Tag Archive for ‘Neocons’
The Liberal Hawks’ Neoconservative Allies
The problem with President Barack Obama’s foreign policy is not that it is “too pragmatic,” as recently alleged. The problem is that Obama combines the broad ideological assumptions of liberal interventionists with a leadership style that allows people more doctrinaire than he to dominate the internal debate and decision-making process. Libya is the product of his disinclination to reject interventionism in principle, and his simultaneous inability to oppose the liberal hawks in practice.
Beware the Neocon Advocacy of Egyptian Democracy
It is essential to take William (“Bill”) Kristol seriously. He has been so utterly wrong on so many things (America’s ability to run the world, NATO, Turkey, the Balkans, Chechnya, Iraq, Sarah Palin, Russia, Iran, Georgia, John McCain, missile defense . . . ) that his pronouncements merit respect. Being consistently wrong—in the fleeting guise of things measurably empirical, that is—they contain a deeper wisdom.
Barack Obama’s Reassuringly Vacuous State of the Union Address
President Barack Obama’s second State of the Union Address was almost entirely focused on domestic issues. This was appropriate considering the magnitude of social, economic and moral problems America is facing, and the attendant absurdity of pursuing grand global themes for as long as those problems remain unresolved.
Rockefeller Republicans
To the Republican establishment, tea party people are field hands. Their labors are to be recognized and rewarded, but they are to stay off the porch and not presume to sit at the master’s table.
The Dread Specter of Economic Nationalism
As Greg Kaza recently noted here, the decline in American manufacturing is a serious problem, one that accelerated under Bush and is continuing unabated under Obama. You would never know that from reading Jonah Goldberg, who wrote this morning that inveighing against corporations moving headquarters or jobs overseas is a leftist phenomenon with historical roots in the programs of Wilson, FDR, Kennedy, and Johnson. Unmentioned by Goldberg is the opposition of each of those presidents to the historic GOP program of high tariffs to protect American manufacturing. Also unmentioned by Goldberg is the possibility that Americans might be concerned about the outsourcing of American jobs as a result of the facts so ably highlighted by Kaza, not as a result of brainwashing by “progressives.” Any politician wishing to lead America out of our current morass must be able to address those facts, a task beyond both the Obamaites and their current opponents in the GOP.
Not Your Father’s National Review
What held National Review together during its heyday was anticommunism. The kiddies who post at NRO either don’t know this, or are embarrassed by it.
Fat Henry Is Still Dead
It’s bad enough that yesterday was Earth Day. Over at NRO, Andrew Stuttaford reminded us that yesterday was also the 500th anniversary of Henry VIII’s becoming the King of England. Except that Stuttaford, an English atheist who left England for New York, sees this anniversary as an occasion for celebration, and Henry as a “Liberator” and a far greater hero than the man he murdered, Thomas More.
We’re Shocked, Shocked! To Find David Frum Engaging in Character Assassination
Over at NRO, the online home of David Frum until January of this year, Frum’s former colleagues are expressing shock and dismay at his attacks on Rush Limbaugh, most prominently in a cover story for Newsweek.
Return of the War Party
“Real men go to Tehran!” brayed the neoconservatives, after the success of their propaganda campaign to have America march on Baghdad and into an unnecessary war that has forfeited all the fruits of our Cold War victory. Now they are back, in pursuit of what has always been their great goal: an American war on Iran.
Israel First, Again
Most Americans agree that the greatest problem America faces right now is a faltering economy. One would never know that by looking at NRO’s Corner on Thursday, February 26. Apparently the greatest threat to the Republic is the appointment of the former ambassador to China and Saudi Arabia, Charles Freeman, to head the National Intelligence Council.
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