A good book to read for those curious about serious, conservative philosophy
He inherited a massive mess from “conservative” (???) Republicans who held power from 1994 (Remember the G.O.P takeover led by Newt Gingrich with his “Contract With America” and all the lasting “radical change” that was going to bring? Like term limits?) until 1996, when voters got fed up with the needless and bloody and costly invasion of Iraq, and even then the Bushies managed to create a bigger mess of an economy and a war for whoever was to follow him.
You have to hand it to us Americans–we got short little spans of attention and virtually no sense of even the most recent history.
The very people in Congress and the media who agitated for the policies that got us in this economic mess-and the bloody, needless war in Iraq–now refuse to accept any responsiblity for the mess since it’s easier simply to dump it on Obama and create bizarre distractions at every turn (he’s not a U.S. citizen, he doesn’t want to win the wars, he’s a Marxist (the most bizarre of all if you’ve ever read and studied Marx and Adam Smith and his vision of capitalism).
At any rate, Andrew Sullivan–the disaffected Republican conservative who now supports Obama and laments the way that real and principled conservatism has yielded to “neo-conservative” and “teabag” fanaticism, has something incisive to say about it all:
“In some respects,” Andrew writes, “the right, however unhinged, understands the importance of what Obama has accomplished more than the purist, whiny left.
“Yes, this first year is marked more by the miracles of what didn’t happen – a Second Great Depression, a Second 9/11, an Israeli strike on Iran, a banking collapse, a health insurance reform failure – than what did. And yes, Obama is on notice that, whatever the enormity of the mess he inherited, the opposition has no sense of responsibility for any of it and will blame him for everything and anything. All he has going for him is the American public’s ability to see through the dust and fury to the realities beneath.
“And Obama is changing those realities. More than most seem to currently grasp. This is liberalism’s moment – its most fortuitous since 1964, its chance to prove that government is indeed needed at times, as long as it knows its limits, and the balance of the American polity needs active, intelligent government action now. What Obama is doing is trying to cement this new liberal era in the conservative institutional structure of American government.
“Against massive, unrelenting, well-moneyed, ideologically manic opposition – and a fickle, purist, prickly liberal elite in his own party.
“Well, no one said it would be easy.”
–
Andrew also is insistent that Obama should fire the head of Homeland Security and roll a few other heads, as they say, for all the security lapses. If not, Andrew Sullivan says and I agree 452 percent, he’ll be no better than W., who never held anybody accountable for incompetence or unacceptable job performance (“Not acceptable”: Obama’s own word for the latest lapse in airplane terrorism security.) Indeed, if this President doesn’t do some housecleaning in the national security quarters, he’s no better than the Bush Republicans who ran the country into the ground.
Well, that’s a little rash.
Nothing’s worse than Bush Republicans, although, grown people wearing hats with teabags hanging off their heads and being taken seriously by whole news networks may be worse than anything I’ve seen in this life.
That’s my rant of the week and glad to have it out of the way so I can get back to rock and roll and football and the Holy Bible, not necessarily in that order.
