holmes writes:
Calling all Republicans to explain what's going on.
There are no republicans. Or, more correctly, there very few republicans, and those few that remain are so overcome by fear that they have lost the courage to stand up for republican principles.
The last real republican president was Nixon (ok, Ford, but he doesn't count). The Republican party has been taken over by radical extremists. Bush senior had some traditional republican principles, but he bought into a Faustian bargain and allowed the neocons too much say.
Ronald Reagan and traditional reps used to hoist the image of Big Brother as something we should fear and avoid.
The rot had already set in with Reagan's presidency. The neocons were the script writers for Reagan's acting role. Sure, Reagan did understand the importance of consensus, and was able to somewhat restrain the neocons. But it was Reagan who gave them a foothold in the party.
The neocons are anarchists. In their idealized kind of anarchy, there would be a minimalist government to just provide essential services. Everything else would be negotiated between rational people. They had Reagan run up a gigantic debt, in order to bankrupt the government. This was part of their strategy to put the government out of business, and make room for their idealized anarchy. The Bush debt is a continuation of this attempt to sabotage our system of government.
If you want to know what anarchy is really like, look to Iraq. The idealized anarchy of the neocons cannot exist, for it is incompatible with human nature. That Iraq is so much of a mess, might well be due to the influence of the neocons. They don't understand government and what it entails. They naively thought they could leave Iraq to the "marketplace".
Bush and Co might have succeeded in Iraq, had they immediately brought in substantial forces to keep the peace, immediately started rebuilding the infrastructure, rehired the Iraqi civil service to run the bureaucracy, and instituted something like the South African "Reconciliation commission" to redress long standing grievances. But they did not, because this was contrary to the neocon objective of an idealized anarchy.
That's my analysis.
Compassionate conservatism - bringing you a kinder, gentler torture chamber
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