Well, of all people...

[oldlady]

Peggy Noonan in From the Wilderness via the WSJ names, quite well I think, the fundamental source of many of our fears and the reason behind so much friction even here at DU of late... I think she's spot on & this is the elephant in the room, the reason for the administration thumbing its nose at us regular citizens, the dread..

http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/110105_world_stories.shtml#0

[Vanje]

1. Thanks Peggy Noonan for your part....

....in bringing us to One Thousand Points of Blight.

[leeroysphitz]

5. Yes this is a bleak veiw...

but I must admit that despite the fact that I have always been "political", that is I've always taken the time and made the effort to keep myself informed and trying my best to convincingly share my views with others, lately I've been feeling more raw, intrusive and impelling ANXIETY about the state and the governance of our nation. I can't shake it.

I stay up at night worrying. Maybe it's because I have new son and I see the possibility of a bleak future for him. Maybe it's because it looks as if greed, selfishness or plain apathy on the part of many americans is causing an era of social and economic progress that has lasted nearly a century to come to a sudden halt.

Strange days.

[melody]

2. It's vastly more complex than that, but with the same mechanics

BushCo was put here by the elites who look down their noses at all non-millionaires, and want them to destroy the US once and for all. I always say the old legal question is the clearest mode for vision - for whom is it good? Who stands to benefit from the US' downfall? It's hardly the middle east - they are just the pawns in the game, as we all are.

[babylonsister]

3. She still sounds like an apologist for the blivet; the problems

of our country and the world just grow bigger as time goes by, how can one person handle them? I think alot of dimson's problems are self-induced. As for the elitists, why yes, they're sitting back and enjoying the fruits this admin is handing to them on a silver platter, and screw the rest of us.

[oldlady]

7. I agree, but...

if it goes to hell in a handbasket in a BIG way, which I do think is in the back of most peoples' minds---just as the courts feel they can take grandma's house for a new strip mall, it is potentially possible that some other entity (let's say China) can take the elites-o-America's homes for themselves.

Isn't it dangerous for us to keep thinking in dem/repug dichotomies, when it could still become a nation/nation dichotomy--- or what I think of as the EAT THE RICH on a nice flat earth Friedman scope, where the whole earth rises up and takes us down-- elites and all.

I've been found naive before, but, couldn't it happen?

peace

[sadiesworld]

15. I'm sure China looks quite yummy from an elite perspective...

all that shiny new infrastructure and a slave population to boot. But Noonan's "the sky is falling and how did all this happen" rhetoric is nauseatingly disingenuous. How can she NOT see that the pro-elite, pro-corporate policies she has endorsed for 20+ years are at the root of this madness? Of course, given her professed belief in magical dolphins, maybe she is just that fricking stupid.

(Was it poor form to answer a question posed to another poster? If so, I'm sorry).

[SeanQ]

45. I think her budding anxiety also comes from the fact,

which it seems she has trouble facing, that a lot of the reasons "the wheels are coming of the trolley" are because of the "elites" who have made "their separate peace", who are getting what they can while they can at the expense of the rest of us. After all, that's the camp she has worked for and supported for so long.

Our problem is this. If most of the people in charge are either incompetent or have resigned themselves to some doom, and either way are in full 'me first' mode, then all they will be doing is indeed screwing the rest of us, right through till the trolley hurtles off the cliff. I don't believe the problems of the world are unsolvable, however difficult the solutions might be. I am starting to believe though that our current leaders (by majority), and probably our current system, are not capable of it. And maybe Ms. Noonan is right. Maybe most of them have given up, they just don't think they can do anything to stop it, they are going through the motions.

So what do we do about it?

(drat, forgot to spellcheck ... again!)

[Walt Starr]

4. Absolutely incredible article that transcends all partisan bounds

Recommended and kicked.

[venable]

first of all, she helped get us here, and secondly

she misses the main cause: this administration does not govern, they campaign. Viciously, corruptly, and cynically, for one purpose: to remain in power so they can continue to line the pockets of cronies.

If you are doing that, you are not, also, governing.

Peggy, as always, misses the mark by a light-year.

[venable]

6. first of all, she helped get us here, and secondly

she misses the main cause: this administration does not govern, they campaign. Viciously, corruptly, and cynically, for one purpose: to remain in power so they can continue to line the pockets of cronies.

If you are doing that, you are not, also, governing.

Peggy, as always, misses the mark by a light-year.

[Nikki Stone 1]

8. But read how Jamie Hecht prefaces the article:

Noonan was the central speechwriter for the “Reagan Revolution” that pulled the bottom out from under the U.S. balance of payments. That shoved the country’s collective head far below the surface of a sea of cheap credit and unpayable debt. Reading this piece, it’s hard not to suspect that Noonan and her ilk knew exactly what they were doing; that the 1980’s were an addict’s last high, selling off the manufacturing base (and selling out the working class that drove it) to buy one more fix of cheap Chinese goods and international finance capital.

What I doubt she understood was that this also broke the only chance for timely mitigation of Peak Oil. The Hirsh Report essentially says that Carter was right, in his methods and his timing; that his program was the country’s last chance to avoid a Tainter-type collapse; and that the Reagan period is the fourth in a five-act Shakespearean tragedy. –JAH]


He basically accuses her of taking hers and running. I agree.

[No Exit]

35. Then kudoes to Hecht--but none to Peggy the Shill! n/t

[SeanQ]

46. And the truth lies there within those two pieces

[donkeyotay]

9. That is the big old stinking GOP elephant in the living room alright

and the WSJ and Peggy Noonan helped create it. They derided as liberal the elitism that was at least predicated on public service and replaced it with the market liberalism of "I've got mine, screw you." Should we now be surprised that no one is looking out for the welfare of the people? Should we be surprised at the growing unease of the fast majority who can no longer "buy a seat at the table?"

from the OP link:

I suspect that history, including great historical novelists of the future, will look back and see that many of our elites simply decided to enjoy their lives while they waited for the next chapter of trouble. And that they consciously, or unconsciously, took grim comfort in this thought: I got mine. Which is what the separate peace comes down to, "I got mine, you get yours."

You're a lobbyist or a senator or a cabinet chief, you're an editor at a paper or a green-room schmoozer, you're a doctor or lawyer or Indian chief, and you're making your life a little fortress. That's what I think a lot of the elites are up to.

[Mist]

10. Noonan is either brain-damaged or incredibly naive

Who the hell does she think brought things to where they are? She has that "amorphous sense that things are broken" because they ARE broken. And she tries to blame it on bureaucracy? What a tool.

[bluedawg12]

11. Noonan is talking about the neocon elite, who now runs this nation

They over threw the Miers bid and made shrub toe the line.

They are the hired mouth pieces and intelligentsia of the uber rich who spend millions annually to allow these radicalrightwing policy makers to work unencumbered by concerns of earning a daily wage. Imagine how powerful a propaganda tool it is to have hundreds of employees in hundreds of think tanks working for your cause. All paid for by a handful of powerful right wing families.

The uber rich are above and beyond the every day concerns of working Americans and don't care about them, and their pet poodle egg head intellectuals are only too happy to be highly paid to hone their own private agenda's.

Noonan is pointing out the demise of the repug party. They have had a coup d'etat and now run the show, right into the ground.

The question is, if Americans know something is dreadfully wrong, why don't they awaken from their slumber?

Is it because we have not yet touched the cord in their heart with a potent message that helps them break free of the lies and false promises?

[Jane Austin]

20. I thought it was the religious right, not the neocons, who

brought down Miers.

I mean, Pat Buchanan is hardly a NeoCon.

[bluedawg12]

24. janeaustin- ahh Buchanan and the neocons

Generally, Pukeanon and the neocons are at odds.

Pukeanon is and has been against the war in Iraq, and is a paleocon.

Pukeanon is the author of the idea of “cultural wars” and has been openly advocating a brawl, a show down, and a street fight ( his type of metaphor) in order to stack the Court with right wing ideologues who will marshal against the forces of liberal corruption in our society.

The theocons were happy to have a fundy nominated, were called into a KKKarl special meeting and were apparently re-assured that Miers would do their bidding and over turn Roe. They were co-opted, and stood with shrub.

The neocons were active as hell in this fight against Miers. Kristolcon published an op ed that she should with draw, as did Krauthhammercon, and David Frumcon appeared on TV stabbing her in the back. The neocons were vocal, public, appeared in print and in the media attacking her viciously.

What did Pukeanon and the neocons have in common? Both found Harriet wanting in the intellectual horse power needed to fulfill their full agenda. They claimed she could not stand up to her intellectual superiors, like Ginsburg and Kennedy, in the Court and that she would give away the farm and knuckle under. Both wanted someone very intellectual, and both wanted the big fight against the left and the Dems. They attacked Miers and shrub and on the very eve of the Libby indictment they got shrub to bow to them or face losing their support.

Shrub thought to himself: do I go into the Fitz investigation with non-cerebral, demagogue, nitwit and avowed dog beater Dobson, or do I go in with the Weekly Standard, and all of the neocon brain power behind me? He chose the latter.

Noonan in her article reflects the disillusionment of the old guard repugs- who believed in small government, fiscal responsibility, no nation building, and clearly shrub does not fit that mold. Conservatives say shrub is not a true conservative. He isn’t, he is a radicalrightwinger.

[AntiCoup2K4]

12. While she accurately documents the fact that the entire country is.....

....falling apart, she fails to put any blame on the Chimp, his PNAC associates, or his Bush Criminal Empire predecessors (whom she herself worked for) who bear a great deal of responsibility for what she describes. In fact she excuses Monkey Boy by implying that the job of President would be too much for anyone these days.

Still, I'll give the old hag partial credit for admitting that the country IS in trouble, when so many of her fellow right wing sheep remain in denial.

[bluedawg12]

13. I do think she is calling out the PNAC

This is the neocons to a "T".

I wonder how raygun viewed the neocons?

>This is. Our elites, our educated and successful professionals, are the ones who are supposed to dig us out and lead us. I refer specifically to the elites of journalism and politics, the elites of the Hill and at Foggy Bottom and the agencies, the elites of our state capitals, the rich and accomplished and successful of Washington, and elsewhere. I have a nagging sense, and think I have accurately observed, that many of these people have made a separate peace. That they're living their lives and taking their pleasures and pursuing their agendas; that they're going forward each day with the knowledge, which they hold more securely and with greater reason than nonelites, that the wheels are off the trolley and the trolley's off the tracks, and with a conviction, a certainty, that there is nothing they can do about it.<
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/110105_world_stories.shtml#0

[No Exit]

28. bluedawg12--Peggy is very much aware of the neocons/PNAC

and if she'd really meant to call them out, she could have been much more specific.

Peggy is, and (at least publicly) always has been, a shill for the right wing.

[bluedawg12]

31. No exit- she is a raygun speech writer but she is old school con.

I think she all but said their name.

I think there is a war in the conservative ranks currently.

>This is. Our elites, our educated and successful professionals, are the ones who are supposed to dig us out and lead us. I refer specifically to the elites of journalism and politics, the elites of the Hill and at Foggy Bottom and the agencies, the elites of our state capitals, the rich and accomplished and successful of Washington, and elsewhere. I have a nagging sense, and think I have accurately observed, that many of these people have made a separate peace. That they're living their lives and taking their pleasures and pursuing their agendas; <

[No Exit]

34. bluedawg12--why is she so timid about mentioning them by name?

She was never timid when she was on TV in the 90's castigating Clinton.

I agree that there is a war in the conservative ranks currently. May it grow until it destroys them.

[bluedawg12]

36. No Exit- I am surmising that because she is part of the conservative

movement as are the neocons she may be concerned that they will savage her as they did with harriet. who knows. but, it is hard to speak out against your own movement openly and the neocons are powerful.

here is something from 2002 by Noonan, that as I read it suggests that she was against the war and actually wishing the dems would speak up.

http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/pnoonan/?id=110002346

>Friday, September 27, 2002 12:01 a.m. EDT

The battle is joined, the debate begun in earnest. In the past 48 hours we have witnessed Bush vs. Daschle, Hitchens vs. Cockburn, Democrats vs. Republicans, The American Conservative vs. The Weekly Standard and National Review, paleocons vs. neocons, compassionate conservatives vs. the left. In New York we debate whether strong criticism of Israeli policy is prima facie evidence of anti-Semitism. In Washington it's two questions: Who owns conservatism, and is the modern left more than a collection of depressives, America-lasters and anti-Semites?

The Democrats on Capitol Hill have so far failed to mount a principled, coherent opposition. I am not shocked by this, are you? One senses they are looking at the whole question merely as a matter of popular positioning: Will they like me if I say take out Saddam? Will they get mad at me if we try to take him out and it's a disaster? Will they like me if I say there's no reason to go to war? Have I focus-grouped this? Such unseriousness is potentially deeply destructive. It is certainly irresponsible. And here's the funny thing: If some Democrat stood up and spoke thoughtfully and without regard for political consequences about what is right for us to do, he'd likely garner enhanced respect and heightened standing. He'd seem taller than his colleagues. At any rate, more than usual, I am missing Pat Moynihan and Sam Nunn.

Members of the administration, on the other hand, seem lately almost inebriated with a sense of mission.<

[No Exit]

43. bluedawg12-- We should not trust Peggy Noonan. She thinks God speaks

through George W. Bush, according to writer Ilana Mercer.

"In as much as she is classy-looking, and speaks with a dulcet lilt, Peggy Noonan doesn't deserve to be lumped in with the Fox fillies. In as much as she prostrates herself to political power, she does. Peggy fashions her prose – a responsorial, stream-of-consciousness ramble – in the style of the black southern preacher. Unlike the preacher, however, she conflates the president with a Higher Power – Peggy believes God speaks through George W. Bush. From his furrows to his genitals, this Court Courtesan's high-flown linguistic banalities have lovingly depicted her man's every inch. (See "He's Got Two of 'Em." )"

www.antiwar.com


A week after the 2004 election, Peggy gushed:

"'He's Got Two of 'Em'

Why I can't stop being happy about the election result.

Well, I just can't stop being happy. I don't mean elated--it's hard to get elated by big history, as opposed to by the birth of a baby, say, or a child's being elected president of the debating club--but I continue to feel relief (the exit poll hives have gone down) and satisfaction (my countrymen, such good sense they have). So let's just let the mood continue and have fun."

(Thursday, November 11, 2004 12:01 a.m. EST)

http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/pnoonan/?id=110005879

Yeah, Peggy, let's just let the mood continue and have fun.

HOW many people had died in Iraq by Nov. 11, 2004??

Peggy Noonan makes me hurl.:puke:

[calico1]

14. Didn't Peggy Noonan take time off to

help get * in the White House? She makes some interesting points but its very strange coming from someone who helped make this all happen.

[No Exit]

30. It's like the kids telling the mom, "This house is a mess", when

THEY were the very ones who made it so.

[Orrex]

16. A spirited attempt to exonerate the Bush administration

Noonan's late-in-the-game redundant perceptiveness is swell, but her observations are hardly insightful or surprising.

Take the dozen pairs of earrings. She identifies them, uncritically, either as a token of affluence or as a last gasp of shallow, materialistic happiness. She overlooks the possibility that the worship of trinkets--the worship of acquisition--is part of the problem, part of the reason that the wheels are coming off the badly overused metaphor.

Noonan's valiant effort to excuse Bush for his countless deliberate misdeeds begins with the observation that "it's all too complex." Well, tough shit. Anyone who thinks that the world is more complicated now than it was five years ago is living in a dangerous and America-centric delusion. The world has been dangerous for a long time, often largely because of American influence. The fact that Noonan and Dubya have only recently begun lamenting the "hard job" of the presidency is only further evidence that too many people of privilege admit no exposure to reality.

Prophecies of impending doom have been around for millennia, culminating in each of the past several generations being convinced that the next generation just won't be able to handle it. Sorry, but Alvin Toffler was a crank.

Thanks, Peggy, for stating the obvious. Thanks also for your de facto pardon of Bush whose job is so hard.

And thanks very much for speaking as one of the elite to us plebes. We've known this shit for years, and if you think we're going to believe that the elites have only lately come on board, then you're going to have to find another metaphor to torture far beyond its limits.

I understand that this article has been kicked. If I could kick it back down, I would.

Phooey on Noonan.

[No Exit]

33. Thank you. You said it much better than I could! n/t

[Uncle Joe]

41. I agree right on with this statement of hers.

"This is. Our elites, our educated and successful professionals, are the ones who are supposed to dig us out and lead us. I refer specifically to the elites of journalism and politics, the elites of the Hill and at Foggy Bottom and the agencies, the elites of our state capitals, the rich and accomplished and successful of Washington, and elsewhere. I have a nagging sense, and think I have accurately observed, that many of these people have made a separate peace. That they're living their lives and taking their pleasures and pursuing their agendas; that they're going forward each day with the knowledge, which they hold more securely and with greater reason than nonelites, that the wheels are off the trolley and the trolley's off the tracks, and with a conviction, a certainty, that there is nothing they can do about it.

I suspect that history, including great historical novelists of the future, will look back and see that many of our elites simply decided to enjoy their lives while they waited for the next chapter of trouble. And that they consciously, or unconsciously, took grim comfort in this thought: I got mine. Which is what the separate peace comes down to, "I got mine, you get yours."

You're a lobbyist or a senator or a cabinet chief, you're an editor at a paper or a green-room schmoozer, you're a doctor or lawyer or Indian chief, and you're making your life a little fortress. That's what I think a lot of the elites are up to."

However, I wonder if she was one of the corpwhorate owned MSM that promoted the idea in 1999-2000 that the primary consideration for the job of President of the U.S. was who would you rather have in your home for a beer.

[JHB]

17. So Peggy has finally noticed...

...the "if we're all just rats on a sinking ship, be the top rat" attitude. I wonder if she's figured out that she's spent her entire career advancing those would-be top rats rather than those trying to save the ship, get the trolley back on track, or whatever metaphore you want to use for promoting general peace and prosperity.

I don't think she's "spot on", however. The way she frames it shows that even though she realizes that history isn't over yet, she, too, has "made her peace" and will just get by on cruise-control, that she lacks the basic spark of optimism that things CAN be made better if we work to MAKE them better.

Peggy has always preferred form over function. If she's finally starting to see the cost of that, it'd be nice, but I think she'll be her old self before long.

[Patiod]

18. The unease affects both us the right and the left

We see the dimson taking us toward a nightmarish court, the war against the middle class and widening gap between rich and poor, constant expensive wars abroad, diminished individual rights (perpetual Patriot Act), corporate facism, you know the litany.

It affects the religious zealots differently -- they constantly talk about their "culture war", and blame all their problems on liberals. Ten commandments in public buildings! Abortions! Gay marriage! the war on Christmas in public schools!!! For some reason, these things seem as important as the earth shattering problems we worry about.

I have to disagree, however about the "I got mine" attitude she attributes to the elites - no no no no no. It's the underlying theme I hear from every single one of my Republican friends. But it is NOT driving the way we liberals think and act - it does not drive progressive thinking. That's one of the key differences between liberals and conservatives.

[Vickers]

19. Wow, it's incredible...she pinpoints PRECISELY what she helped

bring about! :sarcasm:

That's about as clever as the bank robber revealing details of the heist.

[GreenPartyVoter]

21. Well color me shocked. Too bad she didn't have her eyes open to this

back in the Ray-gun years.

[MN ChimpH8R]

22. Well, she did plenty to grease the skids

so I guess she should know.

[mirandapriestly]

23. CBS "veered off track", hmmm how did that happen? yuck to her..nt

[tgnyc]

25. Where the hellhas she been all these years? She just now

realizes that the rich "elites" are mostly looking out for number one?

[Daphne08]

26. After reading all these replies, I must ask,

Does it really matter HOW we arrived here since we find ourselves here anyway.

This is an excellent piece no matter what one's personal perspective might be.

[No Exit]

27. I'm sorry, but Peggy Noonan has always made me puke.

I certainly don't mean that as an attack on the poster, or the praisers, of this article. I mean it as an attack on Peggy Noonan.

Even back when I was stupid enough to follow this cancer--this George W. Bush thing--I couldn't stand Peggy Noonan.

And I don't care for her article. She absolves "her people" of responsibility in this article. As another poster astutely observed: "She helped us get here". Yes, she did--in a big way.

[sandnsea]

29. It's Republicanism and she doesn't understand

"I got mine, you get yours." Yes Peggy, that's the problem. And that's a philosophy that came straight from your hero, St. Ronnie.

[No Exit]

32. Right! Peggy Noonan musing about "why are the wheels off the

track" is like a turd musing about "why does it smell so bad in here".

[sandnsea]

39. Here's the thing about Peggy though

She genuinely cares and if it ever fully sinks in that the problem is Reaganism, well hallelujah we have a chance of digging our way out of this mess. Because once somebody like Peggy gets it, the rest of the country is close behind. She is almost there and she's honestly trying and that gives me more hope than just about anything I've heard in the last 5 years.

[hatrack]

37. Clever, CLEVER Peggy Noonan! It only took her 20 years!!

It only took her 20 years to figure out the kind of nation she'd spent the "high point" of her career creating.

Clever little WSJ op-ed writer!! Would you like a caviar snap? OK then, roll over and BEG!!!

[crispini]

38. Wow. I read the first paragraph and was overcome with chills.

Sometimes things just ring true to me. This rang true, right down to the BONE.

I actually had to stop reading because I started to shake.

I'll see if I can finish it later.

Nominated.

[bluedawg12]

40. Forget Peggy! Look at the division with in their ranks.

I believe that the neocons and traditional conservatives are now mor than ever at odds in their movement.

This is an opportunity for Dems.

http://www.affbrainwash.com/chrisroach/archives/013148.php

>Reagan v. Neocons
by Chris Roach | May 19, 2004 | 1 comment

The Nation had an interesting piece that shows that the neocons, far from being the heirs of Reagan's foreign policy, represent a new and highly ideological intellectual force:

But is neoconservatism simply Reaganism adapted to changing times? According to Stefan Halper, who served in the Reagan Administration, and Jonathan Clarke, a fellow at the Cato Institute, it is nothing of the sort. In the April 2004 issue of The American Spectator, Halper and Clarke argue that, contrary to the gunslinging figure neoconservatives invoke, Reagan was a conservative internationalist who structured his foreign policy around containment and diplomacy, an approach many neoconservatives dismissed as feckless at the time.

This redefinition of conservatism extends to other areas, whether the suggestion that the activist Brown decision somehow advances the conservative agenda item of equality, or that secularism is the American creed. In all of these cases, the redefinition of conservatism requires a deliberate and indefensible rewriting of history. Rather than defending neoconservatism on its merits, its adherents have taken to calling their critics anti-Semites.<

[bluedawg12]

42. The wheels have come off the neocon movement

is what Raygun repug Noonan is trying to say.

The former anti-soviet cold warriors have now gone off the tracks with their middle east agenda, unilateral first strike policy, and nation building.

There is a war going on in the conservative movement, now how do we make that into an opportunity?

..........

http://www.ariannaonline.com/forums/showthread.php?t=5292

Arianna Online Forums > General Discussions > Current Events
How Reagan Beat the Neocons


lmost everywhere in the press one reads that President Bush sounds an awful lot like Ronald Reagan. Commentators and politicians alike have drawn the comparison between Mr. Bush's "muscular" foreign policy and the Reagan doctrine. However macho and aggressive Mr. Bush's foreign policy may be, when it came to the Soviet Union, Mr. Reagan's was anything but.
.......
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2751/is_78/ai_n11849651/pg_2

Neo-conspiracy theories
National Interest, The, Winter, 2004 by Gerard Baker

Buchanan and Halper and Clarke are quite correct in pointing out that today's neocons differ in important respects from the Reagan hawks. For one thing, the early Reagan version did not pursue an unstinting commitment to the universal application of democracy around the world. Indeed, Kirkpatrick first came to the attention of Ronald Reagan after he read her famous 1979 critique of Jimmy Carter in a Foreign Affairs article entitled, "Democracy and Double Standards." In it she castigated Carter for insisting on democratic reforms in countries that were allied to the United States in the Cold War. For the Reagan-era neocons, the emphasis was on defeating communism. If that required some temporary alliances with some unappealing dictators like the Shah of Iran, then so be it. This is strikingly different from today's neoconservative view that the United States can only be safe if democracy is encouraged
...............
http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=38938
Was Reagan the 1st neoconservative?

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Posted: June 14, 2004
1:00 a.m. Eastern


© 2004 Creators Syndicate, Inc.
Patrick J. Buchanan


>Ronald Reagan was one of us, a Cold War anti-communist union leader in the 1940s when neocons were still in mourning for Leon Trotsky. He was a militant free-market conservative in the 1950s when they were still wild about Harry. He was a fiery Goldwaterite in the 1960s when neocons were going all the way with LBJ.

None can say with certitude how Reagan would have responded to 9-11. Yet, it is hard to believe he would have invaded Iraq, absent hard evidence of Saddam's involvement in Sept. 11. For, in spite of Reagan's reputation as a cowboy, prudence – that most conservative of virtues – was a hallmark of his presidency in the Cold War conflict. <

[Francine Frensky]

44. Here's the secret to what she's written:

remember she's a speechwriter, I'll grudgingly admit she's a very good one, and she's playing her readers here with this common emotion: we all want to believe deep down that we are important enough to be alive during the "end times". When we die, so does everyone else; is something that appeals to us even though we don't conciously think it. We all know logically that we are but one tiny strand on the giant rope of humanity, but what appeals to us more is to hear about how we are special: the ones who will be here when it all unravels.

This has been a popular theme during certain moments in history, going all the way back in time. During the bubonic plague, during certain violent eras, sometimes where half or more of the population of an area or country were wiped out, people had these thoughts. And if you read about those times, they were far worse than ours. But people have always "enjoyed" hearing how things are falling apart.

Now I don't know why she's writing this when her party is in power.

Unless there's a general underground strategy of letting america crash and burn (kind of like new orleans - say just let the us default on all our debt to china), and then her cabal will be ready to jump in an impose martial law and force us into a hyper-republican, taliban-like government. I don't know the motivation, but I do know the emotions she is exploiting.

[MadisonProgressive]

47. She's a right wing shill

"The presidency is becoming too big a job"

Well, Clinton seemed to have it under control most of the time! Bush is a friggen idiot!

[bluedawg12]

48. The right wing is split and this is an attack on shrub and the neocons

who are unable to govern.

The old guard is attacking shrub for all of the things that Noonan cites in her article.

I thought it was an amazingly open frontal attack by one conservapig against another.

........

http://www.antiwar.com/mcconnell/mc-col.html
August 21, 2002

http://www.publiceye.org/research/concepts/Mapping-the-Right-06.html

>Cracks and Fissures in the Electoral Right

While the right has been resurgent, it has been continuously bickering...

"During the Bush years, strife among these groups was rampant. Tory 'neocons' and Old Right 'paleocons' warred over Israel and immigration, while libertarians and the Christian right quarreled over family matters. In the 1992 Republican presidential primary Bill Bennett accused Bush challenger Buchanan of 'flirting with fascism.' Ross Perot's third-party candidacy divided the movement further, drawing off the Old Right and laissez-faire conservatives."55

The outcomes of these ongoing internal struggles is difficult to predict, but the cleavages are useful to examine for both tactical and strategic reasons ... It would be a serious mistake, however, to equate internal contradictions and realignment of coalitions with the collapse of the right.

Culture Warriors v. Economic Libertarians

With the ascendancy of the Christian Right in the 1980s, the social conservative theme of the Culture War bested economic libertarianism as the new central metaphor for the struggle between conservatives and liberals

Huntington (who once worried about too much democracy in a paper for the Trilateral Commission) now saw ethno-religious worldviews pitted against each other, with global blocs of Islamic, Orthodox, Japanese, and other cultures battling the beleaguered (heroic, idealized, preferred) Western culture

Paleocons v. Neocons...

Neocons v. Theocons...

Purists v. Pragmatists...

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http://www.antiwar.com/mcconnell/mc-col.html
August 21, 2002


Conservatives Against the War Party
The American Conservative – a new magazine with a mission

>And there is now no shortage of political magazines and commentary situated on what most people would classify as The Right, which now say pretty much the same thing. There is the venerable Commentary, and The Weekly Standard, and National Review, all drawing from the same crew of neoconservative intellectuals and agitpropniks (not always the same, but not mutually exclusive categories);

Anyway, we – Pat Buchanan, the London Spectator columnist Taki, and myself are starting a new magazine – whose mission is in great part to counter the disastrous projects of the War Party. It will debut in late September, and come out every two weeks. We have titled it The American Conservative – and stand ready to initiate a campaign within conservative ranks to keep the country from being led off the cliff by the War Party. <
..........

http://intellectualconservative.com/page1055.html

The New Conservative Divide: Paleocons versus Neocons
by Rachel Alexander
20 April 2003

>The split between neoconservatives and paleoconservatives over the Iraq war goes deeper than many realize. Their differences on ethnic issues are threatening to become the biggest internal battle conservatives will face this decade.
As the first decade of the 2000’s progresses, it is becoming increasingly clear that the two types of conservatism that will define this decade are neoconservatism and paleoconservatism. The war in Iraq has brought out a deep division between the two philosophies, exemplified by paleoconservatism opposition to the conservative Bush administration’s intervention into Iraq.

Paleoconservatism is defined in the American Heritage Dictionary as, “extremely stubborn or stubbornly conservative in politics.” The term paleoconservative actually originated fairly recently, in the Rockford Institute’s Chronicles magazine, as a reaction to what was seen as increasing neocon encroachment into conservatism. Palecons claim that their brand of conservatism is the true descendant of conservative thought of the 1950’s and 1960’s. Paleocons prefer an isolationist foreign policy, and accuse neocons of being interventionist and soft on big government programs. Neoconservative is defined as an intellectual and political movement in favor of political, economic, and social conservatism that arose in opposition to the liberalism of the 1960’s. Paleocons tend to believe that most conservatives today and over the past couple of decades are neocons.<