October 27, 2004

A right turn

OpinionJournal.com offers what I believe to be an important analysis of where President Bush has been in the past four years. I sometimes criticize President Bush for his embrace of big government — I generally find myself in the Barry Goldwater vein (“My aim is not to pass laws, but to repeal them”) — but I wholeheartedly support President Bush’s foreign policy of preemption. That’s why I believe it is critical he have another four years in the White House.

I am not entranced with this notion of neoconservative dominion in the White House. And I generally don’t describe myself as a neocon — just “con” works well enough for me. (In case you’re interested, the Christian Science Monitor offers an interesting identification quiz on this matter.) The authors of this column write, “But even if Mr. Bush wins, the neoconservative dream at its most fanciful is surely over. The neocons will remain; they are too clever and too prominent on Washington's rive droite to disappear.”

They’re probably right. And that’s OK. I’ll take the neocons if we can have Bush for another round against evil.

Don’t miss the column. Here’s one of the highlights (in my humble view):

The result is a paradox: A president who has devoted his energies to governing on behalf of conservative America and who is regarded by many on the right as being the most conservative person to ever reach the White House has ended up creating deep divisions on the right. Big-government conservatism has alienated influential small-government activists; you can even find prominent Washington libertarians saying that they would rather have a Massachusetts liberal with no legislative record to his name in the White House than a Texas Republican who has managed to expand both education and Medicare. Social conservatism has alienated the party's Western wing. And the Iraq War has reinforced doubts among all sorts of conservatives that Bush's Reaganism has shaded into Wilsonian liberalism--one that ignores conservative insights into both the difficulty of implanting democracy in hostile soil and the dangers of stirring up fanaticism.

I think the last sentence is bit myopic: Mr. Bush didn’t stir up fanaticism. Fanaticism came knocking on a sunny morning in September 2001. The hornet’s nest of radical Islam long had been awake — and isolationist (and appeasement-loving) American leaders failed to do what needed to be done.

One kind of fanaticism deserves another. And I’m fanatic about American sovereignty, security and freedom. And all this reminds me of the 12 Sept. 2001 editorial of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram:

"...Those responsible for these attacks would do well to heed the words of Japanese Adm. Isoroku Yamamoto after the attack on Pearl Harbor: 'I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve.' And so they have."

— Brady Creel

| Oct. 27, 2004 | 1:23 PM