I want to clarify something for She’s Right readers.
Two things, actually.
1. Those are not pot leaves on the template. If they are pot leaves, then they are only there to make the hippies feel at home here.
Okay, now that that’s cleared up…
2. I want to explain what I mean when I say that I am a conservative. There are many different kinds of conservatives. Two of the most talked about and immediately recognizable in today’s political climate in the US are the neoconservatives (neocons) and the social conservatives.
Neocons are the conservatives that drive the Bush Administration foreign policy.
Social Conservatives are the ones who focus on the conservative social issues, such as abortion and gay marriage. They are sometimes referred to as the “Religious Right.”
While I am a social conservative, in the sense that I have traditional values and I find it appalling that a civilized society such as ours deems killing an unborn child an acceptable method of dealing with unintended pregnancy, I am not a social conservative that believes in using the government to impose a conservative value system upon free people.
I am what is called a “small government conservative”: a term all but obsolete in our modern day federal government.
According to the Vermont Libertarian Party Chair, Hardy Machia, small government conservatives are a sub-set of Libertarians.
I used to think that small government conservatives (SGCs, as I will henceforth refer to us as) were a part of the GOP. That was true at one time, or so I am told, but that is no longer the case, which is the explanation behind my post-election rants.
Ideally, I believe that government is best which governs least.
Wait, where have I heard that before. Oh, yeah, Thomas Paine of American Revolutionary fame said that. It’s almost as if that was one of the principles this country was founded on.
As an SGC, I firmly believe that the federal government is too powerful. Many of the regulatory functions of the current federal government were reserved to the states by the Constitution and are therefore un-Constitutional.
An example of this would include the United States Department of Education (which rightly should be abolished), and the Republican-supported No Child Left Behind Act, which significantly expanded the DOE’s control over local education decisions. As an SGC, I do not support this kind of federal government control.
I know, I am a crazy, radical extremist because I want to abolish the US DOE.
So, there you have it; a brief introduction to the radical mind behind She’s Right. I have been wanting to do a post about my basic ideology for, well, as long as I have been doing this blog. Now I have.
More to come.
September 17th, 2006 at 2:44 am
September 17, 2006
Op-Ed Columnist
The Longer the War, the Larger the Lies
By FRANK RICH
RARELY has a television network presented a more perfectly matched double feature. President Bush’s 9/11 address on Monday night interrupted ABC’s “Path to 9/11” so seamlessly that a single network disclaimer served them both: “For dramatic and narrative purposes, the movie contains fictionalized scenes, composite and representative characters and dialogue, as well as time compression.”
No kidding: “The Path to 9/11” was false from the opening scene, when it put Mohamed Atta both in the wrong airport (Boston instead of Portland, Me.) and on the wrong airline (American instead of USAirways). It took Mr. Bush but a few paragraphs to warm up to his first fictionalization for dramatic purposes: his renewed pledge that “we would not distinguish between the terrorists and those who harbor or support them.” Only days earlier the White House sat idly by while our ally Pakistan surrendered to Islamic militants in its northwest frontier, signing a “truce” and releasing Al Qaeda prisoners. Not only will Pakistan continue to harbor terrorists, Osama bin Laden probably among them, but it will do so without a peep from Mr. Bush.
You’d think that after having been caught concocting the scenario that took the nation to war in Iraq, the White House would mind the facts now. But this administration understands our culture all too well. This is a country where a cable news network (MSNBC) offers in-depth journalism about one of its anchors (Tucker Carlson) losing a prime-time dance contest and where conspiracy nuts have created a cottage industry of books and DVD’s by arguing that hijacked jets did not cause 9/11 and that the 9/11 commission was a cover-up. (The fictionalized “Path to 9/11,” supposedly based on the commission’s report, only advanced the nuts’ case.) If you’re a White House stuck in a quagmire in an election year, what’s the percentage in starting to tell the truth now? It’s better to game the system.
The untruths are flying so fast that untangling them can be a full-time job. Maybe that’s why I am beginning to find Dick Cheney almost refreshing. As we saw on “Meet the Press” last Sunday, these days he helpfully signals when he’s about to lie. One dead giveaway is the word context, as in “the context in which I made that statement last year.” The vice president invoked “context” to try to explain away both his bogus predictions: that Americans would be greeted as liberators in Iraq and that the insurgency (some 15 months ago) was in its “last throes.”
The other instant tip-off to a Cheney lie is any variation on the phrase “I haven’t read the story.” He told Tim Russert he hadn’t read The Washington Post’s front-page report that the bin Laden trail had gone “stone cold” or the new Senate Intelligence Committee report(PDF) contradicting the White House’s prewar hype about nonexistent links between Al Qaeda and Saddam. Nor had he read a Times front-page article about his declining clout. Or the finding by Mohamed ElBaradei of the International Atomic Energy Agency just before the war that there was “no evidence of resumed nuclear activities” in Iraq. “I haven’t looked at it; I’d have to go back and look at it again,” he said, however nonsensically.
These verbal tics are so consistent that they amount to truth in packaging — albeit the packaging of evasions and falsehoods. By contrast, Condi Rice’s fictions, also offered in bulk to television viewers to memorialize 9/11, are as knotty as a David Lynch screenplay. Asked by Chris Wallace of Fox News last Sunday if she and the president had ignored prewar “intelligence that contradicted your case,” she refused to give up the ghost: “We know that Zarqawi was running a poisons network in Iraq,” she insisted, as she continued to state again that “there were ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda” before the war.
Ms. Rice may be a terrific amateur concert pianist, but she’s an even better amateur actress. The Senate Intelligence Committee report released only two days before she spoke dismissed all such ties. Saddam, who “issued a general order that Iraq should not deal with Al Qaeda,” saw both bin Laden and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi as threats and tried to hunt down Zarqawi when he passed through Baghdad in 2002. As for that Zarqawi “poisons network,” the Pentagon knew where it was and wanted to attack it in June 2002. But as Jim Miklaszewski of NBC News reported more than two years ago, the White House said no, fearing a successful strike against Zarqawi might “undercut its case for going to war against Saddam.” Zarqawi, meanwhile, escaped.
It was in an interview with Ted Koppel for the Discovery Channel, though, that Ms. Rice rose to a whole new level of fictionalizing by wrapping a fresh layer of untruth around her most notorious previous fiction. Asked about her dire prewar warning that a smoking gun might come in the form of a mushroom cloud, she said that “it wasn’t meant as hyperbole.” She also rewrote history to imply that she had been talking broadly about the nexus between “terrorism and a nuclear device” back then, not specifically Saddam — a rather deft verbal sleight-of-hand.
Ms. Rice sets a high bar, but Mr. Bush, competitive as always, was not to be outdone in his Oval Office address. Even the billing of his appearance was fiction. “It’s not going to be a political speech,” Tony Snow announced, knowing full well that the 17-minute text was largely Cuisinarted scraps from other recent political speeches, including those at campaign fund-raisers. Moldy canards of yore (Saddam “was a clear threat”) were interspersed with promising newcomers: Iraq will be “a strong ally in the war on terror.” As is often the case, the president was technically truthful. Iraq will be a strong ally in the war on terror — just not necessarily our ally. As Mr. Bush spoke, the Iraqi prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki, was leaving for Iran to jolly up Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Perhaps the only way to strike back against this fresh deluge of fiction is to call the White House’s bluff. On Monday night, for instance, Mr. Bush flatly declared that “the safety of America depends on the outcome of the battle in the streets of Baghdad.” He once again invoked Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman, asking, “Do we have the confidence to do in the Middle East what our fathers and grandfathers accomplished in Europe and Asia?”
Rather than tune this bluster out, as the country now does, let’s try a thought experiment. Let’s pretend everything Mr. Bush said is actually true and then hold him to his word. If the safety of America really depends on the outcome of the battle in the streets of Baghdad, then our safety is in grave peril because we are losing that battle. The security crackdown announced with great fanfare by Mr. Bush and Mr. Maliki in June is failing. Rosy American claims of dramatically falling murder rates are being challenged by the Baghdad morgue. Perhaps most tellingly, the Pentagon has nowstopped including in its own tally the large numbers of victims killed by car bombings and mortar attacks in sectarian warfare.
And that’s the good news. Another large slice of Iraq, Anbar Province (almost a third of the country), is slipping away so fast that a senior military official told NBC News last week that 50,000 to 60,000 additional ground forces were needed to secure it, despite our huge sacrifice in two savage battles for Falluja. The Iraqi troops “standing up” in Anbar are deserting at a rate as high as 40 percent.
“Even the most sanguine optimist cannot yet conclude we are winning,” John Lehman, the former Reagan Navy secretary, wrote of the Iraq war last month. So what do we do next? Given that the current course is a fiasco, and that the White House demonizes any plan or timetable for eventual withdrawal as “cut and run,” there’s only one immediate alternative: add more manpower, and fast. Last week two conservative war supporters, William Kristol and Rich Lowry, called for exactly that — “substantially more troops.” These pundits at least have the courage of Mr. Bush’s convictions. Shouldn’t Republicans in Congress as well?
After all, if what the president says is true about the stakes in Baghdad, it’s tantamount to treason if Bill Frist, Rick Santorum and John Boehner fail to rally their party’s Congressional majority to stave off defeat there. We can’t emulate our fathers and grandfathers and whip today’s Nazis and Communists with 145,000 troops. Roosevelt and Truman would have regarded those troop levels as defeatism.
The trouble, of course, is that we don’t have any more troops, and supporters of the war, starting with Mr. Bush, don’t want to ask American voters to make any sacrifices to provide them. They don’t want to ask because they know the voters will tell them no. In the end, that is the hard truth the White House is determined to obscure, at least until Election Day, by carpet-bombing America with still more fictions about Iraq.
September 17th, 2006 at 8:12 pm
Ummm…that was annoying.
Anyflerg, Hastings just got this book from the library called “Crunchy Cons” by Rod Dreher. It’s about “How Birkenstocked Burkeans, gun-loving organic gardeners, evangelical free-range farmers, hip homeschooling mamas, right-wing nature lovers, and their diverse tribe of counetcultural conservatives plan to save America (or at least the Republican Party).” I’ve only just started it but it’s pretty cool. You should check it out.
September 18th, 2006 at 12:09 am
That is so funny. I have that book on hold at the library! I am second in the queue, though, so I have no idea when I will finally get to look at it.
Dreher also has Crunchy Con blog.
September 18th, 2006 at 5:07 am
Charity, I recognize your problems with the national Republicans, heck, I agree with many of them, but what I don’t understand is that you’re tarring Vermont Republicans (including those who are running for federal office) with the same brush.
From the list of things you like about the Republican Party:
1) Fewer government programs — I’m not really familiar with Tarrant, but Martha Rainville has proposed no new program for the federal government unless the benefit would far outweigh the modest cost of what she’s proposing.
For example, the Office of Public Integrity that Rainville has called for would have a modest budget and would be more efficient than keeping records in two separate offices in the House and Senate. I heard Sen. Shepard say more than once, the way to change congress is to elect more ethical representatives. Great. Start with Martha Rainville, but then recognize that the current system of peer review does not work and give Rainville credit for trying to fix the system.
2) Lower taxes/less government spending — Again, I just don’t know where you disagree with Vermont Republicans. One of Rainville’s first campaign announcements was decrying earmarks and secretive additions to the federal budget of programs that haven’t been properly reviewed. She supports a Line Item Veto, and more recently she called for an easily searchable internet database of the federal budget so every citizen can see who requested what federal dollar and to whom it was paid.
I would submit that just knowing this level of scrutiny is available would drastically change the mentality of Congress in terms of spending.
3) Education/NCLB — This point is actually the most interesting intellectually. The federal government currently spends millions on primary and secondary education. Some could argue that NCLB is a long-overdue effort to bring accountability to federal education subsidies. Personally I think it is overreaching, but it’s hard to argue that the federal government shouldn’t demand (measurable) results for its funding.
4) Personal Responsibility/Freedom — Just listen to Martha Rainville sometime on this subject, you’ll come around.
5) Gun rights — Martha Rainville is a gun owner, and a firm defender of the second amendment (her opponent Peter Welch is a member of the party that is committed to restricting gun owners’ rights, in case you’ve forgotten).
I do not disagree with you Charity that there are problems in the Republican Party, but Rainville has taken those problems on from her announcement speech when she said “Republicans in Congress have lost their way.”
Give Rainville (and Tarrant) another look. I really think you’ll find more to like. I’m sure that Martha Rainville wants a smaller, more efficient federal government. A government that gets out of the way of citizens working for a better life.
On social issues, I suspect we disagree, but what prompted the anger in my earlier comment was that you seemed to be ignoring many of the areas where you agree with Martha Rainville and Rich Tarrant to say “I don’t like one or two stands they’ve taken, therefore they’re the same as everyone I have a problem with in the national Party/actions of the current congress (BTW, where’s Bernie been on fiscal responsibility?)
September 18th, 2006 at 12:45 pm
The “Crunchy Con” book is interesting – and it gives a label to something I couldn’t quite put my finger on. I consider myself to be in the “crunchy con” camp – but admit to leaning toward the libetarian.
The more restrictions and rules the government (local, state and federal) put on me and my family, the further I march toward the libetarians.
If the federal DOE makes you go all queasy – take a look at what’s happening in your neighbor state of NH regarding public school funding. To say it’s a mess is an understatement.
September 18th, 2006 at 1:05 pm
I appreciate you taking the time to comment again, Mr. Anonymous.
First, I have to point out that I will not be voting for Bernie (or Welch).
Let me take the issues you outlined:
1) Fewer government programs – the Office of Public Integrity is a new program and all new programs come with the promise of a “modest” budget. All new government programs end up costing more than projected.
The fact that she was promoting the idea of creating a new bureaucracy in the Republican Primary was extremely troubling to me. It speaks to her view of government – when you have a problem, create a new bureau or program.
What programs does she want to cut? Fewer government programs does not just mean no new programs, but cutting some of the glut that already exists.
2) Lower taxes/less government spending – I did notice that she supports the line-item veto. I even talked about that on my show before the primary as one plus about her. (Of course, only five people saw that probably.) I also think the spending database is a great idea.
The problem is that new programs and new spending (see below) will offset any benefit of cutting down on earmarks.
3) Education/NCLB – The federal government has every right to demand results for funding, but the federal education budget has doubled under NCLB, an increase of $30 Billion!
Not only that, but in her debate with Shepard, Martha Rainville said that NCLB needs to be fully-funded. That is even more money that the federal government will be dumping into education.
Education spending should be local, so the people spending our hard-earned money have to look us in the eye and account for the money.
4) Personal Responsibility/Freedom – You said, “Just listen to Martha Rainville sometime on this subject, you’ll come around.”
I admit that this is not an area that I was specifically criticizing Rainville for.
5) Gun rights – Again, not an area that I was criticizing her for. I know that the Democrats are the anti-gun party, but this is an area that the GOP as a whole has failed to be a vocal defender of in recent years.
Martha Rainville is not conservative; a fact she is proud of. That is okay for her and any other moderates who support her, but I am not a moderate. The only reason I would vote for a moderate is to keep the GOP in power.
The Republican Party in power right now got there through making promises to be conservative. (I am not talking about social issues here; I am talking about the scope and size (and spending) of the federal government.) They have not followed through on any of those promises, so I do not feel compelled to do anything to keep them in power, especially if that means voting for a moderate.
I am actually going to do a post about that later today (hopefully). Right now I am taking my kids to the park.
September 18th, 2006 at 3:33 pm
When it comes to political philosophy, I am an old-school, Goldwater conservative. This is a conservatism that arose before social “conservatism” appended an activist streak onto an otherwise libertarian approach to government.
In practice, politics is the art of the possible. I accept that intelligent, well-intentioned people can be liberal, conservative, or anywhere in between. The most successful government is one that persuades not just the leaders’ true believers, but one which reaches out and persuades as many “across the aisle” as possible.
Thus, someone like Martha Rainville, who is fundamentally a conservative but pragmatic in how she applies that in the real world, should not be rejected out of hand by the idealogical purists. The mirror-image would hold true with respect to moderate Democrats.
If one accepts that not everyone is a true-blue conservative, and that government should persuade as many of the governed as possible, then there should be no problem with supporting a moderate, pragmatic Republican whose guiding principles are essentially conservative.
September 18th, 2006 at 11:38 pm
“The federal government has every right to demand results for funding, but the federal education budget has doubled under NCLB, an increase of $30 Billion!”
So when the Education budget increases, it’s reason for a holy crusade. But when the Pentagon budget gets increased beyond overkill, we hear crickets.
September 19th, 2006 at 3:01 pm
The federal government has a constitutional mandate to “provide for the common defense.” It has no such mandate/provision for education.
September 19th, 2006 at 8:58 pm
“The federal government has a constitutional mandate to “provide for the common defense.” It has no such mandate/provision for education.”
Awesome! So let’s scrap education in this country and put everything into the military. Then we’ll surely succeed!
September 19th, 2006 at 9:06 pm
I can’t speak for anonymous, but saying that the federal government should not fund education is not the same thing as scrapping education. Education should be a local issue, not federal.
Oh, and I meant to say that NCLB increased ed. spending by $35 Billion.