Thank you America!!

...and the right to exclusively define that as 'progress' and the right to persecute anyone who disagrees.

And could someone please translate Kymar's latest into thepointis-ese for me?

 

I understand your reaction, as expected, especially on July 4th. Somehow you find it distasteful. That is your reaction, coming from your perspective, I don't share it.

That you would bring that up, on July 4th, is just what the right wingers are trying to do to control free speech and free thinking in this country. It is a new form of "McCarthyism" to attack those who don't agree with the administration....trying to make them out to be "less American" and unpatriotic.

However, on this day that we celebrate our independence from the tyrany of Great Britain, expression of the freedom of speech seems appropriate.

While I don't agree with everything the writer said, I do see a value in thoroughly questioning the current establishment. Why the heck not? We don't have a good track record in our political leadership of them demonstrating trustworthyness.

Is it now unAmerican and/or unpatriotic to question the motives of Bush and company?

Here is the bottom line for me.

I find both the left and right extreme in their thinking. It is natural in the political field for those who are out of power to seek power, and to look for flaws with the current administration.

Lord knows, that is all the right wingers did for 8 years of the Clinton administration. I don't recall the democrats on the whole, however, labeling them as unAmerican to do so.

What I observe for the most part in the current landscape, is the liberals questioning the motives and effectiveness of the "war on terrorism" while the right wing has taken to question the patriotism of those who are not "on board."

I find this untenable, and unproductive.

Why is it necessary to target the credibility of the left or the right?

It is necessary, because the bottom line both the right and left are not absolutely correct in their ideology.

If you cannot prove that the left is wrong in their positions you must then challenge their sanity, legality, personality, patriotism, etc. as a means to bolster your position that you are on the correct side of policy going forward.

The reality with politics, we often don't know what the right or wrong side is until many years later.

After the fact, Coulter is elevating McCarthy to hero status, when the tactics were considered, and are considered unAmerican. He was denounced by Eisenhower, and a republican congress at the time.

We saw this in the 50's and 60s', when anyone who questioned authority was accused of being a commie pinko.

The left is just as bad, Carville no better than Coulter in this respect.

The issues should be debated on the merit of the issues, not on the personalities of those presenting them.

Questioning loyalty to our country is a serious charge. I was listening to Alan Comb's talk radio program, who had on Coulter as a guest, and she was calling the democratic party treasonous.

A caller, who had served in the Gulf War, who had risked his life for his country, was a registered democrat. He was clearly angry at being labeled unPatriotic and/or treasonous.

Coulter finally backed off, and said, "I am just trying to show how the democrats are wrong. I am not accusing you of treason or being unpatriotic, just that you are a member of the wrong party."

Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but when opinion is elevated to the level of certainty, and dismissal of other opinions, when a case can't be made to a degree certainty going forward, there is the seed of totalitarian thought.

I encourage independent thought.

Few people can really reason back to their process of coming to conclusions. Often if you do take them back to peel the onion of their belief systems, it takes them back to some basic beliefs and values, that most often come from some religious beliefs.

We support freedom of religion, yet don't support freedom of thought because it conflicts with some religious belief?

Something wrong with that, and that is what I see that troubles me with the dogmatic right, and dogmatic left.

 

What Is Happening in America?
By Eliot Weinberger

This article was written for "Vorwarts," the official magazine of the German Social Democratic Party.

http://www.bigeye.com/weinberg.htm



Eliot Weinberger

Eliot Weinberger was born in 1949 in New York City, where he still lives. He is the primary translator of Octavio Paz into English. His anthology American Poetry Since 1950: Innovators and Outsiders (1993) was a bestseller in Mexico, and his edition of Jorge Luis Borges's Selected Non-Fictions (1999) received the National Book Critics Circle prize for criticism. In 1992, he was given PEN's first Gregory Kolovakos Award for his work in promoting Hispanic literature in the United States, and in 2000 he was the first American literary writer to be awarded the Order of the Aztec Eagle by the government of Mexico. Eliot Weinberger's most recent publications are the collection of essays Karmic Traces: 1993-1999 and a translation of Bei Dao's Unlock (with Iona Man-Cheong), both published by New Directions in 2000. He is the editor of The New Directions Anthology of Classical Chinese Poetry (2003).

 

I'm not sure what msfe is trying to show with this biographical capsule on the author of the Vorwaerts piece: that the piece may not have been "translated," but perhaps was written in English by an American intellectual? Is that supposed to make its dishonesty and stupidity less dishonest and stupid?

That the piece was written for the SPD rather than as some official SPD position does underline one fact that I neglected to mention: Even for the SPD - the party of Chancellor Schroeder - the perspective in that article would stand nearer the extreme wing than the center, which is generally seeking to repair the damage to US-German relations done prior to the Iraq war.

 

You can call it stupid and dishonest, or you could show how it is dishonest and stupid.

You expect people to just believe your take is correct, because you are a right winger?

Why don't we just all call each other stupid and dishonest, isn't that what the game really is? That way we don't have to make arguments that will convince any reasonable man that we are actually on the "right" side of policy going forward.

 

What I found distasteful were the lies advanced on behalf of an extreme anti-American viewpoint. Opponents of the "right wingers" might take some vicarious pleasure in the idea of Bush being made out as some fascist tyrant, but the author is also implying that all of America that doesn't support Bush has been cowed into abject submission and silence, looking on quietly while the next war of aggression is plotted and all values they hold precious are being trampled. It's the kind of thinking that helps justify anti-US agitation and even violence: If you really believed that author's conclusions, then the only responsible thing to do would be to oppose the US by any means necessary, up to and including political violence and war.

As I said, that author was going rather beyond "thoroughly questioning the current establishment."

In any event, I haven't questioned your patriotism or your right, indeed your responsibility, to "question the motives of Bush and company," but neither is it un-American to answer malicious lies and distortions with forceful refutations.

 

Die Väter der Bush-Doktrin

Rolf Hosfeld

Kaum eine US-Regierung war so von intellektuellen Visionären und mächtigen Braintrusts umgeben wie die gegenwärtige. Sie hatten Amerikas Präventivschlag-Strategie schon formuliert, bevor die heutige Administration an der Macht war.

Die Kleiderordnung zählt etwas im Washington Hilton, besonders wenn einflussreiche politische Kreise zu ihrem jährlichen Dinner laden. Doch der Präsident hielt es als Texaner damit nicht so genau, als er Ende Februar dort vor den Gästen des „American Enterprise Institute“ (AEI) auftrat. „Eigentlich“, scherzte er zu Beginn seiner Rede, „wollten sie mich an der Tür gleich zurückweisen, aber Irving Kristol sagte: Ich kenne den Burschen, lasst ihn rein“.

Irving Kristol ist der Doyen des AEI, von dem Ronald Reagan einst sagte, es sei der bei weitem einflussreichste Think Tank des Landes. Kristol gilt als einer der Väter des amerikanischen Neokonservatismus. 1920 geboren, war er bereits eine Bekanntheit unter New Yorker Intellektuellen, als er Anfang der 50er-Jahre mit dem britischen Schriftsteller Stephen Spender das legendäre Magazin „Encounter“ herausbrachte.

Der ehemalige Trotzkist galt damals als demokratischer Linker. „So lange ich mich erinnern kann“, sagt er, „war ich irgendwie Neo: Neo-Marxist, Neo-Trotzkist, Neo-Liberaler, und Neo-Konservativer“. Neokonservative sind konservative Revolutionäre, die die Welt verändern wollen. In seiner Jugend radikal zu sein, ist wie eine erste Liebe, schrieb Kristol in seinen „Memoiren eines Trotzkisten“: „Das Mädchen mag sich schließlich als verdorben herausstellen, aber die Erfahrung der Liebe bleibt“. Heute ist Irving Kristol ein Bush-Mann.

George W. Bush gilt gemeinhin als ein intellektuell anspruchsloser Politiker. Doch die Wahrheit ist, dass selten eine amerikanische Regierung so sehr von intellektuellen Visionen geprägt wurde wie die heutige. „Sie machen einen so guten Job“, verkündete der Präsident auf besagtem Think-Tank-Dinner im Hilton, „dass sich meine Administration zwanzig von Ihren Köpfen ausgeliehen hat.“

Die Köpfe selbst wollen es gern umgekehrt sehen. Irving Kristols Sohn William, Chefredakteur des von Rupert Murdoch finanzierten neokonservativen Kampfblatts „Weekly Standard“, gründete 1997 im Haus des AEI das „Project for the New American Century“ (PNAC), das alle „Neos“ seines Vaters in der grandiosen Vision einer Weltrevolution amerikanischer Werte (unter anderem durch Präventivkriege) zusammenfasst. Er sieht es eher so, dass Bush mit der Zeit „einer von uns“ geworden ist. „Wir vom Weekly Standard und dem Project for the New American Century hatten vieles von dem bereits formuliert, was später zur Bush-Doktrin wurde“, erzählte Kristol kürzlich in einem Interview, „die Konzentration auf Regimewechsel, auf Förderung der Demokratie, und die Prävention der Ausbreitung von Massenvernichtungswaffen in der neuen Welt nach dem Kalten Krieg.“ Gründungsmitglieder des PNAC waren unter anderem Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld und Paul Wolfowitz. „Die Geschichte des 20. Jahrhunderts sollte uns gelehrt haben die Verhältnisse zu beeinflussen, bevor Krisen entstehen“, schrieben sie bereits 1997 in die Statuten des Projekts, „und Bedrohungen zu erwidern, bevor das Unheil eintritt“. Es ging und geht um Amerikas neue militärische Doktrin. Einer von Kristols Freunden ist der stellvertretende Verteidigungsminister Paul Wolfowitz, der wie ein Rufer in der Wüste schon kurz nach dem Ende des Kalten Krieges Amerikas durch nichts umstrittene Vormachtstellung auf der Weltbühne anmahnte.

Wolfowitz gehörte wie Kristol zum Kreis des neokonservativen Chicagoer Philosophen Allan Bloom. In den 80er-Jahren erzielte Bloom mit einem Buch über den „Niedergang des amerikanischen Geistes“ sensationelle Auflagen. Bloom identifizierte den Geist Amerikas mit absoluten moralischen Werten und applaudierte Ronald Reagan, als der die Sowjetunion klar und deutlich als „Reich des Bösen“ bezeichnete. Relativismus der Werte war für ihn und seine Schüler eine von Nietzsche ausgehende Influenza aus Deutschland, die besonders seit den 60er-Jahren amerikanische Linke und Liberale überfallen und die Nation geschwächt hatte. Als deren fatalstes Krankheitssymptom betrachteten sie die Entspannungspolitik.

Amerikanische Neokonservative sind von je her Entspannungsgegner gewesen, je weiter links sie einmal dachten, oft desto mehr. Was für manche gestandenen Konservativen des Landes so nicht zutrifft. Sie waren immer erklärte Feinde einer Herrschaft des „Bösen“ – wie der Ex-Trotzkist Irving Kristol bereits bei seiner ersten Liebe, der Weltrevolution, wie aber auch der fundamentalistische Justizminister John Ashcroft nach Lektüre gewisser Sätze der Bibel. Dieses Bündnis der „Rechten von links“ mit christlichen Fundamentalisten ist das eigentliche Explosivgemisch der Bush-Administration. Ginge es nur nach dem Willen der neokonservativen Ideologen, folgte nun die Wiederauferstehung in ein globales amerikanisches Jahrhundert. George W. Bush scheint sogar als Person dafür zu stehen. Er ist nach vier Jahrzehnten lässigem Leben und anschließender Bekehrung das lebende Symbol solcher Wiedergeburt.

Paul Wolfowitz verkündete kurz vor dem Irak-Krieg den historischen Zeitpunkt, in dem der Westen sich global neu definiert, „in Wertbegriffen, Werten der Freiheit, Toleranz und Demokratie“. Jetzt stellt sich heraus, dass der Moralist in Bezug auf die irakischen Massenvernichtungswaffen bewusst und mit taktischem Kalkül gelogen hat, um einen völkerrechtswidrigen Erstschlag zu legitimieren. Ist die neokonservative Revolution am Ende, bevor sie richtig begonnen hat? Mit oder ohne Wolfowitz‘ Beichte dürfte, so Kenner des Landes, nach Irak keine Mehrheit mehr für einen weiteren „Präventivkrieg“ zu gewinnen sein. Der millenaristische Kreuzzug der Neokonservativen wird vielleicht doch nicht zur permanenten Revolution, und Amerika besinnt sich, nicht zuletzt auf Grund der Wirtschaftslage, wieder auf das, was ansteht.


http://www.vorwaerts.de/allother.php/iAid/5720

 

I suppose I could have critiqued the entire piece line by line. Instead, I gave two examples, one for each charge - in sum:

LIE: That there's been a news blackout in the US regarding the aftermath of the Iraq war and the difficulties encountered.

STUPIDITY (connected to the above lie): That the US is preparing some major military operation against Iran.

This is a perfect example of why I sometimes find arguing with you so tiresome. It's as though you skim the thesis statements, topic sentences, and concluding generalizations in my posts and ignore the illustrations and evidence that follow or underlie them. The same thing occurred a couple of weeks ago when you seemed to take offense over my characterization of a certain writer's statement (actually a rhetorical question) as either ignorant or "loony left." At that time, I provided a couple of paragraphs worth of argument and evidence suggesting why his suggestion (that Saddam may "never" have possessed WMDs) was inane. For page after page thereafter, you insisted that I had merely engaged in "name-calling."

I do "show" why I believe my criticisms to be true. Do you consider my "showings"?

 

You seem to confuse anti-American with anti-Bush and his policy. Fascinating. Where is it written in our constitution that citizenship and being a "good American" requires moral support of the current administration?

I didn't find the article anti-American at all, just anti-Bush and his policy.

This is what is most disturbing about the right wing these days, the belief that you are with them or against them, that you either accept that they are correct, or you are labeled as treasonous or unpatriotic, and unAmerican.

It reminds me very much of the right wing of the 60's and their hatred, bigotry, smugness, self-righteous, approach to issues.

"America, love it or leave it" sentiment is reborn by the current right wingers.

This fanatical, dogmatic style of thought disturbs me.

 

I wrote that "the author is also implying that all of America that doesn't support Bush has been cowed into abject submission and silence, looking on quietly while the next war of aggression is plotted and all values they hold precious are being trampled."

If I belonged to that rest of America, I would find that implication insulting. Regardless of what side you're on, the portrait is obviously inaccurate. And are you saying that American liberals, or non-Republicans, don't or shouldn't have any problem with people laying out justifications for war against the United States?