February 10, 2005
multiculturalism, anti-Americanism, and the meaning of peace
Torture. The last four years of Bush have been pure torture. Listening to self-professed progressives and (pr)oponents of peace rant, rave, and howl at the moon, er, oval office has not been easy for me… Who am I kidding—it’s been great!
I've loved every minute of it. It seems as though Bush has been the number one catalyst for every democratic and progressive cry of desperation heard in the past four years. After the last great hope for mankind (the CCCP), fell to capitalism, the left has been bereft of an ally to root for against the worlds #1 Imperialist nation. Luckily there are plenty of enemies out there who love to hate Amerikkka too.
Torture is learning that many Americans actually hate America and what it stands for. Take ethnic studies professors for instance:
As to those in the World Trade Center . . . Well, really. Let's get a grip here, shall we? True enough, they were civilians of a sort. But innocent? Gimme a break. They formed a technocratic corps at the very heart of America's global financial empire; the "mighty engine of profit" to which the military dimension of U.S. policy has always been enslaved, and they did so both willingly and knowingly. Recourse to "ignorance", a derivative, after all, of the word "ignore", counts as less than an excuse among this relatively well-educated elite. To the extent that any of them were unaware of the costs and consequences to others of what they were involved in, and in many cases excelling at, it was because of their absolute refusal to see. More likely, it was because they were too busy braying, incessantly and self-importantly, into their cell phones, arranging power lunches and stock transactions, each of which translated, conveniently out of sight, mind and smelling distance, into the starved and rotting flesh of infants. If there was a better, more effective, or in fact any other way of visiting some penalty befitting their participation upon the little Eichmanns inhabiting the sterile sanctuary of the twin towers, I'd really be interested in hearing about it. -Ward Churchill, 'Anti-American Fascist and Ethnic Studies Professor'
It takes a disciplined mind to write that the victims of 9/11 were not 'innocent', but were in fact part and parcel of the whole American/Capitalist/Nazi "mighty engine of profit," that deserved the heroic act of resistance Mohammed Atta's 'combat teams' accomplished in David-v.-Goliath fashion the very day Ward wrote this. (Apparently on 9/11.)
He paints a vivid picture of the average investment banker/war criminal 'braying incessantly and self-importantly into his cell phone'... just begging for retribution, eh? I get the sense that Ward hates America more than he deplores violence. And that he hates capitalism above all. That's just my guess though.
Reading Ward's entire essay is fascinating for what it reveals about where the inexorable logic of liberalism will eventually take you. That there is no evil (a banal concept in itself we are told), except America. In fact, that might be the number one commandment, or catechism of the truly left. You can look at the institution of Multiculturalism and Ethnic Studies departments on college campii as a kind of priesthood, as a sect of liberalism, and Ward as a priest of that knowledge.
To Ward every evil in the world is due to American policy. Every act of violence (however justified and 'humanitarian' as the 9/11 attack) is due to a preceeding act of violence perpetrated at the hands of a white european or a descendant of such. Thus the key to ending the cycle of violence is to remove the perpetrator, the oppressor, the powerful, ...the USA. You see it everywhere in his writing, indeed in much of the multicultural materials he no doubt teaches.
Did America deserve 9/11? Judging from the words of many democratic activists, the answer is a resounding yes. America's foreign policy is to blame. America is to blame for all the poverty and torture by totalitarian governments that exist throughout the world. Once you reach this conclusion there is only one course of action to take. Complete surrender. Ah, finally. Peace.
Either way, it's [the 9/11 attack] a kind of "reality therapy" approach, designed to afford the American people a chance to finally "do the right thing" on their own, without further coaxing.Were the opportunity acted upon in some reasonably good faith fashion, a sufficiently large number of Americans rising up and doing whatever is necessary to force an immediate lifting of the sanctions on Iraq, for instance, or maybe hanging a few of America's abundant supply of major war criminals (Henry Kissinger comes quickly to mind, as do Madeline Albright, Colin Powell, Bill Clinton and George the Elder), there is every reason to expect that military operations against the US on its domestic front would be immediately suspended.
Whether they would remain so would of course be contingent upon follow-up. By that, it may be assumed that American acceptance of onsite inspections by international observers to verify destruction of its weapons of mass destruction (as well as dismantlement of all facilities in which more might be manufactured), Nuremberg-style trials in which a few thousand US military/corporate personnel could be properly adjudicated and punished for their Crimes Against humanity, and payment of reparations to the array of nations/peoples whose assets the US has plundered over the years, would suffice.
I think we've finally found the research director for all of Michael Moore's films.
Clearly Ward Churchill is an enemy of the United States. An enemy who should be free to speak, but should not be allowed to do so on any campus funded by taxpayer dollars.
Taking the words of a few on the left and ascribing them to all liberals or progressives is like taking the words of Jerry Foulmouth Falwell or Pat Robertson and ascribing them to all conservatives.
It’s a cheap political trick aimed at dim minds. Must be why it works so well for Both Democrats and Republicans in rallying their loyal bases.
Posted by: David R. Remer at February 10, 2005 02:25 AMEric, I am glad you are enjoying your party’s rise to power. Given the GOP’s Iraq war, the GOP’s tripling of Medicare costs, and now the Very, Very unpopular SS reform proposed by the head GOP honchos, I too have reason to feel glad. Glad that the GOP’s ascent to power will be so short lived.
You can fool some of the people all the time, all of the people some of the time, but, you can’t fool all of the people all of the time. When you have a President leading your party who can’t even recount the words to that sage advice, let alone understand its meaning, there is chasmic room for hope for progressives and Independents and moderates and centrists in 2006 and 2008.
Posted by: David R. Remer at February 10, 2005 02:34 AMD. Remer,
The only problem I see with your logic is probably that even ontop of all that you talk of the “GOP” garnered a larger percentage of the vote this time around. You need to calm down, there is no such thing as a vast right wing conspiracy to controll the world every 10 or so years they get elected to office. Our government is a large bureacratic system that only somewhat depends on the president making the most important choices. The choice to go to war was in fact the Current Administration’s, but the justifications and the suggestions to oust Saddam came from every European corner. Churchill’s hatred for everything western can be seen in his lectures available to the public and his teaching materials, no one needs to listen to his ramblings that piece together noticable phrases and terms in order to fake “truth”.
There is no such thing as a “GOP’s Iraq war”, there is only an action that nobody wanted to take but everyone agrees should have been done one way or another. You can argue all you want as to the legitimacy of such a war, who may or may not have supported it then or even who supports it now but one thing is sure: Saddam’s history was what got him in trouble not Bush’s blundering.
Being the good “progressive” that you are, you should have seen Dateline the night before tonight…no? Well being the rounded out “centrist or moderate” that I am, I watched it for you and absorbed most of the information for a second time. Saddam is the epitome of crazy arabic dictator gone mad with power, even Bin Laden thought so during the Gulf. Your logic that Bush is blundering off into every conflict with his eye’s closed or simply with premeditation is flawed because if it were true then Saudi Arabia would have been first on the list instead of Afghanistan or Iraq. I’ll be the first centrist that will admit I don’t like the idea of being in Iraq, but obviously for different reasons when compared to Remer. Being in Iraq and finishing the job was always going to be a long drawn out conflict. Multiple terrorist organizations have invested time, martyrs and money to Iraq for one simple reason: justification of their cause makes them more powerful no matter how many followers they send to their deaths. As much as I would love to actually debate Remer on the issue I’m sure we believe different facts and will come to different conclusions over some key factors. The only way something like this can be resolved is through a freedom of information that is not present in our current media system, is not present in European media and is not even a glimmer of hope in Arabic media. Controversy is king when selling anything having to do with information, and that is why even though Churchill is a teacher (in effect a seller of information) he too falls prey to the same affect*. Right now if the truth came out about something having to do with all the controversy that is splattered across these forums, blogs and posts it would be quenched and quelled dependent on how “shocking in the right direction” it is. For instance if CBS was vindicated through the discovery of actually incriminating Bush National Guard documents in a month or so the story would be about 10 times as big as it was only half a year ago, but if the Shiite Muslims of Iraq want to voice their opinion in front of a reporter or get the word out they would just be seen as “appeasers”.
I could go on and on but I assume someone will reply and focus their attack on what I’ve wrote so it’s better to wait until then so I too can focus.
Be sure to check out http://www.terrorismanswers.com/ for some quick answers as to why things happen the way they do when reguarding terrorism.
*It should be noted that the way Churchill has drafted his papers he doesn’t so much seem to fall prey as take advantage of an affect.
Grant, I don’t see where you replied to anything I said.
In your response to some of what you said:
There has indeed been a concerted effort by the GOP ever since Gingrich rose to prominence in the House with the Contract with America, to acquire power, all of it. I would argue it was not a conspiracy, since, conspiracies almost by definition take place out of public view.
I have argued for decades, as at least one person here can attest, that political history acts very much like a pendulum, swinging left over time, then back to center or beyond to the right, and back to center or beyond back to left again. It is a very well known view of history and politics which has been around for quite sometime. There is a self correcting mechanism to the game of power which can be traced directly to the wisdom that power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely, which in historical terms, mandates an end to corrupt power either from within the power structure or through revolution by reactionary masses.
So, no, I see no conspiracy by the GOP. I see that they finally got their sales pitch down sufficiently to sell the public a bill of goods which they in turn could either attempt to fulfill or ignore due to other political considerations. The GOP ran on smaller government and have succeeded in creating a much larger one. They ran on fiscal responsibility and have completely ignored that one for other considerations. They ran on compassion and have demonstrated compassion on huge scale for foreign peoples in Indonesia, Africa, and elsewhere but, apparently ran out of compassion for Americans here at home, with their bankrupting of Medicare via the Rx reform (now three times the cost Bush and the OMB said it would cost taxpayers), and cutting domestic program spending across the board and ending programs designed to help some of the most needy.
As for my reference to the GOP war in Iraq, I simply meant that the GOP now owns the war. It was both Democrats and Republicans who voted to invade Iraq, and it was the Congressional Intelligence Oversight Committees who utterly and completely failed the American people in representing their interests by verifying and validating the intelligence before voting to go to war. That said, the decision to remain in Iraq after Saddam was removed, was the decision that made the Iraq war a GOP war. Nation creation and building was not what the American people were sold as a basis for invading Iraq. Failing to produce a short term exit plan after deposing Saddam is what made Iraq uniquely a GOP war. Many Libertarians, almost all Green Party and American Reform Party, and a majority of Democrats would not have engaged the US in this nation creation and building. The cost is too high with little to no additional gain for the US to come of it.
You said: Your logic that Bush is blundering off into every conflict with his eye’s closed or simply with premeditation is flawed because if it were true then Saudi Arabia would have been first on the list instead of Afghanistan or Iraq.
How in the hell did you get any logic like that from anything I said above? Where did I even hint that Bush was blundering off into every conflict with his eye’s closed? It is a matter of public record that the Bush administration had designs on Iraq before 9/11 so, premeditation is not arguable, it is just a simple fact, one which I did not bring up though.
How can you possibly presume that the Bush administration would have gone after Saudi Arabia under any possible fact set. Bush had, has, ties to the House of Saud, why else did the Bush administration give the Saudis clearance to leave the US almost immediately after the 9/11 attacks?
In a release this week we now know the FAA was warned prior to 9/11 of possible jet hijackings and Osama bin Laden’s potential threat.
I am on record here in previous articles as stating the Bush adminstration hasn’t the military forces to engage elsewhere in any kind of large confrontation - a dangerous position for the US to be in since the whole world knows it. Bush has no choice now but to take diplomatic routes with N. Korea, Iran, and China with a prayer that no other nation tries to take advanatage until we can get our big stick out of Iraq and freed up for other action elsewhere. Iran however, is not buying Bush’s tough talk, acting as if it knows Bush is weak politically both at home and abroad in trying to marshall war on a third front.
Iranian President Mohammad Khatami has said Tehran will never give up nuclear technology, as international pressure on his government continues to mount.
He warned of “massive” consequences if Iran was treated unfairly.
So I don’t know where you get your facts from, but, I don’t buy any right or left wing media conspiracy. There is ample coverage by the media of what is going on if one wants to know.
Posted by: David R. Remer at February 10, 2005 06:21 AMEric-
Ward Churchill represents the Democrat protest against Bush? Well, alright, then. Then Timothy McVeigh represents the Republican protest against Clinton.
See how that works? Take a person who is saying or doing indefensible things, then say that they are the paragon of that side’s political theory. Of course it’s monstrously unfair. That’s the point. It’s a rhetorical device. It’s not meant to argue anything real.
And that is what I will say: your comparison is simply meaningless. A liberal might say that 9/11 is a consequence of American foreign policy, but that fact is not meant to necessarily be a moral critique justifying terrorism against us. It is a simple stating of the obvious. But understanding motivations doesn’t means agreeing with them, or short of that, the means used to address them. Your average Liberal sees violence as a last resort on all sides. We’re rationalists. We prefer diplomacy, talking things out.
Ward Churchill is no representative of that. His radicalism is merely a mirror image of all those who believe that human life is cheap enough to spend on making points.
What really is tortured is the slander of the the Democratic party and liberals by the Republicans concerning Communism and Terrorism. It’s a pain in the ass to continually hear this B.S. from your end of the political spectrum. Democrats are no less loyal to this country than Republicans. If you look at our criticism of the Bush administration it has been that you folks haven’t done enough, haven’t done it competently, and have allowed your politics to get in the way of your policy.
It is not a charge we bring without evidence.
Posted by: Stephen Daugherty at February 10, 2005 10:00 AMTo say the GOP was after power is obvious. You don’t get an agenda passed unless you have power. To say power in and of itself is wrong is a cop-out. Somebody has to have power, somebody has to make the tough decisions.
Also obvious is that if the GOP takes the power they have and abuses it, they will lose power because the people of this country will force a change. You don’t need history to figure that out.
To say the GOP has created a much larger government is wrong. The Department of Homeland Security has created a greater bureaucracy, but the actual size of the government has not changed. However, if Bush’s budget gets passed the size will shrink some. You say it has not shrunk then you say it will shrink domestically, which is it?
I agree with your dislike of the precription drug bill, but it is not three times the size they said it was. It’s only larger in the news because they are looking at it over a more extended period of time.
Saying the GOP owns the war is simply liberal fodder and obviously not true.
To have taken Saddam out of power and left the country to fend for itself would have done one of two things, either Saddam loyalists (who share his tyrannical beliefs) would have taken power or one of the terrorist leaders currently leading the so-called insurgency would have taken over.
How is that going to make America any more safe?
Nation building is part of going to war. Somebody has to win and they have to help the losing country become stabilized. That is partly a humanitarian effort and partly a security issue, not an imperialistic one. To say there could be a short-term exit plan is naive.
Most of America understands this, that is why Bush was reelected.
My final point has to do with political power. Bush is very powerful at home (he leads the party with controlling power in two of the three branches of government). After all, the GOP has gained popularity over the past 12 years. How else can you explain the elections?
And to say any president of America is politically weak abroad is ignorant. Money and military strength are what give you political power internationally. I think we all know who has the upper hand in those departments.
It is a sign of the hypocrisy of Republicans that they are Lovers of War but yet refuse to volunteer to fight in one. There are massive shortages in the Army Reserves and National Guard. Where are the 60,000,000 Bush Supporters who should enlist? We are on the brink of a Draft and yet our Moral Brothers still refuse to step up and spread Freedom to Iraq. Come!!! They are offering $10,000 signing bonus for you. Come!!! Follow your beliefs and go to war!!! Or are you just hypocrites who only talk like Your Dear Leader?
Posted by: Aldous at February 10, 2005 11:20 AMJoe I agree with some of the points you made, and I think David has you on a couple of other ones. The glaring weakness in your argument, in my opinion, is the following sentence:
“Saying the GOP owns the war is simply liberal fodder and obviously not true.”
I can tell you that my colleagues in the English Department here at the University would reject any such statement automatically. Back that up. I personnally think that the GOP does in fact own the war, in the sense that they control, as you said, 2/3 of the machinery of American Government.
Lest you bring up the argument that there was a mandate by the people for this war because of the election, I will let you know that here in the great state of Alabama the war was a secondary concern, while making sure that “a bunch of queers don’t get hitched” was much more pressing. So please, enlighten myself, and everyone else, and tell me how the democrats and independents in government have any control over the course of the war.
Let no one forget that this War is a Republican War. The Republicans control Congress and the White House. They and they ALONE bear responsibility for this.
Posted by: Aldous at February 10, 2005 01:06 PMAs far as owning the war, I was merely referring to the fact that a war is not a tangible good that can be owned.
Sure the GOP led the argument when deciding to do to war. But there were numerous democrats who voted to give Bush the power to go to war who should be held just as accountable. They can scream about faulty intelligence and WMDs all they want, but even Clinton thought Saddam was trying to put together WMDs in the late 90s.
Granted the Dems can’t do anything about what happens in the war now, aside from bashing it. I have no problem if you oppose the war, but for anyone to come out and say it publicly while we still have troops in battle then I have a problem. Publicly denouncing the war, even though it is a constitutional right, gives those fighting our troops a reason to keep fighting and can’t help the morale of those Americans who are risking their lives.
Rather than bashing it, how about coming up with alternative plans that make sense? Simply pulling out of Iraq is not a decent argument.
I do have a problem with people who make blanket statements like “Iraq is a quagmire” or the “GOP owns the war” when they are just rhetoric designed to impune the current party in power with little facts to back them up.
Another thing, I don’t think that republicans LOVE WAR, that is a ludicrous statement just like saying that liberals are communists. There are a few liberals who agree with communism, but none of the liberals I know agree with it. Just like there are a few conservatives who are racist (sadly to say I even know a couple). There are extremes on both sides.
By the way, I am not a GOP mouthpiece as I came across earlier (and even do some in this post), I am an independent who tries to use common sense and fact-based arguments over ideology, and who happens to like to argue, which is why I wrote in the first place. I don’t expect everyone to agree with me, but also would like to at least have a fairly intelligent debate.
Let no one forget that this War is a Republican War. The Republicans control Congress and the White House. They and they ALONE bear responsibility for this.
Hey, that’s a fantastic idea. Let’s change the tax structure so that only the taxes of the registered Republicans go towards the cost of the Iraq war. I’ll bet we’ll see near-zero percent support for the war then. The Republican mantra these days seems to be, “Hey, as long as it’s not MY money.”
Posted by: Cameron Barrett at February 10, 2005 04:13 PMPublicly denouncing the war, even though it is a constitutional right, gives those fighting our troops a reason to keep fighting and can’t help the morale of those Americans who are risking their lives.
Personally, I have a huge problem with this statement. If the American public disagrees with the war and its premise then they have every right to speak out against it and it is their responsibility to do so. Just as it was the responsibility of the president and Congress to make sure that the war was justified in the first place—and both the president and the Congress failed us in this case. The protests of the public are protests against the administration that is supposed to be representing them. It was the American public’s supression of their normal need for accountability that led to this war in the first place. If the public—and Congress for that matter—had not still been numbed by 911 and felt it was their duty to support their country and mistook this duty to mean unquestioning trust in and support for a president that didn’t deserve it I don’t think the Iraq war would ever have become a reality. We made one mistake by keeping quiet—I don’t see repeating it again (fool me twice…)
Joe Warren-
The trouble is that power has become the master of the GOP, not its servant. They are not willing to risk their power to admit to mistakes in a timely fashion. Because correcting a mistake is often no different than admitting to it, politically speaking, that also means they have become very slow to correct the course of the policy they have set in motion.
I don’t know how you do the math, Joe. The Medicare drug benefit not only helped to expand the government, it’s massively over budget. Worse, the Bush administration told the people doing the accounting to keep the estimates low. They knew it was going to cost more than they were saying. Worst of all, the Bush administration made it illegal for Medicare to bargain for bulk prices on drugs, to use the market to save Americans dollars.
Face facts: Bush has tried to have his cake and eat it too, and we are in deep shit as a result He has dropped taxes, yet run up huge bills in new military and entitlement spending. If the Republicans are running the government like a business, they aren’t doing a very good job.
If Bush keeps on spending this way, we will find ourselves weakened in terms of financial and military power. We can’t purchase our wars on credit forever, and we certainly cannot do much good economically if Bush’s deficits force us to take on higher interest rates or inflation in order to deal with our excessive borrowing.
The GOP does in fact own this war. This is what the Republican party based its substantial gains in the 2002 elections on. They’ve made support for Bush’s policies in Iraq a dogma of the party. They fought to get us into Iraq, and to make it seem like a necessary war, even as Bin Laden escaped into the barely controlled portions of Pakistan.
As for political power abroad, I don’t know. I mean, we got one part of the supposed axis of evil, but the other two legs of the tripod seem to be openly defying us, despite our threats. We’re having to mend bridges with the French, not they with us.
We Democrats have not shirked our duty in making plans for the war. Kerry, if you paid attention, laid out plans and did not advocate a cut and run policy.
At the end of your second posting, you clarify that you are an independent, that you try to use common sense and fact based arguments, rather than ideology.
But the very fact that you have to clarify that you’re not GOP should be warning sign to you. My old professor once said that a difference, to be a difference has to make a difference. What is the difference between your attitudes and that given out by the Bush administration? Not much, really. You’re supporting the same policies, using the same rhetoric and reasoning, and levelling the same charges at Democrats. You’re also accepting the same sort of B.S. about the unreliability of the liberal media.
If you trully want to live up to your claims, then don’t dismiss claims from my side of the aisle so quickly. The independents in this country have been far too quick to accept the right-wing rhetoric, too quick to dismiss media sources labelled Liberal. Your people have accepted Bush’s sob story about being beat up by the media, instead of investigating the very real possibility that the Bush administration has been kicking its own ass, ala Jim Carrey in Liar, Liar.
Posted by: Stephen Daugherty at February 10, 2005 07:58 PMDavid, re: your first comment
Taking the words of a few on the left and ascribing them to all liberals or progressives is like taking the words of Jerry Foulmouth Falwell or Pat Robertson and ascribing them to all conservatives. …It’s a cheap political trick…
Hmm. Somewhat like predicting a theocracy on the basis of Bush’s religious perspective?
Stephen,
I’m not saying he speaks for every ‘democrat’. But let’s be honest, he does speak very well for the ‘progressive left’. He is the distilled essence of the collectivist left. Ward Churchill is the professorial version of Michael Moore. In the past few years the democratic party has not been moving further center but further left, toward Ward Churchill.
And that is what I will say: your comparison is simply meaningless. A liberal might say that 9/11 is a consequence of American foreign policy, but that fact is not meant to necessarily be a moral critique justifying terrorism against us. It is a simple stating of the obvious. But understanding motivations doesn’t means agreeing with them, or short of that, the means used to address them. Your average Liberal sees violence as a last resort on all sides. We’re rationalists. We prefer diplomacy, talking things out.
Well said. And that is exactly why Kerry lost this last election. A liberal might(?) agree that 9/11 is a consequence of American foreign policy?
…What really is tortured is the slander of the the Democratic party and liberals by the Republicans concerning Communism and Terrorism.
Sorry, Stephen, but facts are facts. Much of the left’s support and sympathy for communism is a historical fact, not hyperboly.
Posted by: ericsimonson at February 10, 2005 11:47 PMRobert,
It is our duty to support our country. And our country is at war. Does that mean we bow to the government and muzzle our beliefs? No. But if you are really protesting the administration, why do you protest the Iraq war? Don’t protest the war itself, even if you didn’t agree with the rationale going into it. To protest the war is to protest against our troops, for the reasons I had stated earlier. Protest against Bush. Get enough support to elect someone else. Since that is not possible anymore, whining about it is not going to make a bit of difference. The majority of Americans who care enough to vote disagree with you and that is how a democracy works. The majority rules. But don’t make things more difficult for American troops.
Just because you have the right to say what you want doesn’t mean you should always exercise that right. Publicly denouncing the war gives hope to our enemies. Nobody can argue that point. To say it is your responsibility to speak out when you disagree with something is a cop-out. How about showing some restraint every once in a while and realize there is more going on in the world than your political or philosophical whim.
Stephen,
I will not argue with you about the Medicare drug benefit because, as I stated before, I do not like the legislation. Has it grown the government? Not yet, and if it does then I will be the first to admit I was wrong.
The problem with Kerry’s plan for the war was that everything he advocated had been tried prior to the war taking place. There is no way Kerry would have been able to change the minds of many European leaders because politically it is too unpopular in many of the countries to side with the United States. You can blame that on Bush if you want (and he likely bears some of that responsibility), but the fact of the matter is the French people and the German people and the Russian people would not stand for their governments getting involved. There is nothing Bush could have done to change that. I’m still surprised Blair went along with the United States.
I only stated that I was an independent because I do not blindly follow the Republicans like a flock of sheep. I do have conservative views economically and militarily, and do not apologize for them. But I also look at things objectively.
Do I think the deficit is getting out of hand? Absolutely. But military spending and tax cuts are not the problem. Too many useless domestic government programs are the problem. Too many entitlements are the problem.
When terrorists are trying to kill us and will not stop until we are dead, they are dead or we convert to their religion, I have no problem with military spending.
When millions of people are being slaughtered and the UN will do nothing about it because they have too many financial ties with the government doing the killing, I have no problem with military spending.
When we are in a recession and our economy is on the fast-track down hill, I have no problem with tax cuts to get things jump started (which have worked by the way, I just wish the money would have come from cutting unneccessary programs rather than deficit spending).
As for the liberal media bias, I did not say anything about a media bias. I simply said that in this particular instance, the media is reporting different numbers than Bush originally said on his Medicare plan without prefacing their reports with an explanation as to the differing timelines.
Funny you brought the subject up though. I happen to work in the media and know for a fact that there are more liberals (by my experience, at least 5 to 1) than conservatives who work in this field. To say that their views have nothing to do with what they report is naive. Besides, journalism as it is taught and most of its trade idiosyncracies are based on liberal thought. Journalists are trained to be skeptical and pessimistic.
Let me add that I have no problem with this. My problem is that many journalists will be quick to point out inconsistencies with Bush, but won’t point out the inconsistencies of many of his detractors. That is a problem for me. If Bush is two-faced, prove it. I have no problem with that. But also prove when John Kerry, or Ted Kennedy or Barbara Boxer are two-faced.
The sad thing is no single media outlet treats everyone with the same standard. You have to watch Fox News and CNN just to get both sides of an issue.
Working in this field it is easy to see that the media is not completely reliable. There are good journalists and there are bad journalists. Unfortunately there is no media source that I have seen that is completely without some bad ones.
There is a reason the independents in this country are quick to side with the those on the Right. Too often the Right makes more sense than the Left. The Left is often theorizing about what is right and what is wrong while the Right is using cold, hard facts. Sure that statement is a generalization, but I have found it to be true on the majority of occassions.
As for Bush being beat up by the media, I could care less. When you are the president, it comes with the job description. Even Clinton was beat up by the media.
Posted by: Joe Warren at February 11, 2005 01:35 AMEric-
Distilled essence? Professorial version of Michael Moore? Let’s be honest, what you want is an easy argument to believe you’ve won.
Ward Churchill is your latest strawman. Your latest method to save you from actually having to discuss our real beliefs, which opposes the terrorists, opposed communism.
But of course, that would be incovenient to the point you’re making.
Posted by: Stephen Daugherty at February 11, 2005 01:46 AMEric, as a conservative Republican I have to say that this sort of post, while potentially amusing to other conservatives, is far more likely to draw fire from the left than get support from the right. Five conservative comments (two of them yours) to twelve liberal comments? We might be right 80% of the time, but without consensus that won’t get us very far, and will just give them more ammunition. Let’s try to pick the battles we can win.
However, a short message to liberals here: if you intend to defend Michael Moore’s films, persist in Bush-bashing, and keep a persistent negative outlook on all things in the news, then you should expect such posts in response.
Posted by: Gandhi at February 11, 2005 08:46 AMStephen,
You might have a point if we hadn’t spent the last year talking about indicting Rumsfeld, and impeaching the President for war crimes.
Or if John Kerry had been able to actually say something nice about the first democratic election in Iraq in 30 years, if not excited. If every single liberal spokesperson and celebrity like Janeane Garofalo didn’t expressly liken everything that was not progressive/liberal as a form of Naziism.
I could go on giving example after example of liberals like this who do not represent the left but what would be the point? It’s all just a straw man argument, that is, pointing out what people on the left actually say.
I haven’t heard very many liberals actually disavow Ward Churchill, or Janeane Garofalo, or Michael Moore… Perhaps I am merely providing an opportunity for liberals to do so.
At the very least it is an opportunity to discuss the empty concept of ‘group rights’ and the supremacy of cultural identification as political ideology, or the overall banality and bankruptcy of multiculturalism itself as a philosophy taught in our Universities. As Ward Churchill has shown us it has become a kind of alternate rascism and fascism itself.
Posted by: ericsimonson at February 11, 2005 12:04 PMJoe:
It is our duty to support our country. And our country is at war. Does that mean we bow to the government and muzzle our beliefs? No. But if you are really protesting the administration, why do you protest the Iraq war?
I don’t understand…are you suggesting that people who disagree with the administration’s policies protest simply by saying “BUSH BAD!” without qualifying it? Don’t you think it might be more effective if they were to protest the specific parts of the administration’s policy they don’t agree with—such as the reason we went to war, the improper management of that war, etc.?
Don’t protest the war itself, even if you didn’t agree with the rationale going into it. To protest the war is to protest against our troops, for the reasons I had stated earlier.You gave no compelling argument why protesting against the war is protesting against the troops themselves. Many of the troops protest the very war even as they’re fighting it—why would they protest against themselves?
Protest against Bush. Get enough support to elect someone else. Since that is not possible anymore, whining about it is not going to make a bit of difference. The majority of Americans who care enough to vote disagree with you and that is how a democracy works. The majority rules.So what you’re saying here is that since Bush won the election that I’m expected to wholeheartedly defer to everything Bush does? Whining about it is not going to make a difference, huh? Just because Bush was elected doesn’t mean that he can’t be influenced. Bush himself may not give a rat’s a#@ about the public now that the election is over, but Congress does. If opposition to Bush’s most damaging policies is strong enough he’ll be forced to compromise if he wants to get anything accomplished and to not jeprodize the GOP’s new stranglehold on power. And before you start going on about “majorities” and “mandates” again…if Bush has such an overwhelming (but statistically small???) mandate then he has no reason to worry about the whining of us feeble few…so why not let us whine away?
But don’t make things more difficult for American troops. Just because you have the right to say what you want doesn’t mean you should always exercise that right. Publicly denouncing the war gives hope to our enemies. Nobody can argue that point. To say it is your responsibility to speak out when you disagree with something is a cop-out. How about showing some restraint every once in a while and realize there is more going on in the world than your political or philosophical whim.It would not be easy to make things more difficult for our American troops…if I remember right some of the protests are about their difficulties due to the administration’s mismanagement. In fact, I believe that they are getting more help now because of some of the protests. Nobody can argue that point you say? Actually my argument would be that Bush’s administration and his policies—and his great Iraq diversion—give more hope to our enemies (especially the ones that aren’t in Iraq) than the protests by the American public ever will…and the best way to ensure that we are safer for the long term is for the American people to clearly demonstrate that Bush does not represent us or our beliefs—and that our enemies should hate Bush and his administration but not America itself. Don’t call me a cop-out and ask me to show restraint just because I don’t subscribe to your belief system and you can’t understand my point of view. And I assume you this is not a whim to me. You live in a glass house, and you should learn how to properly maintain it. Posted by: Robert at February 11, 2005 01:19 PM
Eric-
You don’t get it? You show more interest in Ward Churchill than we do! When I heard about what he said, of course I found it objectionable. But you know something, I don’t care to give this guy any more attention than he really deserves.
It is a mark of your naivete that you believe he means anything to most Democrats. He’s a crank, not an authority figure. Of course, it is more convenient to your rhetoric if he represents all that is evil and traitorous about the left. Frankly, you seem to have more in common with him than I do.
Frankly, I don’t worry every day about who I’m going to disavow, especially when your side, you in particular are asking me to disavow somebody. Time and again, your objections have been based on a very selective view of things. It seems to me that the conservative press is perpetually outraged, and is willing to create something to be furious about, even its absence.
Garofalo believes that the Congressmen and Senators inked their fingers more out of solidarity with Bush, who they’ve gone to great lengths to protect, than with the Soldiers and voters in Iraq, who they’ve constantly let down. Garofalo doesn’t trust the sincerity of the Republican’s gesture. And she’s entitled to that opinion, especially in the light of the deceptions committed by the Bush Administration.
I’m sure you could roll out your share of Democrats you’re outraged with, but over time, I’ve learned to be rather hesitant about trusting the facts you provide on first blush. Too often, your presentation has been selective, and your picture of their motives has turned out to be inconsistent with the evidence.
As for multiculturalism, I believe there is no shame in being able to absorb the best in the cultures in the rest of the world, and create our uniquely American culture with it. It is part of what these terrorists fear- our magnificent ability to tolerate, to absorb their culture into ours, and put back out a synthetic culture that draws them closer to ours.
To condemn multiculturalism is to give the xenophobes of the world, like Osama Bin Laden, the victory. They want a glorious clash. We will shift the ground under their feet instead, and take the initiative from them.
Posted by: Stephen Daugherty at February 11, 2005 03:38 PM“If every single liberal spokesperson and celebrity like Janeane Garofalo didn’t expressly liken everything that was not progressive/liberal as a form of Naziism.”
Eric,
At what time did Michael Moore or any other “Liberal spokesperson” pretend to be speaking for anyone other than themselves?
When did being a celebrity mean that you didn’t have the right to speak up?
When did speaking ones mind become the exclusive property of the right?
You need to buy a norrower brush before you try to paint all the folks that say something against the current regime in Washington as “Liberal” or “America Haters” or “Unpatriotic”.
Just because you or I don’t agree with someone doesn’t mean that they don’t have the right to speak their mind.
Let no one forget that this War is a Republican War.
That’s nonsense. Large-scale U.S. commitment to Vietnam began with Kennedy; does that make Vietnam a Democrat war? Of course not. Neither can efforts in Kosovo or Bosnia under Clinton, regardless of opinion on their merits, be called Democrat wars. They were American efforts.
The only grounds on which a war could only be deemed belonging two one party would be if the Senate had a split-party vote on a declaration of war. Such a vote never took place. The closest thing we have to that is the bill passed overwhelmingly on September 14, 2001, declaring authorization of force against the perpetrators of September 11. The controversy over the “multilateralism” that followed was hardly an issue of split-party dispute.
Posted by: Gandhi at February 11, 2005 07:17 PMThat is, the “unilateralism” that followed. Whoops.
Posted by: Gandhi at February 11, 2005 07:20 PMGandhi,
“The closest thing we have to that is the bill passed overwhelmingly on September 14, 2001, declaring authorization of force against the perpetrators of September 11.”
So, what you are saying is that even though it has never been proved that Iraq had anything to do with Sept. 11th, Mr. Bush went in there anyway, against all the millions of protests around the world because, as he said, “he knew better”.
Posted by: Rocky at February 11, 2005 07:50 PMGandhi-
The issue with this war is that it got Democratic support on a combination of Republican political pressure and evidence that supposedly connected Iraq to the al-Qaeda terrorists. When it turned out that was B.S., the Republican stuck with Bush. That made it a party issue. Democrats were never hesitant about defending our country. Our hesitation was being detoured away from the pursuit of the enemy who struck at us on 9/11. Understand that, and you understand our anger at Bush.
Both points are moot because at the time we did not know better about WMDs. Both parties had the same information. The war was started in a nonpartisan manner; it doesn’t suddenly become a Republican war because Democrats decide they don’t want to fight it anymore. You can’t have your cake and eat it.
Posted by: Gandhi at February 12, 2005 12:36 AMRocky,
Of course every political group isn’t monolithic. But are you trying to tell me that the left had no sympathy with anything Michael Moore said or edited?
It seems as though no one who is liberal can represent the left. Hmm.
Posted by: ericsimonson at February 12, 2005 06:09 PMStephen,
I beg to differ. What liberals say is relevant. What professors, who are teaching their ideology in colleges say is relevant, if only for that reason. Why would the left yawn, when a man who is obviously unqualified to teach at a university says such things. That’s part of what I am asking.
Posted by: ericsimonson at February 12, 2005 06:13 PMGandhi-
The Bush administration had better information than the rest of us. They were told the Niger Documents were forgeries months before the president made use of them in his 2003 SOTU, for example. They bought most of their revelations from one source, a no-no in the intelligence world, where you get other sources to confirm and cross reference what is said. According to Bob Woodward’s Plan of Attack Colin Powell and his staff worked through the piles of intelligence “field-stripping” the damn report of unreliable or unsupportable items, at one point throwing the damn thing over the table and calling it shit. What’s even sadder is that even the stuff he presents to the UN is debunked for the most part.
The failure of intelligence was so widespread that the only banned weapons program that a congressional report confirmed was there was the missile program. Every other claim made was bogus.
The Administration was putting people to work padding up a case they knew did not justify the war from the beginning. They worked the intelligence collection like a menu at a Chinese restaurant, picking whatever seemed to support their cause.
Intelligence is not about assembling propaganda, dream worlds that convince people to follow the politician’s causes. They are about telling us where we stand, and what we might be able to do to resolve the issue. The Republicans decided that their good intentions were more important than their good faith in attaining informed consent from the American people. For that thousands have died.
Fact is, we will fight this war. Its the next war Bush has to prove his good faith on, because he has burned an awful lot of credibility by his actions, and we want better leadership than that. For the time being, he will have to suffer our slings and arrows, because he hung us out to dry. Why do you think the Democrats wanted assurances that this was a fight against terrorism and WMDS? We wanted it because that is what the Democrats wanted: a focused war on terror against real threats.
We will fight this war to the end. Just don’t expect us to praise Bush for his wisdom while we do it. You can’t manipulate us and expect isolated victories to restore our trust in the Bush administration.
Eric-
The better way to put it is that no one liberal represents the left. We don’t much subscribe to the idea that we have to listen to some authority out there. We operate on a marketplace of ideas, you guys operate on a supply chain of them.
Fact is, when this guy talks about comparing 9/11 victims to war criminals, nobody much buys what he says, so nobody much feels the need to shout him down. We feel people are generally intelligent enough to determine his looniness and his fringiness for themselves.
And so far, we’ve been right. This is the marketplace of ideas- the vast majority of Americans will not buy what this man sells. We don’t need to treat every crank with provocative claims like they’re some sort of biohazard that must be quarantined. Believe it or not, morality and conscience are pretty difficult to shake, and the average person is not that dumb in this day and age.
Fact is, we Democrats trust people to reject the Ward Churchills of the world. We don’t need to be such control freaks about things. We don’t need to shut him up. People will put their own distance between his beliefs and theirs.
You just don’t have faith in people, that’s your problem.
Posted by: Stephen Daugherty at February 13, 2005 02:35 AMStephen,
These are good. Let me parse this out with a response, if I may.
The better way to put it is that no one liberal represents the left.
Maybe it would help if there were someone to represent the left. But then part of being left is support for collectivism, so that might make sense. However, these ‘crackpots’ seem to end up representing it by default. Perhaps we can agree on a percentage of how many liberals it takes to represent the left?
We don’t much subscribe to the idea that we have to listen to some authority out there. We operate on a marketplace of ideas, you guys operate on a supply chain of them.
I hope it’s not a free market of ideas, because, as we all know free markets are faulty, and prone to corruption, and need considerable regulation in order to benefit society fully. ;)
Fact is, when this guy talks about comparing 9/11 victims to war criminals, nobody much buys what he says, so nobody much feels the need to shout him down. We feel people are generally intelligent enough to determine his looniness and his fringiness for themselves.
Except that he is a tenured professor, possibly because of his positions and opinions and not in spite of them. I would guess that at least 5% and perhaps as many as 10% of ‘liberals’ do agree with him on many points and would tell you so. In fact I’ve met some.
And so far, we’ve been right. This is the marketplace of ideas- the vast majority of Americans will not buy what this man sells. We don’t need to treat every crank with provocative claims like they’re some sort of biohazard that must be quarantined. Believe it or not, morality and conscience are pretty difficult to shake, and the average person is not that dumb in this day and age.
I agree. You may have noticed that since the eighties the country has become more and more conservative. The free market of ideas does work. Even on talk radio. And Foxnews. Except that, as I recall, those mediums are fascist because of their predominantly conservative political makeup. (Not that you said that, mind you, but a preponderance of liberal comments seem to be indicating that a critical mass of ‘representative statements’ may be close at hand.)
Fact is, we Democrats trust people to reject the Ward Churchills of the world. We don’t need to be such control freaks about things. We don’t need to shut him up. People will put their own distance between his beliefs and theirs.
I also trust people to reject the Ward Churchills of the world. The fact is, most have. I’m not worried that Ward Churchill needs to be shut up. He has every right to espouse his views that America is evil. But should he be teaching that as ‘Ethnic Studies’?
Because that’s what the real issue is here. His views aren’t all that out of line with many on the left. The idea of multiculturalism, as it is blandly defined, is not contentious. Melting pot. Assimilation. Tolerance. But the version that the left actually teaches is laden with the message that America is wrong and in fact evil, like Nazi Germany. …and that white males in particular are somewhat… well, inherently evil.
There is not just one Ward Churchill, Stephen. How many ethnic studies professors do you think teach anything about America that is positive? Have you ever read some of the stuff that comes out of this field? I can assure you that the level of political diversity among ethnic studies professors is next to zero.
Posted by: ericsimonson at February 13, 2005 04:22 AMEric-
Collectivism? Individualism. We let people make their own damn minds up, which means nobody represents everybody’s view in any absolute sense. Collectivism is you trying to force the collective to share the same opinion. Where your party seems to put crackpots and their extreme beliefs ahead of common sense and pragmatism, and then require everybody to accept their ideas as revealed truth, we let people make up their own damn minds, which means that the marketplace of ideas decides.
As for that market place, we do favor some regulation, in order to insure transparency and fair play, even to the point of letting you guys have the opportunity to change our minds. An example, of course, is balanced budgets. Of course, you guys won’t admit how far you’ve gone in the other direction. We’re at war with Eurasia, we’ve always been at war with Eurasia.
As for the fact that Churchill is a tenured professor, who cares? There must be tens of thousands of tenured professors in this country whose views will influence far more people. You think he’s 5 to 10% of the liberals, I say he’s less than one percent. But of course, neither of us are getting our numbers by scientific means, so it’s just an expression of our prejudices.
As for the country becoming more conservative, it is and it isn’t. Take note of Christian music, if you will: it’s gone from acoustic to electric, from strictly gospel to rock, alternative and rap. Your favorite media outlet, FOX, puts out content full of sex and violence, as do many of the conservative-run outlet. They’re even getting into pornography.
Yes, some of the free-market ideologies are popular right now. But they’re not as popular as they were during the Clinton administration, after all the “reforms” of the Republican congress came back to bite us in scandal and stock market chaos. Give people enough time, and they’ll find they want the powerful to have to play by rules. We don’t like getting pushed around, decieved, and bankrupted on account of their dishonesty and corruption.
I don’t find my definition of multiculturalism to be that bland. I find it to be a rather compelling vision of our world. In the end, what defeated communism and the Soviet Union was the gap between how the state wanted itself perceived, and how people really saw it and knew it to be. The freedom to hate one’s country is a necessity, because with it implicitly comes the freedom to criticize the government and dislike its leaders. That is a necessary freedom, for anybody who seeks reform and accountability.
I am not going to get all paranoid about what ethnic studies teachers are telling students, because I believe with our freedoms that those who disagree can take different professors or go to different colleges that fit their sensibilities better.
I think you operate from a prejudice about Liberals that blinds you to the advantages of our approach. Perhaps ethnic studies is a strident field, but if it is, it really doesn’t represent our view. Our moderation isn’t an act to cover hidden extremism, it is our honest opinion. The sooner you accept that we are not trying to fool you when we say that we are willing to go to war, or that we support America, the sooner this discussion can head into more productive waters of discourse.
Posted by: Stephen Daugherty at February 13, 2005 09:38 AMStephen,
I think you’ll find that the left is laboring under a prejudice about the advantages of our approach. The liberal approach has been tried and found wanting over the last 50 years, and most Americans understand that. Roosevelt could not get elected today on a platform promising to implement the New Deal. Those kinds of policies failed and moreover were antitheitical to the individualism and freedom you think liberalism embodies.
The sad fact is that liberalism is a political ideology that has identifiable policies and ideas. Ward Churchill takes them to their logical conclusion. I can understand those on the left who see what it would mean if he were indentified as representative of liberalism. The call today from Howard Dean and Bill Clinton is that democrats must start lying better about their beliefs if they are going to win elections. No surprise, because that’s what they attribute Bush’s victory to; they think he’s just a better liar.
But I digress. Which is it? Is Ward a crackpot, unrepresentative of the left, or leftist ideas, or is he just another professor amonth thousands nothing to be excited about?
Posted by: ericsimonson at February 13, 2005 07:08 PMRoosevelt could not get elected today on a platform promising to implement the New Deal. Those kinds of policies failed…
Dream on, righty. Those policies were absolutely essential in keeping my grandparents alive during the depression, and for providing opportunity to their children and then to my generation.
Eric, your banal “liberals hate America” mantra got boring a long, long time ago. Liberals hate bush, and bush IS NOT America, as much you’d like to convince yourself that he is.
Posted by: Ben at February 17, 2005 12:05 PM
