Bush’s New “Axis of Evil”
George W. Bush must have been the despair of the history department of every school his daddy managed to get him into.
Consider his latest excursion into the history of the republic, at Southern Methodist, where the Great Man's papers are to be housed.
What's interesting about our country, if you study history, is that there are some "isms" that occasionally pop up. One is isolationism and its evil twin protectionism and its evil triplet nativism. So if you study the '20s, for example, there was an American-first policy that said, "Who cares what happens in Europe?" ... And there was an immigration policy that I think during this period argued we had too many Jews and too many Italians, therefore we should have no immigrants. And my point is that we've been through this kind of period of isolationism, protectionism and nativism. I'm a little concerned that we may be going through the same period. I hope that these "isms" pass.
Where to begin?
First, "America First" was the antiwar movement begun in 1940 and backed by the young John F. Kennedy and his brother Joe, Gerald Ford and ex-president Herbert Hoover. It had nothing to do with the 1920s.
In the Harding-Coolidge decade, America was deeply interested in "what happens in Europe." It began with Hoover rushing U.S. food aid to the defeated nations of World War I and even to the USSR, for which Lenin personally thanked the Americans.
In 1921, President Harding called a Washington Naval Conference that produced the greatest disarmament treaty of modern times, in which America, Britain, France, Italy and Japan agreed to deep cuts and severe limits on the strategic weapons of the day, battleships.
In 1924, Charles G. Dawes advanced the Dawes Plan to ease the reparations burden on Germany, for which he won the Nobel Peace Prize.
In 1927, Coolidge convened a second naval disarmament conference to bring cruisers under the same limits as battleships—but the British balked.
In 1928 came the Kellogg-Briand Pact, by which scores of nations renounced war as an instrument of national policy. Undeniably utopian, it was hardly a mark of an isolationist America.
Secretary of State Frank Kellogg won our country's fourth Nobel Peace Prize.
In 1929 came the Young Plan to further ease a reparations burden on Germany then being exploited by the rising Nazi Party.
Wrote British historian A.J.P. Taylor: "American policy was never more active and never more effective in regard to Europe than in the 1920s. Reparations were settled; stable finances were restored; Europe was pacified, all mainly due to the United States."
What is Bush talking about, and why is he trashing this Republican record like some court historian of FDR?
As for "protectionism," Harding did approve the Fordney-McCumber Tariff Act of 1922, doubling rates to 38 percent. But he also slashed Woodrow Wilson's income tax rates by two-thirds, back to 25 percent.
Result: Unemployment, 12 percent when Harding took office, was 3 percent when Calvin Coolidge left. Manufacturing output rose 64 percent in the Roaring Twenties. Between 1923 and 1927, U.S. growth was 7 percent a year. At decade's end, America produced 42 percent of the world's goods.
Compare this economic triumph with the fruits of W's free-trade policy that wiped out 6 million U.S. manufacturing jobs, one of every three we had, and put America in hock to China.
The protectionism Bush calls "evil" was the policy of 12 Republican presidents from Abraham Lincoln to Coolidge, who made the GOP America's Party and converted this country into the industrial marvel of mankind.
Is Bush oblivious to this? Did someone at Phillips Academy, Yale or Harvard Business School tell him Lincoln, William McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt were free-traders?
As for "nativism," the term dates to the mid-19th century and had to do with hostility to Catholics and Irish, not Italians and Jews.
The 1924 Immigration Act, to end the Great Wave of the previous 30 years from Southern and Eastern Europe, did seek to preserve the ethnic character of the country. Yet, after 40 years of that moratorium, the Melting Pot having done its work, America was more united and socially at peace in the Eisenhower-JFK era than she has been before or since.
Is every immigration restriction law "evil," Mr. Bush? Are Japan and South Korea evil because they have never accepted immigration? Has mass immigration benefited Europe, where David Cameron and Angela Merkel are bewailing the disaster of "multiculturalism"? Is your successor, Gov. Rick Perry, evil for calling for troops on the border to stop the invasion you failed to halt?
For eight years, Bush pursued interventionism, free trade and open borders. Result: two wars that have bled his country and reaped a harvest of hate, the deindustrialization of America and a republic on its way to becoming the new world order's Tower of Babel.
Political result: A wipeout of the GOP in 2006 and 2008, and Bush going home to Texas with the lowest job approval in presidential history.
Bush ought to sue Phillips Academy for educational malpractice.
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I am proud to say that I recovered from my GOP affliction and left that evil stupid party at the fresh young age of 21. Come to think of it, it feels much like the way I am so thankful I've been a Christian ever since I was old enough to make THAT decision. There was a period of 3 and a half years, after turning 18 and hence becoming eligible to vote, in which I walked in the political and intellectual darkness. And it was just in time to vote for Dubya in 2004, unfortunately. Good thing it was such a short period of darkness.
#43
I can already imagine this conversation.
Reporter: Dr. Fleming, what is the first thing you would do as the head of Department of Education?
Thomas Fleming: Resign.
Won't cut it. We need to dismantle every single public school in the United States. Only when mass education has stopped poisoning the minds of American youth can the war on idiocy truly commence.
For those who call me "extremist" and "unrealistic," here is an item on the Bitter Home Schooler's list:
"If you can remember anything from chemistry or calculus class, you're allowed to ask how we'll teach these subjects to our kids. If you can't, thank you for the reassurance that we couldn't possibly do a worse job than your teachers did, and might even do a better one."
Cheers,
Nicholas
(proud product of family school)
Between unsuccessfully trying to fight teacher's unions and just giving up with a resignation letter, I have a hard time thinking of Dr. Fleming doing the former.
Or any person with known human limits, for that matter.
All this talk about the false dichotomy of manufactured political extremes really frames the only political battle that is worth fighting, both in the ballot box and the media. As Dr. Wilson succinctly points out, voting for the lesser of two evils is still voting for evil. Having voted for W twice, I now realize that gives me some street cred with ensnared NeoCon Republicans who are just looking for a way through the confusion that guides them.
Shattering the current menu is crucial. It will also be painful, because thinking hurts. And we as a people may also find that many of our supposed enemies are our friends, and many of our so called friends are our enemies...
P.S. Mr. Liberty, I believe you are posting in the wrong section. The "Jerks" section is a couple of clicks over, and Dr. Fleming is always looking for prime examples.
I could justify voting for the lesser of two evils if the supposed lesser of two evils really were the lesser. With the way things are these days, I can't tell anymore who is the lesser evil. The choice is between the Democrats who openly hate me and the Republicans who covertly hate me. The end result is that I've never voted in a national election and the future looks to be more of the same for me.
This last midterm election, I was hoping the Republicans would lose big and be discredited forever. There are some decent Republicans out there but I'm not convinced the party can be saved.
Tongue in cheek of course, Pat Buchanan hints that George W. Bush is either ignorant of history or just plain stupid or both. The truth is more serious than that. Bush is a dishonest person who is more than happy to tell tall tales to half-educated SMU grads just as he did to Southern grannies and Republican stalwarts for so long. Yes, all politicians lie and some lies must be told. But Bush's lies are amplified due to his being president for eight years combined with his alleged piety which has always seemed to me to be part scam and part crutch for a dry-drunk. Bush tends to cover up his many deceitful escapades with his theatrical demeanor as humble Christian gentleman. Of course, the truth about Bush is that he is a cynical and arrogant plutocrat more than willing to play conservatives as rubes.
I believe that a vote for the lesser of two evils is still a vote for evil, so I try not to do it. Of course, when I don't vote for either of the major party candidates, I'm accused of "wasting" my vote. Just as Islam will no longer be Islam after it is "reformed" (and reformed Christianity is no longer Christian), the Republican Party will no longer be the Republican Party if it is "saved." It doesn't need saving, it needs to be replaced. The question is: what do we replace it with?
@30 et al
With regard to "terrorism," the thing the media and its police state cronies lust after more than anything in the next Tomothy McVeigh. The domestic, or home-grown, terrorist has them slobbering at the chops. Of course what they really mean is disgruntled, independent, white men suitable for internment and re-education in FEMA camps constructed around the nation in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. "Never let a crisis go to waste" is an axiom beloved by both the stupid party and the evil party.
And McVeigh may well have been a dupe set up by the Canadian moron that ran Elohim City. It would not surprise me to know that Southern Poverty Law Center made secret donations to that criminal enterprise.
I can not verify it, but some rumours even were that the Anti-Defamation League was once funding a marginal group led by one George Lincoln Rockwell, some Klansman I think, and this group of four to five people received great press coverage.
I like the upbeat positive attitude that would have the delightful nerve to do such a thing - "we NEED domestic enemies, some enemy, ANY enemy! A Black Panther uprising, a hippy cult, anything!"