Monday, June 13, 2005
In Defense of Neocons
Over on TMPCafe’s America Abroad blog, G. John Ikenberry posted a thoughtful essay entitled ”Democratic Enlargement versus Liberal Order,” comparing and contrasting the philosophies of Republican and Democratic liberal internationlists:
My view is that Bush’s vision is distorted and incomplete. The big difference between Bush and the great liberal internationalist presidents is that Bush wants to promote democracy and freedom and Wilson, FDR, Truman, Kennedy, and Clinton wanted to build liberal order. More precisely, they believed that you can’t really have one without the other – to spread democracy you must also deepen the liberal democratic order. . . .
This debate is useful. I think Bush and the neo-conservatives are wrong. But the debate does force liberal internationalists to think about how the liberal order should be reformed to better facilitate democratic enlargement.
Comments (0) • Trackbacks (0) • Permalink • Tell-a-Friend
Why We Need More Adjustment Assistance Programs
Matt Yglesias posted a piece about CAFTA. One anti-free trader raised his voice with the one incontrovertible argument favoring protectionism: a personal anecdote. Stalenyc wrote:
more...Comments (0) • Trackbacks (0) • Permalink • Tell-a-Friend
Sunday, June 12, 2005
Why I Don’t Like Howard Dean
Part 1 of what may become a long running series. . .
Matt Yglesias had some nice things to say about Howard Dean today. Matt seems to think he’s getting a raw deal. I don’t:
Dean cannot possibly be building an effective party because he’s repeating the same mistake that led us to nominate John Kerry: He puts “thou shalt not offend anyone who dislikes Bush” at the top of his list. There are plenty of Republicans with reasons to dislike their party’s current leadership. It’s hard to see how anyone who values social liberty, free trade, fiscal responsibility, or effective nation building can remain a Republican. On the other hand, other than those who elevate social liberty above all, there’s no reason that any of these folks should become Democrats either. Dean continues the Democratic Party’s post-Clinton slide into believing that Republican ideas are so bad that Americans will wake up one day and vote Dem. His unique contribution is to extend that nonsense from Republican ideas to Republicans themselves. Meanwhile, those of us who value free trade, fiscal responsibility, effective nation building have to wonder why we should remain Democrats. It’s fairly clear that, at this point in history, neither party much wants us. If Dean—or his successor—wants to build a winning party, he’s going to have to figure out how to convince disgruntled Republicans to cross the aisle.
Earned some more support from Petey, thank you very much.
Comments (0) • Trackbacks (0) • Permalink • Tell-a-Friend
Foray into Controversy
Yglesias hit one of my political buttons yesterday. I decided to post something controversial--the beginnings of my take on the war in Iraq. It seems to have earned me my first fan.
Yglesias thinks that some of the effusiveness thanking Lindsey Graham, the war’s newest critic, is, well, effusive: “Liberals have developed a slightly unfortunate habit of praising to the skies every Republican legislator who goes slightly off-message in Iraq.” My comment?
more...Comments (0) • Trackbacks (0) • Permalink • Tell-a-Friend
Saturday, June 11, 2005
Daalder and Gelernter, Obama and Disraeli
I wandered out of Matt Yglesias’s domain today into another of the TPMCafe blogs, America Abroad. Ivo Daalder posted an interesting thought playing off Barack Obama’s recent statements about American exceptionalism:
The neocon’s version of exceptionalism—and certainly the one propounded by our commander in chief—is a triumphalist one, suggesting that America is morally superiot to everyone else. Because our motives are pure and superior, the justice of our actions must go unquestioned—or so this form of American exceptionalism appears to imply.
I’m not particularly comfortable with this kind of muscular certitude of our supposed moral superiority. I much prefer the way Barak Obama talks about American exceptionalism. Here’s what the junior senator from Illinois had to say on this subject in his really quite extraordinary commencement address at Knox College last week:
[America is a] place where destiny was not a destination, but a journey to be shared and shaped and remade by people who had the gall, the temerity to believe that, against all odds, they could form “a more perfect union” on this new frontier. And as people around the world began to hear the tale of the lowly colonists who overthrew an empire for the sake of an idea, they started to come. Across oceans and the ages, they settled in Boston and Charleston, Chicago and St. Louis, Kalamazoo and Galesburg, to try and build their own American Dream. This collective dream moved forward imperfectly—it was scarred by our treatment of native peoples, betrayed by slavery, clouded by the subjugation of women, shaken by war and depression. And yet, brick by brick, rail by rail, calloused hand by calloused hand, people kept dreaming, and building, and working, and marching, and petitioning their government, until they made America a land where the question of our place in history is not answered for us. It’s answered by us.
more...
Comments (0) • Trackbacks (0) • Permalink • Tell-a-Friend
Yglesias and Woolsey
Got annoyed with an Yglesias post today. Seems that he doesn’t much trust James Woolsey. Which is fine, except that he tried to smear him with the label:
James “the new war is actually against three enemies: the religious rulers of Iran, the ‘fascists’ of Iraq and Syria, and Islamic extremists like al Qaeda” Woolsey?
Not that Woolsey needs me to defend him, but I had to ask:
I’m sorry, but which of these three groups do you believe is not fighting us? Or is it simply that though they would like to fight us, they are too insignificant to warrant our attention? Perhaps we should simply “contain” them to keep their atrocities local? After all, as long as they do nothing more than oppress Muslims and murder religious minorities (or an occasionally insufficiently pious Muslim), what’s it to us?
I don’t really expect an answer.
Comments (0) • Trackbacks (0) • Permalink • Tell-a-Friend
Friday, June 03, 2005
Patent Reform
Yglesias piques my interest yet again! Today he wrote a brief piece about patent reform. I added my own two cents:
It’s tough to know how to best motivate innovation. Many recent observers have concluded that our current patent system is too strong. If that’s true, it’s a relatively new phenomenon. Not too long ago, the general consensus was that our patent system was too weak, and that it was hurting our competitiveness internationally. In the late ‘70s, Jimmy Carter set up a Domestic Policy Review committee to find the sources of our national malaise. One of its key recommendations was that we needed to strengthen our patent system. The Carter Justice Department ran with the idea, and in one of the few clean handoffs, the Reagan Justice Department finished the job.
That was 25 years ago. We need to fix the system again, perhaps in fundamental ways. The best bet would be to keep it where it is--with the ideological divide running orthogonal to partisan affiliation. While I don’t deny the benefits that the pharmaceutical industry enjoys under both the patent system and several of Bush’s domestic policies, I see this parallel as essentially coincidental.
Comments (0) • Trackbacks (0) • Permalink • Tell-a-Friend
Thursday, June 02, 2005
The Greatest Country
I found another of Yglesias’s posts just screaming for a comment. He titled it with the provocative quesry, Which is the Greatest Country of All? In return, I asked Who Fits?
I had a conversation with a friend this afternoon. I have just returned from Portugal, he from Italy. I said that the more time that I spend abroad, the stronger my feeling that we’ve got something unique going in this country. He said that time abroad reminds him of how sick he’s getting of Americans--and how much he prefers Europeans.
Which of us is more representative of the Democratic intelligentsia? I’d like to think that I am, but I don’t. I suspect that he speaks for many affluent, educated, Democrats, completely apalled at Bush’s reelection, who prefer to seek the company of “sensible” Europeans. Personally, I’ve got my problems with Bush, but I’ve seen worse. Chirac and Schroeder come immediately to mind.
Comments (0) • Trackbacks (1) • Permalink • Tell-a-Friend