Politics As Usual . . .

DES MOINES: In an act of political jujitsu, Mike Huckabee has halted a negative ad that he was about to broadcast on television Monday against his Republican rival, Mitt Romney. But while claiming the moral high ground, he proceeded to show the ad to a roomful of reporters, photographers and television cameras who are repeating his anti-Romney message for free while Huckabee declares that his hands are clean.

The display unfolded at the Marriott Hotel here to the mirth of the media who watched Huckabee's legerdemain even as the media itself became the conduit for his attacks against Romney.

At the same time, he pointed to media cynicism as the reason he felt compelled to show the ad, saying that unless he showed it, reporters would not believe that it really existed.

Source: International Herald Tribune December 31, 2007.

Abbie Hoffman - Unpublished Interview

In 1986, Kesher Talk contributor Van Wallach interviewed 60s radical Abbie Hoffman for a New York publication. Based on five hours of conversation, the edited transcript never got published. Hoffman died, at his own hand, in 1989. Now, thanks to the magic of blogging, Hoffman's wit and energy live again -- see "Conversations with a Ghost: The Abbie Hoffman Interview".

The Founding Fakers

In "The Founding Fakers" (The New Republic 8/11/03), Franklin Foer tackles what I consider a glaring and persistent flaw in the conduct of recent Republican administrations: namely, the willingness of some within the GOP to cloak some morally repugnant characters who would otherwise fall into the category of criminals or terrorists in the mantle of democracy when it is politically expedient to do so -- i.e., "the foreign opposition leader romanticized beyond reason."

Liberals did this with Stalin and Fidel Castro; Reagan with the Nicaraguan Contras (or as he called them, "the moral equivalent of our Founding Fathers"); the Bush (senior) administration with the Afghan mujahedin . . . and now, says Foer, the spotlight may be turning towards militant groups in Iran such as the Mujahedin-e-Khalq, a militant organization based in Iraq which, although currently classified as a terrorist organization, may be useful should the U.S. extend its "war on terrorism" into Iran.

Extolling the virtues of cults like the Iranian mujahedin doesn't simply cheapen rhetoric about liberal democracy, it cheapens conservatism itself. Ever since Edmund Burke, conservatives have made skepticism about revolutions and revolutionaries a central tenet of their politics. As Irving Kristol rephrased the classic complaint in a 1972 essay, "to think we have it in our power to change people so as to make the human estate wonderfully better than it is, remarkably different from what it is, and in very short order, is to assume that this generation of Americans can do what no other generation in all of human history could accomplish." This rigid traditionalism has been sometimes deployed to justify turning away from injustice. But it was also a source of humaneness, a bulwark against rash plans for social upheaval, a vital warning about the violent excesses of ideological fervor, a reminder that revolutions often end in tears. In this new era, with grand plans for remaking the map and new heroes being born, we could stand to be reminded of these old dictates, which add a touch of realism to right-wing idealism and offer a salutary dose of conservatism for conservatives.

Whether the MEK will occupy the same pedestal as the Contras remains to be seen, but I do think Foer has a good point: it's one of those blatant utiliatarian political decisions that can only turn around and hurt us in the end.

(And the rallying cry will be 'Democracy! Whisky! Sexy!')

In the latest issue of The New Criterion, historian Paul Johnson delivers a fascinating explication of the meaning of 'empire' and proceeds with a vigorous defense of America's 'New Awakening':

[I]n the twentieth and still more the twenty-first centuries, the forms of moral, commercial, and cultural imperialism emanating from the West are essentially secular. We no longer speak of “Christianizing the world,” a phrase in wide use up to 1914. But “democratizing the world,” whether spoken or not, is our aim. Behind this lies the belief that when functioning democracies become the norm, international law is more likely to be observed, free trade to spread, real incomes to increase, and the world to become a freer, healthier, more secure, and contented place. In the creation of this oikumene, or ecumenical world of Western-style civilization, America is allotted the prime role by geography and history, economics and demography, culture and philosophy.

. . . it is worth recalling that up to 1860 “empire” was not a term of abuse in the United States. George Washington himself spoke of “the rising American Empire.” Jefferson, aware of the dilemma, claimed that America was “an Empire for liberty.” That is what America is becoming again, in fact if not in name. America’s search for the security against terrorism and rogue states goes hand in hand with liberating their oppressed peoples. From the Evil Empire to an Empire for Liberty is a giant step, a contrast as great as the appalling images of the wasted twentieth century and the brightening dawn of the twenty-first. But America has the musculature and the will to take giant steps, as it has shown in the past.

From the Evil Empire to the Empire of Liberty
The New Criterion Vol. 21, No. 10. June 2003.

On a related note:

• Democratic Imperialism: A Blueprint, by Stanley Kurtz. Policy Review April-May 2003.
• The Liberty Doctrine, by Michael Mcfaul. Policy Review April-May 2002.

The Hypocrisy of Noam Chomsky

Keith Windschuttle critiques the moral hypocrisy of Noam Chomsky's role as a leading apologist for the Pol Pot regime during the Cambodian genocide, and his condescending stance towards American casualties in 9/11:

Chomsky has declared himself a libertarian and anarchist but has defended some of the most authoritarian and murderous regimes in human history. His political philosophy is purportedly based on empowering the oppressed and toiling masses but he has contempt for ordinary people who he regards as ignorant dupes of the privileged and the powerful. He has defined the responsibility of the intellectual as the pursuit of truth and the exposure of lies, but has supported the regimes he admires by suppressing the truth and perpetrating falsehoods. He has endorsed universal moral principles but has only applied them to Western liberal democracies, while continuing to rationalize the crimes of his own political favorites. He is a mandarin who denounces mandarins. When caught out making culpably irresponsible misjudgments, as he was over Cambodia and Sudan, he has never admitted he was wrong.

Today, Chomsky’s hypocrisy stands as the most revealing measure of the sorry depths to which the left-wing political activism he has done so much to propagate has now sunk."

The Hypocrisy of Noam Chomsky, by Keith Windschuttle The New Criterion Vol. 21, No. 9, May 2003