Ideology Was Bush’s Undoing
Over lunch, a liberal friend expressed puzzlement. Citing the title of Tom Oliphant's new book about the Bush administration, "Utter Incompetents," he wondered aloud.
Like him or not, he said, Bush is not an unintelligent man, and he is a principled and energetic executive. As for Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and the others, almost all had long resumes of accomplishment in politics, government and business. Why, then, do they seem to have failed so dismally?
In my new book, Day of Reckoning, published this week, I offer an answer. If there is a one root cause to the Bush failures, it has been his fatal embrace of ideology.
Ideology is substitute religion, a belief system based on ideas that are often contradicted by history and common sense. Yet men will adhere to ideologies with a zealotry that borders on fanaticism.
Marxism, fascism and socialism were are ideologies, gods that failed. So, too, is democratism, the Gospel of George W. Bush.
Democratism is a belief that all men are equally endowed with a desire for freedom and an aptitude for democracy. All can be uplifted, and all brought to see that democracy is the one true path to peace in our world. In democracy lies our salvation.
This conviction lay behind the invasion of Iraq, Bush's crusade to democratize the Middle East and his "global democratic revolution" to "end tyranny in our world." And, as Woodrow Wilson's crusade "to make the world safe for democracy" gave us Lenin, Stalin and Hitler, Bush's crusade for democracy is leaving us with ashes in our mouths.
Yet, Wilson's heart was pure, and he ever exhibited the serenity of the True Believer, the unmistakable mark of the ideologue. One imagines Bush will be preaching the dogma of free trade long after the last U.S. factory has closed and the dollar has reached parity with the Mexican peso.
Bush's "compassionate conservative" appears grounded in the ideological conviction that all children are endowed with the capacity to learn through the high school level. No Child Left Behind was going to raise the test scores of all our children above the national average, as in Lake Wobegon.
Why was it fated to fail? Because reality is otherwise. All children are not equal in their innate ability to learn English or math, as they are not equal in their ability to play sports, music or chess. A second-grader knows that, but our elites reject it as bigotry and blasphemy against the egalitarian dogmas that define who they are.
So we invest trillions, empower bureaucrats and enrich the education industry, demanding it produce what it has shown for 40 years it cannot produce. Today's SAT scores are far below where they were in 1964. Like socialists striving to make their system work in Cuba, China and Russia, we have been banging our heads against a brick wall of human nature.
Consider Katrina. Bush was indeed disengaged. But Katrina was a failure of government, not of Bush. The city of New Orleans, the state of Louisiana and FEMA all failed at the simple rescue of 30,000 people stranded by a few feet of stagnant water, while TV anchors boated back and forth bellowing for government to come save them.
Where were the men of New Orleans?
Why did the men of New Orleans, after getting their families out, not come back in boats to rescue the black women and children? Why did so many cops defect and start looting? And why did the National Guard and 82nd Airborne succeed and end the hysteria in hours?
In New Orleans, society collapsed because its basic building block, the family, has collapsed, for all the reasons we know too well.
Yet while civil government is failing, institutions like the 82nd, Microsoft and the New England Patriots succeed—because they operate on other than ideological principles.
You don't vote for the head of Microsoft or choose the coach of the Patriots or commanding officer of the 82nd by elections.
These institutions reject egalitarianism. They put excellence before equality. They do not believe in a "level playing field" for opponents, but, with Vince Lombardi, that "winning isn't everything, winning is the only thing." They demand our best. You fall short, you are gone. They are intolerant of excuses and self-pity.
All who labor there know if they do not perform, the penalties are real: loss of jobs, income, prestige. In the 82nd, incompetence can mean dead comrades or your own death. They are one-for-all and all-for-one people. They are exclusive, not inclusive. They reject racial, ethnic and gender quotas and affirmative action. To the 82nd and the Patriots, there are places women simply do not belong.
Thomas Jefferson believed that in a republic a "natural aristocracy" of virtue and talent should rule. Those who run these institutions believe the same. That is why they succeed, and why government, when we ceased to be a republic and degenerated into an egalitarian democracy, so often fails.
COPYRIGHT 2007 CREATORS SYNDICATE INC.
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Re: Winning over and retaining a larger audience.
This well-written and candid piece had my backing for almost all of its duration.
Yes, absolutely, excellence comes first, and only.
Even as much as I love working with special children, I will tell you that theirs is not the same playing field upon completion of school as is ours.
Still, the piece vehemently offended me and lost my support upon reading the line "There are some places that women simply do not belong."
That's absolutely correct! HOWEVER, "It's not what you say, but how you say it." This applies to writing as well.
I had no idea who had written the piece, as I was only interested in the background of the magazine, "chronicles".
It was only once I had such a drastically negative reaction that I sought the name of the author.
While I was always aware that Pat Buchanan had a wily reputation as far too renegade for our society, I can now say that I have first-hand experienced such-
AND if a large portion of women feel as I do, then that's up to 51% of the population will similarly be stricken from any potential support group he or his fellow right-wingers may otherwise have.
PLEASE learn better public relations.
Cheney, Bush, Rumsfeld, Kristol and crew egalitarians? Please. It's closer to the truth to say they suffer from the lack of an ideology that leaves them defenseless in the face of the cultural power of the liberal media. Bush and the Republicans aren't ideologues, the only thing they believe in is money and Big Bidness. These are cynical men mostly interested in their own self-aggrandizement and helping their own class, and the fact that they are willing to render unto the great liberal Caesar everything else doesn't mean they believe all the baloney they spout.
"Like him or not, he said, Bush is not an unintelligent man, and he is a principled and energetic executive. As for Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and the others, almost all had long resumes of accomplishment in politics, government and business. Why, then, do they seem to have failed so dismally?"
Whether or not you intended to do so, Mr. Buchanan, you've given an excellent illustration of the complete lack of discernment which characterizes leftists. My few liberal friends speak in educated accents, using proper grammar while making similarly idiotic observations.
One liberal acquaintance of mine recently remarked that she was so disgusted with Hillary's refusal to address the war or to speak of impeachment that she was going to vote for Guiliani. "At least Rudy is pro-choice", she said.
To any sentient human being who has been alive during the past 20 years, W would have to appear as a complete moron, supremely incurious, absolutely unprincipled and decidely lethargic. How anyone could describe him as your liberal friend did is really incomprehensible.
"But Katrina was a failure of government, not of Bush. The city of New Orleans, the state of Louisiana and FEMA all failed at the simple rescue of 30,000 people stranded by a few feet of stagnant water.."
Excuse me. Katrina was a HURRICANE--a natural disaster that devastated a city whose below-sea-level sections should never have been built. That they were is the legacy of generations of human folly, none of which can be laid at the doorstep of W. Bush or FEMA, much as I hate to exonerate them. The rescues that failed should never have been needed. The human shortcomings and depredations associated with the aftermath of Katrina should never have been occasioned.
To quote the song: "And all the rest is talk."
To A Farrell:
There are places where women don't belong, just as there are places where men don't belong. Fact of life.
Excellent article in my opinion, but gives Bush and co. a bit too much credit. I don't think they're driven by anything except a lust for power.
to Aleksander T.
I think you misinterpreted what A. Farrell said. His basic point was an exhortation for political correctness. You see the insidiousness? We think PC and don't even realize it. PB turned off 51% of the population by just being anti-PC - this according to A. Farrell.
"Why did the men of New Orleans, after getting their families out, not come back in boats to rescue the black women and children?"
Oh, let's see....maybe the fact that FEMA and local law enforcement were actively thwarting and even forcibly prohibiting volunteer rescue efforts may have had a little to do with that.
"Why did so many cops defect and start looting?"
Cops defected? Cops are mostly just bullies with badges anyway. Maybe you were surprised to hear that cops were looting.
"And why did the National Guard and 82nd Airborne succeed and end the hysteria in hours?"
When did that happen? Was it before or after they teamed up with Blackwater mercs and local LE to raid private homes and seize weapons? Let me guess: you ignored all of this while it was happening and recently dug into some FOXNews archives to get a little info about the aftermath of the hurricane for your column here.
Try keeping up with current events as they unfold, and pay less attention to the MSM version of those events. There is a world of information available online which counters what TV news is passing off as fact.
To Chris Hewlett:
I see what you're saying, but my impression was that A Farrell was completely serious. Especially that part about learning better PR. In other words, being popular and mainstream is more important than being accurate. I often wonder why people like that even visit conservative websites. I guess the old Jacobin habit of infiltrating and causing arguments in the enemy camp dies hard.
For years I thought it was going to be women who would be the first to say enough and demand that something be done, but I was wrong. The media matrix and its deluge upon their emotions has left them nearly defenseless, backed into themselves trying to wrap themselves in the "niceness" security blanket offered by PC fanatics of all stripes. Respail was indeed prescient, but he missed slightly, our women won't be forced into "de-mythification" centers they have offered themselves up out of a sense of being "nice." The first poster being example one.
The problem always is determining who is part of the natural aristocracy. The organisations Mr Buchanan mentions are self-perpetuating oligarchies. The people currently at the top determine who enters at the bottom and who advances up the ladder. That does not necesarily encourage excellence but tends to encourage timeserving, boot licking and "house politics". Democracy was invented precisely to overcome those disadvantages and the Soviet system failed precisely because it was unable and unwilling to overcome them. As Winston Churchill once said, democracy is the worst possible system of government, except for all the others that have been tried!
Bush's mistake was not to espouse democracy, but not to see the contradiction in trying to impose democracy from outside. How can government of the people, for the people and by the people be imposed on the people?
This is idiotic nonsense. Bush's so-called "democratization" of the Middle East is nothing more than a fig leaf for the real reason for these criminal invasions/genocide, which is to eliminate Israel's enemies, as well as steal all of the oil they can in the Middle East, while trying to cut Russia, India and China out of the action. Fully half of the oil used by this country is produced domestically, and only a sliver of the rest is supplied by Middle East countries. Most Middle East Oil goes to France, Spain, Germany and Japan. The Bush administration, which is filthy with oil people, wants to control that oil as well as its sale, and thus make the profits from it, instead of the Iraqis. I have a question, however: how did all of OUR oil get underneath THEIR sand? Hell, if Denmark were sitting on top of a pile of oil, Bush would invade them as well, and try to sell people the crap that Copenhagen was an Al Qaeda outpost.
As for the "debacle" or "failure" in New Orleans, anybody that gets their news from unbiased sources, instead of the Zionist-controlled "mainstream" media, knows that what went down in New Orleans was a full-blown dress rehearsal for the imposition of martial law. In at least one parish, FEMA was even cutting communication lines to the outside world, so that only the views of Fox and CNN could get out to the public at large. They were trying to prevent stores like Wal-Mart and Sam's from re-opening, and they turned away s***loads of offered assistance, both domestic and foreign. What FEMA was engaged in down there was deliberate criminal conduct, and I defy anybody to prove otherwise.
One really has to wonder about Buchanan's motives for penning such tripe. Is it possible that he's truly this ignorant about what's going on? Or does he have another agenda to push?
I look forward ro perusing Pat's new book. He is usually good on themes even when his presentaion of the politics is resented. Free Trade, Globaloney, endless war in the Middle East and aspirations to Empire were all issues he saw years and years in advance of those "gentlemen in grey" running the republican campaigns for Bob Dole and G. W. Bush. The rise of Ron Paul in the teeth of orchestrated black outs and the politcs of calumny, should be proof enough of the enduring ideas of Republic Not Empire, Small is Beautiful and America's endless debate involving the role of government in protecting freedoms and encouraging virtue.
The best book on the essentials underlying this debate is Tom Fleming's, The Morality of Everyday Life and Josef Peiper's, Leisure as the Basis Of Culture. The best introductory outline of the real debate between Freedom lovers and virtuous citizenship, is the respectful debates of Meyer and Bozell some half century ago. Nothing has really changed very much for conservatives since those days, except being used more intelligently by folks who desire their votes but not their convictions.
1. “Democratism” as Buchanan uses it is better called “Wilsonianism”. I oppose it not because it is an “ideology” (Americans consistently misuse this word), but because it is wrong.
2. There is indeed a “global revolution” happening. It just isn’t what Wilson wanted or what Fukayama thought. The State -- especially its nationalist, centralist, and imperial form – and the Megacorporation, both of them bureaucracies, are dying. The factory-manufacturing economy, “the industrial revolution”, is ending, as the agrarian age did, and the “middle-middle” class of “middle managers” and the “Proletariat” “Blue Collar” class joins peasants and feudal lords as dying social strata. Protestantism, in its classic forms, is dying as well, the Neo-Calvinist revival itself more Evangelical that it wishes to admit.
In the place of the old dying order is a three way struggle. Myself not taking sides but just listing facts, those struggles are:
– racialist and ethnic nationalism vs a cosmopolitan style in an international economy, consisting of an international elite of business men, professionals, and High Tech processors, many of the last in in India
– empires vs both nationalism on one hand and on the other the revival of the polis and confederation.
– secular vs religious.
I would share Mr. Buchanan's sense of outrage if I also shared his idealism. Big M is right on target about the motivations of this administration, though I can't speak to his views about FEMA and NO, since this is the first time I'm hearing this theory.
Pat Buchanan is right and the Big M is wrong. George W. Bush does believe that democracy is the highest order of political development. He does believe that all the peoples of the world are entitled to a democratic system of government. George W. Bush takes to heart the scribblings of Natan Schranansky, author of a book that lauded democracy a few years back.
What guides Bush's thinking? George W. Bush, a drunken failure at age 40, found a spiritual crutch in Methodism, historically a religion of the nursemaid trying to alleviate all the pains of the world. Think of Bush as a latter day William Gladstone, the tower of the 19th Century Liberal Party in Britain, who did funny things like go amongst the prostitutes of London to try to get them to reform their ways. Gladstone was a sanctamonious prig and Bush has become one in middle age. Bush, like Gladstone, naively believes that government, if run in a therapeutic fashion by an enlightened elite, can raise the mediocre and wretched to the standards that God would desire. People who think government can do all sorts of amazing things tend to be strong democrats. And Bush is one.
Bush pushed war in Iraq for a myriad of reasons that congealed in 2002. A man whose false humility hides a strong arrogance, Bush wanted to one-up his father by toppling Saddam Hussein. Vindictive as well, Bush also wanted revenge on Saddam for the botched assasination attempt on George I, Barbara and Laura. But Bush was also swayed by the idea that he could transform the Middle East into a collection of democratic states, with the added caveat that these democratic states would want friendly relations with Israel. After all, Japan and Germany became democracies after World War Two, Bush would reason as has many neo-conservatives. We can condemn Bush's rationale as the analogy between the Axis powers of World War Two and that of the Islamic Middle East does not compute but Bush does believe in his fantasy. Men in his position of power who don't have the wisdom to understand that Islam is anti-democratic in essence should lose their power.
Derek Leaberry,
You give W way too much credit for thinking. Cheney/Wolfowitz looked for and found an arrogant, well-born and well-connected screw-up to front for them. They are seeking to do the same thing with America's Mayor.
Loving it. I may acutally read Pat's "A Day of Reckoning" while his previous books I didn't bother since we've all been hashing out everything he could have said with him and ourselves since the old sf site. But now I sense pat's own stylistic advance as a writer, more humor and an ease of wisdom etc. Cool. veryCool.
Quote of Pat's above: "Ideology is substitute religion, a belief system based on ideas that are often contradicted by history and common sense. Yet men will adhere to ideologies with a zealotry that borders on fanaticism." (end quote) -by el Pat
TJF once said men have a desperate need for beauty. All people do even the necessary evil, women - do as well (I kid, they're an unnecessary-evil... i kid again ... they're not 'evil' per se - see, I've come in to the 21st Century?) I like women. cough, err... no, I do! I love women too much - so i keep her - in a cage No - at arm's length. Or I'd get nothing done. Well, i don't do much anyway.
But peculiarly men in my opinion tend to get those endorphins going, you know the brain's Natural painkillers (which in and of itself is a good thing to do...) by painting bizarre pictures in their minds of open-ended inevitably 'ideas' and wishes and dreams largely divorced from reality which they nonetheless will subscribe to and become addicted to-(albeit naturally due to the juice i.e. the excessive release of those natural painkillers such 'beauty' engenders)-'as if' actual or real, and they do this much more readily as a matter of Fact than women do - who are reminded constantly of mother Nature and her reality first and foremost by the cylces of their own bodies. Men can be more hardheaded than women, some men, but generally women in the duo are for many reasons naturally more the anchor than the kite. Alone though a woman can become batty, confused, probably more so than a man alone, generally speaking.
Ok class, there's the bell! ... get outa'Here. ... wait sweetie - you stay after? - you may need tutoring???????! we're all adults here! ... I kid. (humor)
_____________________
Sid! Wow, you've changed. Take a side
The SPLC informants here have it all wrong, and intentionally so.
The simple fact of the matter is that all other races organize along racial lines.
There are tens if not hundreds of thousands of non-white racial organizations in the U.S. How many thousands of black organizations are there? They largest mestizo organization is La Raza ("the race").
Are these organizations going to go away because neocons like Richard John Neuhaus say "race doesn't exist" or "race isn't important"?
I've been around non-whites most of my life, and you are seriously naive if you think that race doesn't matter to these people. Only whites would be so naive to think that "race doesn't matter."
I'm not a "racialist"; I'm a Christian paleoconservative. And I'm not saying that only race matters. Of course, other things matter. But if whites do not foster some sort of racial identity, whites, and thus Western Civilization, are doomed.
sid's addicted to his juice...err, the endorphins in excess, that - 'beauty' releases. it's good in and of itself (human) -- good sid, good- long as he don't 'believe' his own act in this case. c'ept he does and wants to 'convince' others of the 'beauty.' [gee, wow - jeepers, sid - really?]
ladies for example would laugh... or simply not pay attention - something more real awaits - shopping.
___________
who can blame'her?!!!!!!!!!!!!
well, you'd have to be a genius like andrei navrozov, to get away with it.
go Andy! ol'Sid, i'm afraid he's still really only at the complaint desk? i hear ya sid. [i'm like an assistant...or, at least one of my 'hats'.] occasionally i'll go on vacation and hide as sid's assistant. a T.A.
Bush isn't an ideologue at all. If he and his clan were why was Barbra sent this past summer to buy a 100,000 acre ranch in Paraguay? The Bush clan is getting ready to bail out on the USA when the dollar collapses, so they know the policies they are setting in place are bad news for America. I wish Buchanan would stay true to his own ideology and quit flip flopping with his views on Bush and his buddies. The so called ideology is nothing more than a mask for the pure power lust they have.
"Bush isn’t an ideologue at all."
I agree. In fact, Bush seems incapable of even grasping an idea, let alone an ideology. As my uncle used to joke about a dense colleague, "I've seen people who don't know anything, but this fellow doesn't even suspect anything."
That sentence describes W better than anything I've heard.
Buchanan, in the main, is correct. Bush as President is the point man, the "face," of a failed ideology that has been driving America for decades. Whether or not GWB is an ideolog is ultimately irrelevant; he mirrors to us what is wrong with our national thinking.
@Michael Kenny (#10) -- you raise valid concerns. You are correct that the 82nd, Microsoft and Patriots are oligarchies. However, they serve to illustrate the point that excellence and successful governance are not achieved via egalitarianism. A study of ancient Cherokee culture (as one example) reveals how a "natural aristocracy" ruled and sustained an otherwise democratic society -- one that endured for centuries until overwhelmed by disease and technology. The secret? As Robert Reavis said, "Small is Beautiful."
For my part I found this an excellent article. The neocons' goals differ little from the those of the left. The two only differ in how to achieve those goals. What I find astonishing is the number of people in the comments who sifted through the article in a desperate search for something to criticize. Little wonder there is no 'conservative movement'. We agree only to disagree.
Democracy in England took a long time to forge, something neo-conservatives and their acolytes ignore. It wasn't as if the Magna Carta was forced on King John in 1215 and a perfect one-man, one-vote parliamentary democracy got underway. Less than seven hundred years ago, the flamboyantly homosexual King Edward II was murdered in a most excruciating way at Berkeley Castle. A little more than five hundred years ago, King Richard III had his young nephews murdered at the Tower of London so he could usurp the throne. King Henry VIII executed two of his queens. As late as 1832, few Englishmen voted and most Englishmen didn't have the vote until 1868. Women wouldn't get it until the 1920s. Democracy didn't come overnight to England.
And what of democracy? It seems to produce big, therapeutic government, a large welfare state that slants to the middle-classes because the electorate is at that social level, budget deficits, moral degeneracy legitimized, K Street lobbyists by the thousands and a plutocracy, best symbolized by the political exploits of George W. Bush.
"Marxism, fascism and socialism were are ideologies, gods that failed. So, too, is democratism, the Gospel of George W. Bush.
Democratism is a belief that all men are equally endowed with a desire for freedom and an aptitude for democracy."
This use of language seems uncharacteristically un-Buchanan. First of all, Marxism is just an honest, quick implementation of socialism, and Capitalism, a term invented by Marx, is just another form of socialism. It aims for the same goals by different,albeit more gradual, means. Meanwhile, democracy is anti-constitutional; it is mob rule, absolute rule by simple majority vote. All psychological and emotional juveniles have an "aptitude for democracy (mob rule)" Fascism is a different animal and, despite the "close" association of Mussolini and Hitler, it should not be confused with the National Socialism (Nazism) of Hitler, yet another form of Leftist socialism.
"These institutions reject egalitarianism. They put excellence before equality.. . They reject racial, ethnic and gender quotas and affirmative action." In fact they don't reject affirmative action. Meritocratic libertarianism is the new fall back position of defeated conservatism. It won't succeed because it doesn't deal with the real issue - the cultural and physical destruction of traditional America. What we are experiencing isn't egalitarianism and mob democracy, it's white-hating racism for power, and it didn't come up from the bottom, it was imposed by a "natural aristocracy", in very many cases without voting and against the wishes of the majority. (To a large degree these programs represent a particularly vicious type of class warfare waged by this "aristocracy" against its "inferiors"; there are downsides to meritocracy as well.) Jefferson also believed that the solid yeoman farmer was the backbone of the Republic, and however much he believed in a meritorious elite he didn't mean for that elite to come from all over the world.
Re #26
Lee,
"... Capitalism, a term invented by Marx, is just another form of socialism. It aims for the same goals by different, albeit more gradual, means. ..." is a contradiction in terms.
Capitalism, according to Marx, is characterized by private ownership of means of industrial production. It has no "goal", as it arose not as an ideology, but a de facto economic system (that displaced feudalism, due to industrialization). In contrast, socialism is often characterized by state or community ownership of the means of production. There are various socialist ideologies, some predating Marx (Saint-Simon, Owen, ...), and all of them antithetic to capitalism.
"Meanwhile, democracy is anti-constitutional; it is mob rule, absolute rule by simple majority vote. ..."
Anti _which_ constitution?... ... "Democracy" is much too broad a term... Yes, it can refer to a rule by simple majority vote of the mob (that is why at one time tyranny as a political system was preferred to such democracy in old Greece), but need not.
Ben,
haven't you ever wondered why Marx thought capitalism would lead to socialism?
Global capitalism today knocks down national barriers, corrupts tradition, corrupts the sense of property ownership ("every product has a price"), entices immorality esp greed, concentrates wealth, separates owners from managers, can keep workers in the dark about what the larger corporation they work for is really up to, and homogenises the work force into a proletariat. The free market can work without what we call capitalism.
Though I suspect you think I'm a loon, I recommend reading the articles offered here. (I'm not Catholic, but there's a lot of sense in their teachings.)
Btw, I've subscribed to the feed on this thread, hoping Lee replies. He'd give a better answer than I have.
If my memory of history serves me, democracy, i.e. mob rule, was yet another gift of Honest Abe’s war. The founders had envisioned a Republic where the power of the country was to be centered in the propertied, middle class. They believed only this class had the strength to balance the power of the international bankers and the moneyed class. After Lincoln’s war, the whites in the South were disenfranchised and the Negroes were given the vote without any requirements whatsoever. Further, they were promised anything and everything (the proverbial forty acres and a mule) to keep them voting radical Republican. Thus was our political system corrupted. Still to this day votes are something to be bought through pork and promises of pork. The entire welfare system owes its existence to democracy. That the Neocons would build a religion on the basis of democracy is the pinnacle of the absurd.
I agree with the post of #15 with the exception of GWB having a Christian motive............Bush is a Universalist based on his statements that
"ALL people worship the same GOD with different paths to get there."....Chuck Baldwin has done a great piece on the demented and heretical perspectives of our sitting President. He even points out the dates when rammadan dinners were served in the whitehouse and other non-christian outbursts..............In realty, GWB could be the most messed up ideoligist that has ever sat in the Whitehouse, and I'm not convinced that he will leave peacefully!
Pat, is that you? Dr. Fleming summed up Bill Gates as "humorless nerd" or something like that. Besides, Microsoft is just a big monopoly that doesn't so much innovate as "extend, embrace and extinguish" other innovators. If you don't believe me, just ask Judge Bork and Sun Microsystems.
Don't even get me started on the foul, adulterous Belichik and the serial fornicator, bastard sire Tom Brady. I'm loathe to mention this, but Mr. Buchanan is providing rope to those Cultural Marxists who cry racial double standards in reply to legitimate criticism of the Gangsta, Hip Hop sickness ravaging black culture. The odious, classless Belichik and Tomcat Brady are no better.
Which leads me to Katrina. 82nd Airborne aside, whoever suggested it was a dress rehearsal is right. Jefferson Parish Sheriff "Heavy Horse" Harry Lee, God rest his soul, had to personally threaten to arrest FEMA personnel after they cut the phone lines in the Parish's emergency command center for the third time in one day! Moon over Paraguay is right.
roho, my explanation about President Bush's motives should have included my belief that Methodists have much more in common with Unitarians or Universalists than in Roman Catholicism or the more vigorous Protestant denominations. I think we would agree that Bush's religiosity is a bit of a rainbow stew, sort of like Gandhi's.
"I think we would agree that Bush’s religiosity is a bit of a rainbow stew, sort of like Gandhi’s." end quote...
Derek - now if he'd only fast? ... Not a big fan of Gahdhi's myself - but i wouldn't put him in the same breath as bush. One went his own way after hardship...the other is spoiled. You can't grace that/state even with the term 'religiosity'. If you want to even intimate (for your sake of discussion) that 'term' it turns out 'trainwreck'.
Sound familiar to today's reality.
If it doesn't sound like it - are say for example - you perhaps 'spoiled' too?
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Derek..........I understand.........Has anyone noticed the "TRASH JOB" Michael Medved has done on Patrick Buchanan's book at Townhall.com?...........His concept of Christianity in American History is a bit brutal as well.......It is as if he tries to sell readers on the concept that there is really NO decline in morals within America, and that Buchanan is simply a Negative Prophet in the tradition of Jerry Fallwell!
excellent column by Pat B! Thank God for a clear-headed thinker with a real historical and philosophical perspective.
not to take anything away from your excellent magazine, but the latest issue (12-1-07) of The American Conservative features a more extended treatment of the column's concerns entitled "State Religion"--an excerpt from Pat's new book "Day of Reckoning," which I highly recommend to your readers.
sto kalo
skopros
Re #30
Frank,
"... haven’t you ever wondered why Marx thought capitalism would lead to socialism? ..."
Your choice of words here is ambiguous. Intolerable conditions do often "lead to" drastic changes for the better, since times immemorial. Which hardly implies that "good life consists of misery". Marx merely considered that necessary "building block" of his future socialism was the "proletariat", by which term he referred to the brutally exploited factory workers of his own era: no industrial capitalism – no proletariat, no proletariat – no socialism. That is what he meant by "capitalism would lead to socialism" - and certainly not that one is somehow "part" of the other.
One cannot agree more with your description of "global capitalism", aka "gobalization", of today. But "free market sans capitalism" would be an oxymoron, wouldn't it?...
Government can limit the amount of capital (distinct from wealth) a person may accumulate and require that beyond that either a partnership must be established or a guild of skilled workers (or a breakup into smaller companies). Also, guilds or at least the owners of the capital wouldn't be immune from being sued as are modern corporations... An investor investing in a harmful company ought to be held responsible as the enabler just as would the proprietor of a business whose employee commits a harmful act while under his supervision.
Variations could exist among industries. This obviously wouldn't be as flexible as capitalism, but it would correct many of the ills of capitalism.
Also, government could ban immoral acts, such as the sale of certain drugs and sex within the government's jurisdiction. Gambling could be banned and stricter regulations established for advertising. Schools could teach Western culture rather than atheist culture. Abortion could be banned. Immigration would be drastically reduced, and what could be produced locally would be preferred over the same imported from even a few counties away.
The emphasis of a healthy society is on virtue, not greed. Our current system is based upon greed, and the traitorous results our just dessert (it's far more profitable to break or change the rules via government, and why not if everyone's out for himself and one can likely get away with it?). We have established a structure as does any other society, and there's no such thing as allowing it to be as is its nature. Similarly, our society expects men to pursue greed, yet those like Bill Gates clearly have nothing more to gain. They pursue money like points in a video game, without proper concern for and indeed at the expense of their own society. He also probably wants to expand Microsoft because its his institution. Additionally, Gates has far too much power.
Chesterton's Outline of Sanity is entertaining and enlightening. As he put it there's a lot of diversity within the label 'distributism.'
Anyway, a favorite example of Chesterton's was that monogamous peasant societies prevented monopolies from arising just as they prevented harems, though some men are better farmers just as some are better with the ladies. Past a certain size, peasants would put a stop to the expansion, social pressures being the primary tool. I'd like to think that despite the larger size of modern society that the same controls can be reinstated, though sure government power would be more necessary due to the larger size.
The goal not being economic equality in the least, but rather a more localised and less extreme inequality. A business that is doing well ought to enjoy its success, but a man who focuses too much on profits and such can become harmful to the community. It's better that he focus on his family and community more than attempt a corporate empire.
Dr. Francis, though I never met him, used to appear quite critical of capitalism in his writings. I suspect he found it led to the managerial state that is our great enemy today. I've been somewhat of a populist for as long as I've been interested in politics and I'm also a Southerner so distributist ideas seem natural to me, now that I've been introduced to them. For me distributism was like a hammer shattering my ideological cage, of which I already had strong doubts about. Once shattered, I was free to consider what systems were best for a civilisation's longevity and strength, and admittedly I'm still learning. Such may well lead to too much free thought, but capitalism does at least seem to be a bad tradition, and there are older traditions to fall back on.
My apologies for the quick, jumbled response, but it's all I've time for atm. I figure it'd be more rude of me to not respond at all, until much later that is.
Speaking of Microsoft:
Lack of black engineers hurts U.S., Bill Gates says
http://www.eetimes.com/news/latest/showArticle.jhtml;?articleID=204200534
Until I read Pat and some of the follow on posts I was dreaming of a Clinton-Guiliani dream team so I could, at last, be taken off to a re-education camp and properly disposed of. Now I harbor some hope of making it to three score and ten.
I agree with everything except the Wilson thing. Wilson was really Wolfsohn, a Jew. He was the beginning of the end of America and the other two International Jews, Rosenfeld and Truman, also performed irreparable damage upon this nation. Bush, who traces his roots to a certain Solomon Bush (a Jew) is simply following in the footsteps of the "master race"...
You know, the "people of the book"...the "chosen race of God"?
What dreadful analogies this man draws.
Microsoft whose second-rate products maintain market dominance by "virtue" of unethical and illegal practices.
Sports where "They do not believe in a “level playing field” for opponents" and "winning is the only thing"
It is precisely these qualities that have pervaded the American political system and led to the mess it is in now, not to mention the disdain with which many of us in the English speaking World view it.
One assumes that Buchanan's Republic would still boast a raft of legislation to prevent Organised Labour adopting his ethos.
Bush’s undoing is his lack of intelligence; he is just a puppet being played by more powerful puppet masters.
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