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THE CONSERVATIVE REVIEW - July 27, 2010
This is an essay by former assistant Sec. of Treasury for
Ronald Reagan. He articulates real conservative values,
not what passes for conservatism in today's environment.
While this was written a few years ago, it remains crisp,
clear and a message real conservatives need to read today.
What Became of Conservatives?
by Paul Craig Roberts
I remember when friends would excitedly telephone to report
that Rush Limbaugh or G. Gordon Liddy had just read one
of my syndicated columns over the air. That was before I
became a critic of the US invasion of Iraq, the Bush
administration, and the neoconservative ideologues who
have seized control of the US government.
America has blundered into a needless and dangerous war,
and fully half of the country's population is enthusiastic.
Many Christians think that war in the Middle East signals
"end times" and that they are about to be wafted up to
heaven. Many patriots think that, finally, America is
standing up for itself and demonstrating its righteous
might. Conservatives are taking out their Vietnam frust-
rations on Iraqis. Karl Rove is wrapping Bush in the
protective cloak of war leader. The military-industrial
complex is drooling over the profits of war. And neo-
conservatives are laying the groundwork for Israeli
territorial expansion.
The evening before Thanksgiving Rush Limbaugh was on
C-Span TV explaining that these glorious developments
would have been impossible if talk radio and the
conservative movement had not combined to break the
power of the liberal media.
In the Thanksgiving issue of National Review, editor
Richard Lowry and former editor John O'Sullivan
celebrate Bush's reelection triumph over "a hostile
press corps." "Try as they might," crowed O'Sullivan,
"they couldn't put Kerry over the top."
There was a time when I could rant about the "liberal
media" with the best of them. But in recent years I have
puzzled over the precise location of the "liberal media."
Not so long ago I would have identified the liberal media
as the New York Times and Washington Post, CNN and the
three TV networks, and National Public Radio. But both the
Times and the Post fell for the Bush administration's lies
about WMD and supported the US invasion of Iraq. On balance
CNN, the networks, and NPR have not made an issue of the
Bush administration's changing explanations for the
invasion.
Apparently, Rush Limbaugh and National Review think there
is a liberal media because the prison torture scandal could
not be suppressed and a cameraman filmed the execution of a
wounded Iraqi prisoner by a US Marine.
Do the Village Voice and The Nation comprise the "liberal
media"? The Village Voice is known for Nat Henthof and
his columns on civil liberties. Every good conservative
believes that civil liberties are liberal because they
interfere with the police and let criminals go free. The
Nation favors spending on the poor and disfavors gun
rights, but I don't see the "liberal hate" in The Nation's
feeble pages that Rush Limbaugh was denouncing on C-Span.
In the ranks of the new conservatives, however, I see and
experience much hate. It comes to me in violently worded,
ignorant and irrational emails from self-professed
conservatives who literally worship George Bush. Even
Christians have fallen into idolatry. There appears to
be a large number of Americans who are prepared to kill
anyone for George Bush.
The Iraqi War is serving as a great catharsis for multiple
conservative frustrations: job loss, drugs, crime,
homosexuals, pornography, female promiscuity, abortion,
restrictions on prayer in public places, Darwinism and
attacks on religion. Liberals are the cause. Liberals are
against America. Anyone against the war is against America
and is a liberal. "You are with us or against us."
This is the mindset of delusion, and delusion permits of
no facts or analysis. Blind emotion rules. Americans are
right and everyone else is wrong. End of the debate.
That, gentle reader, is the full extent of talk radio, Fox
News, the Wall Street Journal Editorial page, National
Review, the Weekly Standard, and, indeed, of the entire
concentrated corporate media where noncontroversy in the
interest of advertising revenue rules.
Once upon a time there was a liberal media. It developed
out of the Great Depression and the New Deal. Liberals
believed that the private sector is the source of greed
that must be restrained by government acting in the public
interest. The liberals' mistake was to identify morality
with government. Liberals had great suspicion of private
power and insufficient suspicion of the power and
inclination of government to do good.
Liberals became Benthamites (after Jeremy Bentham). They
believed that as the people controlled government through
democracy, there was no reason to fear government power,
which should be increased in order to accomplish more
good.
The conservative movement that I grew up in did not share
the liberals' abiding faith in government. "Power corrupts,
and absolute power corrupts absolutely."
Today it is liberals, not conservatives, who endeavor to
defend civil liberties from the state. Conservatives have
been won around to the old liberal view that as long as
government power is in their hands, there is no reason
to fear it or to limit it. Thus, the Patriot Act, which
permits government to suspend a person's civil liberty by
calling him a terrorist with or without proof.
Thus, preemptive war, which permits the President to
invade other countries based on unverified assertions.
There is nothing conservative about these positions. To
label them conservative is to make the same error as
labeling the 1930s German Brownshirts conservative.
American liberals called the Brownshirts "conservative,"
because the Brownshirts were obviously not liberal. They
were ignorant, violent, delusional, and they worshipped
a man of no known distinction. Brownshirts' delusions
were protected by an emotional force field. Adulation of
power and force prevented Brownshirts from recognizing
implications for their country of their reckless
doctrines.
Like Brownshirts, the new conservatives take personally
any criticism of their leader and his policies. To be a
critic is to be an enemy. I went overnight from being an
object of conservative adulation to one of derision when
I wrote that the US invasion of Iraq was a "strategic
blunder."
It is amazing that only a short time ago the Bush administ-
ration and its supporters believed that all the US had to
do was to appear in Iraq and we would be greeted with
flowers. Has there ever been a greater example of
delusion? Isn't this on a par with the Children's Crusade
against the Saracens in the Middle Ages?
Delusion is still the defining characteristic of the Bush
administration. We have smashed Fallujah, a city of
300,000, only to discover that the 10,000 US Marines are
bogged down in the ruins of the city. If the Marines
leave, the "defeated" insurgents will return. Meanwhile
the insurgents have moved on to destabilize Mosul, a city
five times as large. Thus, the call for more US troops.
There are no more troops. Our former allies are not going
to send troops. The only way the Bush administration can
continue with its Iraq policy is to reinstate the draft.
When the draft is reinstated, conservatives will loudly
proclaim their pride that their sons, fathers, husbands
and brothers are going to die for "our freedom." Not a
single one of them will be able to explain why destroying
Iraqi cities and occupying the ruins are necessary for "our
freedom." But this inability will not lessen the enthusiasm
for the project. To protect their delusions from "reality-
based" critics, they will demand that the critics be
arrested for treason and silenced. Many encouraged by talk
radio already speak this way.
Because of the triumph of delusional "new conservatives"
and the demise of the liberal media, this war is different
from the Vietnam war. As more Americans are killed and
maimed in the pointless carnage, more Americans have a
powerful emotional stake that the war not be lost and
not be in vain. Trapped in violence and unable to admit
mistake, a reckless administration will escalate.
The rapidly collapsing US dollar is hard evidence that the
world sees the US as bankrupt. Flight from the dollar as
the reserve currency will adversely impact American living
standards, which are already falling as a result of job
outsourcing and offshore production. The US cannot afford
a costly and interminable war.
Falling living standards and inability to impose our will
on the Middle East will result in great frustrations that
will diminish our country.
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