Hear, hear! Even though you are a bit hard on the Spaniards, whom all of Christendom owed a great debt.

There is a problem with your WMD example, however. I yield to no-one in my detestation of Leftism and its propagandists, but it does seem that many in the Bush administration - including Bush - and the Blair government may have told a string of whoppers as they built support to invade Iraq. There is much to lambaste the Left about, starting with their hysterical opposition to Bush’s de minimis tax cut, but I fear they may be on the right side of the facts, for once, about Iraq’s WMDs. HRS

Like all of us here, I am well aware of the actions of leftists and of the enormous control they wield over numerous institutions in what’s left of this civilization. I fail to see how caving in to leftist agendas (AA/Diversity, entitlements, gay agenda, etc.) constitutes fighting. That’s a major part of my complaint with Bush/Rove/Frist & Co. - they don’t fight the left at all. It really is the death of politics. The “debate” has degenerated into squabbles over a few minor tax cuts and a war that even I am having my doubts about as far as the reasons offered. Meanwhile the band keeps on playing the Hegelian Mambo in the background and the country continues its leftward “cha-cha-cha.” (Thanks to Matt for the dance metaphor.)

Bush and Rove don’t fight the Left because they are soft Leftists themselves (maybe not so soft in Rove’s case, and I doubt Bush really qualifies as a political thinker - his political calculus seems to be mostly emotionalism with a Christian gloss). As for Frist, he is either an utterly useless milquetoast Republican, or just another soft Leftist. I don’t know enough about him to be sure. All three are globalist and politically correct; they do not fight the Left because, in general, they agree with it. That is what the Republican faithful who are not themselves liberals must come to understand. HRS

Thanks to Mr. Sutherland for the cheer. However, I don’t see how he can agree with what the left is saying about WMDs, including their accusing the administration of lying to bring us into a war, while agreeing with what I say about the motivations of mainstream conservatives in resisting that leftist attack at all costs. If the left’s ongoing attempt to destroy the administration is indeed correct, as Mr. Sutherland suggests, how can he agree with my sympathetic understanding of the mainstream conservatives’ situation in facing that attack?

I agree that Christendom owes the Spanish a great deal. But the West owes the neoconservatives a great deal. The neoconservatives were the leading source of American intellectual fortitude vis a vis Communism during the latter stages of the Cold War. I’m thinking, for example, of the role of Commentary magazine during the 1980s. Also, Richard Pearl, now an object of (wholly undeserved) hatred on the antiwar right, played a crucial role of intellectual leadership in the Reagan defense department and was the administration’s most effective public spokesman on Cold War controversies.

To Carl,

I didn’t say the adminstration is opposing the left. I said people like David Horowitz oppose the left, and so justify the administration’s efforts to co-opt opposition by moving to the left themselves.

To Mr. Auster, in my previous post I was attempting to point out the fallacy of David Horowitz’s agrument, which I interpreted as being ‘Bush and the Repubs have a fierce battle with the left on their hands, so let’s not criticize when they make a tactical move to obtain votes.’ I did not mean to imply that you supported this argument, your disagreement with Horowitz is evident. Sorry for the confusion.

The debate among conservatives would, I think, benefit from more clarity on one question: the distinction between issues on which compromises are legitimate and issues on which they’re not—not how FAR they go but whether any compromise at all are acceptable.

The reason David Horowitz (just to use him as an example) is willing to compromise on the decision concerning sodomy, whereas we’re not, is that he doesn’t see homosexuality as a question that goes to the foundation of the good society, and we do. Most conservatives would accept a political compromise on the question of steel tariffs, if necessary to support a valuable alliance, because we don’t believe the question of protectionism goes to that foundation; but principled libertarians do, and so they’d oppose such a compromise for political expediency.

Those two examples suggest that the question whether a particular compromise by the administration with the Congressional Democrats is acceptable depends on where the issue fits within our philosophy. The next step is to analyze all those allegedly tactical compromises by Bush & Co. and see if perhaps they’re not compromises at all but rather expressions of a consistent philosophy (unlike the lucianne.com faithful, I think they are).

When approached in this manner, political dealings become directional signals independent of whether the issues are big or little or appeal to or antagonize this or that interest group. Take for example an essay in today’s National Review analyzing the administration’s cave-in on the requirement that men’s and women’s college sports get equal funding: a seemingly small matter that most Americans have never heard of, but indicative of a fundamental shift in a theory of our federal government, integrally related to several other actions that one normally wouldn’t think of in the same context.

The major parties in our country have peacefully handed over power to each other, because they have agreed on the fundamentals but disagreed on how to express those fundamentals in changing circumstances. There was only one exception, but it proves the rule: in the 1850s they started disagreeing on one fundamental principle. The first result was the only time a third party became a major party (although only by merging with one of the major parties), and the second result was civil war.

Applying Frieda’s analytical terms to David Horowitz, we can say that the one thing he will not compromise on is the need for tolerance and inclusion of homosexuals and a sympathetic response to the homosexual agenda. Of course, he would reject what I’ve just said. He says there is no homosexual agenda, and it’s bigotry to think there there is one. There is just human beings seeking tolerance and inclusion. If there is a homosexual agenda, that only pertains to antinomian homosexual rights “extremists” who, for example, reject proper preventive responses to the AIDS epidemic. But every homosexual and homosexual activist to the right of those “extremists” is just a good American seeking his freedom and fulfilment in this land of tolerance and inclusion, and anyone who opposes them is an intolerant bigot.

On just about every other social issue, Horowitz is ready to compromise, and anyone who has a principled position on those issues is a rigid ideologist who fails to grasp practical politics. With some of David Horowitz’s recent statements rejecting any discussion of primary issues, I think we are seeing the end of politics, at least as far as Horowitz himself is concerned.

Speaking of positions on which no compromise is possible, I recommend everyone read Maggie Gallagher’s article today at NRO on homosexual marriage, one of the strongest pieces on this issue I’ve seen. Gallagher is often a disappointment, but when she’s good, she’s good. (One false note in this article: she refers to America as a “secular, pluralist” nation. Since when has America been called a “secular” society per se—especially by conservatives?)

http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/comment-gallagher071403.asp

Just a brief comment on Lawrence Auster’s praise of Commentary magazine during the 1980s. I could not agree more. At times, it was the only semi-popular political magazine I would bother with. That all changed for me, however, during the Clinton-launched war against Serbia and Kosovo. In sort of a prelude to Clinton’s pressuring of Israel and the Bush-led invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, the US took up the position of the defender of Islam, even at the cost of cleansing Kosovo of its Serbs, Jews, and Gypsies, while allying with radical Islam, including, it appears, al-Qaeda. Commentary led the cheers for the Kosovo war—and I stopped subscribing.

It is simply amazing to watch America and Christendom slit their own throats. Ever seeking to placate Islam, the US makes itself vulnerable, betrays its allies, and is incapable of launching wars based on its own interests. Thus, in Afghanistan and Iraq, we can only act as “liberators”, lining up our own troops for target practice, instead of acting ruthlessly to put the fear of God into the Iraqis, the Afghanis, and Islam in general. I even remember that Bush’s first wish in Afghanistan was “to bomb them with food,” instead of the real thing.

This is all hopeless. My old mentor from my days in graduate school—a Hungarian Jew who lived through Hitler and escaped from the Soviets in 1956—recently told me that in many ways Americans are in worse shape than Hungarians were under Communism. Under Communism, she said, Hungarians at least knew they were being lied to. Americans, however, are routinely fed lies and believe them like the Gospel. That Commentary has now become part of the problem, instead of part of the solution, makes the situation all the more tragic.

If Paul had not identified his mentor as a “she,” I would have thought he was talking about Thomas Molnar, another Hungarian who came to the U.S. in the fifties (or late forties), and who has said that Hungary under Communism at least kept some of its old high culture and standards, but that under American-influenced pop freedom, it has lost even that.

Writing today at NewsMax, Christopher Ruddy also describes what the left is doing to President Bush over the WMDs as “war”:

“As President Bush has been fighting a war against terrorism, the Democrats and the big media are fighting a war against President Bush.”

http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2003/7/13/145337.shtml

If anyone heard Ari Fleischer’s last press briefing today on C-SPAN, the ‘war’ analogy isn’t too far off.

The entire briefing was dominated by reporters asking about the President’s mention of Saddam’s alleged attempt to aquire uranium from Africa, which has now been partially retracted.

As usual, reporter after reporter asked the same question over and over with different wording, trying to explore every little nuance of argument and trap the spokesman into making some misstep.

The answers were understood before the briefing. But all this intense focus and refocus! How many ways can the same answers be proffered? One might have wondered whether there were not more serious and pressing issues to address.

To get the attention of starving conservative Republicans, traditionalists could use an association, a party. An association or party would have a name. Naming is very important to people. People make sense of the world (many philosophers and psychologists say) through language, and language uses lots of names: nouns.

With a name, traditionalists would be able to distinguish themselves from the chaos that is the cultural fight. One of Mr. Auster’s possible premises is conservative Republicans cannot distinguish potential allies (traditionalists) from those with knives (leftists and their allies). Mr. Auster inspires the idea that much of what Republican conservative voters hear from traditionalists is criticism of Republicans, who are in a knife fight with leftists (and their allies). A knife fight is an apt analogy because leftists (and their allies) are literally predators on conservative Republican voters. For example, using the IRS to rob a small percentage of people and give to a large percentage of people is predatory behavior. Tolerating and threatening massive violent crime on doe-like Republican conservatives in exchange for votes is predatory behavior.

An association or party would be a power, something conservative Republicans could ally with and have reason to ally with. Right now traditionalists are not a power because they don’t have a way to focus their votes. They have no party to focus their votes on a candidate or referendum.

Still, for a time at least, traditionalists cannot be part of the Republican Party, which does not respect them because…they have little power and no name. The comment has come full circle.

If anyone is “evil” it’s Bush. If anyone looks more like an antichrist(comming in the name of christ) it’s Bush. If anyone wants to create division and destroy our democracy it’s Bush with a total right wing take over of all government. If anyone is for big business over “We The People” it’s Bush.Inform yourselves at DemocracyNow.org