Uh-oh: Self-described "stalwart" Professor Stephen Bainbridge (via Popdex) gives a conservative perspective on the current situation: "It's time for us conservatives to face facts. George W. Bush has pissed away the conservative moment by pursuing a war of choice via policies that border on the criminally incompetent."
We control the White House, the Senate, the House of Representatives, and (more-or-less) the judiciary for one of the few times in my nearly 5 decades, but what have we really accomplished? Is government smaller? Have we hacked away at the nanny state? Are the unborn any more protected? Have we really set the stage for a durable conservative majority?
...The conservative agenda has advanced hardly at all since the Iraq War began. Worse yet, the growing unpopularity of the war threatens to undo all the electoral gains we conservatives have achieved in this decade. Stalwarts like me are not going to vote for Birkenstock wearers no matter how bad things get in Iraq, but what about the proverbial soccer moms? Gerrymandering probably will save the House for us at least through the 2010 redistricting, but what about the Senate and the White House?
...I'm very afraid that 100 years from now historians will look back at W's term and ask "what might have been?"
Xark may be "left-leaning" (as described by The Hotline's Blogometer) these days, but that doesn't mean that individual xarkers don't understand and appreciate the ideals of classical conservatism. Agree or disagree, Bainbridge appears to represent the kind of conservatism we enjoy conversing with, if only because we come away from the discussion smarter.
What I oppose (and Xark is a group effort, so I don't speak for everyone) is the kind of conservatism that showed up among Bainbridge's trackbacks and comments: " Looks like somebody's spiked Prof. Bainbridge's wine with a good dose of leftism," and "Brainbridge has lost me with his confused mess of a philosophy."
Honest, idealistic American conservatism is about protecting rights and liberties, preserving the rule of law and an approach to governance based on first principles, not shifting fashions or personal political ambitions. Conservatism is about the restrained and principled use of power. One might not always agree with its prescriptions, but even in disagreement one could respect its integrity of thought.
The people who are currently destroying that philosophy's good name love power and have little regard for restraint, fairness or the greater good of the Republic. They've been profiteering and settling old scores ever since their man took office in 2001, and now they're getting the hard lesson: Karma is a bitch.
Sorry, Professor. You backed a crass, shallow, mean-spirited man, and he turned out to be a liar, too. Now you'll have to spend some time in the wilderness, but that's a necessary part of the American political cycle.
Cutting and running: David Corn posts this piece on the Iraq situation by former CIA analyst Larry Johnson: "Why We Must Leave Iraq." Interesting read, in which he says there are no good outcomes left in this failed adventure.
I've been thinking about this a lot over the past few days, and it's an uncomfortable subject. What should we do? On the one hand, "staying the course," when there is no discernible course, is not only a bad policy, it's immoral. We've got soldiers and Marines dying over there, and we bear responsibility to them that their lives mean something.
On the other hand, a sudden and complete pullout would be a disaster.
I'm going to try an exercise here soon. If you take the values that we've been trying to develop in the post "Ten Words" and apply them to the situation in Iraq, what kind of policy emerges (right now we have seven words: 1. integrity; 2. compassion; 3. honor; 4. freedom; 5. fairness; 6. respect; 7. honesty)? What course of action do they suggest. Feel free to try this yourselves and either post or e-mail me your thoughts -- meanwhile, I gotta go to work.
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