September 11 galvanized most conservatives so fiercely that they allowed the rest of the platform to fall away into obscurity. by A.H. Dowden
(libertarian)
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
Samuel Francis defined conservatism as "the survival and enhancement of a particular people and its institutionalized cultural expressions."The nineties were rife with paleocon thought that affected congressional action in many ways. In fact, George W Bush more than seized on that popularity in the 2000 general election. Coupled with a yearning for a leader more focused on the problems here in the US rather than those dictated by the UN, the GOP had themselves a winner.
Shortly after W took office, those all-too-familiar psychopaths perpetrated their murder by airplane scheme and everything changed. Those that had been so ready for the "uniter" to get started uniting were instantly consumed with the idea that some quixotic and bitter element from a far off land wanted to kill Americans, and perhaps, were just getting started. The vast majority of Americans at that time were totally glazed over concerning the rhetoric coming from these men and the smaller scale attacks that had accompanied it for decades. Most people, to this day, do not understand the symbiotic relationship between the Islamic revolution - birthed in Iran and unleashed by our own handywork - and the various schools of thought that make up the venomous Islamic belief system that we all know and love today. People were disconnected from the attacks and rhetoric coming from overseas and after the initial bombing of the World Trade Center, quickly drifted back to their beer and television trance.
September 11 galvanized most conservatives so fiercely that they allowed the rest of the platform to fall away into obscurity. Scared of another attack on US soil and clamoring for revenge, suddenly conservatives didn't care about fiscal discipline anymore. They didn't care about shrinking the footprint and involvement of the federal government in the lives of the citizenry. Today's conservatives have overseen the birth of the largest federal bureaucracy in the history of our great nation known as "Homeland Security." And now we have candidates deemed to be front runners by the mainstream media openly advocating some form of national ID card. What!? It doesn't end there... Gollum aka Rudolph Giuliani, the abortion and gay rights advocate, is suddenly a right wing darling. Fox News continues to tout this guy without mention of the splintering effect it will have on the Reagan coalition. Where oh where have all the conservatives gone? And how does this willingness to go along with something as profoundly un-American as a national ID tracking system persist? The answer can be found in the perpetuating of the idea that it will be only a homeland security measure. The "war on terror" has become the strawman of our time that threatens to pull our nation into a perpetual cycle of invasion, counterinsurgency and nation building.
Our efforts to democratize the Middle East and set-up puppet allies do little to change the view of US in the hearts and minds of the citizenry. Are we fighting against a sovereign nation or against the people? Quite obviously we're engaged with the people as foreigners continue to stream into Iraq hoping for a chance to strike a blow against the great Satan. This democratization by force is driving the recruiting efforts of groups such as Al-Qaeda and fostering misguided hatred toward the US. And as we've discovered, once you allow the people to form their own government, you might not like the particular form they choose, as in the new Iraqi constitution that includes the tenets of sharia law. No worries though. The idea it seems, is a stepchild regime that will do our bidding and not the freeing of any people. The federal government spends billions of dollars a year on a foreign policy gone awry, producing little to no benefit and conservatives are out front cheering them on? Of course those in favor of this forever war diplomacy have their lapdogs working overtime espousing the alleged benefits. Using rhetoric such as "we haven't been attacked in more than six years" they posit the idea of a free middle east and disregard the will of the people like the good plutocrats they are.
Are we, as conservatives, so afraid of more psychopath pilots that we will allow this runaway government to bankrupt the nation we leave to our children? There are fundamental problems facing the American people in the very near future that transcend partisan politics. Conservatives in this country had better snap their heads around and focus on the real threats here at home. The slow death of the middle class, un-fair trade agreements, a fleeting manufacturing sector, and the gaping shortfalls that surround the looming entitlement calamity left un-checked, or worse - in the hands of socialists like Hillary Rodham Clinton and the lock-stepping army of liberal goons sure to follow - threaten to unravel the fabric of this nation and doom us to mediocrity for generations.
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