses — just as car owners do not buy insurance to cover oil changes). Hence liberals’ advocacy of government responsibility for — and, inevitably, rationing of — health care, which is 16 percent of the economy and rising.
Steadily enlarging dependence on government accords with liberalism’s ethic of common provision, and with the liberal party’s interest in pleasing its most powerful faction — public employees and their unions. Conservatism’s rejoinder should be that the argument about whether there ought to be a welfare state is over. Today’s proper debate is about the modalities by which entitlements are delivered. Modalities matter, because some encourage and others discourage attributes and attitudes — a future orientation, self-reliance, individual responsibility for healthy living — that are essential for dignified living in an economically vibrant society that a welfare state, ravenous for revenue in an aging society, requires.
This reasoning is congruent with conservatism’s argument that excessively benevolent government is not a benefactor, and that capitalism does not merely make people better off, it makes them better. /Liberalism once argued that large corporate entities of industrial capitalism degraded individuals by breeding dependence, passivity and servility. Conservatism challenges liberalism’s blindness about the comparable dangers from the biggest social entity, government.
Conservatism argues, as did the Founders, that self-interestedness is universal among individuals, but the /dignity of individuals is bound up with the exercise of self-reliance and personal responsibility in pursuing one’s interests. /Liberalism argues that equal dependence on government minimizes social conflicts. Conservatism’s rejoinder is that the entitlement culture subverts social peace by the proliferation of rival dependencies.
The /entitlement mentality encouraged by the welfare state exacerbates social conflicts — between 1 generations (the welfare state transfers wealth to the elderly), between 2 racial and ethnic groups (through group preferences) and between all 3 organized interests (from farmers to labor unions to recipients of corporate welfare) as government, not impersonal market forces, distributes scarce resources. This, conservatism insists, explains why /as government has grown, so has cynicism about it.
Racial preferences are the distilled essence of liberalism, for two reasons. First, preferences involve identifying groups supposedly disabled by society — victims who, because of their diminished competence, must be treated as wards of government. Second, preferences vividly demonstrate liberalism’s core conviction that government’s duty is not to allow social change but to drive change in the direction the government chooses. Conservatism argues that the essence of constitutional government involves /constraining the state in order to allow society [ pri sector ] ample scope to spontaneously take unplanned paths.
Conservatism embraces President Kennedy’s exhortation to “Ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country,” and adds: You serve your country by embracing a spacious and expanding sphere of life for which your country is not responsible. [he is sooo hard to read]
Here is the core of a conservative appeal, without dwelling on “social issues” that should be, as much as possible, left to “moral federalism” — debates within the states. On foreign policy, conservatism begins, and very nearly ends, by eschewing abroad the fatal conceit that has been liberalism’s undoing domestically — hubris about controlling what cannot, and should not, be controlled.
Conservatism is realism, about human nature and government’s competence. Is conservatism politically realistic, meaning persuasive? That is the kind of question presidential campaigns answer.
The Republican Collapse
Top of Form
Bottom of Form
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By DAVID BROOKS
Published: October 5, 2007
Modern conservatism begins with Edmund Burke. What Burke articulated was not an ideology or a creed, but a disposition, a reverence for tradition, a suspicion of radical change.
David Brooks
When conservatism came to America, it became creedal. Free market conservatives built a creed around freedom and capitalism. Religious conservatives built a creed around their conception of a transcendent order. Neoconservatives and others built a creed around the words of Lincoln and the founders.
Over the years, the voice of Burke has been submerged beneath the clamoring creeds. In fact, over the past few decades the conservative ideologies have been magnified, while the temperamental conservatism of Burke has been abandoned.
Over the past six years, the Republican Party has championed the spread of democracy in the Middle East. But the temperamental conservative is suspicious of rapid reform, believing that efforts to quickly transform anything will have, as Burke wrote “pleasing commencements” but “lamentable conclusions.”
The world is too complex, the Burkean conservative believes, for rapid reform. Existing arrangements contain latent functions that can be neither seen nor replaced by the reformer. The temperamental conservative prizes epistemological modesty, the awareness of the limitations on what we do and can know, what we can and cannot plan.
Over the past six years, the Bush administration has operated on the assumption that if you change the political institutions in Iraq, the society will follow. But the Burkean conservative believes that society is an organism; that custom, tradition and habit are the prime movers of that organism; and that successful government institutions grow gradually from each nation’s unique network of moral and social restraints.
Over the past few years, the vice president and the former attorney general have sought to expand executive power as much as possible in the name of protecting Americans from terror. But the temperamental conservative believes that power must always be clothed in constitutionalism. The dispositional conservative is often more interested in means than ends (the reverse of President Bush) and asks how power is divided before asking for what purpose it is used.
Over the past decade, religious conservatives within the G.O.P. have argued that social policies should be guided by the eternal truths of natural law and that questions about stem cell research and euthanasia should reflect the immutable sacredness of human life.
But temperamental conservatives are suspicious of the idea of settling issues on the basis of abstract truth. These kinds of conservatives hold that moral laws emerge through deliberation and practice and that if legislation is going to be passed that slows medical progress, it shouldn’t be on the basis of abstract theological orthodoxy.
Over the past four decades, free market conservatives within the Republican Party have put freedom at the center of their political philosophy. But the dispositional conservative puts legitimate authority at the center. So while recent conservative ideology sees government as a threat to freedom, the temperamental conservative believes government is like fire — useful when used legitimately, but dangerous when not.
Over the past few decades, the Republican Party has championed a series of reforms designed to devolve power to the individual, through tax cuts, private pensions and medical accounts. The temperamental conservative does not see a nation composed of individuals who should be given maximum liberty to make choices. Instead, the individual is a part of a social organism and thrives only within the attachments to family, community and nation that precede choice.
Therefore, the temperamental conservative values social cohesion alongside individual freedom and worries that too much individualism, too much segmentation, too much tension between races and groups will tear the underlying unity on which all else depends. Without unity, the police are regarded as alien powers, the country will fracture under the strain of war and the economy will be undermined by lack of social trust.
To put it bluntly, over the past several years, the G.O.P. has made ideological choices that offend conservatism’s Burkean roots. This may seem like an airy-fairy thing that does nothing more than provoke a few dissenting columns from William F. Buckley, George F. Will and Andrew Sullivan. But suburban, Midwestern and many business voters are dispositional conservatives more than creedal conservatives. They care about order, prudence and balanced budgets more than transformational leadership and perpetual tax cuts. It is among these groups that G.O.P. support is collapsing.
American conservatism will never be just dispositional conservatism. America is a creedal nation. But American conservatism is only successful when it’s in tension — when the ambition of its creeds is retrained by the caution of its Burkean roots.
Same Old Party By PAUL KRUGMAN President Bush hasn’t strayed from the path of conservatism. On the contrary, he’s the very model of a modern movement conservative.
Which way is right for McCain?
Editorial: Attempting to mend fences with conservatives could put him all over the map.
Which way is right for McCain?
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Attempting to mend fences with conservatives could put him all over the map.
February 16, 2008
Trying to defend Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) against attacks from the right, President Bush went on the Fox News Channel last weekend to vouch for the Republican presidential front-runner’s conservative credentials. “I know the principles that drive him. And no doubt in my mind, he is a true conservative,” Bush said. But what constitutes a true conservative, and what qualifies Bush to guard the entrance to that club?
The GOP’s conservative wing, after all, has many chambers. There are social conservatives, whose support for “pro-family” government regulation rankles some
economic conservatives. The latter group, in turn, is divided between
tax-cutting supply-siders and
budget hawks who worry that deficits impinge on growth.
Then there are foreign policy and national security conservatives — some of them
isolationists, others interventionists in the name of advancing America’s global interests. And don’t forget libertarian conservatives such as Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas), who don’t share much with social and national security conservatives beyond their love of low taxes.
Reflecting those divisions, multiple conservative interest groups have rated McCain’s voting record, and their score cards have yielded widely divergent results. In 2006, for instance, his ratings included high marks from the
/deregulation-loving Americans for Prosperity and the
/earmark-hating Citizens Against Government Waste, but failing grades from Phyllis Schlafly’s family-values-oriented /Eagle Forum and the /John Birch Society, which these days focuses on closing the borders.
More than his votes on specific bills, though, conservatives have been rankled by McCain’s unpredictability and his /willingness to (gasp!) work with Democrats on shared priorities such as immigration, election law ??? and greenhouse gases.
Bush, on the other hand, has been nothing if not predictable, and he has rarely formed common cause with Democrats. Yet many conservatives have soured on him too for presiding over an orgy of deficit spending, miring the U.S. in a futile nation-building exercise in Iraq, ruining the American brand overseas and — worst of all — damaging the GOP’s reputation so badly that Democrats regained control of Congress.
Perhaps McCain’s best fence-mending hope is to win the backing of a conservative icon whose appeal spans the factions — someone like, say, a certain bombastic radio host. Don’t look for Rush Limbaugh to switch from criticizing McCain to lavishing praise on him, however. He said Wednesday: “If I endorse McCain, all these independents and Democrats that despise me would abandon him. I’m the greatest asset McCain has.” That clapping sound you hear is Karl Rove, the master of rallying the GOP base to win elections, slapping himself on the forehead.
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The last true cons… by
By Jacob Heilbrunn
By common consent, William F. Buckley Jr., who died Wednesday, was the father of modern conservatism. But he also ended up as one of the Bush administration’s most trenchant critics. His death not only represents the loss of one of America’s leading intellectual figures but also underscores the extent of the collapse ??? of the conservative movement that has so decisively shaped politics for decades.
Like no other personality, Buckley pulled together the disparate strands of the conservative movement to endow it with panache, self-confidence and a sense of being on the cutting edge. An avid sailor, a writer of numerous spy novels and the host of the first of the political talk shows, “Firing Line,” Buckley quickly became a celebrity who made conservatism respectable. ???
this was no small feat in postwar America. After the defeat of Nazi Germany and the widespread acceptance of the New Deal, conservatism looked like a relic of the past, consisting of a bunch of isolationists and anti-Semitic ??? cranks. The journalist Murray Kempton, who later became a close friend of Buckley’s, summed up the dominant liberal thinking at the time when he observed, “The New American Right is most conspicuous these days for its advanced state of wither.”
Buckley changed that. With the appearance of National Review in 1955, he began to give conservatism a makeover. No doubt Buckley’s greatest flaw was his embrace of Sen. Joseph McCarthy and his refusal to acknowledge McCarthy’s malevolence. But Buckley himself was a tolerant figure whose best friends (such as the radical journalist Dwight Macdonald) were often on the left. He never confused, as today’s conservatives often do, shared political views with actual friendships.
A year after graduating from college, Buckley pioneered the depiction of American liberals as a smug, self-satisfied elite in his famous 1951 book, “God and Man at Yale.” At National Review, he brought on a passel of former Trotskyites turned conservatives, such as Willi Schlamm and James Burnham, who churned out essays attacking the news media and universities as being filled with doctrinaire liberals. Sound familiar?
Ever since, conservatives — whether it’s Ann Coulter or Dinesh D’Souza — have continuously denounced traitorous liberal elites. But they are bargain-basement Buckleys. The difference is that Buckley’s criticisms were grounded not in personal venom but in analysis. In the 1960s, after all, liberals really did have the upper hand in politics; they ???? dragged the U.S. into Vietnam and oversaw the rise of the Great Society, which became a big conservative bugaboo.
Even as debate raged, however, Buckley never became a hater. He possessed a benignant temperament that his successors lack. His most famous proteges –writers Garry Wills, Joan Didion and John Leonard — eventually decamped for the left. Buckley’s response was to quip, “I hadn’t realized that I was running a finishing school for young apostates.”
In the end, Buckley’s judicious temperament and inquisitiveness meant that he himself became something of a heretic, ironically at the moment the right seemed to be at the peak of its power. When I met Buckley, then nearing 80, for lunch at (where else?) the New York Yacht Club in 2004 to interview him about neoconservatism, he was plainly skeptical of the idea that the Middle East could be turned overnight into a bastion of democracy. As the Iraq war became more of a morass, Buckley declared that the “insurrectionists in Iraq can’t be defeated by any means that we would consent to use,” and that in a parliamentary democracy President Bush would have had to step down.
Sam Tanenhaus, who is writing a Buckley biography, noted in the New Republic that Buckley also had begun to question “the wisdom of having opened the gates quite so wide.” Into his movement had stepped neoconservatives and evangelicals who were bent on that most unconservative of propositions — a war to spread peace in the Middle East. Really? The younger generation now running National Review largely has adopted that neoconservative worldview, much to the older generation’s chagrin.
deleted…. Part liberal conception of conservatism.
Jacob Heilbrunn is a senior editor at the National Interest and the author of “They Knew They Were Right: the Rise of the Neocons.”
/what the heck was this convoluted piece all about? Xxxxxx it was awful – Grand Old Protectionists By ROBERT E. LIGHTHIZER John McCain may be a conservative, but his unbridled free-trade policies don’t help make that case.
The Coming Activist Age By DAVID BROOKS The Democrats are the natural party of federal vigor. Yet, historically, periods of great governmental change have often been periods of conservative rule.
Conservatives Try New Tack on Campuses By PATRICIA COHEN
Donors are financing initiatives to restore what some see as the casualties of the culture wars of the ’80s and ’90s.
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Three Cheers for Irving
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By DAVID BROOKS
Published: September 21, 2009
Irving Kristol was born into a fanatical century and thrust himself into every ideologically charged battle of his age. In the 1930s, as a young socialist, he fought the Stalinists. In the 1940s, as a soldier, he fought fascism. In the decades beyond, as a writer and intellectual, he engaged with McCarthyism, the cold war, the Great Society, the Woodstock generation, the culture wars of the 1970s, the Reagan revolution and so on.
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The century was filled with hysterias, all of which he refused to join. There were fanaticisms, none of which he had any part in. Kristol, who died on Friday, seemed to enter life with an intellectual demeanor that he once characterized as “detached attachment.”
He would champion certain causes. He could arrive at surprising and radical conclusions. He was unabashedly neoconservative. But he also stood apart, and directed his skeptical gaze even on his own positions, and even on the things to which he was most loyal.
“There are no benefits without costs in human affairs,” he once wrote. And so there is no idea so true and no movement so pure that it doesn’t require scrutiny. There was no position in this fallen world without flaws.
So while others were marching to barricades, picking out bits of the truth that confirmed their own prejudices, editing contrary evidence and working themselves up a righteous lather, Kristol would adopt an attitude of smiling forbearance. He was able to pick a side without losing his clarity.
Kristol championed capitalism and wrote brilliantly about Adam Smith. But like Smith, he could only give two cheers for capitalism, because the system of creative destruction has victims as well as beneficiaries.
Kristol championed middle-class virtues like faith, family and responsibility, especially during the 1960s when they were so much under attack. But he acknowledged that bourgeois culture could be boring and spiritually unsatisfying.
Kristol championed democracy but understood its limitations. He emphasized that the American founders believed in a democratic system, but were appalled by the democratic faith: the idea that the majority view should be followed in all circumstances. They built a system that was half-democracy and half a republic, designed to acknowledge and also subdue popular will.
Kristol embraced the welfare state (one of his great achievements was to reconcile conservatism with the New Deal), but he was skeptical of most individual proposals. Improving society is so intractably hard that all efforts to do so should be subject to the most careful scrutiny.
His goal, he wrote, was “not to dismantle the welfare state in the name of free-market economics but rather to reshape it so as to attach it to the conservative predispositions of the people.” He believed that government programs that were not paternalistic, but merely provided social insurance, would “engender larger loyalties,” which is “precisely what the art of government, properly understood, is all about.”
Kristol was easily the most influential contemporary writer in my life, and while going over my worn collections, I’ve wondered where this attitude of detached attachment came from.
My first guess is ethnic. Kristol grew up in a working-class neighborhood in Brooklyn and seems to have absorbed the elemental Jewish commandment: Don’t be a schmuck. Don’t fall for fantastical notions that have nothing to do with the way people really are.
My second guess is philosophical. Kristol wrote in a time when intellectuals saw themselves as heirs to the Enlightenment, by which they meant the French Enlightenment. They put their faith in a rational elite and a moral avant-garde that would champion justice, virtue and equality by leading social and political revolutions.
But Kristol was drawn to the other Enlightenment: the Anglo-Scottish Enlightenment, led by Lord Shaftesbury, Adam Ferguson, Adam Smith and Edmund Burke. This was a more prosaic Enlightenment, which was hostile to passionate politics. The leaders of the Scottish environment hoped that progress might come gradually and organically — if individuals were given the liberty to develop their own responsible habits and if they themselves built institutions to guide them on their way.
My third guess is moral. In “The Brothers Karamazov,” Dostoyevsky has his Antichrist flaunt a banner that, in modern form, reads: “First make people prosperous, and then ask of them virtue.”
Kristol argued that this was the great seduction of modern politics — to believe that problems that were essentially moral and civic could be solved by economic means. They can’t. Political problems, even many economic problems, are, at heart, ethical and cultural problems. And improving the attitudes and virtues of a nation is, at best, a slow, halting process.
Kristol pursued this task by being cheerful, patient and realistic — by being at once courageously committed and skeptically detached. By david brooks
Ephemeral Comfort of Conservatism By CHARLES M. BLOW Fear of change and the uncertainty it brings is driving a large part of the opposition against the Obama administration. Nmyt l0/09
The Fatal Conceit By DAVID BROOKS The effort to cap executives’ compensation is a good example of overconfidence in government to solve everything.
/ Where Have You Gone, Bill Buckley? By DAVID WELCH The Republican Party is crying out for someone in the mold of William F. Buckley Jr.
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coCons4
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
For Conservatives, Mission Accomplished
By JOHN MICKLETHWAIT and ADRIAN WOOLDRIDGE
Published: May 18, 2004
ast week Washington was the site of the biggest birthday party you never heard of. The occasion was the 40th anniversary of the American Conservative Union, and the guest list included all the grandees of right-wing America, from Senator Mitch McConnell to Phyllis Schlafly to Wayne LaPierre of the National Rifle Association to, of course, President Bush.
In his speech, the President promised that “for our blessed land the best days lie ahead,” and was greeted with several foot-stomping ovations and cries of “Four more years!” But the real flavor of the event was captured by what the president called the “fine group of decent citizens” gathered at the tables in front of him — members of the N.R.A., the Heritage Foundation, the Family Research Foundation and countless other groups that make up Conservative America. One man wore a tie with the Ten Commandments; women carried handbags in the colors of the American flag; and when the narrator of a film about the conservative union used the phrase “right-wing nuts,” the room roared its approval.
This is the type of partisan anniversary that only one side of America pays attention to — the side that watches Fox News Channel (the host for the evening was that network’s Tony Snow). Yet every Democratic politician in the land could have learned a great deal by attending. It would be going a little far to say that the A.C.U. ought to have celebrated under a banner labeled “Mission Accomplished,” but it is because of such groups that the right has out-organized, out-fought and out-thought liberal America over the past 40 years. And the left still shows no real sign of knowing how to fight back.
To consider the ground that liberals have ceded, one must look back at the union’s founding in a cramped living-room in 1964, a few days after Lyndon B. Johnson had thrashed the first fully paid-up conservative presidential candidate, Barry Goldwater. Back then, the self-styled “Mr. Conservative” seemed to come from another planet. “When in all our history,” asked the political theorist Richard Hofstadter, “has anyone with ideas so bizarre, so archaic, so self-confounding, so remote from the basic American consensus got so far?”
Fast forward to today. A Republican Party that is more conservative than Mr. Goldwater could have imagined controls the White House, Congress, many governors’ mansions and a majority of seats in state legislatures. Back in 1964, John Kenneth Galbraith smugly proclaimed: “These, without doubt, are the years of the liberal. Almost everyone now so describes himself.” Today, a Gallup poll tells us, twice as many Americans (41 percent) describe themselves as “conservative” than as “liberal” (19 percent).
Democrats have come up with all sorts of excuses, from the evils of Richard Nixon’s “Southern strategy” to the “stolen” election of 2000. They usually ignore the fact that the right has simply been far better at producing agenda-setting ideas. From welfare reform in Wisconsin to policing in New York City, from the tax-cutting Proposition 13 in California to regime change in Baghdad, the intellectual impetus has, for better or worse, come from the right. As President Bush bragged at last week’s party, the right is “the dominant intellectual force in American politics.”
Yet many Democrats insist this will change once Mr. Bush is ejected from the White House. This shows how little they have learned. First, the right has a history of advancing its agenda under Democratic executives (welfare reform came about under Bill Clinton). More important, it has organized itself for a much longer battle. Whenever it has been forced into retreat — as after Watergate — the flame has burned eternal at places like Heritage, the American Enterprise Institute and the Cato Institute, and at their smaller cousins in virtually every state.
Brains are nothing without political brawn. That’s why the American Conservative Union disciplines Congressional Republicans by rating them according to their purity (the average rating for House Republicans has risen from 63 percent in 1972 to 91 percent in 2002). Yes, liberal environmental and abortion rights groups rate members of Congress too, but those figures are more effective as fodder for conservative attack ads than as a way to keep Democrats in line.
There are other battalions of foot soldiers, too. Americans for Tax Reform, which had a table at the dinner, rigidly enforces the party’s pledge not to raise taxes. Focus on the Family (which has a campus in Colorado Springs so big that it has its own ZIP code) concentrates on promoting family values. Sometimes these groups feud — Cato libertarians have plenty of differences with Focus on the Family’s social conservatives — but as all the back-slapping at the party showed, they share a sense of movement.
In theory, liberals have more than enough brain and brawn to match conservative America. The great liberal universities and foundations have infinitely more resources than the American Enterprise Institute and its allies. But the conservatives have always been more dogged. The Ford Foundation is as liberal as Heritage is conservative, but there is no doubt which is the more ruthless in its cause.
Now, perhaps, a few liberals are waking up to the task that confronts them. Americans Come Together, a group backed by the billionaire George Soros, already has 20 offices and 450 employees in Ohio alone. John Podesta, a former chief of staff to President Bill Clinton, has founded the Center for American Progress, which Democrats are calling “the liberal Heritage.” But it still seems that liberals are purely reactive. Barry Goldwater may have been strong meat, but at least he had ideas. By contrast, Americans Come Together’s entire raison d’être (like that of the John Kerry campaign) remains negative: to send Mr. Bush back to Texas.
“There is no such thing as spontaneous public opinion,” Beatrice Webb, the great British leftist, once said. “It all has to be manufactured from a center of conviction and energy.” The American Conservative Union is just one of many such centers on the right; it’s a lesson that liberal America seems unable to learn.
John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge, writers for The Economist, are the authors of “The Right Nation: Conservative Power in America.”
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5/l9/04
COMMENTARY
In God, and the GOP, They Trust
A belief in free will puts frequent churchgoers in the Republican fold.
If the last presidential election was any indication, the outcome of November’s contest will be decided in large part by voters’ religious commitments.
/The more often you attend church, the more likely you are to vote Republican.
What polling data don’t tell us is why the religiously observant vote as they do.
The statistical trend is striking. In 2000, Voter News Service reported that
/ the 14% of voters who attended religious services more than once a week voted for George W. Bush over Al Gore by 63% to 36%. Meanwhile, the
/14% who never went to services supported Gore over Bush by an equally commanding margin, 61% to 32%.
What is it about the policy positions and cultural attitudes described as Republican or conservative that makes them so attractive to religious voters? What principle links, say, a passionate defense of gun ownership and a strong preference for low taxes? The link can be summarized in three words:
/individual moral responsibility.
For more than a century, our culture has been divided on the question of whether individual moral actors may justly be held responsible for their deeds. Marx and Freud rocked the 19th century faith in moral responsibility and freedom of will, arguing that human beings are unknowingly in the grip of, respectively, powerful economic and psychosexual forces. 00000000000 Later analysts would discover other latent structures in society that supposedly determine our moral choices. 000000000
Today, the ideological struggles of liberals and conservatives mirror the clash initiated by /Marxists and Freudians with [vs] 19th century individualism.
/Conservatives encourage individuals to make their own choices, except where those choices invariably harm the innocent (as in abortion) or undermine the pillars of civilization itself (as in gay marriage).
/Liberals see the function of government as parental, with citizens in the role of children too unaware and irresponsible to cross the street by themselves.
Consider the following admittedly broad generalizations:
/The gun control debate pits conservatives, who are content to place moral responsibility on the gun owner, @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ against liberals, who think that that responsibility can safely be placed on only the state. @@@@@@@@@@
/Liberals tar conservatives for their apparent stinginess on government social spending, but conservatives respond that society should depend more on individuals to support the needy. @@@@@@@@@@@ Heavy taxes are a sign that society has relieved the individual of that responsibility. @@@@@@@@@
/Affirmative action bothers conservatives, who think even a person from a historically oppressed race is free to rise above the suffering of his ancestors. Liberals doubt that transcending the structure of institutionalized racism is always possible. @@@@@@@@
/The Iraq war troubles liberals, who think that only the collectivity — in this case, the international community in the form of the United Nations — should take responsibility for making war.
/Conservatives argue that the individual moral actor, or a single country when it comes to war, can make that decision for itself.
/@@@@@ Conservatives dislike the myriad safety regulations — for example, anti-smoking laws and lawsuits — promulgated by liberals. The question is whether a person is responsible for his own health, or whether the collectivity, the state, needs to step in and assume responsibility.
/On education, conservatives accept the judgments of individual parents as to children’s best interests; hence the enthusiasm for school choice and home schooling. Liberals feel better when society — the state, the teachers unions — takes the responsibility to educate children on itself.
And so on. Generally speaking,
/liberalism distrusts the individual, while conservatism trusts him enough to give him a chance to make the right, or the wrong, decision. If he makes the wrong one, he will have to answer to his own conscience, or to his God. @@@@@@@@
Looked at this way, it becomes apparent 0000000000000 why religious Americans gravitate to conservatism. By far the majority of them are Christians and their biblical religion is premised on the idea of individual moral responsibility. Traditionally, religious faith presumes that God commands us to act in certain ways — which in turn presumes moral freedom. @@@@@@@@ Otherwise, how could God hold us responsible if we refuse to obey? @@@@@@@@@@@@
Not all Democrats fully accept the strictly “liberal” view, of course, but they belong to a party that, of the two main parties in American political life, is the one identified with the belief that moral choices are profoundly conditioned by circumstance and therefore aren’t truly free. It may be too much to suggest that God himself is a Republican. Then again, it may not.
The End Of the Right?
Friday, August 4, 2006; Page A17
Is conservatism finished?
What might have seemed an absurd question less than two years ago is now one of the most important issues in American politics. The question is being asked — mostly quietly but occasionally publicly — by conservatives themselves as they survey the wreckage of their hopes, and as their champions in the Republican Party use any means necessary to survive this fall’s elections.
Conservatism is an honorable disposition that, in its modern form, is inspired by the philosophy developed by Edmund Burke in the 18th century. But as a contemporary ??????? American movement, conservatism is rooted intellectually in the 1950s and the circles around William F. Buckley Jr. and National Review magazine. It rose politically with Barry Goldwater’s campaign in 1964.
Conservatism was always a delicate balancing act between small-government economic libertarians and social traditionalists who revered family, faith and old values. The two wings were often held together by a common enemy, modern liberalism certainly, but even more so by communism until the early 1990s, and now by what some conservatives call “Islamofascism.”
President Bush, his defenders say, has pioneered a new philosophical approach, sometimes known as “big-government conservatism.” The most articulate defender of this position, the journalist Fred Barnes, argues that Bush’s view is “Hamiltonian” as in Alexander, Thomas Jefferson’s rival in the early republic. Bush’s strategy, Barnes says, “is to use government as a means to achieve conservative ends.” xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Kudos to Barnes for trying bravely to make sense bias??? of what to so many others — including some in conservative ranks — seems an incoherent enterprise. jjjjjjjjjj But I would argue that this is the week in which conservatism, Hamiltonian or not, reached the point of collapse.
The most obvious, outrageous and unprincipled spasm occurred last night when the Senate voted on a bill that would have simultaneously raised the minimum wage and slashed taxes on inherited wealth. @@@@@@@@@
Rarely has our system produced a more naked exercise in opportunism than this measure. Most conservatives oppose the minimum wage on principle as a form of government meddling in the marketplace. But moderate Republicans in jeopardy this fall desperately wanted an increase in the minimum wage.
So the seemingly ingenious Republican leadership, which dearly wants deep cuts in the estate tax, proposed offering nickels and dimes to the working class to secure billions for the rich. Fortunately, though not surprisingly, the bill failed.
The episode was significant because it meant Republicans were acknowledging that they would not hold congressional power without the help of moderates. That is because there is nothing close to a conservative majority in the United States.
Yet their way of admitting this was to put on display the central goal of the currently dominant forces of politics: to give away bias as much as possible to the truly wealthy. You wonder what those blue-collar conservatives once known as Reagan Democrats made of this spectacle.
Last night’s shenanigans were merely a symptom. Consider other profound fissures within the right. There is an increasingly bitter debate over whether it made any sense to wage war in Iraq in the hopes of transforming 000000000000000 that country into a democracy. Conservatives with excellent philosophical credentials, including my colleague George F. Will, and Bill Buckley himself, see the enterprise as profoundly unconservative. @@@@@@
On immigration, the big-business right and culturally optimistic conservatives square off against cultural pessimists and conservatives who see porous borders as a major security threat. @@@@@ On stem cell research, libertarians battle conservatives who have serious moral and religious doubts about the practice — and even some staunch opponents of abortion break with the right-to-life movement on the issue. @@@@@@
On spending . . . well, on spending, incoherence and big deficits are the order of the day. Writing in National Review in May, conservatives Kate O’Beirne and Rich Lowry had one word to describe the Republican Congress’s approach to the matter: “Incontinence.”
In that important essay, O’Beirne and Lowry argued that the relevant question for conservatives may not be “Can this Congress be saved?” but “Is it worth saving?” finally !!!
Political movements lose power when they lose their self-confidence and sense of mission. Liberalism went into a long decline after 1968 ?????????? when liberals clawed at each other more than they battled conservatives — and when they began to wonder whether their project was worth salvaging.
Between now and November, conservative leaders will dutifully try to rally the troops to stave off a Democratic victory. But their hearts won’t be in the fight. The decline of conservatism leaves a vacuum in American politics. An unhappy electorate is waiting to see who will fill it. right, and who or what is there. wow
— out of chrono order below re those above —–
Cons 4
Inside a Republican Brain By WILLIAM SAFIRE Published: July 21, 2004
What holds the five Republican factions together? To find out, I depth-polled my own brain.
The economic conservative (I’m in the supply-side division) opposes the enforced /redistribution of wealth
/lower taxes for all to stimulate growth with productivity, thereby to cut the deficit.
/cut nondefense spending
/stop the litigation drain
/reduce regulation but
/ protect consumers from media and other monopolies
My social conservative instinct wants to
/denounce the movie-and-TV treatment of violence and porno-sadism as entertainment; /repeal state-sponsored gambling
/slow the rush to same-sex marriage
/oppose partial-birth abortion
/resist genetic manipulation that goes beyond therapy. Vs
/libertarian impulse, which is pro-choice and anti-compulsion
/protect the right to counsel of all suspects
/right to privacy of the rest of us
/quiet cars in trains
/vouchers for education
/snoops out of bedrooms
/fundamentalists out of schoolrooms.
The idealistic calling grabs me when it comes to
/America’s historic mission of extending freedom in the world. This brand of thinking is often called neoconservative.
In defense against terror, I’m
/pre-emptive and unilateral rather than belated and musclebound, and would rather be ad hoc in forming alliances than permanently in hock to global bureaucrats. 000000
Also rattling around my Republican mind is the cultural conservative. In today’s ever-fiercer kulturkampf, I identify with art forms more traditional than avant-garde, and language usage more standard than common. I prefer the canon to the fireworks and a speech that appeals to the brain’s reasoning facilities to a demidocumentary film arousing the amygdala.
Do these different streams of conservatism flow gently together to form a grand Republican river inside the head? “Do I contradict myself?” asked Walt Whitman, singing of himself and answering, “Very well then I contradict myself. (I am large, I contain multitudes.)”
If these different strains of thought were held by discrete groups of single-minded people, we would have a Republican Party of five warring bands.
Social conservatives would fight libertarians over sex,
libertarians would savage neocons over pre-emption
neocons would hoot at the objections of
economic conservatives (traditional division) to huge deficits.
But think of these internecine battles not as tugs of war among single-minded groups; instead, think of them as often-conflicting ideas held within the brain of an individual Republican. What goes on is “cognitive dissonance,” the jangling of competing inclinations, with the owner of the brain having to work out trade-offs, suppressions and compromises until he or she achieves a kind of puzzled tranquility within.
What helps me work out that continual internal skirmishing is a mind-set. That brings us to those “values” that every candidate talks about. My values include
/self-reliance over community dependence,
/intervention over isolation,
/self-discipline over society’s regulation,
/finding pleasure in work rather than working to find pleasure.
Principles like those help me gel a mind-set that reduces the loudest dissonances among my fistful of clanging conservatisms.
Another aid to resolve the dissonance is every partisan’s need for a political home. Independence is fine for the occasionally involved, but if influence as a participant or commentator is desired, one political side or the other must be taken.
The political brain doesn’t have to go all the way to conform to either side because each side – Republican and its loyal opposition – contains this conglomeration of nonconformity. I’m a right-winger who is hot for gun control, dismaying all but the wishy-washies called “moderates,” but that specific dissent is made inside my Republican home. And home has been defined as the place where – when you have to go there – they have to take you in.
Finally, the dissonance inside my head will be forced into harmony by the need to choose one leader who reflects the preponderance of my views and my judgment of his character.
I will take my teeming noggin to both conventions, watch all the debates and cast my vote – careful, in the tradition of Times columnists, not to endorse anyone. But now you know how one Republican mind will be made up. I presume the liberal brain works the same way.
E-mail: safire@nytimes.com
———— – – – – – –
8-09-04: News Abroad
Review of Stefan Halper’s and Jonathan Clarke’s America Alone: The Neo-Conservatives and the Global Order
By Jim Sleeper
Mr. Sleeper, a lecturer in political science at Yale, is the author of LIBERAL RACISM and THE CLOSEST OF STRANGERS: LIBERALISM AND THE POLITICS OF RACE IN NEW YORK.
As prominent conservatives – diplomats, retired generals, commentators such as George Will – are breaking with the Bush administration over the military, constitutional and budgetary consequences of its foreign policy, two of them have published a solemn remonstrance assailing President Bush’s capitulation to a “small group of neoconservative policy makers,” whom they accuse of driving our national misadventures in regime change and nation-building even at the price of endless war and the loss of America’s “moral authority.”
Their jeremiad, America Alone, is the more telling because Stefan Halper and Jonathan Clarke are not left-wing populists or even Democrats. Halper, a White House and State Department official in the Nixon, Ford and Reagan administrations, and Clarke, a former counselor in the British Diplomatic Service now at Washington’s libertarian Cato Institute, mean to save a moderate, worldly conservatism that they say has been replaced by the
/neoconservative “special interest,” with its “endless mantra of ‘
/Munich’ ” – referring to the 1938 agreement – and
/obsession with the Middle East.
Neoconservatism is less a conspiracy than a powerful mind-set, modulated a bit in the varied styles of, among others,
/neocon godfathers Irving Kristol, Richard Pipes and Donald Kagan;
polemicists Norman Podhoretz, his son John, Daniel Pipes (son of Richard and director of the pro-war Campus Watch) and columnist Charles Krauthammer;
State and Defense department infighters Elliott Abrams, Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith;
foreign policy strategists Jeane Kirkpatrick and Robert Kagan (son of Donald and co-founder of the neocon Project for the New American Century); and
genial pundits William Kristol (son of Irving and PNAC’s other founder) and David Brooks.
In what they see as a Hobbesian dog-eat-dog world, the neocons demand what Halper and Clarke call a “values-based” foreign policy, grounded in classical virtues.
They dismiss as hopelessly ineffectual not only most
/ liberal internationalist thinking but also the
/traditional conservative “realist” approach taken by Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon.
In the authors’ telling, older neocons began on the left and carried their penchant for ideological warfare rightward without actually embracing conservative economics or the “great melody” of Edmund Burke’s conservative social thought. ?????
Halper and Clarke show that even as world communism disintegrated, the neocons’ obsession with it kept them
/oddly captive to its combative ways. Neocons miss the Cold War (“World War III”), which seemed to them to justify their demands for greater ideological clarity and aggression in U.S. foreign policy. They thrilled to Ronald Reagan’s “evil empire” rhetoric but were disoriented as he drew Mikhail Gorbachev into dismantling that empire peacefully; they scrambled to reproduce the Cold War’s good-versus-evil coordinates in the public mind and the corridors of power, working through the Project for the New American Century http://www.newamericancentury.org and the American Enterprise Institute. ????? sig
After a decade of post-Cold War scheming and bombast, their opportunity arrived on Sept. 11, 2001, which overwhelmed a naive president and, Halper and Clarke write, enabled the neocons to impose an “artificial clarity of their own invention on the highly complex network of interactions that constitute America’s relations with the rest of the world…. A preexisting ideological agenda was taken off the shelf, dusted off, and relabelled as the response to terror.” Nine days after Sept. 11, Bush got a letter from leading neocons applauding his “commitment to ‘lead the world to victory’ in the war against terrorism” and, remarkably, putting Iraq front and center. [ WHY?!! ] Neocons championed the now-discredited Ahmad Chalabi as a credible informant and likely leader for a U.S.-liberated Iraq. America’s post-Sept. 11 foreign policy was “conceptualized and promoted” preeminently by the neocons,
/”first by their advocacy of war against Iraq a decade before 9/11 [WHY] and,
/second, by their embrace of the concept of an endless, ongoing ‘World War IV.’ “
(The elder Podhoretz is writing a book tentatively titled “World War IV: How It Started, What It Means, and Why We Have to Win.”) The authors’ assessment of the costs includes doomed military and political strategies employed against the terrorists and a homeland-security patriotism that has turned the neocons’ idea of loyalty into a loveless lock step and their democratic creed into Orwellian sloganeering. ???
As foreign policy veterans, Halper and Clarke are acute on the
/collapse of multilateralism (we now treat allies “much as though they were Soviet-style satellites”) and the
/rise of a state-driven “war on terror” that
by targeting “senior leaders” misconstrues [fix] terrorist organizations so badly that it ends by empowering them.
They also protest the disruption of America’s always problematic balance of liberty and security, noting that “[a]s advocates of limited-government conservatism, we are /dismayed at the flow of power toward the center” and that “terrorism can be better addressed if we resist the temptation to cut constitutional corners.”
They expose the neocons’ use of journalism to spread disinformation and create “a climate of fear.” The more that people watched Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News cable network, the authors point out, the more likely they were to believe that Iraq and Al Qaeda were linked, that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction and that world public opinion supported the war.
—– stopped here ——
Administration officials “circumvented the usual … channels” to provide pro-war analysis to “sympathetic media outlets,” including the neocons’ Weekly Standard, which sometimes availed itself of “actual wording from allegedly classified documents.” William Kristol, its editor, asserted that the war’s aftermath would require only 75,000 U.S. troops and $16 billion a year. “Using ridicule and ostracism to attack dissenters,” Halper and Clarke write,
/”neo-conservative strongholds such as the Weekly Standard, the New York Post, the Fox Network, and the Wall Street Journal editorial page effectively stilled the debate. Those questioning … the neo-conservative rationale for war faced personal attacks on their integrity laced with allegations of disloyalty.”
If journalism is the first draft of history, neocons attacked the second draft too,
/rewriting Reagan’s foreign policy record to make it seem their own. Halper and Clarke describe William Kristol’s and Robert Kagan’s 1996 Foreign Affairs essay, “Toward a Neo-Reaganite Foreign Policy,” as a “muddying of the historical record,” arguing that Reagan’s outreach to China and the Soviets and cautionary standards for American intervention abroad reflected his belief that America could win more ground by setting an example than by aggression.
/Conservative moderation in foreign policy does have a long pedigree. But Halper and Clarke are reticent about
/conservatism’s decidedly mixed record: Conservatives did oppose most American interventions abroad, but often in racist or isolationist disdain. Their McCarthyism at home prefigured the
/current neocon obsession with national security. Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, William Rehnquist, John Ashcroft and the congressional hawks, whom the authors also condemn, are all longtime card-carrying conservatives. (The authors label Cheney and Rumsfeld “nationalists,” as if reluctant to acknowledge this.) What in American conservatism predisposed it to be so misled? No reckoning with that here.
The authors are not only protective of presidents Nixon and Reagan but also seem hesitant to slam a sitting president who may yet take their advice. Were they journalists, they might tell us more about why George W. Bush didn’t keep the neocons in check. They do show how reluctant he was, as a candidate and as president before Sept. 11, to project American military might abroad, repeatedly abjuring “nation-building” and seeming more “humble” than aggressive in foreign policy.
But why was he that way, and why did he change? Having observed him as an undergraduate (he was my neighbor in a Yale college and president of my roommate’s fraternity) and observing classmates who are raising money for him now, I recognize in Bush and his club an insularity along with the impish, frat-boy streak we saw in his stagy flight-deck landing and his Thanksgiving Day descent into Baghdad. The frat boys had, of course, a dim awareness of a harder, bigger world beyond the one that had always been their oyster. But Bush (unlike his father, who saw combat) contrived neither to fight in the Vietnam War nor to oppose it. Small wonder [aaa] that the rude shock of Sept. 11 made him susceptible to the neocons’ “artificial clarity.”
Now that the shocks of the war in Iraq and its aftermath have been almost as rude, might he replace them with wiser advisors? He awarded a Presidential Medal of Freedom to Norman Podhoretz on June 23, but Lyndon Johnson gave the same medal to his departing Defense secretary, Robert McNamara, when America’s failing war in Vietnam drove them apart. It was a send-off whose grandiosity masked its bitterness.
Most conservatives and liberals now agree that McNamara saw the light about Vietnam while LBJ was still marching deeper into the tunnel. If Halper and Clarke are striking a conservative nerve, might it be Bush who is inching toward the light, leaving Podhoretz & Co. behind in the darkness? Even if so, it may be too late for them all.
This article first appeared in the Los Angeles Times and is reprinted with permission of the author.
———- – – – – –
A Bench Tilting Right
Appellate judges appointed by Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush show more conservative voting patterns than do judges appointed by any president in the past 80 years. As a result, the average vote of a federal judge has been growing much more conservative.
Ll/28/04 la: FOREIGN POLICY really bad. @@@@@ Deleted most. Hardly worth saving.
Tribal Warfare on the Right
Time to end the squabble that nearly brought down Bush
By Henry R. Nau, Henry R. Nau, 000000000000000000000 a professor at George Washington University, served in the Ford and Reagan administrations and is author of “At Home Abroad: Identity and Power in American Foreign Policy.” This article
In Camp 1, conservative realists, such as Brent Scowcroft, attacked President Bush’s policies for splitting the NATO alliance and chasing after democratic rainbows in the barren sands of the Middle East. +++++
In Camp 2, conservative internationalists — the notorious neocons — including Charles Krauthammer and Francis Fukuyama, quarreled about the urgency of the terrorist threat and the need for international approval. 00000
In Camp 3, conservative nationalists, such as Pat Buchanan, deplored the Cold War reflex to defend feckless allies and called for homeland and missile defenses to defeat terrorism. 000000
Neoconservatives advocate the most muscular strategy, one that encourages the U.S. to act without allies if necessary through flexible “coalitions of the willing.”
Realists would prefer to use existing alliances and patiently reorganize them to deal with new threats.
Nationalists expect allies to do more on their own and seek to keep U.S. forces at home, where America is still protected by two broad oceans. These disagreements are actually helpful.
What is most puzzling about neocons is not that they believe democracy is potentially possible anywhere, but that they believe we can export it without the help of our democratic allies.
What is not bearable is for conservatives as a whole to succumb to indifference, as nationalists are prone to do, or to intolerance as neocons are prone to do, or to cynicism ???? as realists are prone to do.
*
(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX) = crap
Snapshots of the Conservative Camps
Neocons
What they’re reading: Israeli Cabinet member Natan Sharansky’s new book “The Case for Democracy,” which argues that the world is “divided between those who are prepared to confront evil and those who are willing to appease it.” Sound familiar? Sharansky met with President Bush and Middle East advisor Elliott Abrams on Nov. 11 to discuss his book, which Bush is reading.
Favorite president: Ronald Reagan
Most hated president: Jimmy Carter
Favorite countries: Israel and Taiwan
Most hated country: France
Favorite U.S. war: all of them, except …
Least favorite war: Persian Gulf War, because the first President Bush didn’t go to Baghdad
Favorite word: unilateralism
Favorite part of the country: Manhattan
Where they buy their suits: Barneys
*
Realists
What they’re reading: Former journalist Anatol Lieven’s “America Right or Wrong: An Anatomy of American Nationalism,” a denunciation of messianic neoconservatism. Lieven declares, “America keeps a fine house, but in its cellar there lives a demon, whose name is nationalism.”
Favorite president: Richard Nixon
Most hated president: Woodrow Wilson
Favorite war: Persian Gulf War, because the first President Bush didn’t go to Baghdad
Least favorite war: Vietnam
Favorite country: Britain
Most hated country: none
Favorite term: balance of power
Favorite part of the country: Ohio
Where they buy their suits: Brooks Brothers
*
Nationalists
What they’re reading: Pat Buchanan’s “Where the Right Went Wrong: How the Neoconservatives Subverted the Reagan Revolution and Hijacked the Bush Presidency” and the late Sen. Robert Taft’s 1951 “A Foreign Policy for Americans,” which decries interventionists who “are inspired with the same kind of New Deal planned-control ideas abroad as recent administrations have desired to enforce at home.”
Favorite president: Andrew Jackson
Most hated president: Bill Clinton
Favorite war: Mexican-American War
Least favorite war: all the rest
Favorite country: none
Most hated country: everyone else
Favorite term: unilateralism
Favorite part of the country: Georgia
Favorite clothing store: Syms
— Jacob Heilbrunn
A House Divided, and Strong
By DAVID BROOKS
Conservatives have thrived because they are split into feuding factions that squabble incessantly. 4/05 nyt
Just How Gay Is the Right?
By FRANK RICH 5/05
Homosexuality is the ticking time bomb within the conservative movement that no one can defuse.
——————– – – – – –
Smile if (and Only if) You’re Conservative
Thursday, February 23, 2006; Page A19
To bemused conservatives, it looks like yet another example of analytic overkill by the intelligentsia — a jobs program for the (mostly liberal) academic boys (and girls) in the social sciences, whose quantitative tools have been brought to bear to prove the obvious.
A survey by the Pew Research Center shows that conservatives are happier than liberals — in all income groups. While 34 percent of all Americans call themselves “very happy,” only 28 percent of liberal Democrats (and 31 percent of moderate or conservative Democrats) do, compared with 47 percent of conservative Republicans. This finding is niftily self-reinforcing: It depresses liberals
Election results do not explain this happiness gap. Republicans have been happier than Democrats every year since the survey began in 1972. Married people and religious people are especially disposed to happiness, and both cohorts vote more conservatively than does the nation as a whole.
People in the Sun Belt — almost entirely red states — have sunnier dispositions than Northerners, which could have as much to do with sunshine as with conservatism. Unless sunshine makes people happy, which makes them conservative.
Such puzzles show why social science is not for amateurs. Still, one cannot — yet — be prosecuted for committing theory without a license, so consider a few explanations of the happiness gap.
Begin with a paradox: Conservatives are happier than liberals because they are more pessimistic. Conservatives think the Book of Job got it right (“Man is born unto trouble as the sparks fly upward”), as did Adam Smith (“There is a great deal of ruin in a nation”). Conservatives understand that society in its complexity resembles a giant Calder mobile — touch it here and things jiggle there, and there, and way over there. Hence conservatives acknowledge the Law of Unintended Consequences, which is: The unintended consequences of bold government undertakings are apt to be larger than, and contrary to, the intended ones.
Conservatives’ pessimism is conducive to their happiness in three ways. First, they are rarely surprised — they are right more often than not about the course of events. Second, when they are wrong, they are happy to be so. Third, because pessimistic conservatives put not their faith in princes — government — they accept that happiness is a function of fending for oneself. They believe that happiness is an activity — it is inseparable from the pursuit of happiness.
The right to pursue happiness is the essential right that government exists to protect. Liberals, taking their bearings, whether they know it or not, from President Franklin Roosevelt’s 1936 State of the Union address, think the attainment of happiness itself, understood in terms of security and material well-being, is an entitlement that government has created and can deliver.
On Jan. 3, 1936, FDR announced that in 34 months his administration had established a “new relationship between government and people.” Amity Shlaes, a keen student of FDR’s departure from prior political premises, says, “The New Deal had a purpose beyond curing the Depression. It was to make people look to Washington for help at all times.” Henceforth the federal government would be permanently committed to serving a large number of constituencies: “Occasional gifts to farmers or tariffs for business weren’t enough.” So, liberals: Smile — you’ve won.
Nevertheless, normal conservatives — never mind the gladiators of talk radio; they are professionally angry — are less angry than liberals. Liberals have made this the era of surly automobile bumpers, millions of them, still defiantly adorned with Kerry-Edwards and even Gore-Lieberman bumper stickers, faded and frayed like flags preserved as relics of failed crusades. To preserve these mementos of dashed dreams, many liberals may be forgoing the pleasures of buying new cars — another delight sacrificed on the altar of liberalism.
But, then, conscientious liberals cannot enjoy automobiles because there is global warming to worry about, and the perils of corporate-driven consumerism, which is the handmaiden of bourgeoisie materialism. And high-powered cars (how many liberals drive Corvettes?) are metaphors (for America’s reckless foreign policy, for machismo rampant, etc.). And then there is — was — all that rustic beauty paved over for highways. (And for those giant parking lots at exurban mega-churches. The less said about them the better.) And automobiles discourage the egalitarian enjoyment of mass transit. And automobiles, by facilitating suburban sprawl, deny sprawl’s victims — that word must make an appearance in liberal laments; and lament is what liberals do — the uplifting communitarian experience of high-density living. And automobiles . . .
You see? Liberalism is a complicated and exacting, not to say grim and scolding, creed. And not one conducive to happiness.
G.O.P. Corruption? Bring In the Conservatives.
In the lexicon of American business, “cynicism” means doubt about the benevolence of market forces, and it is a vice of special destructiveness. Those who live or work in Washington, however, know another variant of cynicism, a fruitful one, a munificent one, a cynicism that is, in fact, the health of the conservative state. The object of this form of cynicism is “government,” whose helpful or liberating possibilities are to be derided whenever the opportunity presents.
Remember how President Reagan claimed to find terror in the phrase, “I’m from the government and I’m here to help”? Or how the humorist P. J. O’Rourke won fame by declaring that even the proceedings of a New England town meeting were a form of thievery?
The true scoffer demands sterner stuff, though, and in the cold light of economic science he can see that government is not merely susceptible to corruption; government is corruption, a vile profaning of the market-most-holy in which some groups contrive to swipe the property of other groups via taxation and regulation. Politicians use the threat of legislation to extort bribes from industry, and even federal quality standards — pure food and so on — are tantamount to theft, since by certifying that any product in a given field won’t kill you, they nullify the reputations for quality and goodness that individual companies in the field have built up at great expense over the years.
The ideas I am describing are basic building blocks of the conservative faith. You can find their traces throughout the movement’s literature. You can hear their echoes in chambers of commerce across the land. But what happens when you elevate to high public office people who actually believe these things — who think that “the public interest” is a joke, that “reform” is a canard, and that every regulatory push is either a quest for monopoly by some company or a quest for bribes by some politician? What happens when the machinery of the state falls into the hands of people who laugh at the function for which it was designed?
The obvious answer is an auctioning-off of public policy in a manner we have not seen since the last full-blown antigovernment regime held office, in the 1920’s. Agencies and commissions are brazenly turned over to campaign contributors; high-ranking officers of Congress throw grander and gaudier fund-raisers even after being arraigned; well-connected middlemen sell access for unprecedented amounts.
What really worries me, though, is that our response to all this may be to burrow deeper into our own cynicism, ultimately reinforcing the gang that owns the patent on cynicism and thus setting us up for another helping of the same. This may not be apparent now, with the identity of the culprits still vivid and the G.O.P. apparently heading for a midterm spanking. Recall, though, that while the short-term effects of the Watergate scandal were jail sentences for several Republicans and the election of many Democrats to Congress in 1974, its long-term effect was the destruction of public faith in government itself and the wave that swept in Ronald Reagan six years later.
In the absence of a theory of corruption that pins the tail squarely on the elephant, this is certainly what will happen again. Conservatives are infinitely better positioned to capitalize on public disillusionment with the political system, regardless of who does the disillusioning. Indeed, the chorus has already started chanting that the real culprit in the current Beltway scandals is the corrupting influence of government, not conservative operatives or their noble doctrine. The problem with G.O.P. miscreants is simply that they’ve been in D.C. so long they’ve “gone native,” to use a favorite phrase of the right; they are “becoming cozy with Beltway mores,” in The Wall Street Journal’s telling. If you don’t like the corruption, you must do away with government.
Were he not the main figure in all this, Jack Abramoff would undoubtedly be nodding in agreement with those editorials. A self-described “free-marketeer” who spent his days fighting “government intervention in the economy” and leading the catcalls at Tip O’Neill, he would undoubtedly have seen the political gold beneath the scandals. If, in our revulsion at Abramoff’s crimes, we are induced to accept Abramoff’s politics, it will be K Street’s greatest triumph yet.
Thomas Frank is the author, most recently, of “What’s the Matter with Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America.’’ He is a guest columnist during August.
=== above out of chrono order re those above them ===============
The Conservative Mind By DAVID BROOKS Conservatism has lost half of its intellectual firepower. Republicans need to recover traditional conservatism or risk becoming irrelevant. 9/l2
Walter Berns, a Catalyst of the Neoconservative Movement, Dies at 95 By SAM ROBERTS Professor Berns’s dissatisfaction with Cornell’s response to a takeover of a campus building by black students in 1969 fueled a group of intellectuals who blamed liberalism for many ills.
For Poorer and Richer By ROSS DOUTHAT In a substantially poorer past, lower-income Americans found a way to cultivate monogamy, fidelity, sobriety and thrift.
/ http://www.gallup.com/poll/201152/conservative-liberal-gap-continues-narrow-tuesday.aspx
/
Stephens: Roger Ailes, the Man Who Wrecked Conservatism
/ Happy 300th, Adam Smith! (msn.com) = 0
=========== = = =
Cons5
These are old
Author Links
Ann Coulter
Bill Gertz
Claire Berlinski
Daniel Flynn
James Hirsen
Kenneth Timmerman
L. Brent Bozell III
Linda Chavez
Michael Barone
Michael Medved
Tammy Bruce
Links
American Spectator
Ankle Biting Pundits
BLACKFIVE
Captain’s Quarters
Day by Day Cartoon
Drudge Report
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GettingAmericaRight.com
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==================== = = =
This is old as no @:
Policy Groups toward the far right. from town hall.
Accuracy in Academia, Reed Irvine, Chairman, 4455 Connecticut
Avenue, N.W.,Suite 330, Washington, DC 20008, 202/364‑3085, fax 202/364‑4098
Accuracy In Media, Reed Irvine, Chairman, 4455 Connecticut
Avenue, Suite 330, Washington, DC 20008, 202/364‑4401, fax 202/364‑4098
Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty, Rev.
Robert A. Sirico, President, 161 Ottawa Avenue, N.W., The Waters
Building, Suite 301, Grand Rapids, MI 49503, 616/454‑3080, fax
616/454‑9454
Alabama Family Alliance, Gary J. Palmer, President, 402
Office Park Drive, Suite 300, Birmingham, AL 35223, 205/870‑9900,
fax 205/ 870‑4407
Ethan Allen Institute, John McClaughry, President, RR 1
Box 43, Concord, VT 05824, 802/695‑2555, fax 802/695‑2555
Alliance Defense Fund, Alan Sears, President, P.O. Box
54370, Phoenix, AZ 85078, 602/953‑1200, fax 602/953‑5630
Alliance for America, Harry McIntosh, Vice President for
Administration, P.O. Box 449, Caroga Lake, NY 12032, 518/835‑6702,
fax 518/835‑2527
American Academy for Liberal Education, Jeffery Wallin,
President, 1015 18th Street, N.W., Suite 204, Washington, DC 20036
202/452‑8611, fax 202/452‑8620
The American Cause, Terrence Jeffrey, Executive Director,
P.O. Box 879, McLean, VA 22101, 703/827‑9200, fax 703/827‑0592
American Center for Law and Justice, Keith A. Fournier,
Executive Director, 1000 Regent University Drive, P.O. Box 64429, Virginia Beach, VA 23467, 804/579‑2806,
fax 804/579‑2836
American Conservative Union, Jeffrey Hollingsworth, Executive Director, 1007 Cameron Street, Alexandria, VA 22314, 703/836‑8602, fax 703/836‑8606
American Council on Science and Health, Elizabeth M. Whelan,
President, 1995 Broadway, Second Floor, New York, NY 10023, 212/362‑7044, fax 212/362‑4919
American Defense Institute, Captain Eugene B. "Red"
McDaniel, USN (Ret.), President, 1055 North Fairfax Street, Suite
200, Alexandria, VA 22314, 703/519‑7000, fax 703/519‑8627
Americans for Effective Law Enforcement, Wayne Schmidt,
Executive Director,
5519 N. Cumberland Avenue, Suite 1008, Chicago, IL 60656‑1498,
312/763‑2800
American Enterprise Institute, Christopher DeMuth, President,
1150 17th Street, N.W., Washington, DC 20036, 202/862‑5800, fax
202/862‑7178
American Family Association, Donald Wildmon, Executive
Director, P.O. Drawer 2440, Tupelo, MS 38803, 601/844‑5036, fax
601/844‑9176
American Foundation for Resistance International, Albert
Jolis, Executive Director, 101 East 52nd Street, Twelfth Floor,
New York, NY 10022, 212/759‑3434, fax 212/207‑8173
American Legislative Exchange Council, Samuel A. Brunelli,
Executive Director,
910 17th Street, N.W., Fifth Floor, Washington, DC 20006, 202/466‑3800,
fax 202/466‑3801
American Security Council, 1155 15th Street, N.W., Suite
1108, Washington, DC 20005, 202/296‑9500, fax 202/296‑9547
American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property,
Mario Navarro da Costa, Director, Washington Office, 4107 N. 27th
Road, Arlington, VA 22207, 703/892‑1810, fax 703/243‑6038
Americans for a Sound AIDS/HIV Policy, W. Shepherd Smith,
Jr., President, P.O. Box 17433, Washington, DC 20041, 703/471‑7350,
fax 703/471‑8409
American Studies Center/Radio America, James C. Roberts,
President, 1030 15th Street, N.W., Suite 700, Washington, DC 20005,
202/408‑0944, fax 202/408‑1087
Americans for Tax Reform, Grover G. Norquist, President,
1320 18th Street, N.W.,
Suite 200, Washington, DC 20036, 202/785‑0266, fax 202/785‑0261
American Textbook Council, Gilbert T. Sewall, Director,
475 Riverside Drive,
Suite 518, New York, New York 10115, 212/870‑2760, fax 212/870‑3454
Americans United for Life, Paige Cunningham, President,
343 South Dearborn, Suite 1804, Chicago, IL 60604, 312/786‑9494, fax 312/786‑2131
Arizona Institute for Public Policy Research, Michael Sanera,
President, 7000 North 16th Street, #120‑420, Phoenix, AZ 85020,
602/277‑8682, fax 602/277‑8563
Arkansas Family Council, Jerry Cox, Executive Director,
1300 Westpark Drive, Suite 5‑B, Little Rock, AR 72204, 501/664‑4566, fax 501/664‑2317
John M. Ashbrook Center, Charles E. Parton, Director, Ashland
University, 401 College Avenue, Ashland, OH 44805, 419/289‑5411,
fax 419/289‑5425
Atlantic Institute for Market Studies, Brian Crowley, Director,
1601 Lowerwater Street, P.O. Box 730, Halifax B3J 2Z1, CANADA,
902/466‑4809, fax 902/466‑4863
Atlantic Legal Foundation, Douglas Foster, President, 205
East 42nd Street, Ninth Floor, New York, NY 10017, 212/573‑1960,
fax 212/573‑1959
Atlas Economic Research Institute, Alejandro Chafuen, President,
4084 University Drive, Suite 103 Fairfax, VA 22030‑6812, 703/934‑6969, fax 703/352‑7530
Josiah Bartlett Center for Public Policy, Emily Mead, President,
P.O. Box 897, Concord, NH 03302‑0897, 603/224‑4450
Beacon Hill Institute for Public Policy Research, David
G. Tuerck, Executive Director, Suffolk University, 8 Ashburton
Place, Boston, MA 02108, 617/573‑8750, fax 617/720‑4272
Buckeye Center For Public Policy Solutions, Andrew C. Little,
President, 131 N. Ludlow Street, Suite 308, Dayton, OH 45402, 513/224‑8352, fax 513/224‑8457
California Public Policy Foundation, John Kurzweil, President,
P.O. Box 931, Camarillo, CA 93011‑0931, 805/445‑9183
Capital Research Center, Terrence Scanlon, President, 727
15th Street, N.W., Suite 800, Washington, DC 20005, 202/393‑2600, fax 202/393‑2626
Capitol Resource Institute, Michael Bowman, Executive Director,
1314 H Street, Suite 203, Sacramento, CA 95814, 916/498‑1940, fax 916/448‑2888
Cascade Policy Institute, Steve Buckstein, President, 813
South West Alder, Suite 707, Portland, OR 97205, 503/242‑0900,
fax 503/242‑3822
Catalyst Institute, Paul Knapp, President, 33 North LaSalle
Street, Suite 1920, Chicago, IL 60602‑2604, 312/541‑5415, fax 312/541‑5401
Cato Institute, Edward H. Crane, President, 1000 Massachusetts
Avenue, N.W., Washington, DC 20001 202/842‑0200, fax 202/842‑3490
Center for the American Experiment, Mitchell Pearlstein,
President, 1024 Plymouth Building, 12 South 6th Street, Minneapolis,MN 55402, 612/338‑3605, fax 612/338‑3621.
Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise, Ron Arnold,
Executive Vice President, 12500 N.E. 10th Place, Bellevue, WA
98005, 206/455‑5038, fax 206/451‑3959
Center for Education Reform, Jeanne Allen, President, 1001
Connecticut Avenue, N.W., Suite 920, Washington, DC 20036, 202/822‑9000, fax 202/822‑5077
Center for Equal Opportunity, Linda Chavez, President,
1010 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W., Suite 220, Washington, DC 20001,
202/842‑3733, fax 202/842‑3746
Center for Individual Rights, Michael P. McDonald, President,
1300 19th Street, N.W., Suite 260, Washington, DC 20036, 202/833‑8400, fax 202/ 833‑8410
Center for International Relations, Lee Edwards, President,
27 15th Street, N.W., Eighth Floor, Washington, DC 20005, 703/971‑1490, fax 202/269‑9353
Center for Media and Public Affairs, John Thomas Sheehan,
Executive Director, 2100 L Street, N.W., Suite 300, Washington, DC 20037, 202/223‑2942, fax 202/872‑4014
Center for Military Readiness, Elaine Donnelly, President,
P.O. Box 2324, Livonia, MI, 48151 313/464‑9430, fax 313/464‑6678
Center for the New West, Phillip M. Burgess, President
and CEO, 600 World Trade Center, 1625 Broadway, Denver, CO 80202‑4706, 303/572‑5400, fax 303/572‑5499
Center for Policy Studies, Bruce Yandle, Coordinator, 201
Sirrine Hall, Clemson University, Clemson, SC 29634‑1330, 803/656‑1346, fax 803/656‑4532
Center for Security Policy, Frank J. Gaffney, Jr., Director,
1250 24th Street, N.W., Suite 350, Washington, DC 20037, 202/466‑0515, fax 202/466‑0518
Center for Strategic and International Studies, David M.
Abshire, President,
1800 K Street, N.W, Washington, DC 20006, 202/887‑0200, fax 202/775‑3199
Center for the Study of American Business, Murray Weidenbaum,
Director, Washington University, Campus Box 1208, St. Louis, MO
63130‑4899, 314/935‑5662, fax 314/935‑5688
Center for the Study of Popular Culture, David Horowitz,
President, 9911 West Pico Boulevard, Suite 1290, Los Angeles,
CA 90035, 310/843‑3699, fax 310/843‑3692
Center for the Study of Public Choice, Robert Tollison,
Director, Georges Hall, Mail Stop 1D3, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA 22030, 703/993‑2315,fax 703/993‑2323
CEO America, Fritz Steiger, President, P.O. Box 1543, Bentonville, AR 72712‑1543, 501/273‑6957, fax 501/273‑9362
G.K. Chesterton Society, Father Ian Boyd, Editor, <I>Chesterton
Review</I>, St. Thomas More College, 1437 College Drive, Saskatoon,
Saskatchewan S7N OW6, CANADA, 306/966‑8917, fax 306/966‑8917
Christian Civic League, Michael Heath, Executive Director,
70 Sewall, Augusta, ME 04330, 207/622‑7634, fax 207/622‑7635
Christian Coalition, Ralph Reed, Jr., Executive Director,
1801‑L Sara Drive, Chesapeake, VA 23320, 804/424‑2630, fax 804/424‑9068
Citizens Against Government Waste, Thomas A. Schatz, President,
1301 Connecticut Avenue, N.W., Suite 400, Washington, DC 20036,
202/467‑5300, fax 202/467‑4253
Citizens for Law and Order, Kevin Washburn, President,
P.O. Box 13308, Oakland, CA 94661, 510/531‑4664, fax 510/531‑1861
Citizens for a Sound Economy, Paul Beckner, President,
1250 H Street, N.W., Suite 700, Washington, DC 20005‑3908, 202/783‑3870, fax 202/783‑4687
The Claremont Institute, Larry P. Arnn, President, 250
West First Street, Suite 330,
Claremont, CA 91711, 909/621‑6825, fax 909/626‑8724
Coalition on Urban Affairs, Star Parker, President, 6033
W. Century Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90045, 714/648‑0880, fax 714/648‑0981
Committee for Monetary Research and Education, Elizabeth
Currier, President, P.O. Box 1630, Greenwich, CT 06836, 704/598‑3717
The Commonwealth Foundation, Don E. Eberly, President,
3544 North Progress Avenue, Suite 101, Harrisburg, PA 17110, 717/671‑1901, fax 717/671‑1905
The Commonwealth Foundation of Virginia, Walter Curt, President,
220 University Boulevard, Suite 302, Harrisonburg, VA, 1‑800‑296‑9751, fax 703/432‑9430
Competitive Enterprise Institute, Fred L. Smith, Jr., President,
1001 Connecticut Avenue, N.W., Suite 1250, Washington, DC 20036,
202/331‑1010, fax 202/331‑0640
Concerned Women for America, Beverly LaHaye, President,
370 L’Enfant Promenade, S.W., Suite 800, Washington, DC 20024,
202/488‑7000, fax 202/488‑0806
The Congressional Institute, Inc., Jerome F. Climer, President,
316 Pennsylvania Avenue, S.E., Suite 403, Washington, DC 20003,
202/547‑4600, fax 202/547‑3556
Conservative Caucus Foundation, Howard Phillips, President,
450 Maple Avenue East, #309, Vienna, VA 22180, 703/893‑2777, fax
703/281‑4108
Constitutional Heritage Institute, Richard L. Thayer, President,
608 North 108th Court, Omaha, NB 68164, 402/493‑9155, fax 402/493‑7084
Consumer Alert, Fran Smith, President, 1735 I Street,
N.W.,Suite 603, Washington, DC 20006, 202/467‑5809, fax 202/467‑5814
Defenders of Property Rights, Nancie G. Marzulla, President,
6235 33rd Street, N.W., Washington, DC 20015, 202/686‑4197, fax
202/686‑0240
Delaware Public Policy Institute, P.O. Box 1052, Wilmington,
DE 19899‑1052, 302/655‑7221, fax 302/654‑0691
Alexis de Tocqueville Institution, Merrick Carey, President,
2000 15th Street North, Suite 501, Arlington, VA 22201, 703/351‑4969,
fax 703/351‑0090
Discovery Institute, Amb. Bruce Chapman, President, 1201
Third Avenue, 40th floor, Seattle, WA 98101 206/287‑3132, fax
206/583‑8500
Eagle Forum, Phyllis Schlafly, President, 7800 Bonhomme
Avenue, St. Louis, MO 63105, 314/721‑1213, fax 314/721‑3373
Education and Research Institute, M. Stanton Evans, Chairman,
800 Maryland Avenue, N.E., Washington, DC 20002, 202/546‑1710,
fax 202/546‑1638
Empire Foundation for Policy Research, Brian Backstrom,
Acting President,
130 Washington Avenue, Suite 1000, Albany, NY 12210, 518/432‑4444, fax 518/432‑6617
Employee Benefit Research Institute, Dallas Salisbury,
President, 2121 K Street, N.W., Suite 600, Washington, DC 20037,
202/659‑0670, fax 202/775‑6312
Empower America,</A> William A. Dal Col, President, 1776 I
Street, N.W., Washington, DC 20006, 202/452‑8200, fax 202/833‑0388
The Empowerment Network Foundation, Sharron Lipscomb, President,
2210 Mount Vernon Avenue, Alexandria, VA 22301, 703/548‑6619,
fax 703/548‑7328
Equal Opportunity Foundation, Joe Beard, Jr., Senior Fellow,
1747 S Street, N.W., Washington, DC 20009‑6117, 202/483‑1311,
fax 202/265‑9737
Ethics & Public Policy Center, George Weigel, President,
1015 15th Street, N.W.,
Suite 900, Washington, DC 20005, 202/682‑1200, fax 202/408‑0632
Evergreen Freedom Foundation, Robert Williams, President,
P.O. Box 552, Olympia, WA 98507, 206/956‑3482, fax 206/352‑1874
The Family Foundation (KY), Kent Ostrander, Executive Director,
P.O. Box 22100, Lexington, KY 40522, 606/255‑5400, fax 606/233‑3330
The Family Foundation (VA), Walt Barbee, President, 8001
Forbes Place, Suite 211, Springfield, VA 22151, 703/321‑8338,
fax 703/321‑9332
Family Institute, Jeff Whitesides, Executive Director,
200 12th Avenue South,
Nashville, TN 37203, 615/254‑3917, fax 615/782‑6695
Family Institute of Connecticut, Charles P. Stetson, Chairman,
P.O. Box 58,
Southport, CT 06490, 203/254‑1039, fax 203/254‑1039
Family Research Council, Gary Bauer, President, 700 13th
Street, N.W., Suite 500, Washington, DC 20005, 202/393‑2100, fax
202/393‑2134
Family Research Institute of Wisconsin, Marvin Munyon,
Executive Director,
111 King Street, Suite 25, Madison, WI 53703‑3339, 608/256‑3228,
fax 608/256‑3370
The Federalist Society, Eugene B. Meyer, Executive Director,
1700 K Street, N.W., Suite 901, Washington, DC 20006, 202/822‑8138,
fax 202/296‑8061
Florida Family Council, Mark Merrill, Executive Director,
101 E. Kennedy Boulevard, Suite 3120, Tampa, FL 33602, 813/222‑8300,
fax 813/222‑8301
Focus on the Family, Tom Minnery, Vice President for Public
Policy, 8605 Explorer Drive, Colorado Springs, CO 80920, 719/531‑3400,
fax 719/548‑4525
Foreign Policy Research Institute, Harvey Sicherman, President,
1528 Walnut Street, Suite 610, Philadelphia, PA 19102‑3684, 215/732‑3774,
fax 215/732‑4401
Foundation for Economic Education, Hans F. Sennholz, President,
30 South Broadway, Irvington‑on‑Hudson, NY 10533, 914/591‑7230,
fax 914/591‑8910
Foundation for Florida’s Future, Jeb Bush, Chairman of
the Board, 269 Giralda,
P.O. Box 14155, Coral Gables, FL 33114, 305/442‑0414, fax 305/442‑2215
Foundation for Free Enterprise, Thomas J. Czerniecki, Director
of Programs and Public Affairs, 15 E. Midland Avenue, P.O. Box
768, Paramus, NJ 07653‑0768, 201/261‑4600,
fax 201/261‑8616
Foundation for International Studies, Eric Brodin, Director,
P.O. Box 219, 201 East Leslie Campbell Avenue, Buies Creek, NC
27506 0219, 910/893‑8786, fax 910/893‑8786
Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment,
John A. Baden, Chairman, 502 South 19th, Box 1, Bozeman, MT 59715, 406/585‑1776
Fraser Institute, Raymond Addington, Chairman of the Board,
626 Bute Street, 2nd Floor, Vancouver, British Columbia V6E 3M1,
CANADA, 604/688‑0221, fax 604/688‑8539
Free Congress Foundation, Paul M. Weyrich, President, 717
Second Street, N.E., Washington, DC 20002, 202/546‑3000, fax 202/543‑8425
Freedoms Foundation at Valley Forge, Rear Admiral Richard
C. Ustick, USN (Ret.), President, P.O. Box 706, Route 23, Valley
Forge, PA 19482, 610/933‑8825,
fax 610/935‑0522
Free Market Foundation, Steve Knudsen, Executive Director,
P.O. Box 740367, Dallas, TX 75374‑0367, 214/680‑9171, fax 214/680‑9172
Fund for American Studies, David Jones, President, 1526
18th Street, N.W., Washington, DC 20036, 202/986‑0384, fax 202/986‑0390
Future of Freedom Foundation, Jacob Hornberger, President,
11350 Random Hills Road, Suite 800, Fairfax, VA 22030, 703/934‑6101, fax 703/803‑1480
Georgia Family Education & Research Council, Inc., Richard
Hamme, Executive Director, 3937 Holcomb Bridge Road, #301, Norcross, GA 30092, 404/242‑0001, fax 404/242‑0501
Georgia Public Policy Foundation, Griff Doyle, President,
2900 Chamblee‑Tucker Road, Building 6, Atlanta, GA 30341‑4128,
404/455‑7600, fax 404/455‑4355
The Golden State Center for Policy Studies, Charles Heatherly,
Director, The Claremont Institute, 2012 H Street, Suite 101, Sacramento, CA 95814, 916/446‑7924, fax 916/446‑7990
Barry Goldwater Institute for Public Policy Research, Jeffry
Flake, Executive Director, 201 N. Central Avenue, Phoenix, AZ
85004, 602/256‑7018, fax 602/256‑7045
The Heartland Institute, Joseph Bast, President, 800 East
Northwest Highway, Suite 1080, Palatine, IL 60067, 708/202‑3060, fax 708/202‑9799
The Heritage Foundation, Edwin J. Feulner, Jr., President,
214 Massachusetts Avenue, N.E., Washington, DC 20002‑4999, 202/546‑4400, fax 202/546‑8328
High Frontier, Lt. Gen. Daniel O. Graham, USA (Ret.), Director,
2800 Shirlington Road, Suite 405‑A, Arlington, VA 22206, 703/671‑4111, fax 703/931‑6432
Home School Legal Defense Association, Michael Farris,
President, P.O. Box 159, Paeonian Springs, VA 22129, 703/338‑5600, fax 703/338‑1952
Hoover Institution, John Raisian, Director, Stanford University,
Stanford, CA 94305‑6010, 415/723‑1754, fax 415/725‑8990
Hudson Institute, Leslie Lenkowsky, President, P.O. Box
26‑919, Indianapolis, IN 46226, 317/545‑1000, fax 317/545‑9639
Idaho Family Forum, Dennis Mansfield, Executive Director,
P.O. Box 265, Boise, ID 83701, 208/344‑9009, fax 208/344‑1808
Illinois Family Institute, Joe Clark, Director, 799 W.
Roosevelt Road, Building 3, Suite 218, Glen Ellyn, IL 60137, 708/790‑8370, fax 708/790‑8390
Independence Institute, Tom Tancredo, President, 14142
Denver West Parkway, Suite 101, Golden, CO 80401, 303/279‑6536, fax 303/279‑4176
The Independent Institute, David J. Theroux, President,
134 Ninety Eighth Avenue, Oakland, CA 94603, 510/632‑1366, fax
510/568‑6040
Independent Women’s Forum, Barbara Ledeen, Executive Director,
2111 Wilson Boulevard, Suite 550, Arlington, VA 22201, 703/243‑8989, fax 703/243‑9230
Indiana Family Institute, William Smith, Executive Director,
70 East 91st Street, Suite 210, Indianapolis, IN 46240, 317/582‑0300, fax 317/582‑1438
Indiana Policy Review Foundation, Thomas Hession, President,
320 North Meridian, Suite 904, Indianapolis, IN 46204, 317/236‑7360,
fax 317/236‑7370
Institute for American Values, David Blankenhorn, President,
1841 Broadway, Room 211, New York, NY 10023, 212/246‑3942, fax 212/541‑6665
Institute for Children, Conna Craig, President, 18 Brattle
Street, Suite 211,
Cambridge, MA 02138, 617/491‑4614, fax 617/491‑4673
Institute for Contemporary Studies, Robert B. Hawkins,
Jr., President,
720 Market Street, Fourth Floor, San Francisco, CA 94102, 415/981‑5353, fax 415/986‑4878
Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis, Robert Pfaltzgraff,
President, 675 Massachusetts Avenue, Tenth Floor, Cambridge, MA
02139‑3396, 617‑492‑2116, fax 617/492‑8242
Institute for Humane Studies, David Nott, President, 4084
University Drive, Suite 101, Fairfax, VA 22030, 703/934‑6920,
fax 703/352‑7535
Institute for Justice, William Mellor, President, 1001
Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W., Suite 200 South, Washington, DC 20004, 202/457‑4240, fax 202/457‑8574
Institute of Political Economy, Roberta Herzberg, Director,
Department of Political Science, Utah State University, Logan,
UT 84322‑0725, 801/797‑1000, fax 801/797‑3751
Institute for Policy Innovation, David Hobbs, President,
250 South Stemmons, Suite 306, Lewisville, TX 75057, 214/219‑0811, fax 214/219‑1236
Institute on Religion and Democracy, Diane Knippers, President,
1331 H Street, N.W., Suite 900, Washington, DC 20005, 202/393‑3200, fax 202/638‑4948
Institute on Religion and Public Life, Richard John Neuhaus,
President, 156 Fifth Avenue, Suite 400, New York, NY 10010, 212/627‑2288, fax 212/627‑2184
Institute for Research on the Economics of Taxation, Norman
B. Ture, President, 1300 19th Street, N.W., Suite 240, Washington, DC 20036, 202/463‑1400, fax 202/463‑6199
Institute for the Study of Economic Culture, Peter L. Berger,
Director, Boston University, 10 Lenox Street, Brookline, MA 02146, 617/353‑9050, fax 202/353‑6408
Institute of World Politics, John Lenczowski, Director,
1521 16th Street, N.W., Washington, DC 20036, 202/462‑2101, fax
202/462‑7031
Intercollegiate Studies Institute, T. Kenneth Cribb, Jr.,
President, 14 South Bryn Mawr Avenue, Suite 100, Bryn Mawr, PA 19010, 610/525‑7501, fax 610/525‑3315
Andrew Jackson Institute, Nelson Griswold, President, P.O.
Box 190472, Nashville, TN 37219, 615/726‑0247, fax 615/726‑3481
Jamestown Foundation, William Geimer, President, 1528 18th
Street, N.W., Washington, DC 20036, 202/483‑8888, fax 202/483‑8337
Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, Tom Neumann,
Executive Director, 1717 K Street, N.W., Washington, DC, 20036,
202/833‑0020, fax 202/296‑6452
Kansas Family Research Institute, David Payne, Executive
Director, 2250 N. Rock Road, Suite 118‑224, Wichita, KS 67226,
316/634‑2428, fax 316/634‑2622
Landmark Legal Foundation, Jerald Hill, President, 2345
Grand Avenue, Suite 2310, Kansas City, MO 64108, 816/474‑6600,
fax 816/474‑6609
Land Rights Foundation, David Howard, Editor,<I> Land Rights
Letter, </I>P.O. Box 1111, Gloversville, NY 12078, 518/725‑1090,
fax 518/725‑8239
Law and Economics Center, Kenneth W. Clarkson, Director,
P.O. Box 248000,
Coral Gables, FL 33124, 305/284‑6174, fax 305/662‑9159
The Leadership Institute, Morton C. Blackwell, President,
8001 Braddock Road,
Suite 502, Springfield, VA 22151, 703/321‑8580, fax 703/321‑7194
C.S. Lewis Institute, Doug Kay, Executive Director, 1904
North
Adams Street, Arlington, VA 22201, 703/247‑3866, fax 703/247‑3847
Liberty Fund, Inc., J. Charles King, President, 8335 Allison
Pointe Trail, Suite 300, Indianapolis, IN 46250‑1687, 317/842‑0880,
fax 317/577‑9067
The Lincoln Institute for Research and Education, J.A.
"Jay" Parker, President,
1001 Connecticut Avenue, N.W., Suite 1135, Washington, DC 20036,
202/223‑5112
The Lincoln Legal Foundation, Joseph A. Morris, President,
100 West Monroe Street, Suite 1600, Chicago, IL 60603, 312/606‑0876,
fax 312/606‑0879
The John Locke Foundation, Marc E. Rotterman, President,
P.O. Box 17822,
Raleigh, NC 27619, 919/847‑2690, fax 919/847‑8371
Louisiana Citizens for a Sound Economy, Beverly Smiley,
Director, P.O. Box 80362, Baton Rouge, LA 70890, 504/924‑2246,
fax 504/924‑1974
Clare Booth Luce Policy Institute, Michelle Easton, President,
112 Elden Street,
Suite P, Herndon, VA 22070, 703/318‑0730, fax 703/318‑8867
Mackinac Center for Public Policy, Lawrence Reed, President,
119 Ashman Street,
P.O. Box 568, Midland, MI 48640, 517/631‑0900, fax 517/631‑0964
Madison Center for Educational Affairs, Charles Horner,
President, 1155 15th Street, N.W., Suite 712, Washington, DC 20005,
202/833‑1801, fax 202/775‑0851
James Madison Institute for Public Policy Studies, Peter
Schweizer, President, 2010 Delta Boulevard, P.O. Box 13894, Tallahassee, FL 32317, 904/386‑3131, fax 904/386‑1807
The Manhattan Institute, Lawrence J. Mone, Vice President
for Research, 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017, 212/599‑7000, fax 212/599‑3494
George C. Marshall Institute, Robert Jastrow, President,
1730 M Street, N.W., Suite 502, Washington, DC 20036, 202/296‑9655, fax 202/296‑9714
Massachusetts Family Institute, Daniel White, President,
381 Elliot Street, Newton Upper Falls, MA 02164‑1130, 617/928‑0800, fax 617/928‑1515
Media Research Center, L. Brent Bozell, III, Chairman,
113 South West Street, 2nd Floor, Alexandria, VA 22314, 703/683‑9733, fax 703/683‑9736
Michigan Family Forum, Randall Hekman, Executive Director,
611 South Walnut, Lansing, MI 48933, 517/374‑1171, fax 517/374‑6112
Middle East Forum, Daniel Pipes, Editor, Middle East
Quarterly, 1920 Chestnut Street, Suite 600, Philadelphia,
PA 19103, 215/569‑9225, fax 215/569‑9229
Minnesota Family Council, Thomas Prichard, Executive Director,
2855 Anthony Place South, #150, Minneapolis, MN 55418‑3265, 612/789‑8811, fax 612/789‑8857
Mississippi Family Council, Forest Thigpen, Executive Director,
P.O. Box 13514, Jackson, MS 39236, 601/969‑1200, fax 601/969‑1600
Missouri Research Institute, Paul Scianna, Executive Director,
P.O. Box 480018, Kansas City, MO, 64148‑0018, 816/943‑1776, fax 816/943‑0550
Mountain States Legal Foundation, William Perry Pendley,
President, 1660 Lincoln Street, Suite 2300, Denver, CO 80264,
303/861‑0244, fax 303/831‑7379
National Alumni Forum, Jerry L. Martin, President, 1625
K Street, N.W., Suite 310, Washington, DC 20006‑1604, 202/467‑6787, fax 202/467‑6784
National Association of Scholars, Stephen H. Balch, President,
575 Ewing Street, Princeton, NJ 08540, 609/683‑7878, fax 609/683‑0316
National Center for Neighborhood Enterprise, Robert L.
Woodson, President, 1367 Connecticut Avenue, N.W., Washington, DC 20036, 202/331‑1103, fax 202/296‑1541
National Center for Policy Analysis, John C. Goodman, President,
12655 North Central Expressway, Suite 720, Dallas, TX 75243‑1739,
214/386‑6272, fax 214/386‑0924
National Center for Public Policy Research, Amy Moritz,
President, 300 Eye Street, N.E., Suite 3, Washington, DC 20002,
202/543‑1286, fax 202/543‑4779
National Council for Adoption, Mary Beth Style, Vice President
for Policy and Practice, 1930 17th Street, N.W., Washington, DC
20009, 202/328‑1200, fax 202/332‑0935
National Council to Support the Democracy Movements, Martin
Colman, Executive Director, 1000 Thomas Jefferson Street, N.W.,
Suite 505, Washington, DC 20007,
202/429‑0108, fax 202/223‑6194
National Defense Council Foundation, Major F. Andy Messing,
Jr., USAR (Ret.), Executive Director, 1220 King Street, Suite
#1, Alexandria, VA 22314, 703/836‑3443, fax 703/836‑5402
National Empowerment Television, Paul Weyrich, President
and CEO, 717 Second Street, N.E., Washington, DC 20002, 202/546‑3000, fax 202/543‑5605
National Fatherhood Initiative, Wade Horn, Executive Director,
600 Eden Road, Building E, Lancaster, PA 17601, 717/581‑8860,
fax 717/581‑8862
National Forum Foundation, James S. Denton, President,
511 C Street, N.E., Washington, DC 20002, 202/543‑3515, fax 202/547‑4101
National Humanities Institute, Joseph Baldacchino, President,
214 Massachusetts Avenue, N.E., Suite 470, Washington, DC 20002,
202/544‑3158, fax 202/544‑3158
National Institute for Public Policy, Keith Payne, President,
3031 Javier Road, Suite 300, Fairfax, VA 22031‑4662, 703/698‑0563, fax 703/698‑0566
National Legal Center for the Public Interest, Ernest B.
Hueter, President, 1000 16th Street, N.W., Suite 301, Washington, DC 20036, 202/296‑1683, fax 202/293‑2118
National Review Institute, Lisa B. Nelson, Executive Director,
36 West 44th Street, New York, NY 10036, 212/679‑7330, fax 212/213‑9369
National Right to Work Committee, Reed Larson, President,
8001 Braddock Road, Springfield, VA 22160, 703/321‑9820, fax 703/321‑7342
National Strategy Information Center, Roy Godson, President,
1730 Rhode Island Avenue, N.W., Suite 500, Washington, DC 20036,
202/429‑0129, fax 202/659‑5429
National Tax Limitation Committee, Lewis K. Uhler, President,
151 North Sunrise Avenue, Suite 901, Roseville, CA 95661, 916/786‑9400, fax 916/786‑8163
National Taxpayers Union, David Keating, Executive Vice
President, 713 Maryland Avenue, N.E., Washington, DC, 20002, 202/543‑1300, fax 202/546‑2086
National Wilderness Institute, Robert Gordon, Executive
Director, P.O. Box 25766 Georgetown Station, Washington, DC 20007, 703/836‑7404, fax 703/836‑7405
Nevada Policy Research Institute, Judy M. Cresanta, President,
P.O. Box 20312, Reno, NV 89515, 702/786‑9600, fax 702/786‑9604
New Citizenship Project, John Walters, President, 1150
17th Street, N.W., Suite 510, Washington, DC 20036, 202/822‑8333,
fax 202/822‑8325
New Coalition for Economics and Social Change, Lee Walker,
President and CEO, 300 South Wacker Drive, Suite 601, Chicago,
IL 60606, 312/427‑1290, fax 312/427‑1291
New England Legal Foundation, Edward A. Schwartz, President,
150 Lincoln Street, Boston, MA 02111, 617/695‑3660, fax 617/695‑3656
New Jersey Citizens for a Sound Economy, Dana Joel, Director,
204 West State Street, Trenton, NJ 08608, 609/392‑6445, fax 609/392‑6425
New York Citizens for a Sound Economy, Ray Keating, Director,
P.O. Box 596, Manorville, NY 11949, 516/874‑8353, fax 516/476‑8354
Nixon Center for Peace and Freedom, Steven Clemons, Executive
Director, 1620 I Street, N.W., #900, Washington, DC 20006, 202/887‑1000, fax 202/887‑5222
North Carolina Family Policy Council, Bill Brooks, Executive
Director, P.O. Box 2567, Raleigh, NC 27601, 919/834‑4090, fax
919/834‑0045
North Dakota Family Alliance, Clinton Birst, Executive
Director, 4007 State Street, North, Box 9, Bismarck, ND 58501,
701/223‑3575, fax 701/223‑3675
Northeastern Ohio Roundtable, David Zanotti, President,
31005 Solon Road, Solon, OH 44139 216/349‑3393, fax 216/349‑0154
Northwest Legal Foundation, James J. Klauser, Executive
Director, 557 Roy Street, Suite 100, Seattle, WA 98109, 206/283‑0503, fax 206/283‑0514
Of The People, Gregory Erken, Executive Director, 2111
Wilson Boulevard, Suite 700, Arlington, VA 22201, 703/351‑5051,
fax 703/351‑0937
Ohana Policy Center, Rebbecca Walker, Executive Director,
P.O. Box 1544, Kaneohe, HI 96744, 808/247‑8476, fax 808/247‑8836
Oklahoma Citizens for a Sound Economy, Larry Stein, Director,
P.O. Box 2181, Edmon, OK 73034, 405/330‑4002
Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs, Brett Magbee, President,
100 W. Wilshire, C‑3, Oklahoma City, OK 73116, 405/840‑3005, fax
405/840‑4925
Oregonians in Action Legal Center, William Moshofsky, President,
8255 S.W. Hunziker Road, Suite 200, P.O. Box 230637, Tigard, OR
97281‑0637, 503/620‑0258, fax 503/639‑6891
Pacific Legal Foundation, Robert K. Best, President, 2151
River Plaza Drive, Suite 305, Sacramento, CA 95833, 916/641‑8888,
fax 916/920‑3444
Pacific Research Institute, Sally C. Pipes, President,
755 Sansome Street, Suite 450, San Francisco, CA 94111, 415/989‑0833, fax 415/989‑2411
Palmetto Family Council, Steve Suits, Executive Director,
3604 Fernandina Road, #208, Columbia, SC 29210, 803/731‑4313,
fax 803/585‑0941
Partners Advancing Values in Education, Daniel McKinley,
Executive Director, 1434 West State Street, Milwaukee, WI 53233, 414/342‑1505, fax 414/342‑1513
Pennsylvania Family Institute, Michael Geer, President,
3544 North Progress Avenue, Suite 104, Harrisburg, PA 17110, 717/236‑2212, fax 717/236‑3615
Pennsylvania Leadership Council, Inc., 223 State Street,
Harrisburg, PA 17101, 717/232‑5919, fax 717/232‑1186
Pioneer Institute for Public Policy Research, James A.
Peyser, Executive Director, 85 Devonshire Street, Eighth Floor, Boston, MA 02109, 617/723‑2277, fax 617/723‑1880
Political Economy Research Center, 502 South 19th Avenue,
Suite 211, Bozeman, MT 59715, 406/587‑9591, fax 406/586‑7555
Prison Fellowship, Thomas Pratt, President, P.O. Box 17500,
Washington, DC 20041‑0500, 703/478‑0100, fax 703/478‑0452
Progress and Freedom Foundation, Jeffrey Eisenach, President,
1250 H Street, N.W., Washington, DC 20005, 202/484‑2312, fax 202/484‑9326
Project for the Republican Future, William Kristol, Chairman,
1150 17th Street, N.W., Fifth Floor, Washington, DC 20036, 202/293‑4900, fax 202/293‑4901
Public Affairs Research Institute of New Jersey, Donald
Linky, President, 212 Carnegie Center, Suite 100, Princeton, New Jersey 08540, 609/452‑0220, fax 609/452‑1788
Public Interest Institute, Dale Bails, Executive Director,
600 North Jackson Street, Mount Pleasant, IA 52641, 319/385‑3462
Public Service Research Council, David Denholm, President,
527 Maple Avenue East, Third Floor, Vienna, VA 22180, 703/242‑3375, fax 703/242‑3579
Puebla Institute, Nina Shea, President, 1319 18th Street,
N.W., Washington, DC 20036, 202/296‑8050, fax 202/296‑5078
Putting People First, Kathleen Marquardt, Chairman, 21
North Last Chance Gulch, P.O. Box 1707, Helena, MT 59624, 406/442‑5700, fax 406/449‑0942
Reason Foundation, Robert W. Poole, Jr., President, 3415
South Sepulveda Boulevard, Suite 400, Los Angeles, CA 90034, 310/391‑2245, fax 310/391‑4395
Resource Institute of Oklahoma, David Dunn, Director of
Research, 5101 N. Classen Boulevard, #307, Oklahoma City, OK 73118, 405/840‑3005, fax 405/840‑4288
The Rockford Institute, Allan C. Carlson, President, 934
North Main Street, Rockford, IL 61103, 815/964‑5053, fax 815/965‑1826
Rocky Mountain Family Council, Thomas McMillen, Executive
Director, P.O. Box 13619, Denver, CO 80201, 303/292‑1800, fax 303/421‑5677
Rose Institute of State and Local Government, Alan Heslop,
Director, Claremont McKenna College, Adams Hall, 340 East 9th,
Claremont, CA 91711, 909/621‑8159, fax 909/621‑8419
Rutherford Institute, John Whitehead, President, P.O. Box
7482, Charlottesville, VA 22906‑7482, 804/978‑3888, fax 804/978‑1789
Safe Streets Alliance, James Wootton, President, 1330 Connecticut
Avenue, N.W., Suite 360, Washington, DC 20036, 202/822‑8100, fax 202/822‑8149
Science and Environmental Policy Project, S. Fred Singer,
President, 4084 University Drive, Fairfax, VA 22030, 703/934‑6940, fax 703/352‑7535
Scientists and Engineers for Secure Energy, Miro Todorovich,
Executive Director, 570 Seventh Avenue, Suite 1007, New York,
NY 10018, 212/840‑6595, fax 212/840‑6597
Seniors Coalition, Paul Bramell, Chief Executive Officer,
11166 Main Street, Suite 302, Fairfax, VA 22030, 703/591‑0663,
fax 703/591‑0679
Small Business Survival Committee, Karen Kerrigan, President,
1320 18th Street, NW, 2nd Floor, Washington, DC 20036, 202/785‑0238, fax 202/822‑8118
Social Philosophy and Policy Center, Fred D. Miller, Jr.,
Executive Director, Bowling Green State University, Bowling Green, OH 43403, 419/372‑2536, fax 419/372‑8738
South Carolina Policy Council, Edward McMullen, President,
1419 Pendleton Street, Columbia, SC 29201, 803/779‑5022, fax 803/779‑4953
South Dakota Family Policy Council, John Paulton, Executive
Director, 2900 East 26th Street, Suite 312, Sioux Falls, SD 57103, 605/335‑8100, fax 605/338‑0240
Southeastern Legal Foundation, Matthew J. Glavin, President,
3340 Peachtree Road, Suite 2515, Atlanta, GA 30326, 404/365‑8500,
fax 404/365‑0017.
State Policy Network, Byron S. Lamm, Executive Director,
816 Mill Lake Road, Fort Wayne, IN 46845‑6400, 219/637‑7778, fax 219/637‑7779
Statistical Assessment Service (STATS), David Murray, Director
of Research, 2100 L Street, N.W., Suite 300, Washington, DC 20037, 202/223‑3193, fax 202/872‑4014
Tax Foundation, J.D. Foster, Executive Director and Chief
Economist, 1250 H Street, N.W., Suite 750, Washington, DC 20005‑3908, 202/783‑2760, fax 202/942‑7675
TEACH America, Patrick J. Keleher, Jr., President, 550
Sheridan Square, Suite 3B, Evanston, IL 60202, 708/866‑9885, fax
708/866‑9277
Term Limits Legal Institute, Cleta Deatheridge Mitchell,
President, 900 Second Street, N.E., Suite 200A, Washington, DC
20002, 202/371‑0450, fax 202/371‑0210
Texas Citizens for a Sound Economy, Peggy Venable, Director,
P.O. Box 2165, Austin, TX 78768‑2165, 512/476‑5905, fax 512/476‑5906
Texas Public Policy Foundation, Jeffrey M. Judson, President,
8122 Datapoint Drive, Suite 300, San Antonio, TX 78229, 210/614‑0080,
fax 210/614‑2649
Toward Tradition, Rabbi Daniel Lapin, Chairman, P.O. Box
58, Mercer Island, WA 98040, 206/326‑8734, fax 206/236‑3288
Traditional Values Coalition, Andrea Sheldon, Director,
Government Affairs, 139 C Street, S.E., Washington, DC 20003, 202/547‑8570, fax 202/546‑6403 & anh?
U.S.‑Baltic Foundation, Linas J. Kojelis, President, 1211
Connecticut Avenue, N.W., Suite 506, Washington, DC 20036, 202/986‑0380, fax 202/234‑8130
U.S. Global Strategy Council, General Vernon Walters, Chairman,
1800 K Street, N.W., Suite 1102, Washington, DC 20006, 202/466‑6029, fax 202/331‑0109
U.S. Term Limits, Paul Jacob, Executive Director, 1511
K Street, N.W., Suite 540,Washington, DC 20005, 202/393‑6440, fax 202/393‑6434
Veritas Institute for Public Policy Research, Timothy J.
Hurley, President, 3317 N. Charles, Wichita, KS 67204, 316/838‑5637
Virginia Citizens for a Sound Economy, Lethia Fisher, Director,
P.O. Box 7551, Charlottesville, VA 22906, 703/863‑8612, fax 703/863‑8614
Ludwig von Mises Institute, President Llewellyn
H. Rockwell, Jr., 415 West Magnolia Avenue, Suite 101, Auburn,
AL 36849, 205/844‑2500, fax 205/844‑2583
Washington Family Council, Jeff Kemp, Executive Director,
P.O. Box 40584, Bellevue, WA 98015, 206/562‑1435, fax 206/562‑1439
Washington Institute for Policy Studies, Bill Baldwin,
President, P.O. Box 24645, Seattle, WA 98124‑0645, 206/938‑6300,
fax 206/938‑6313
Washington Legal Foundation, Daniel Popeo, Chairman and
General Counsel, 2009 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W., Washington,
DC 20036, 202/588‑0302, fax 202/588‑0386
Washington Research Council, Richard S. Davis, President,
1301 Fifth Avenue, Suite 2810, Seattle, WA 98101‑2603, 206/467‑7088, fax 206/467‑6957
West Virginia Family Council, Alice Hunt, Director, P.O.
Box 443, Scott Depot, WV 25560, 304/562‑9472, fax 304/562‑0899
Wisconsin Policy Research Institute, Inc., James H. Miller,
President, 3107 North Shepard Avenue, Milwaukee, WI 53211, 414/963‑0600, fax 414/963‑4230
Yankee Institute for Public Policy Studies, Inc., Laurence
D. Cohen, Executive Director, 117 New London Turnpike, Glastonbury, CT 06033‑2044, 203/633‑8188, fax 203/657‑9444
Young America’s Foundation, Ron Robinson, President, 110
Elden Street, Herndon, VA, 22070, 703/318‑9608, fax 703/318‑9122
===================== = = =
cons authors – old
Frieman, Milton, Free to Choose, Bright Promises, Dismal Performance?, Tyranny of the Majority
Hazlitt, Henry, The Conquest of Poverty
Banfield, Edward, The Unheavenly City Revisited
Sowell, Thomas, Race and Economics, Pink and Brown People,
Gilder, George Wealth and Poverty
=======================================================
Alan Brownfeld
albert jay nock
b cutler [cons?] idiot, nasty.
blk cons: alan l keyes, michael l williams, glenn loury,
brad reynolds. of justice? 92?
elliot abrams
walter berns
buckley
c rossiter BLEW it
charley reese
chas r? morris
chas murry
chas kesler of cmc coauthored bk w/ buckley
earnst van de hagg – disappointing
coolidge – limited gov
dannenmyer & rochebacher?
david brooks – nasty
dole is cons.
r. perle
donald lambro
eric voegelin
Ernest Van den Haag
frank s meyer
fried wise, a giant?,
gerhart neimeyer
gingrich – undisputed leader of cons wing of congress – nr
goldwater: am’s isolationism brot wwii.
hamilton fish
harry v jaffa
hayek, friedrich – nobel laureate
hershenson, bruce too far. soapy, self-righteous
hh
ike was cons – said newswk or us news 7/90
irving kristol -publishes “nat int”
j.q. wilson
james burnham
james doti
James Kilpatrick
jean kirkpatrick
jeffrey hart
jessie helms
john lewis, st. sen
jon dos passos = cons
joseph sobran
Kemp, Jack?
keyes, mona charen, tom bethell,
kristol, irving,
r. emmett tyrrell, arnold beichman, alan leo straus
Martin Anderson
joe mccarthy = cons
michael novak
mona charen – cons on crossfire
morris, Charles r?
murray kempton or murray rothbard of newsday
nixon devious, fp, cons,
norman podhoretz
p. buchanan, jeane kirkpatrick,
pat buchanan
paul craig roberts [w.e. simon pro at csis]
pete wilson said he was a compassionate conservative.-8/9l
phil gram
Phil Terzian
r. emmett tyrell jr
richard m weaver these via cons bk club
richard perle was in defense.
Richard McKensie – uci
Robert Carlson
robert novak
rusher, william
russ limbaugh. kfi? via ch l3
russell kirk
schmitz, john – former congressman
Sidney Hook
silber
simon, william
sowell wise, profound
stanton evans 800 maryland ave ne dc 20002
thatcher tops, wise, strong, intense.
tom bethel of am spec… blew it
utt – see bell’s piece [where?]
w. williams
wallace, geo
whittaker chambers
will, geo
Will. Safire
william a rusher is at claremont inst.
william safire
willmoore kendall
/Cons: Dan.. Yanklovichj?, Dr. Norman Borlaug, William Tuicker, Richard Dawkins, Murray Rothbard,
/Kempton, Murray ‑ Newsday?
/dick armey – cons from tex.
/hamilton fish – implacable foe of fdr
/kruthamer under col right in la
/phoenix = cons
martin feldstein=cons
/nix a centrist cons.
/tenn. judge – inspiration – frank. makes em say sir.
/geo gilder looks glazed. tv l/92 weird. like a crazed tom peters.
/chas schultz of brookings does not want an indust. policy.
/buchanan too cons: anti free trade where it hurts us? aids is punishment. anti un.
/westbrook pegler was right wing and dirty
/rothbard, murray. prof of econ u of nev, lv, neveda
/postrel in la – not impressive on ir biz in so.
/sen roth – cons
/john wayne was a bircher
/chi sch of econ = cons. herb stein
/wfb = dean of cons.
/fred barnes – cons but writes for nr?
/paul craig roberts
/alan reynolds
/nixon of saddle river, n.j.
/cons – diehards
/kevin phillips said tv/geo putnam
/n gingrich gave FLAT speech at 92 conv.
/rush lumbaugh: crude, nasty, extreme, all him, harrangs,
/glamour boys of the right: kemp, bennet, pete de pont.
/armey called galbraith’s writing, “fiction”.
/nixon: moderates are liz dole, weld, kean, edgar.
/g. will. opposed tv in senate.
/g. will used to be the cons that libs loved to endorse. = ?
/t bethell of am spectator.
/stuart butler jeanne kirpatrick used to be a dem.
/g. gilder blew one in w. post.
/rudman
/w. bennet wrong that aids and abortion are part of decline of val.
/w. post w. meg greenfield
/t. bethel – anti gay in mil
/3 cons in hollywood are heston, schwarzenegger, and t selleck.
/cons tom bethel: looked unhappy and self right. on c span. the lib, corn, of The Nation, looked together, soph,
/Inside Calif. a monthly pol newlet. joseph farah wrote good on on honig
/fred barnes on the right?
/st. of va
/trent lott
/chet: r preaches rather than sol.
/bonzell’s newlet is small minded. ticks you off. n.
/terry eastland worked for ed meese.
/counc of econ advisors [for ca]: geo shultz, fried, g beckmer, carla hills, michael j boskin, p drucker, r roseberg, j bryson, j a thompson, j gunn, m anderson, borjas, lau, osborne, j q wilson, l reaser.
/t hazlitt – nasty, snide, petty
/kreigle’s cousin
/sen orin hatch
/thatcher
other entities
/Hillsdale, Wabash, and Birmingham-southern. are cons c’s.
peter scurrey at ucla.
/am cons party – never heard of em. grove city college. grove city pa
/hillsdale college press, l 800 437 2268.
/hillsdale college, hillsdale, MI 49242.
/ihs, g mason u. l 800 697 8799 utah is republican.
/fred barnes is cons. tho at new rep.
mclaughlin is cons.
/bill kristol – jerkish
/RD is cons
/n gringich has phd. in econ. dick armey too. /rep h.g. gross
cpac conf in la l0/93
/the geo wash soc, am cons union, young america’s f, ca pol r =o, inside cal [pub], buck johns, christian action network, sen bill leonard. calif cons union, CA young ams for freedom, intercolelgiate studies i.., legal affair council, shE list, us justic f. #
/arthur laffer
/e o wilson, r posner, c murray, ben wattenberg
/dan oliver at heritage = 0
/sen patterson of mo. sen gore of tenn, harry fletcher, nat chm of rep party. – anti fdr.
/paul craig roberts
/nat j center, 800 maryland ave ne, dc, 20002. cons?
/cpac, 9l9 prince st, alex, va, 223l4
/c. kruthammer – anti-right to die. anti wel. thus cons?
/jon mcglaughlin is a cons, said mark green.
/rep weber
/ken hamblin, 53, the black rush limbaugh.
/kemp comes on too strong, ego, lack of class sometimes, banty rooster, emotional.
/orrin hatch, trent lott
/p.j. o’rourke – of rolling stone mag.
/hugh hewit must be cons.
/pete dupont – too cons. said koch went from lib to cons.
/henry hide, tony fabrizio.
/elliot abrams
/ashbrook – former congressman
lester maddox
peter scurrey at ucla. 3l0 675 l50l.
/mencken: arch cons la mag
/w. williams blew it on rush. coercion is evil, period. congress should make no laws. anti smoking restrictions.
/nightly biz report is subtly anti labor, anti tax.
w mo. sep 93
/fax lists to blk cons a o smith? at kiev radio in la.
/archcons menken. said some neg things bout blks.
/VA is cons.
/cons in past: hl mencken, nock, chodorov, garet, paterson, robert taft, l read, morley, manion, mises, hayek, rothbard.
/rel right is taking over rep party. 6/94 tv
/hh worked for The Nation. am merc. and ny times. newswk. /rockwell [n] in r:
/pat buchanan – paranoid isolationist.
pat sajak is cons. errol smith is blk dj from la. is cons. i sent him my stuff?
/armstrong williams. blk cons radio talk show host.
/some jews are cons: these are or support this idea: elliot abrams, mona charen, midge dicter, don feder, david horowitz, william and irving kristol, michael Novak, jon & norman podhoretz. fried.
/elliot abrams glossing over ollie north’s lying.
/armey, 30l cannon bldg. 205l5. slept in off. drove pick up.
/j sununu does not believe in freedom FROM religion.
/ken hamblin – cons blk dj in denver with hat. blankita cullem? in richmond. gal. another. armstrong williams in la?
/MediaCritic cons pub. terry eastland – ed.
/seemed like watenburg said, “if I were a liberal, god [forbid?]..”
/regney pub..ing 422 lst st se, 20003
/l of those guys at lst wilshire is cons.
/heston, t selleck, pat sajak, major dad,
/barone blowing it. on rel. 95
/Richard B. McGenzie. McKenzie has affiliation with the Pacific Research Institute and teaches in the Graduate School of Management at uci.
/KRAUTHAMMER how can he be a cons after his jones beach one.
/walter knott – a cons that helped the comm.
/m baron – increasingly right tilting.
/germond said barnes is a right winger. [but writes for nr?]
/f barnes likes p gramm.
krauthammer’s a cons, said i kristol
/tim rutten – too cons.
/b wattenberg – a neocons dem
/wattenberg as much as said he’s cons. 95
/midge dector’s bk: lib parents, radical children.
newt gopac – true believers. he had em use same lang. plugs from biz doners in his course. if reps gain 20 seats in 96? then in for 20 yrs.
/newt rising in 84. vision. took on tip. audacious? his best hr. anti go along-get go-along, tired of rep compromising, built cons op soc.
/goldwater hated fdr.
/novak is controlling. stern pa. is religous.
/western cons pol action conf., ll5 w. cal. bl #l49, Pasadena
/talk radio is the most opinionated, most infl, and is hard right.
/micael novak: min wage idiots at airlines checking. Putin was a minor ……… apparachic ……
/bovard, james – cato – terrible hair. Anti vista
/kate o’beirne
/brilliant and conservative Jews – Don Feder, Michael Medved, David Horowitz, Dr. Laura, and Dennis Praeger
— – – – – – ll/03 la:
4/04: nothing objective bout hannity, joe scarborough, o’reily, they inflame.
/ Who else?
/marshall fritz –
/ Norman Podhoretz and his wife Midge Decter are they cons?
Dup?:
Conservatives
george will
william f. buckley
William Safire
spiro agnew
pat buchanan
martin feldstein, economist
milton friedman – nobel laureate
gingrich – congressman
goldwater – former senator
jessie helms – senator
jack kemp
charlton heston – actor
sidney hook – writer
jeanne kirkpatrick – former ambassador to the un
arthur laffer – economist
richard nixon
robert novak – columnist
ronald reagan
richard perle – former assist? sec. of defense
senator phil graham
thomas sowell – economist
Margaret thatcher
Gasper weinberger – former secretary of defense
george will – columnist
walter williams – economist
/nat c for pub policy research
/roger ailes, ceo of fox: angry, ego, defensive, spins, not iq.
/Herb kaplow far more iq and gracious
/Conservative pundits Robert Novak and Michael Medved
/George Will and Robert Bork to Francis Fukuyama, Dinesh D’Souza and David Horowitz
/Peter Collier and Paul Craig Roberts,
/tucker Carlson supposed to be cons pol commentator
/michell malkin
/was prof at uci McIntyre?
/cris buckley said his dad wfb said he spent his life separating himself from the kooks
/chas Krauthammer
/se cupp – cons blogger.
/joe scarborough
/johna Goldberg is with nat r.
/geo will – too grandiose, self-right… eurodite
/cal Thomas worked for the moral majority for 5 yrs.
/the daily wire
——————————————————– – – –
/Nixon objected to all in the family
/ https://www.bing.com/search?q=ben+SHApiro+&FORM=HDRSC1
/Shelby steel of hober
/repressed cons…..who overstepped in sex: bauman, al capp, gaetz,
/amanda carpenter amanda carpenter – Bing on tv with g. will: always tons of change. He listens to bks from 5:3l am on during his commute etc, gaining 2.5 hrs of learning. Said nothing is perm – a & p . said c students afraid to speak out AFIRE | College of Education and Human Sciences (unl.edu) . she’s better with make up. he vals the courts.
/ william j. billingsley – Search (bing.com)
william j. billingsley communists on campus – Search (bing.com)
/ john mclaughlin tv host – Search (bing.com) trouble in amen corner?
/ This Republican President Nearly Tripled the U.S. Debt During His Time in Office
== = = = = = =
Neo4
‘America at the Crossroads,’ by Francis Fukuyama
Neo No More
Review by PAUL BERMAN
Published: March 26, 2006
In February 2004, Francis Fukuyama attended a neoconservative think-tank dinner in Washington and listened aghast as the featured speaker, the columnist Charles Krauthammer, attributed /”a virtually unqualified success” to America’s efforts in Iraq, and the audience enthusiastically applauded. Fukuyama was aghast partly for the obvious reason, but partly for another reason, too, which, as he explains in the opening pages of his new book, “America at the Crossroads,” was entirely personal. In years gone by, Fukuyama would have felt cozily at home among those applauding neoconservatives. He and Krauthammer used to share many a political instinct. It was Krauthammer who wrote the ecstatic topmost blurb (“bold, lucid, scandalously brilliant”) for the back jacket of Fukuyama’s masterpiece from 1992, “The End of History and the Last Man.”
But that was then.
Today Fukuyama has decided to resign from the neoconservative movement — though for reasons that, as he expounds them, may seem a tad ambiguous. In his estimation, neoconservative principles in their pristine version remain valid even now. But his ex-fellow-thinkers have lately given those old ideas a regrettable twist, and dreadful errors have followed. Under these circumstances, Fukuyama figures he has no alternative but to go away and publish his complaint. And he has founded a new political journal to assert his post-neoconservative independence — though he has given this journal a name,
/The American Interest, that slyly invokes the legendary neoconservative journals of past (The Public Interest) and present (The National Interest), just to keep readers guessing about his ultimate relation to neoconservative tradition.
His resignation seems to me, in any case, a fairly notable event, as these things go, and that is because, among the neoconservative intellectuals, Fukuyama has surely been the most imaginative, the most playful in his thinking and the most ambitious. Then again, something about his departure may express a larger mood among the political intellectuals just now, not only on the right. For in the zones of liberalism and the left, as well, any number of people have likewise stood up in these post-9/11 times to accuse their oldest comrades of letting down the cause, and doors have slammed, and The Nation magazine has renamed itself The Weekly Purge. Nowadays, if you are any kind of political thinker at all, and you haven’t issued a sweeping denunciation of your dearest friends, or haven’t been hanged by them from a lamppost — why, the spirit of the age has somehow passed you by.
Fukuyama offers a thumbnail sketch of neoconservatism and its origins, back to the /anti-Communist left at City College in the 1930’s and 40’s and to the conservative philosophers (Leo Strauss, Allan Bloom, Albert Wohlstetter) at the University of Chicago in later years. From these disparate origins, the neoconservatives eventually generated “a set of coherent principles,” which, taken together, ended up defining their impulse in foreign affairs during the last quarter-century. They upheld a belief that
1 democratic states are by nature friendly and unthreatening, and therefore
2 America ought to go around the world promoting democracy and human rights wherever possible. They believed that American power can serve moral purposes. They
3 doubted the usefulness of international law and institutions. And they were
4 skeptical about what is called “social engineering” — about big government and its ability to generate positive social changes.
Such is Fukuyama’s summary. It seems to me too kind. For how did the neoconservatives propose to reconcile their ambitious desire to combat despotism around the world with their cautious aversion to social engineering? Fukuyama notes that during the 1990’s the /neoconservatives veered in militarist directions, which strikes him as a mistake. A less sympathetic observer might recall that neoconservative foreign policy thinking has all along indulged a
/romance of the ruthless — an expectation that small numbers of people might be able to play a decisive role in world events, if only their ferocity could be unleashed. It was a romance of the ruthless that led some of the early generation of neoconservatives in the 1970’s to champion the grisliest of anti-Communist guerrillas in /Angola; and, during the next decade, led the neoconservatives to champion some not very attractive anti-Communist guerrillas in /Central America, too; and led the Reagan administration’s neoconservatives into the swamps of the Iran-contra scandal in order to go on championing their guerrillas. Doesn’t this same impulse shed a light on the baffling question of how the Bush administration of our own time could have managed to yoke together a stirring democratic oratory with a series of grotesque scandals involving American torture — this very weird and self-defeating combination of idealism and brass knuckles? But Fukuyama must not agree
The criticisms he does propose are pretty scathing. In 2002, Fukuyama came to the conclusion that invading Iraq was going to be a gamble with unacceptably long odds. Then he watched with dismay as the administration adopted one strange policy after another that was bound to make the odds still longer. The White House decided to ignore any useful lessons the Clinton administration might have learned in Bosnia and Kosovo, on the grounds that whatever Bill Clinton did — for example, conduct a successful intervention — George W. Bush wanted to do the opposite. [and ignored nam] There was the diplomatic folly of announcing an /intention to dominate the globe, and so forth — all of which leads Fukuyama, scratching his head, to propose a psychological explanation.
The neoconservatives, he suggests, are people who, having witnessed the collapse of Communism long ago, ought to look back on those gigantic events as a one-in-a-zillion lucky break, 00000000000000000 like winning the lottery. Instead, the neoconservatives, victims of their own success, came to believe that Communism’s implosion reflected the deepest laws of history, which were operating in their own and America’s favor — a formula for hubris. This is a shrewd observation, and might seem peculiar only because Fukuyama’s own “End of History” articulated the world’s most eloquent argument for detecting within the collapse of Communism the deepest laws of history. He insists in his new book that “The End of History” ought never to have led anyone to adopt such a view, but this makes me think only that Fukuyama is an utterly unreliable interpreter of his own writings.
He wonders why Bush never proposed a more convincing justification for invading Iraq — based not just on a fear of Saddam Hussein’s weapons (which could have been expressed in a non-alarmist fashion), nor just on the argument for human rights and humanitarianism, which Bush did raise, after a while. A genuinely cogent argument, as Fukuyama sees it, would have drawn attention to the problems that arose from America’s prewar standoff with Hussein. The American-led sanctions against Iraq were the only factor that kept him from building his weapons. The sanctions were crumbling, though. Meanwhile, /they were arousing anti-American furies across the Middle East on the grounds (entirely correct, I might add) that America was helping to inflict horrible damage on the Iraqi people. American troops took up positions in the region to help contain ?????? Hussein — and the presence of those troops succeeded in infuriating Osama bin Laden. In short, the prewar standoff with Hussein was untenable morally and even politically. But there was no way to end the standoff apart from ending Hussein’s dictatorship.
Now, I notice that in stressing this strategic argument, together with the humanitarian and human rights issue, and in pointing out lessons from the Balkans, Fukuyama has willy-nilly outlined some main elements of the liberal interventionist ??????? position of three years ago, at least in one of its versions. In the Iraq war, liberal interventionism was the road not taken, to be sure. Nor was liberal interventionism his own position. However, I have to say that, having read his book, I’m not entirely sure what position he did adopt, apart from wisely admonishing everyone to tread carefully. He does make plain that, having launched wars hither and yon, the United States had better ensure that, in Afghanistan and Iraq alike, stable antiterrorist governments finally emerge. [oh boy]
He proposes a post-Bush foreign policy, which he styles “realistic Wilsonianism” — his new motto in place of neoconservatism. He worries that because of Bush’s blunders, Americans on the right and the left are going to retreat into a Kissinger-style reluctance to promote democratic values in other parts of the world. Fukuyama does want to promote democratic values — “what is in the end a revolutionary American foreign policy agenda” — though he would like to be cautious about it, and even [oh boy] multilateral about it. The United Nations seems to him largely unsalvageable, given the role of /nondemocratic countries there. But he thinks that a variety of other institutions, consisting strictly of democracies, might be able to establish and sometimes even enforce a new and superior version of international legitimacy. He wants to encourage economic development in poor countries, too — if only a method can be found that avoids the dreadful phrase “social engineering.”
Fukuyama offers firm recommendations about the struggle against terrorism. He says, “The rhetoric about World War IV and the global war on terrorism should cease.” Rhetoric of this sort, in his view, overstates our present problem, and dangerously so, by “suggesting that we are taking on a large part of the Arab and Muslim worlds.” ++++++++ He may be right, too, depending on who is using the rhetoric. Then again, I worry that Fukuyama’s preferred language may shrink our predicament into something smaller than it ever was. He pictures the present struggle as a “counterinsurgency” campaign — a struggle in which, before the Iraq war, “no more than a few thousand people around the world” threatened the United States. I suppose he has in mind an elite among the 10,000 to 20,000 people who are said to have trained at bin Laden’s Afghan camps, plus other people who may never have gotten out of the immigrant districts of Western Europe. But the slaughters contemplated by this elite have always outrivaled anything contemplated by more conventional insurgencies — as Fukuyama does recognize in some passages. And there is the pesky problem that, as we have learned, the elite few thousand appear to have the ability endlessly to renew themselves.
HERE is where a rhetoric pointing to something larger than a typical counterinsurgency campaign may have a virtue, after all. A more grandiose rhetoric draws our attention, at least, to the danger of gigantic massacres. And a more grandiose rhetoric might lead us to think about ideological questions. Why are so many people eager to join the jihadi elite? They are eager for ideological reasons, exactly as in the case of fascists and other totalitarians of the past. These people will be defeated only when their ideologies begin to seem exhausted, [hmmmmmm] which means that any struggle against them has to be, above all, a battle of ideas — a campaign to persuade entire mass movements around the world to abandon their present doctrines in favor of more liberal ones. Or so it seems to me. Fukuyama acknowledges that the terrorist ideology of today, as he describes it, “owes a great deal to Western ideas in addition to Islam” and appeals to the same kind of people who, in earlier times, might have been drawn to Communism or fascism. Hmmmmmmmmmmm Even so, for all the marvelous fecundity of his political imagination, he has very little to say about this ideology and the war of ideas. I wonder why.
I think maybe it is because, when Fukuyama wrote “The End of History,” he was a Hegelian, and he remains one even now. Hegel’s doctrine is a philosophy of history in which every new phase of human development is thought to be more or less an improvement over whatever had come before. In “America at the Crossroads,” Fukuyama describes the Hegelianism of “The End of History” as a version of “modernization” theory, bringing his optimistic vision of progress into the world of modern social science. But the problem with modernization theory was always a tendency to concentrate most of its attention on the steadily progressing phases of history, as determined by the predictable workings of sociology or economics or psychology — and to relegate the free play of unpredictable ideas and ideologies to the margins of world events.
And yet, what dominated the 20th century, what drowned the century in oceans of blood, was precisely the free play of ideas and ideologies, which could never be relegated entirely to the workings of sociology, economics, psychology or any of the other categories of social science. In my view, we are seeing the continuing strength of 20th-century-style ideologies right now — the ideologies that have motivated Baathists and the more radical Islamists to slaughter millions of their fellow Muslims in the last 25 years, together with a few thousand people who were not Muslims. Fukuyama is always worth reading, and his new book contains ideas that I hope the non-neoconservatives of America will adopt. But neither his old arguments nor his new ones offer much insight into this, the most important problem of all — the problem of murderous ideologies and how to combat them.
=============== = = =
Neocon
/Reflections of a Neoconservative Irving Kristol
/America’s historic mission of extending freedom in the world. This brand of thinking is often called neoconservative.
——- – – –
/Preemptive wars, unilateralism, regime change,
/military solutions alone to confront real or presumed security threats proved to be as defective an idea /deep disdain for diplomacy.
/search max boot neocon for ‘what the heck is a neocon?’
/likes call to heroism. Need war, crusade
Neocons w post:
/not for détente, bipartisanship, respect for views of allies = weakness.
/won cold war thru containment, moral auth, fostering free open society.
/were Democratic dissidents, uneasy with dem isolationism, softness re defense. Saw vw as paralyzing. M ledeen of aei. Max boot. Claim they follow rr, but wrong. Falsify hist. deceit, synthetic neurosis. Sig damage to cor am pol insts. War with no dimensions, elusive enemies, no def of victory, no end in sight. dup
/paul kagan, wolfowitz
/idealists: rice, wolfowitz vs realists: powell, Scowcroft.
They’ve accepted need for strong fed gov. 000
/rr considered neocon. ??????????
/neo’s will help with mil any dem st attacked by a non dem st.
/Nixon a realist.
/bush 4l sot to slow the break up of the ussr for stability.
/only way to stop ter is to bring dem ls to mid east, then rest.
/krauthammer, foud ajami, victor davis, elliot Abrams, ken adelman?
/l/4/05 – w post: Which Foreign Policy?
Are the neoconservatives “up” or “down” in the second Bush administration? Will their agenda of transformational regime change in the Middle East be dominant in Bush II, or will their influence be reduced?
/weekly standard is their mag
The Neo-Conservative Agenda: Humanism vs. Imperialism
|
The Neo-Conservative Agenda: Humanism vs. Imperialism. Rodrigue Tremblay … Besides being actively supported by a few far–right think tanks, … |
/”neoconservatism” refers to those who converted to the right beginning in the 1970s. (“Neo” means “new.”) The opposite of the neoconservatives are those conservatives who date back to the movement’s origins. Those origins are generally agreed to be in the mid-1950s, to when Buckley founded National Review. If there is any conservative alive who is not a neoconservative, it’s Buckley.
The Beginning of the End of the Adventure
By DAVID RIEFF
Neocon interventions, R.I.P.
/apparently they are pro is…
/Neocon commentator David Horowitz
/is newt one? he’s nuts
Starting Another War By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF Let’s hope President Bush resists the siren calls of neocons who claim that a few air raids would make the Iranian nuclear menace disappear.
How Neoconservatives Conquered Washington – and Launched a War, by …
|
The major link between the conservative think tanks and the Israel lobby is the … target Israel rather than the U.S. The neocons urge war with Iran next, … |
/scot ritter: neocons started [?] with rr, then bush sr, then into tanks during Clinton, then out in force with bush jr. [are they mostly jewish?]
/dup? rise of the vulcans – the hist of bush’s war cab by james mann
Neoconservatives steer Iraq policy By Peter Spiegel Group of war’s architects seem to be getting their way on surge in U.S. troops, shift in war’s focus. – Iraq to hang two of Hussein’s ex-aides
/they considered rr a peacenik, said someone on tv
The Neocon Paradox By ROBERT WRIGHT Even if neocons weren’t bent on spreading democracy, their chronic inflammation of world opinion would be unhealthy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoconservative
http://www.amconmag.com/03_24_03/cover.html – When the Cold War ended, these neoconservatives began casting about for a new crusade to give meaning to their lives. On Sept. 11, their time came. They seized on that horrific atrocity [just what I said] to steer America’s rage into all-out war to destroy their despised enemies, the Arab and Islamic “rogue states” that have resisted U.S. hegemony and loathe Israel.
/they think bombing iran will set back their regime and ………..
erlich says it will do the opposite. It will rally support for the regime. Iranians anywhere want it. It could bring sabatoge of straits of hormutz. Hamas could step up its activities in leb, etc. and ter in us.
/richard perle said neocons not resp for war in iraq. Xxx implied Rachel matow?
/aei was bastion of neocon thinking
========================== = = = = =
Neocon4
|
May 4, 2005 |
COMMENTARY
Neocons Lay Siege to the Ivory Towers
By Saree Makdisi, Saree Makdisi is a professor of English literature at UCLA.
In the months ahead, the state Senate Committee on Education will consider a bill that pretends to strike a blow for intellectual honesty, truth and freedom, but in reality poses a profound threat to academic freedom in the United States.
Peddled under the benign name “An Academic Bill of Rights,” SB 5 is in fact part of a wide assault on universities, professors and teaching across the country. Similar bills are pending in more than a dozen state legislatures and at the federal level, all calling for government intrusion into pedagogical matters, such as text assignments and course syllabuses, that neither legislators nor bureaucrats are competent to address.
The language of the California bill — which was blocked in committee last week but will be reconsidered later in the legislative session — is extraordinarily disingenuous, even Orwellian. Declaring that “free inquiry and free speech are indispensable” in “the pursuit of truth,” it argues that “intellectual independence means the protection of students from the imposition of any orthodoxy of a political, religious or ideological nature.” Professors should “not take unfair advantage of their position of power over a student by indoctrinating him or her with the teacher’s own opinions before a student has had an opportunity fairly to examine other opinions upon the matters in question.”
To protect students from what one might (mistakenly) suppose to be an epidemic of indoctrination, the bill mandates that students be graded on the basis of their “reasoned answers” rather than their political beliefs. Reading lists should “respect the uncertainty and unsettled character of all human knowledge.” Speakers brought to campus should “promote intellectual pluralism,” and faculty should eschew political, religious or “anti-religious” bias.
Notwithstanding its contorted syntax, the bill may sound reasonable. But, in fact, it has nothing to do with balance and everything to do with promoting a neoconservative agenda. For one thing, the proposed “safeguards” to “protect” students from faculty intimidation are already in place at all universities, which have procedures to encourage students’ feedback and evaluate their grievances. Despite a lot of noise from the right about liberal bias on campus, there are simply no meaningful data to suggest that any of these procedures have failed.
The real purpose of the bill, then, is not to provide students with “rights” but to institute state monitoring of universities, to impose specific points of view on instructors — in many cases, points of view that have been intellectually discredited — and ultimately to silence dissenting voices by punishing universities that protect them.
“Why should we, as fairly moderate to conservative legislators, continue to support universities that turn out students who rail against the very policies their parents voted us in for?” asks the Republican sponsor of the Ohio version of the bill.
Backers of the Florida bill would like to empower students to sue professors with whom they disagree on the theory of evolution. ………… I put next part on ob4
==================== = = = = = =
== = =
freedoms and rights and put opposites – libel, riot, violence and sep econ from person – but this is done … where? under cons?
my op of freeman – meaning the freeman?
no bill bds in hawaii
freedom hse type comparisons. thus where most oppor for poor, etc.
/[0 on fed deficit]
/ fewer strikes in pri schs, etc.?
/ check backs of all for pages noted
/ senholtz goes too far
/ not pro
/ irrelevant dates l85 5/88
/ bias, assumptions, but no name calling like con dig and am op
/ anger / petty/ classical lib/ god/ abstracts/ bad writing/ / needs lot of editing/ immature parts/ needs overview, outline, diagram/
my notes
[charity offers help here and sends it abroad regardless of consequences]
find golden age for the poor/ cap.. means stock market, [auctions?] swap meets – guy who make dup keys, flea markets, garage sales, good humor?, helms bakery, walking knife sharpener, but not st carts,/ [trouble w/pc’s and vista’s approach]/ [min wage contributes to crime, drugs, drop out?, illegit? cause no resp]/ [sw was not intellectual?]/ [true wealth and self-sufficency is human capital, its resourcefulness and resilience for the unforseen]
sig parts
trans payments promotes class warfare as spec ints comete for handouts/ disaster relief means builders built where they wouldn’t normally.
/ hi benfits mean hi uib & visa versa
/ supreme myth: indus rev was bad
/ pri wel + in la mirada
/ infl helps debtors / intentions only
/ cutting assist spurred s. korea & taiwan
/ no killed by war vs own govs – spec comm govs
/ no zoning in houston
/ eng unions=sts w/in sts
/ every class is unfit to govern
/ soc.. don’t like independ individ
/ 40% of perus gnp informal
/ job traning replaces pri jobs and contributes to unrealism
/ fed jobs cost jobs as overpriced
/ rome fell for econ reasons
/ lack of econ oppor = inequality
/ min wage means 25% uib in pr
/ hurting imports hurts exports
/ min wage put 500k blks out of work
/ taking labor disputes out of the courts was revolutionary
/ l066 origins of eng classes
/ real bizmen surpass those helped by gov
/ pub-pri not so hot
/ cut tarriffs and trade not aid. Fee needs to liven up its pub with pics, graphs, charts, color. ratings of countries, states, cities? summaries of the success of trade, zoning, pri, etc. you have to plod thru is repititious stuff.
speakers: horberger, anderson, evans – his wife likes ny.
dianne fallon of uci said it’s really marxist. david wallace 963 9560. Marshall Fritz 5533 E. swift, fresno 93727 209-292-1776. A Larry Sternberg ran in the 40th dist. The law – bastiat./ Leonard Reed. fritz said populists are above auth on his chart. fee calls their grounds a campus. too abstract – ed only, no lobbying or CURRENT issues yet some anger. pushing fellowship a bit and god. freedom has to be won by every gen. dianne said register isn’t dem or rep. the individ under pharohs, kings, dictators, emperors, chieftans, etc. for yrs. only recently was the individ put lst. we need cul literacy. something about statutory law bad vs _____ law. All people want in life is their fair advantage.
licensing restrict entry. it? should be market oriented. something about a license giving you info on someone and… the market should do this. fritz says the higher the pro, the less effective.
the good hskpg seal = 0 same w/ mr. goodwrench. [vs ul]
od’s are not from too many drugs, but from bad mixtures.
alc is licensed. biggest gang wars over alc. w/ al capone.
battle is won over soc. it’s in retreat all over the world.
Emminent Domain? – bk by Elen Frankel Paul? Richard Epstein. Geo. Reisman or Eastland? was there. look for the sols in freedom [market], not force.
/fee should rate countries, pols, networks, reporters,
seems like they need to have all the answers
why don’t they put it in comic book form
/not their resp to save world.
/always quoting people no one’s heard of.
/try to bring god into it.
/have cons debate in lil saigon: min wge, study, wk, sm biz, pri prop, union, benefits, wel, child labor, uib, wkmn’s comp. disability, child care,
free=resp
l soc resp starts at the bottom, not the top – thus sort people and classes out
2 pov?, criminals, youth, alc, gamblers, mi’s they need resp
free market=? priv prop, vol exchange, limited gov., individ resp and choice. self-improvement vs compulsory reform of others. no pol action as cure [absolute insanity]
gov’s biz to force us to be free. and min wage ties in? /
cmc/register panel grubbs: impractical, curse on both candidates l0/88. far out, removed, self?, distorted all. young. libs are self-righteous. register doesn’t endorse candidates.
stores having xmas things out before halloween
am. op. bkstr ll25 e. l7th #206
fee
pri prop=accountability
pri libraries
toll roads
dereg biz and wages [?]
charity was bigger [and more effective?] in past
child labor
/bldg codes for quakes + odd ball add ons i would try
/how young should a kid be able to join the mil/
/ reason said: cutting the top tax rate in 80 actually INcreased tax revenues from hi-income taxpayers. the top rate is now closed to the revenue-maximizing rate. /
/reason: wealth and power are products of dereg, im, tax reduction,freedom. /myth: broadcast reg is not pol and protect the pub.
/rationing during wartime/
/lic plates for cars
/ mess of orchard st.
/ all the posters in subway = lcd
/ draft vs elvis and clay
/cig ads on tv stopped ‘7l
/vol up on commercials
/l7 of the 46 cities in la ban fireworks
/what can you NOT do on pri prop – murder, etc. discriminate?
/lot of carnival games are rigged -stupid one at mc sch
/dangerous umbrellas
/fee + get too wrapped up in glory, clouds, etc.
p 405 freeman oct 88.
/radar detectors on the back of reason? or am digest?
/ liberty mag, l.p. news / too smug/
/fee – something childish bout it
/anti search and seizure = anti drug test or random alc rdblks = police state. drug re-ed cents = conc.. camps. anti rico, grand jury system
/libertarian conv in dc. polo shirts, baseball cap, standing ovation, few weirds
/ smog
/w. williams anti united eur fee/ l/6th of the articles might be worth reading
/am ed league. stupid slogans for bumper stickers. ussr still giant threat. crap. tight lipped, steel jawed, silver mained, stalwart, gen rogers
[let’s put on the breastplate of righteousness.] wave flag from the ramparts. marine barracks demo.
/new gas nozzels – fee
/am op bkstr
/new gas nozzels – fee
/libertarians. just as bad as left – sneer
/no billbds in vermont as of 87.
/including some fringies: trim: all a plot to bend const. the hse is our new hse of lrds
/fee vs carmel, ca.
/earthquake standards
/quake codes and fee
/was it lib… phil that caused register not to support sw neighbs.
/after l0/89 sf quake you can see that this is a country of standards and regs.
/pull tab openers for cans. bottle bill.
/the lack of standards in mex, thus their raw sewage wrecking areas north of the border – see sig file
/fee is anti raising a mil. said hughes?
hornberger: pro: accum unlimited wealth,
anti: pub sch, wel, ss, licensing, pub parks, trade restrictions, im control, drug laws, mw, susidies, censorship, for aid, for intervention, draft,
/Law, Miss Helen 792 l264 fee’s rep here re l2/89 conf. 724 walnut ave redlands. verbose on my dime.
/you look at all our regs and laws and wonder, but look at mex +/bk3 =
/send lists to fee? doubtful as he must have seen lots
/lead paint outlawed in 77
/mises inst: the dead of the armenian earthquake in l2/89 were victims of comm. – bldgs built so terribly. apologists for comm: bad weather for 70 yrs of ussr crop failure. a drought for ehtiopoian famine -whereas the gov starved em. soc = l much less capital formantin 2 big waste 3 overuse of means or production. no incentive to produce new cap goods or maintain older ones. control over them by pol, burs, now owners. builders have no stake in what they build as can’t be sold. mng have no reason to preserve them. can’t decide to send more steel to industry or bldg without market price. or if it’s worth more than concrete or marble w/o market price. thus random surpluses and shortages. quotas for quantity, but can’t have it for quality so they produce flimsy bldgs. in moscow, nets over sidewoks to catch falling masonry. some a ‘s in here
/mises inst: world bank supports soc. pop density supposed to be bad yet taiwan thrives, [park ave], hong kong,
/b. poole said galbraith couldn’t admit he was wrong.
see boon
/can’t let tobacco industry get away with all. other vices
/madison ave made female smoking acceptable
/can’t say that free market means free press
/optiz of fee tried to weave god into cap. dumb
/gov is supposed to help us, but helps self. – same with all
/fee scalping tickets, mercenaries
/you look at all our regs and laws and wonder, but look at mex +
/fee and forgeries – clothes, etc.
/fee – trafficking in exotic pets
/sch bus safety. bars on jap trucks
The Freeman is self‑centered? repetitive vs simple
/reagan’s dereg of fcc permitted infomercials, whihc papers have done for yrs. la times mag
/fee and control of diamonds
/our tobacco cos hitting e. eur [& 3rd world] for all their worth. phillip morris doing all it can to buy support, goodwill, support. using patriotism, etc
/fee stores open sun
/raw sea food is not inspected by gov like meat and chicken
/fee: jon locke, adam smith, jefferson, f bastiat.
/boomed up vol on commercials
/eventually smoke regs for employees, bands, non smokers/land bank on nantucket – hard. saves nature for tourist from developers.
that vs fee
/pipeline/what does fee say bout e. eur/auto dialers [l500 calls/day] vs fee
/fee and campaign to get women to smoke. fee’s becomming discredited in my eyes. 9l
gablers
/your cause is hurt by the letter from dr. simon. i can’t believe he’s a dr. it’s self-serving, ignorant, adolescent, extreme, maudlin, infantile, uses bad english and faulty logic. It’s rabid. He spelled genius genious. He should come off it.
The article about the errors was sensible. His letter was a joke. Such a person needs group therapy. It’s very sad that such an educated person is so mixed up./smoky cap’n jacks
/noisy fed grp/
/all that hawking in tj./fee and unreged boxing.
/cons would pave over all
/boxing is unregulated
/fee: c is dialectical materialism, class-warfare sociology, exploitation econ, socialistic “achievements”, regulation, /fireworks illegal cept in cm, bp, sa,
/ir ban on poaching elephants worked. tv 6/92 and price of ivory went down. valid?
/ticket scalpers /boxing and corruption are synonymous. tv 92 unregulated. dirty.
/fee: no of liquor stores in ghetto.
/fee – wing walking.
/our tobacco cos are leaping into eastern eur [and 3rd world] 92
/unlicensed cabs in la: no insur. no driv lic, drivers with records. called “bandit cabs”.
/restricting alc at beaches due to problems. stadiums too? 92
/ bock sees mh system as an annoyance / /fee: black market in caviar, rhino tusk, etc. furs,
/fee and commercials boomed up. back east, france.
/loansharking vs my 50% etc./you forget how much cig ads on tv earlier. vs fee.
/fee – mafia, triads
/fee – corruption./damming rivers vs fee.
mises
/8th annual mises univ, at cmc, 7/l7-24. via ludwig von mises inst., auburn, alabama 37849, 205 844 2500. 2583-f
Gentlemen, 5/24/93
It’s hard to tell if your Mises Univ. july l7th is open to someone like me, a person in his 50s, and what the costs are.
I had one course in Econ. M. Friedman has influenced me the most over the years. I also like Thomas Sowell, George Banfield, and Walter Williams. I never heard a word about them in college. I heard about your progam through REASON. I would like to attend your program.
Also if you wanted me to speak for l0 minutes or more, I’d love to. My subject is: spa2
/fee vs st vendors and ice cream trucks/fee vs hm owners assoc? noise from giant speakers in cars/fee and crime
/fee vs smog control
/inst for justice wants more it denver + opened up to cabs. was tried in dc and sd – dereg. didn’t work. 90% of cities restrict em. 93
/fee: illegal fireworks.
/helmuts have cut cycle deaths 34% 3/94.
/since seat belt law in calif, 35k lives saved. belts double your chances of survival.
/free market and the border.
/reason: why should gov have mono on justice: vs pri security and pri courts.
said man’s struggle is to free himself from insts he created. dos passos/we have an earthquake or flood, some die. same happens in india or bangladesh and thousands die. reason.
/fee dogs in NY. singapore and dogs.
/fee: pool of pro jury servers.
/fee and billboards.
trad soc parites have largely given up on state ownership and instead hope to use gov to increase flow of pri cap. [this is a link twix econ and pol] m barone us news 8/l5/94 /soon as there are restriction on commerce, the mob goes right after it. gas coupons, tires, etc during war. they got things no one else could. tv. numbers, prostitution. the normandy caught fire. mob told navy, we did it. pay up or more. navy paid. luciano in here.
/would free market in sports have black teams?
/need regs for zoos.
/fee vs segregation, higher rents, etc.
/what does fee have to say bout inventors.
/fee: fp vs pri
/free market in b&c/guy on tv who made smoking acceptable for women.
/should cover cap… in hist./think of all the kids kept out of sports because they can’t go to c. sig
/which country has most of its gov privatized/computer recycling center gives em to schs. vs fee.
/fee vs colonialism
/fee: which country is best for inventors
/jury awards/fee – jury awards
/m funds – one of the greatest contributions to financial dem. sig. pbs 3/99
/insur cos should have more say in law enforcement [stolen items]
/animal rights
Will Canada Open Border to Investors?
Canada’s industry minister said that the government would consider changing the country’s limits on foreign ownership of communications companies to encourage investment and competition. http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/20/business/worldbusiness/20CANA.html?todaysheadlines
/what do they say bout grameen?
/free market in getting mil from poor countries.
/bitter frustration, angry?
/convoluted fee: what really got us out of the depression – you read it and it can’t get to the pt . you just give up – ty : http://www.fee.org/the_freeman/detail/which-strategy-really-ended-the-great-depression I know about frustration thus these comments. So who IS getting noticed, read, etc.
/erudite
/see far
/ate taco off st stand in tj. Vs, peddlers in bkk
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Fee2
l2/86
prof? doti of chapman, but dry/ sig: infl enriches debtors & hurts creditors [pols & gov] 457/ legal tender/ indust pol../ farm: l800 90% of pop on farm/ l960, l0%// famine in china in late l870’s killed l5 mil/
l/87
conf in for debts 3/ safeway 4/ m 9/ insur l2/ rousseau/ irish tato famine/ sagebrush rebellion
2/87 -fee
so africa and media – good/ l000’s slaughtered in uganda or zaire – hardly any coverage 5l/ such selectivity is racism/ millions killed in _____/ grp vs individ/ deficits/
3/87
hm schooling is one’s right 84/ the individ/ sweden/ lat am – good/ welfare states at war?/ morality of good intentions/ rise of great philanthropists during laissez-faire cap – l05/ poorest areas on eath are those most unsulated from cap and individualism/ emotion not facts l07/ 4 [lib] examples/ intentions only – sig- l08/ anti trust rh/
4/87
pri prop makes people accountable [bug & 0]/ entitlements/ anti biz, but not anti entertainers earnings [nor sports]/ ethnic income l44/ self-employed rates hi for asians [l3% vs nat. average of 8%]/ pri libraries l47/ l2-l3 mil starved? in ussr l92l-2 l55/ l929-33 5 mil starved, 5 mil liquidated/ us agr l0 times more efficient than ussr/ l932-33 famine ussr 7 mil died/ end of 20’s, l0 mil deported to sub-artic/ thus total ofl5 mil directly or indirectly/ rent control thus shortage/ thus less labor/ policy shifts caused farm problem l66/ free banking system l67/ conservation/ mercantilism l83/ 3% growth for [soc] and 7% for [cap]/ mozambique/ sig – cutting assist spurred taiwan & s. korea to devel.. & then foreign investment was attracted/ thus power of us econ for soc. change
6/87
irresp/ housing 2l5/ rent control=price control/ charity & for aid/ pri prop helps pers freedom 220/ %’s of fed land in 4 states/ defending the rich/ gov caused depression 23l/ s. hook/ so. africa – bk/
7/87
20th cent dead “243” 35 mil killed by war, ll9 mil by own govs; of the ll9, 95 mil were killed by comm govs; 800k killed by dems and most of those were refugees repatriated to the ussr by the dems./ sig – in the last 20 yrs, the no of those living under dem in so am has increased from 20% to 90% 250/ early holland was the hong kong of the l7th cent [& what happened]; thus wealth depends on the system/ mao’s china wanted watches, bikes, foot-powered sewing machines/ Deng’s china wants tv’s, refers, tape players/ trade, not aid 275 [like raising kids]/ aid hinders progress 278; destroys incentives; reinforces those in power/
8/87
282 [find what=bad investment climate]/ [sig of the black market] 283/ pri mail outlawed l845/ bal budget/ during depression, ’32, congress raised taxes, which prolonged it 293/ pov here=wealth abroad 295/ min wage’s effect on appalachia 295/ save in vermont s/ hm industry 296/ cuba was rich before communism 296/ rodesia exported food/ mozabique/ farm/ free market in kidneys 308 and hearts – bock/ environment/ imperialism or neo colonialism/ leftist barry commoner/
9\88
min wage thus more automation and fewer frings benefits 323/ africaners use min wage to help white youth/ unions favor it as it lifts the level of non union wages; thus unions [can ask for more]/ free agents in sports/ line item veto [skipping]
l0/87
power must be limited, divided, sep [as in econ?] to minimize the bad side of man/ min wage says anyone worth less won’t get a job 37l/ zoning hard 372/ none in houston! and others 372/ british unions could use violence 378 thatcher stopped it/ the end of the miners strike in 3/85 was the greatest defeat for labor in british hist 379. printers lost there in 87. they were states w/in states!/ sig: the privileged classes indulged them, but masses had enuff 379 / every class is unfit to govern 38l [thus dem nec] checks and bal/ soc.. don’t like independ individ 399 sig?/
ll/87
40% of peru’s gnp is via informal econ. in lima it provides 95% of pub trans & l/2 of the housing / in the formal econ, it takes 20 yrs to gain title to a hm/ disadvantages of informal econ listed/ vol and coercive cartels/ job training nyc which replace pri jobs 427 and contributes to unrealism amoung the young 426/ 427 good/ min wage means less $ for training/ it was lo till 50’s/ creating a fed job at prevailing union rate of $l2/hr mean 2 $6/hr workers are left out/ once job paid enuff for l0 jobs 429/ l3 mil new jobs created twix 83-87 of which l/2 are ——-/ trade deficit/ mercantilism/ rome fell for econ reasons sig 452/ jim crow/ 54-64 golden decade for civil rights/ [when was golden age for poor]/ lack of econ oppor=[racial] inequality/ dc and ny cabs/ jamaica/ indians/ poland – wait for apt l5-20 yrs/ bk review: dereg paid off in oil, truckers, airfairs, telecom/ need to dereg wages 48l/ various acts/ lo wage eaners = l0% of labor force/ puerto rico=example of labor legislation as min wage is close to full industrial wage there [thus] 25% uib [like my mississippi example]
l/k88
saudia arabia pays its farmer $lk/ton for wheat when it can be bot for $80 on the ir market. that’s l2 l/2 times for “nat. security”/ [h2o there is more than oil? or gas?]/ brazil/ infl rates, graphs, 0 sig/ illegals: us boarder ve berlin wall 22/ yugo…/
2/88
lawyers can labor, but laborers can’t practice law – talent/ paul samuelson, a critic of the free market 49/ [market distributes the wealth] 50/ wilderness tnc/ self regulation-skimmed-potential 62?/ capital/labor ratio is sig 7l/ [bro vs bro in civil war and unions]/ union rh 75/ welfare reform/ hayek got nobel
3\88
ihs 83/”corruption”=connections=blat in east eur 86; menial jobs have the most; it’s essential for coffee, tel, acceptance at sch, tickets, fruit, etc. – diff from black market. they make lot$ on the side 88/ pri plots = l% of cultivated land = 26% of agri output./ hawley smoot 92 tarrifs -the crowning folly of l920-33/ hurting imports hurts exports 92/ [during depression] forclosures stayed thus burden fell on banks which [thus] closed 93. inc tax doubled in 32 93/ fiscal burden of local , st & fed govs nearly doubled. [econ could hve recovered quicker w/o this?] FDR seized gold/ devaled $ 40% 94. nra, min wage, which hurt the so most. 35-40 hr wk, no youth labor. so suffered. min wage put 500k blks out of wk sig 94/ skipping/ supreme crt stopped some w/ good econ results 95/ wagner act ’35 NLRB = rev, as it took labor dispute out of crts and put em under nlrb/ effects of various acts/ seed sown by scholars of [roaring] 20’s & earlier 96/ charitable help 99/ min wage, real good, copy l06/ farm credit/ depression & boondoggles ll8
4/88
hundu casts/ eng’s classes – origins=l066 l26/ real bizmen beat those with gov assist l34/ myth of jap indus pol/ minorities got ahead faster in past as feer econ l52/ no anti descrim laws then [compliments sow]/ media bias on airline dereg l56/
5/88
l74 curious/ rh l76/ “vol” l83/ proud poor wont take gov $ – so it goes thru a church/ pub-pri partnerships touted but pure pri is better/ world bank loans push soc… l84 and are disasters [listed]/ loans to commie countries/ far better to cut loans & tarrifs and just trade l87/ soc..in africa l93 [picking on them?]/ only conf… where inc is falling l9l/ africa was a next export in 30’s; now an importer l93/ hm industry/ [restrictions hurt women most] l98 incredible/ mand… stu fees 200/ many illegals can’t not afford to come here – if no job, welfare/ eminent doman – hard, bad 203/ m. collins way 208
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Fee3
MOGADISHU, Somalia
There are no import taxes. Anyone can bring in anything–a radical departure from the days when only entrepreneurs with hard-to-obtain government permits could conduct trade, and the ability to bribe and cajole officials determined business success.
A 10-year power vacuum, vicious clan fighting, famine and a disastrous U.N. mission followed the overthrow of the socialist regime of dictator…. But the violent demise of central authority has permitted an explosion of trade and private enterprise. Amid the concrete jungle of rubble and ruins, workshops and kiosks are brimming with activity. New buildings are going up in many parts of town. Locally owned companies have stepped in to provide electricity and telephone service. Recent months have seen the creation of the country’s first private television and radio station, a pasta factory and many other new enterprises.
“Privatization is booming,” said Abdulkadir Yahaya Ali, a Mogadishu-based consultant for the War Torn Societies Program, an international nongovernmental organization. “In the past, there was no motivation and everything was monopolized by government.”
In short, it has been a while since Somalia’s business sector functioned so well. All the same, many Somalis would rather see the return of a national government, and their efforts to come back from rock bottom might provide a lesson for all of Africa–a continent where overbearing government still tends to crush entrepreneurship.
A central administration would give Somalia legitimacy and could engage in nationwide infrastructure development, Somalis say. A federal authority would mean the reemergence of public undertakings such as hospitals, schools, transportation and law enforcement.
In the absence of a government, religious groups emphasizing studies from the Koran typically run schools. Public hospitals collapsed, but doctors have joined to establish private hospitals and clinics that charge a nominal fee but sometimes also treat poor patients free of charge.
But perhaps the most important of these functions is law enforcement. Clans led by gun-toting warlords and their supporters have filled the void. Anyone who owns anything of value has to hire truckloads of armed militiamen to protect them. While businessmen long for the reestablishment of a central bank to provide credit and loans, others are anxious to again be able to freely travel outside of Somalia with valid travel documents.
Even the issuance of passports is in the hands of entrepreneurs. Virtually worthless Somali documents, leftovers from the days of central government, are on sale in the market where businessmen will affix your picture and stamp them for $15 each.
Abdulkadir Osoble Ali turns a huge profit as director of Benadir Maritime & Port Operations, which spent about $1 million to develop the El Maan beach into a port following the closure of Mogadishu’s official seaport in 1991.
But he too sees the need for a government. “If you are a trader or business person, maybe it’s better than before,” said Osoble, a former resident of Alexandria, Va. “But the overall situation is not better.”
“It is much harder to run and set up a business when you have to set up your own security, you have no electricity and you have to power your generator,” said Ahmed Abdisalam, who last December helped set up Horn Afrik, Somalia’s first private television and radio station. “A government which can take care of [these services] is good. On the other hand, now you don’t have the limitations that a government would impose.”
The main challenge for a new government would be to preserve and promote incentives for private enterprise while providing some checks and balances. What many people here say they want is simple: a central authority that provides basic services, but refrains from interfering in business and in the lives of private citizens.
In Africa, that is close to a revolutionary idea.
“They want a government, but it will not be the type of command-and-control government it was before,” said Michel Del Buono, a senior economist with the Nairobi office of the United Nations Development Program. “They want central control but not too much control at the center.”
Such a setup is rare on a continent known for the big-footing influence of government in all sectors of life. The political fate of Somalia, infamous for the failed 1990s United Nations humanitarian mission, is being decided at a reconciliation conference in neighboring Djibouti. Thousands of delegates, including clan elders, ethnic minorities and women, who until now have been politically marginalized, are expected to choose a transitional government and a president.
The caretaker administration is to govern for three to five years, after which the country will hold multiparty elections. Some key Somali warlords have boycotted the meeting, which has won considerable support from the international community and has largely sidelined the warlords.
Local political analysts and foreign diplomats attending the conference insist that the absence of the war lords will have little impact on the outcome of the talks because most other segments of society are determined to have peace and a central governing authority.
“[People] are so tired,” said Yahaya, the research consultant. “They cannot travel. They don’t have the freedom to move. Ten years is enough time. We are tired, fed-up.”
He added that those who are not participating in Djibouti are now seen as the “enemy of the people. They are not seen as patriotic.”
“People have come to the conclusion that it is no longer about clan,” said Abdisalam, the media executive. “It’s about [personal] interest. People have come to the stage where they no longer feel their warlords or clans can deliver.”
The warlords could hamper Somalia’s quest for peace; after all, they have the guns. But analysts believe that the key to success for any new administration will be its skill at managing the business community.
“The [new] government can establish laws and regulations, but it cannot monopolize things and take them out of the hands of the private citizen,” Yahaya said.
“The businessmen need everything a government can give them in terms of sovereignty, insurance and protection for foreign trade,” said Del Buono, the development economist. “They also need domestic law and order.”
Indeed, security is key for Somalia’s burgeoning business community. At least 200 of Osoble’s 500-strong work force are guards–more specifically, gun-toting militiamen. They use 23 “battle wagons,” or pickup trucks, each equipped with a 37-millimeter antiaircraft gun, antitank rifles–and a cellular phone.
Abdi Mohammed Sabrie, the manager of Somalpast, the country’s first private spaghetti manufacturing company, pays 30 armed guards to protect the compound where he and his partners also make plastic bags and run a bakery.
“Before the civil war broke out, you needed no civil guard for business or personal security,” Sabrie said. The gunmen cost him about $3,000 a month–a large sum for a nation where the average person makes less than $50 per month. Sabrie spends an additional $5,000 a month on fuel to power the pasta factory equipment.
“A government with sound economic trade policies would benefit us, 100%,” he said. “Now business people have to provide security, power, water and a seaport [for themselves].”
Many of them have taken advantage of the absence of a central authority to provide such basic services. A proliferation of private telephone companies has made many individuals rich while helping to contribute to Somalia’s survival. In Mogadishu, three companies–consisting primarily of a satellite dish, a foreign carrier and local offices with booths for callers–compete for business.
Calls to anywhere in the world cost less than $2 a minute, said to be the lowest price on the continent. Local calls are free. Telephone service has enabled traders to make deals across the Gulf of Aden with the Arabian Peninsula, a welcome improvement from the days of the old regime when making a business call often required physically crossing into a neighboring country. Residents are also able to keep in contact with exiles or family members living abroad. But there is a catch.
Mogadishu’s telephone companies are not interconnected, so customers can call only those subscribing to the same service, making it necessary to have three separate phone services. Efforts to get the ventures to unite have so far failed, because, according to Mohamed Abukar, a field coordinator for the U.N. Development Program in Somalia, “everyone wants his own area of control.”
About 75 generating stations in Mogadishu provide city residents with electricity. The Elman Electricity Co. runs eight of them, each housing a huge diesel-powered electrical generator.
The company’s customers, about 6,000 households and businesses, can choose the number of hours of electricity they wish to have per day and exactly how many lightbulbs and outlets to power. According to Mohamed Mohamoud, Elman’s vice chairman, the average family uses five bulbs and three outlets, and spends about 55 cents a day. The company provides free electricity for street lights, mosques and private schools.
Clan membership is largely irrelevant to business, and the entrepreneurial spirit infuses the lives of small tradesmen. At Mogadishu’s central market, a hodgepodge of dilapidated kiosks set amid whitewashed and bullet-scarred concrete structures, money changers sit behind bundles of Somali shillings.
In the absence of a central bank, businessmen rely on them to exchange foreign currency. One U.S. dollar currently trades at 10,000 Somali shillings.
Although they can earn enough to live comfortably, even the money changers said they were tired of having to fend for themselves and would welcome the return of a central authority. “I will be happy if a new government comes back,” said Ali Barre, a former civil servant who got into the money-changing business two years ago with $2,000 of savings. “Everything will be safe. There will be peace. Our children will go to school.”
“Everyone is expecting a government to come out of Djibouti,” said Hajji Ali Ibrahim, who sells passports out of his rundown photo studio in the market. “We don’t sleep at night. We sit and watch the conference on television.”
Such people can watch the conference because of one of the private enterprises–Horn Afrik, the television and radio network that opened in December. From 2 p.m. to midnight each day, residents of the capital are treated to a cocktail of news and current-affairs programs interspersed with Islamic readings.
The proceedings at the Djibouti meeting are beamed live into the living rooms of capital residents every evening, and viewers are encouraged to call in and air their thoughts.
“When a government comes, if they tried to shut us down, they would have a challenge on their hands,” said Abdisalam, Horn Afrik’s director of programs. “How the government deals with the entrepreneurial spirit will be very interesting.”
It also will be crucial in maintaining long-term peace and stability, since the ability to trade freely has transcended clan hostilities and done much to further reconciliation. “Somalis are united when it comes to business,” said Mogadishu faction leader Hussein Mohamed Aideed.
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