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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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 Posted: Mon Jan 11, 2010 10:25 pm Post subject: |
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"Clintonism" is my own term for the Clintons' putting their own career interests ahead of all other priorities, rather than making decisions based on realism or idealism.
Other realists in world history include: FDR, H. Truman, D. Eisenhower, and JFK. W. Churchill and J. Stalin were classic realists, as was RFK during the JFK administration. Mao after the Cultural Revolution, and all his successors, apparently. M. Gorbachev.
Other idealists: W. Wilson, V. Lenin, Mao until the Cultural Revolution, Jamal Nasser, F. Castro and Che Guevara, RFK as a senator and presidential candidate, and S. Allende and H. Chavez. Congressman Charlie Wilson and Osama bin Laden. Cindy Sheehan.
Idealists rank among the planet's more dangerous people if you ask me. Extreme interventionists. They tend to bring us to the brink and even want to actually go into it for "the greater good of all," etc., which only they define, and they define it rigidly and uncompromisingly. They need to chill. The only ones I admire are the benevolent, noninterventionist ones, such as M. Gandhi and MLK.
Hard to say where I would place Ron Paul. Probably somewhere near Sarah Palin: insufficiently informed but sure-footed and therefore at least as dangerous as any idealist. |
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Kuros
Joined: 27 Apr 2004
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| Posted: Mon Jan 11, 2010 11:03 pm Post subject: |
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| Gopher wrote: |
"Clintonism" is my own term for the Clintons' putting their own career interests ahead of all other priorities, rather than making decisions based on realism or idealism.
Other realists in world history include: FDR, H. Truman, D. Eisenhower, and JFK. W. Churchill and J. Stalin were classic realists, as was RFK during the JFK administration. Mao after the Cultural Revolution, and all his successors, apparently. M. Gorbachev.
Other idealists: W. Wilson, V. Lenin, Mao until the Cultural Revolution, Jamal Nasser, F. Castro and Che Guevara, RFK as a senator and presidential candidate, and S. Allende and H. Chavez. Congressman Charlie Wilson and Osama bin Laden. Cindy Sheehan.
Idealists rank among the planet's more dangerous people if you ask me. Extreme interventionists. They tend to bring us to the brink and even want to actually go into it for "the greater good of all," etc., which only they define, and they define it rigidly and uncompromisingly. They need to chill. The only ones I admire are the benevolent, noninterventionist ones, such as M. Gandhi and MLK.
Hard to say where I would place Ron Paul. Probably somewhere near Sarah Palin: insufficiently informed but sure-footed and therefore at least as dangerous as any idealist. |
I agree with everything you say here, except about the Clintons. What you say sounds a bit partisan, but I agree Bill's foreign policy was his weak point. Hillary is doing a much better job now.
I far favor realism because its more humble and more grounded in the sense of America's (or any country's) limitations. |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Mon Jan 11, 2010 11:11 pm Post subject: |
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But I am not an anti-Clinton partisan. I agreed with and supported the Clinton administration after its first year. I voted for him in 1996. I also would have voted Democrat had that party nominiated Hillary in 2008.
I just recognize that these two put their own career interests above all else and are not easily classifiable as realists or idealists in foreign relations. My impression: they are they was Gore Vidal portrays JFK in Washington, D.C.: always checking political polling data before announcing his position on X, Y, or Z. Neither realists nor idealists do that. No more, no less.
I also value realists. They never throw their nation's power and influence away in risky Quixotic endeavors, for example. |
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On the other hand
Joined: 19 Apr 2003
Location: I walk along the avenue
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| Posted: Tue Jan 12, 2010 11:40 am Post subject: |
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Gopher described as a realist...
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| Mao after the Cultural Revolution |
He then described as an idealist...
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| Mao until the Cultural Revolution |
So what was Mao during the Curltural Revolution? Or did you mean to say that he was an idealist until the end of the Cultural Revolution? Because that interpretation would make the most sense to me. |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Tue Jan 12, 2010 12:08 pm Post subject: |
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| Yes, revolutionary idealist at home and abroad through the Cultural Revolution, where its excesses as well as Soviet conflicts on his border, changed him into a realist who dealt with the Americans as a tacit cold war ally. |
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thecount
Joined: 10 Nov 2009
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| Posted: Wed Jan 13, 2010 8:15 pm Post subject: |
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| Kuros wrote: |
I get your point, it makes sense. But McCain's foreign policy was an incoherent amalgamation of realism and idealism, so apparently he was lacking some conservative credentials, as well. I'm not convinced that realism is the conservative tradition, even though one of our strongest foreign policy Presidents, George Bush Sr., was a realist exemplar. |
And there is a reason why conservatives such as myself were appalled at McCain's policies as well as campaign (running on "experience" and then picking Sarah Palin? Really? Was that just to patronize [and alienate] women, or did you pick Sarah specifically to anger conservatives of both sexes?). There was a reason that even strong-right conservatives with influence such as Limbaugh were railing AGAINST McCain.
This may be a bit of a rant, but I hope this satisfies some of your intellectual curiosity about the pragmatic conservative that I have been trying to characterize.
You ask about the realists. Here's who the realists are voting for: We voted (yes, "we") for Obama.
But such a binary thing "voted for Obama / did not vote for Obama" does not truly cover it, so let's look into WHY a true conservative would vote for Obama.
Was Race a factor in our vote?
No, not because he was black, although many of the Democrats did, and were proud of it. Huffington Post ran an editorial advocating voting for Obama because he was black (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michelle-haimoff/vote-for-obama-because-he_b_120202.html). Salon also advocated voting for a candidate based on the color of his skin (http://www.salon.com/opinion/kamiya/2008/02/26/obama/).
There was a provoking poll in November that had Obama's ratings down (and down in most by double digits) with every demographic. Except blacks. http://www.gallup.com/poll/124484/obama-approval-slide-finds-whites-down-39.aspx
Personally, I was both amused and saddened that M.L.K.'s dream had been misinterpreted so dramatically. The door of racism swings both ways.
Was it "Youth" or "Good Looks" ?
No. Age doesn't enter into it. Aesthetic appeal is not the role of president, nor is living 40 years after his term has ended. What kind of forward-thinking person would take seriously a plea by an "Obama-girl" that bases her support almost entirely on some sort of fetishization of the man.
Was it "History" ?
Rubbish. Every time we inaugurate anyone, he's the first SOMETHING, if only "The first Forty-Fourth President!"
The desire to make history is a backwards, awkward thing. History merely for the sake of history is a misguided thought process for people who lead boring lives. It boggles the mind to see people push a "historic" angle. It means that they've run out of substantive arguments.
No, we voted for Obama because we cared about the FUTURE.
And this is not his empty "hope" rhetoric; it's not Obama's promised future we wanted. Follow me here on a thought experiment:
Assume McCain wins. If we pragmatic conservatives had enough votes to push him there (unlikely), we can assume still that his margin of victory was quite low. He assumes the presidency at a point of economic crisis.
He faces an overwhelmingly democrat-heavy House and Senate, and a relative public zeitgeist that it is conservative policies that are to blame for the financial crisis (this is a different issue completely, but I doubt anyone can argue that any fiscally conservative policy was be the cause).
Luckily for us, it doesn't matter; all that matters is that they THINK it is true.
So now we have McCain, in the middle of an economic spiral, who would be utterly incapable of pushing any sort of fiscally conservative policy past the massive majority in the house and senate who, after 8 years and an extremely close election, are even madder at Republicans.
Next, we realize what those politicians will do: obstruct McCain.
No one who knows anything about politics can really be surprised, for instance, at Limbaugh's comments regarding Obama ("I want to see him fail").
Carville made those same comments regarding Bush, minutes before the 9/11 attack. When asked if he wanted Bush to fail, Carville responded "I certainly don't want him to succeed." And you know what? It is perfectly acceptable! It makes sense! In fact, it is commendable! "Our leader, right or wrong" is not the American way. The realists recognize this, as well as one other, related thing: Politicians are like Piranha, they may travel in schools, but if they sense blood they will pounce on their own.
By slightly winning the election, McCain has no sweeping popular mandate that would frighten obstructionists (like it frightened Republicans near the start of Obama's first term). Conservative policies would be shot down, while Rome continued to burn. Cries of congressional obstruction will not save McCain's numbers any more than "we inherited this from Bush" are saving Obama's. Americans hate excuses.
Our biggest shortcoming of all as a people is our collective inability to see beyond the figurehead of our country. Realists see this:
NO MATTER WHO CONTROLS CONGRESS, THE PRESIDENT (and his/her party, by extension) GETS THE CREDIT/BLAME.
People talk about Bill Clinton's surplus; they do not mention Newt Gingrich. This is of dire importance. While McCain is out there, throwing out any number of ideas, they are all being shot down and the country is BLAMING CONSERVATIVES FOR IT.
So, what happens? We see repudiation at the ballot box in 2010. Democrats go from a super-majority to an ultra-majority. In 2012, there is no "party of no" to stop the (overwhelmingly elected) democrat now seizing the reigns of office.
With McCain, the most logical projection of a presidency I could see was legislative stagnancy (by congressional opposition) during a crisis period while conservatives continued to lose ground, perhaps to a point of no return in the next election cycle, where something like the current health care bill could be passed without much protest.
With Obama, we expected an overreach - and we got it. We knew fully well what the democrats would try to do. We balanced it against an unacceptable option (the McCain path) and found it better to have these fights now than four years down the road, with a much diminished base due to constant media criticism and political zeitgeist against us.
It has paid off in spades.
We voted for Obama. We want desperately for his ideas to fail...and that's why we voted for him. The alternative would almost certainly have ensured their success. As it stands right now, the democrats have just enough of a majority that they cannot blame obstruction solely on conservatives - they just don't have the votes. With D's running the house, senate and white house, there will be no doubt in the public's mind who to repudiate when they next hit the ballot box.
To the rational conservative, everything is a potential tool. People especially. We're the people who email Rep. Anthony Weiner and tell him not to give up on the public option; that it's best for the American people and plead for him to follow his heart. We do this because we want something the Senate will not accept. Stall for time and capitalize on frustration. Tactics of desperation, but tactics nonetheless.
/rant. |
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mises
Joined: 05 Nov 2007
Location: retired
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mises
Joined: 05 Nov 2007
Location: retired
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| Posted: Fri May 21, 2010 9:35 am Post subject: |
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aewpvcxAwTk
^ 11 part video on the neo-cons. It is worth a watch. What is conservative has changed. The neo-cons have redefined the right. Yes, this is very 2003 but relevant today. |
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