Our 28-year conservative opportunity to fix the moral and practical boundaries of government is gone–gone with the bear market and the Bear Stearns and the bear that’s headed off to do you-know-what in the woods on our philosophy.
I’ve been a fan of O’Rourke’s for some time. To me his best work was in Parliament of Whores — he was young enough to still get angry, but old enough to have wisdom to go with it.
The trainwreck of the Bush years and the election of Obama seem to have stirred some of the old man’s melancholy magic, though.
Conservatives should never say to voters, “We can lower your taxes.” Conservatives should say to voters, “You can raise spending. You, the electorate, can, if you choose, have an infinite number of elaborate and expensive government programs. But we, the government, will have to pay for those programs. We have three ways to pay.
“We can inflate the currency, destroying your ability to plan for the future, wrecking the nation’s culture of thrift and common sense, and giving free rein to scallywags to borrow money for worthless scams and pay it back 10 cents on the dollar.
“We can raise taxes. If the taxes are levied across the board, money will be taken from everyone’s pocket, the economy will stagnate, and the poorest and least advantaged will be harmed the most. If the taxes are levied only on the wealthy, money will be taken from wealthy people’s pockets, hampering their capacity to make loans and investments, the economy will stagnate, and the poorest and the least advantaged will be harmed the most.
“And we can borrow, building up a massive national debt. This will cause all of the above things to happen plus it will fund Red Chinese nuclear submarines that will be popping up in San Francisco Bay to get some decent Szechwan take-out.”
If that’s magic Jacques, count me out. It’s a dreadful piece IMHO. Mostly unfunny, and stupidly partisan. It’s all ‘us’ (conservatives) and ‘them’ (liberals). For me it conveys the impression that it really wouldn’t matter how badly your party had led the country, the real pity is that in its base excess, in its monumental unworthiness to govern, it gave the other side over which it had so many advantages, a look in.
This is a government that lied its way into a war which crippled America’s economic and moral standing in the world, tried to party on and cut taxes for the rich while it was spending hundreds of billions on foreign adventures. A party that got judges removed for not toeing the political line, that approved detention for years without due process, extraordinary rendition and systematic torture while arguing that it should not be required to abide by the Geneva Conventions. I mean you wouldn’t have believed this if it was predicted a decade ago. (Compare this to the behaviour of the USA when it really was under some threat in WWII).
And all we get from PJ is a lamentation that they blew it and let the liberals back in.
Anyway, perhaps it becomes very good. I gave up reading about half way through.
That’s a shame, Nicholas, because that’s when he really hits his stride.
There’s the partisan over reaction at the top but push on, because O’Rourke is essentially a Goldwater Republican. Your remarks show you didn’t actually get to the part where O’Rourke lambasts Republicans going back to Reagan.
Strangely, I don’t remember the war in Iraq being driven by popular demand, especially after the first year. The Afghan campaign has not been terribly popular either. The secret rendition flights and torture of prisoners did not even go through any consultation process with the electorate. Development of Raytheon’s 95GHz anti-personel directed energy weapons couldn’t have been cheap, hmmm what percentage of the electorate even knows that exists (but their tax paid for it) ? I don’t remember there even being a strong public outcry that we must have electronic voting machines, but there has been a public outcry against such things (which was duly ignored by state government as they signed up to buy more and more expensive disfunctional machines).
It’s pretty easy to keep extending the list of elaborate and expensive government military programs that were either completely kept secret, or that the electorate was hoodwinked and bullied into not exactly supporting, but at least being too frightened to protest about. Sadly, both of the major US political parties took part in this. I’ll further add that the expensive and ineffective bank bailout program was also highly unpopular with the electorate but got pushed through in the heat of panic and once again, very few in Washington were willing to speak out against it.
PJ has the right idea about trying to limit government power, but he certainly has the wrong idea about what the Republican party has been doing, or about who is driving this bus.
So freedom is being allowed to own a gun, but not being allowed to own the physical body you live in. Somehow hypocrisy just keeps stinking no matter how you dress it up. At least the Socialists are honest and consistent about believing that individuals have no rights.
This reminds me of the US clothing industry working together to readjust clothing sizes. Worked for them.
Anyhow, the “Liberals think you can” comment is downright rude in the face of what GWB has just done.
Tel, I think you’re making the same mistake as Nicholas. O’Rourke is a not a republican apologist.
Are you saying that he is a totally committed supporter of the blunders and crimes he didn’t enumerate?
I’m a fan of PJ O’Rourke, but this is not one of his best columns. The best bit is the description of the “room full of horseshit” trick — but that seems to be how he’s arguing for another go. “We screwed it up completely, but if you give us another shot, we’ll get it right.” Yeah… no.
P J’s been a faithful Republican for a long time now, and that loyalty through good and bad times is kind of admirable.
I read this piece the other day and agree that it’s certainly not P J’s best. (But that’s okay – there’ll always be Republican Party Reptile, the CEO of the Sofa, etc, to come back to). But there are still a number of good points in there, like the defence of personal choice in relation to abortion, etc.
The old chap might have a good book or two still left in him – I certainly hope so. But he should probably be moving beyond partisan cheap shots at this time in his life. And he can probably be forgiven for a few bad columns, he’s got rectal cancer. And that’s just a pain in the arse. ;)
Here’s a nice earlier piece by O’Rourke surveying the election candidates – less partisan, more funny.
I wish I knew where all my O’Rourke books had got to.
I have a left hand. I have a right hand.
If they get into a fight with each other I really do need a shrink!
Human existence is not about the war of concepts, egos and being right (which everybody seems to love so much)! Human existence is the journey one gets to take, to discover what it means to be alive! What else is a society good for?
For that you need mutual respect amongst the peoples of this earth, and care.
People who highlight differences do so by ignoring our similarities (which are far profounder), inflame the conflict of concepts, and use emotion to overcome a deficiency in truth; and diminish us all thereby.
I admire people who walk the middle way, with integrity, because they genuinely like their fellow human beings; and genuinely feel to help.
Option 1: Bush
Option 2: a lie
Option 3: Bush
PJ’s just another Limbaugh.
The points he makes on abortion and social conservatism are very good. I didn’t read the piece as an exercise in providing amusement, but as making serious points with the odd funny line thrown in. If you’re a Goldwater Republican, the socially conservative trainwreck that the Republican Party has become isn’t funny at all. It’s beyond sad.
I’ve written several posts on this issue (including one partly on PJ’s piece) at my place. I won’t link them all, because they’re all on the front page and easy enough to find.
Jacques, if he is going to turn around and say that liberals believe “X” and conservatives believe “Y” after umpteen years of conservative government pushing the bounds of “X” beyond belief, then yeah I’m going to call him on it and I don’t feel it’s a mistake either. Then to say that the voters have been demanding these things from their government (when in reality public opinion has been firmly against Bush for at least the last two years) is just out in space somewhere. Let’s not forget that it was Clinton (the liberal) who last had the US budget turning a surplus and paying back foreign debt. Does PJ offer even a shred of credit for that? One would think that a man of principle would offer thanks where thanks is due.
PJ used to be in favour of small government, sound money, balanced budgets and minimal regulation — all the things that Ron Paul is pushing right now. Does PJ come out in public as a Ron Paul supporter? No, only loonies support Ron Paul.
Let’s go make fun of some pot smokers so we can find someone to look down upon and feel superior.
Tel, I think O’rourke only makes fun of pot smokers in the “I was one and …” sense. But his funniest work is long past as far as I can tell. Parliament of Whores, All the Trouble in the World and Give War a Chance are funny and libertarianish.
Pedro, I challenge you to produce 3 articles from Daily Kos that come close to the level of anti-intellectual raving that appears to be the only thing Limbaugh is capable of. Because I don’t doubt I could produce at least 20 examples of Limbaugh simply being a blathering idiot.
Actually pedro I’d be satisfied if you could find a single article from Daily Kos suggesting that Bush caused the 2001 recession. There were a few criticising Bush for trying to suggest the recession started before he took office, but none that I can see suggesting the recession was his fault. Note of course, it didn’t come into existence until 2002, and it’s pretty hard to find any articles on Google from before 2003.
Hmm, odd…I meant to both those to the “Obama’s recession” thread…not sure how that happened..
NPOV, what might appear raving to me could be sensible to you, but I’ll simply leave the discussion by saying I remember these things, but couldn’t be bothered hunting around to find them. Fraid I’m not that good at designing google searches so I have to sift pages of links.
How about tyhat comedienne who wanted a bunch of her black friends to gang-rape Palin?
Well I’m sure there’s much on Daily Kos that’s not particularly sensible. And yes, no doubt there is raving from time to time. I pretty much only read Daily Kos articles when they are linked to from other sources I respect, or when they turn up in fairly specific Google searches, so I’m almost certainly not repeating a representative selection of its content, but I have never yet come across anything from Limbaugh (or similar sources) that remotely resembles intelligent discussion.
But he should probably be moving beyond partisan cheap shots at this time in his life.
The tone’s a bit different from his earlier stuff. But he’s writing for the Weekly Standard not Rolling Stone and he’s writing in today’s America. The America of Michael Savage and Mike Moore. Anyone read Michael Savage? The fact that he can actually publish such witless tripe let alone that it sells tells you heaps about just how low the bar is cast.
What O’Rourke is doing is saying the GOP fucked up. And it did. To make this palatable he has to persistently remind his readers that he’s one of them.
Thing is the alliance between the fag wavers, the bible bashers and the adherents of old style liberalism have taken their toll. One such is that the first two groups have a lot of power. I truly wonder about the wisdom of an alliance that turns a blind eye to religious fundamentalism, the denial of science etc and still purports to extol freedom.