But I also believe that given a choice between soul-throttling fundamentalism and individual liberty, most people will pick liberty in the end. ~Andrew Sullivan

Leaving aside for the moment just what Sullivan means by “fundamentalism,” it remains entirely possible that large numbers of people will quite willingly choose to have their souls “throttled” because they regard it as the better option of the two.  This seems strange to many Americans, but then most of the world also seems strange to many Americans.  Perhaps what we regard as normal and obvious is not a good guide for what will happen around much of the rest of the world, since our society is still generally so markedly different from many societies around the world.

What’s more, if a publication started infusing its business-oriented news coverage with rightwing politics would an Economist writer even notice? ~Matt Yglesias

Well, since The Economist‘s news and editorial departments are both about as “right-wing” as Tony Blair when he is in a particularly gushy, humanitarian mood, I would say that their writers would notice.  For instance, here’s some rampant right-wingery from their book reviews this week:

In Europe’s own history Islam has often been a more tolerant, civilising force than, say, the Roman Catholic church [bold mine-DL]. Today’s Turkey offers a current example: devout Muslims with a passion for secular democracy.

Set aside for now just how absurdly, painfully wrong that is.  (These would be the tolerant, civilising forces that had their chief influence in Europe in the Balkans and Spain, and most of their time in both places was neither terribly tolerant nor civilising, while Catholicism created the basis for all western European high culture, literature and art, among other things.)  A critic might object and say, “But neoconservatives say this sort of thing all the time about Islam, and about Turkey, too.  Do you mean to say that they aren’t right-wing?”  Yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying.  Even so, the skepticism of an Economist reviewer of the Eurabian thesis–a popular one in many different conservative circles nowadays–underscores just how much less “rightwing” Economist writers tend to be compared to their American counterparts in the pro-corporate, globalised hegemonist set.  I could cite example after example showing just how ‘wet’ the (British) liberalism of The Economist is, I could argue why it is rather farther to the left of the WSJ on those points where they don’t readily agree, and I could go into some detail to explain why shameless propagandising for globalisation, corporate interests and interventionist wars (which both the WSJ and The Economist do all the time) has nothing to do with what most right-wingers I know actually want or believe, but there is only so much time in the day.

There’s one other difference between the incomers and the aborigines. On polling day the people at the top of the hill will have trooped down to the polling station and, pretty much to a man, voted SNP. Down by the harbour they will have wandered along to the same booths and voted for anyone but. It is pretty much as simple as that.

It is tempting to see Gardenstown as a pristine example of why people vote for nationalist parties. This, of course, would be to ignore the more complex religious, tribal and political reasons why people vote SNP — but to a limited degree, the Gardenstown example holds water. Here you have a population at the top of the hill which feels itself usurped and colonised, taken over, forced out by the bloody English. It is easy to forget — and will become still easier as the years progress — that the English moved in because they were willing to pay comparatively large sums of money to the Scots for those pretty little houses at the water’s edge. And in each individual instance, the Scots were quite uncomplaining when it came to cashing the cheques. It’s only now, when they look down the hill, that the sense of grievance — only mild grievance, mind, this is not Palestine by any stretch of the imagination — manifests itself; their entire seafront swallowed up. Because nonetheless, their village and their way of life is gone, presumably for ever. ~Rod Liddle

The truth is, the Republican Party has one of its strongest lineups ever. Yet one would think from polls showing that a third of Republicans are dissatisfied with their choices that they were stuck with a roster of has-beens and also-rans [bold mine-DL]. Spoiled and well fed, they’re the party of Goldilocks in search of the perfect porridge. ~Kathleen Parker

Give me strength.  Republicans largely are stuck with has-beens and also-rans.  Giuliani, McCain and Tommy Thompson fit the former category (sorry, Tommy), and I’m sorry to say that the other candidates generally seem to fit the latter.  If Fred Thompson joins the race, there will be one more has-been in the mix. 

Did Ms. Parker watch the debate last week?  That was one of the strongest GOP line-ups ever?  Well, in a frightening way, she may still have something of a point when you consider that the “credible” and “viable” alternatives to George Bush in 2000 were such giants as Steve Forbes and John McCain (with a field rounded out in the end by Gary Bauer, John Kasich and Alan Keyes).  Even so, supposing for a moment that this is one of the strongest Republican presidential fields of all time, the obvious question has to be: how have the Republicans ever won the Presidency?  The real answer has to be that there actually have been much stronger Republican fields in the past, and also that there have been more propitious times for the GOP than there are right now.  Even if this were a very strong field, which I don’t believe, the eventual nominee has everything going against him.

“Even if we won’t be going around in the woods trying to find any bears to kill, sometimes the bear visits whether you’re looking for him or not,” he [Fred Thompson] said. ~Kathleen Parker

Is this some oblique reference to the Reagan “bear in the woods” ad from long ago?  Is this yet another lame attempt to relate to the youthful experiences of Davy Crockett (who was, after all, from Tennessee)?  Perhaps this talk of unexpected bear visitations would make more sense if we were not, as a matter of policy, virtually permanently camped out, Grizzly Man-like, in “the bear”‘s cave.

Not satisfied with having their harpy cries of doom disappointed when the devastation of Lebanon did not usher in Armageddon and the Mahdi (or was it the smoking gun?) did not appear in the form of a mushroom cloud on 22 August 2006, war supporters are gearing up for another summer of dire warnings.  Tony Blankley seems to be worried that we are on the verge of something as bad as WWI or WWII or maybe both put together…because in September there will finally be some accountability for the morally bankrupt war policy that he and his allies have supported:

No [sic] even a middling student of history can be anything less than appalled at how often mankind lurches into its episodic catastrophes due to momentary lapses of common sense shared by vast majorities.

In 1914, from London to Paris to Berlin to Vienna to St. Petersburg and Moscow, most people briefly thought that World War I would be over and won by Christmas. In retrospect, the known close balance of lethality held by the two belligerent alliances (and the advantage the machine gun gave to the defense) should have led people to presume a long and bloody abattoir of a war.

In the 1930s, the idea that the manifest expansive urges of the Japanese Empire and Hitler’s Germany would somehow be self-limiting should never have become the consensus expectation both in Europe and the United States. 
 

Blankley is comparing these two, of course, to general public disgust with the Republican Party over Iraq, which is apparently going to lead to epic disaster on par with global conflagrations…by starting to get us out of a war.  There follows a warning about the madness of crowds, because there is nothing that worries the preachers of the armed doctrine of democratists than popular unrest at home:

Cynical or foolish politicians will reflexively give the people what they want. Even most sincere and thoughtful politicians will rarely find the strength to long resist the urge of the public. Vox Populi, Vox Dei — (although sometimes politicians should listen to the advice given to Charlemagne by his advisor, Alcuin: “And those people should not be listened to who keep saying the voice of the people is the voice of God, since the riotousness of the crowd is always very close to madness.”)

This is often true, but why is it that war supporters only seem to discover a sane perspective on the dangers of mass politics at the moment when their policy preferences are in danger of being overthrown?  It seems to me that there were not many invocations of the wisdom of Charlemagne or any other skeptic of popular government to be found in Republican ranks when everyone and his brother was intoxicated with the wonder of seeing numerous purple-fingered Arabs or started wrapping themselves (figuratively) in orange banners in tribute to glorious Ukrainian revolution.  You couldn’t get such people to shut up, so exuberant were they about “people power.”  Nor was there much concern about the folly of the mob when they returned Dobleve to power in ’04.  I would like to think that we anti-democrats have been a bit more consistent in our fairly unremitting disrespect for mass democracy when it opposes our preferences and when it favours our preferences.

As near as I can tell, Blankley thinks September is going to be so “cruel” because it will finally signal the end of Mr. Bush’s ability to indefinitely con the public and abuse the military.  Political pressure will build up such that even the Decider will have to take account of it.  There may even be enough Republican defections from what I might call the Lemming Caucus to overcome Mr. Bush’s veto by that point.  Plus, Gen. Petraeus will report the success, or lack thereof, of the “surge,” at which point there will be nothing behind which war supporters will be able to hide.  Not that they won’t do all they can to manufacture new “corners” that we have almost “turned” and new “plans” that need to be tried, but they will no longer be able to retain credibility with even the much-diminished core supporters who have remained with them till now.

The result is that these Coastal Megalopolises [sic] are increasingly a two-tiered society, with large affluent populations happily contemplating (at least until recently) their rapidly rising housing values, and a large, mostly immigrant working class working at low wages and struggling to move up the economic ladder. The economic divide in New York and Los Angeles is starting to look like the economic divide in Mexico City and São Paulo. ~Michael Barone

On the political implications of this increasingly severe social stratification, I had this to say last year:

Why anyone wants to replicate the splendid “successes” of the Mexican social, economic and political model, I will never fully understand, but the reality that Mexican immigrants will reproduce the society and culture of their old country was entirely foreseeable and was foreseen.  For some folks, the transformation will not be so bad and will make some into a hereditary oligarchic ruling class tucked away in their little enclaves.  That is, at least until homegrown Chavismo comes knocking on their door.

There are two forces at work gradually creating a new oligarch-serf society in certain parts of the country. First, there is the arrival of large numbers of immigrants coming from cultures in which this sort of stratification and the attendant systems of patronage and graft that go with it are all considered normal.  The inherited political culture of these immigrant populations reproduces itself, and the native oligarchs encourage this development because the highly stratified arrangement suits their interests and may even match their own preoccupations with class-driven politics.  Perversely, those most inclined to bang the economic populist drum about income inequality have the most to gain politically from the processes that are encouraging the widening of income inequality in these megalopolitan centers, since the two-tier structure would benefit an oligarchic party doling out largesse to clients in exchange for support.  Second, there is the steady, ongoing departure of the middle-class families that cannot afford to live as the oligarchs do and do not want to live among the serfs, especially if the serfs are from a significantly different culture and/or race.  Call the process “flight of the native.”   

You have the prospect of the coastal megalopoleis becoming extensions of Latin America in terms of social structure quite apart from any cultural or other changes that may be happening, while Middle America becomes ever-more staunchly the bastion of middle-class interests against a coalition of interests of oligarchs and serfs.  This will make the coastal regions even more inaccessible to Republicans, while continuing to strengthen Republicans over time in the middle of the country.  If the megalopoleis, Upper Midwest and coasts are net demographic losers over time, we should continue to see a decrease in the political clout of relatively left-leaning strongholds.  However, as the social transformation on the coasts continues, these areas promise to produce ever more radically leftist politics that will separate these places even more from Middle America.  It seems that it follows that those who do not want there to be two truly starkly opposed Americas should give serious thought to curbing mass immigration.

Reason: In 2006 the GOP majority held a vote on Iraq withdrawal that you said was intended to embarrass the Democrats politically. And then the GOP lost the elections in part because Democrats hit them on the war. Why have your colleagues misread the popularity of the war?

Gilchrest: I can’t psychoanalyze those guys. I think the GOP was dissolving. Now it’s drying up and the wind’s going to blow it away. I just don’t think we have the depth of knowledge, intellect, and experience necessary for a viable political party any more.

Try putting that on the 2008 bumper stickers!

At the same time, I have to acknowledge that Gilchrest does have some choice words for the ridiculous “Victory Caucus”: 

Reason: How do you interpret the Republican base on this issue? There are a number of ad hoc groups that bloggers have started to punish Republicans who’ve cast anti-war votes, like Florida’s Ric Keller…

Gilchrest: Poor soul.

Reason: That was the Victory Caucus. How do you respond to these groups that want to oust anti-war Republicans?

Gilchrest: I know what I want to say, but my mother taught me not to say it. Look, history is a vast early warning system. Knowledge is key to this issue. Simplistic, dogmatic ideology confines and restricts your view of the world. So if you want to be loyal to the troops in the field, if you’re saying you’re patriotic, then you’ll read a book like Anthony Zinni’s The Battle for Peace. You’ll read a book like Fiasco. You’ll turn the damn television off every night for two hours and read some objective opinions on this thing. Ignorance is pervasive in any culture and ours is not an exception.

Reasonhas interviewed Rep. Wayne Gilchrest (R-MD).  Here is a choice excerpt: 

Reason: When you voted for the war you said that the Americans who would overthrow Saddam were “peacemakers.” Do you stand by that?

Gilchrest: I stand by that rationale. That rationale was based on the Persian Gulf War of 1991. I was here during that war, during the debate, during the development of the authorization to use force, and this authorization for this war was virtually the same. What it meant was that you only go to war with all other options exhausted. After a couple of years, when all that began to unravel, that’s when I knew if I had a chance to vote on authorization again I wouldn’t vote for it. What I failed to consider was whether the executive branch was competent, informed, and had integrity [bold mine-DL].  Under the circumstances, I don’t think it was.

He failed to consider it?  I can understand, with some reservations, that members of the House might have regarded the administration as “competent,” “informed” and bursting with integrity, but were mistaken and then felt foolish for having trusted the administration.  To not even consider whether or not this was the case seems crazy to me. 

It seems to me a safe bet, and the conservative bet, to assume that the administration is always incompetent, uninformed and corrupt until they prove otherwise on a consistent basis.  This is how I view government in general, and I have to tell you I am not disappointed as often as I should be.  You don’t entrust war powers to the chief executive on the assumption that he is going to do everything right, but you should only vest the President with lawful, constitutional war powers (which would involve a declaration of war) after you have already accepted that the President will almost certainly make a hash of it, doesn’t know what he’s doing and may be on the take from or under the influence of special lobbies but that the war is nonetheless in the national interest and must therefore go ahead.  After living through the age of Clinton and Bush, how could anyone ever again make the mistake of assuming a plenitude of competence and knowledge in the executive branch? 

Note what Gilchrest doesn’t say.  He doesn’t say that it was a mistake to meddle in Iraq in general, or that it was wrong to invade another country without good reason, or that there is something profoundly wrong in effectively calling those who start wars “peacemakers.”  He embodies the kind of critic of the war that Hanson et al. skewer (and with some justification): when things go poorly, then they discover that the war was a mistake, but should things turn around they will suddenly rediscover their inner hawk.  I guess this is what a lot of people in the so-called “political middle” are like, and it reminds why I try to stay as far away from the “political middle” as I possibly can.