Please take time and drink in the stupidity that is Kevin Drum and his idiotic liberalism:
I don’t write about national security and civil liberties issues as much as I should. Partly this is because I find much of it too grim to bear. But it’s also because it seems so hopeless: there’s really no significant difference between the two major parties on most of these issues, and therefore no real chance of any of them being changed. There are differences at the margin — Obama banned torture and Eric Holder at least tried to institute civilian trials for terrorist suspects — and during campaign season even modest differences become magnified. But really, there’s a pretty broad bipartisan consensus on all the big stuff: drones and assassinations and secrecy and military intervention and the ever increasing role of surveillance in our society, just to name a few items.
via It’s Official: No One Will Ever Be Prosecuted for Bush-Era Torture | Mother Jones.
Maybe it is because no one really actually did anything illegal and if legal boundaries were pushed, it was because there were actually people wanting to protect this Country from terrorist attacks. However, Liberals cannot be bothered with that; because they are too defending those who want to kill us. Yes, Abu-ghraib prison was horrible thing and quite the isolated incident, in which the people who committed those crimes were tried, convicted and served their time. Now, of course, those people are going to say, “Oh yes! I was told to do what I did!” Do you really think those idiots are going to say, “Yes, I was a treasonous a–hole and I admit that.” — honestly? One would think the smart answer to that would be no. But then again, we are talking about Liberal Democrats here.
Which brings me to my real point of this posting: This is precisely why I stopped voting for the Democratic Party. Because of the acute anti-Military attitude exhibited by them. This piece quoted above is nothing more than a nice way of saying that our own military are nothing more than “battlefield terrorists.” Something that has been expressed by the liberal left before. This attitude is also found in the some of the libertarian and strict Paleoconservative circles too; which is why I am not too friendly with them.
When it comes to foreign policy, I tend to follow the Reagan line. Military only as a last resort — peace through strength, not domination of the World by military might and not irresponsibility by foreign policy disengagement. I believe that Wilsonian foreign policy is wrong-minded and has caused more harm, that it has ever caused good. The outcome simply is not worth forcing western style of Government and Politics on those who do not want it. Both Iraq wars proved it, Vietnam proved it, Korean War proved it, World War I, which eventually caused World War 2 — proved it.
However, I do believe that defending the Republic is very important. I also happen to believe, that if we are going to fight wars, that we should actually declare a war, and do it according to the Constitution. This is something that I actually agree with Ron Paul on. However, the problem with the Ron Paul and his followers, and also with strict paleoconservative crowd is that they conflate or at least confuse the terms “defending the Republic” and “defending empire.” There is a fine line between the two and Ronald Reagan walked it very well. Ron Paul and the strict paleoconservatives, not so much. To be fair, Bush blew it too.
Not to mention that a good many of the Paleoconservatives have an issue with the idea of a Jewish state, not to mention some of them just outright hate Jews with a passion. While I might have an issue with some of the actions of some of the American Jews and their supporters. I have no issue at all with the Jewish State at all. This is one of my big issues with the paleoconservative right, and it is why I tend to distance myself from most of them. It is okay to be against Wilsonian foreign policy; but to use nuanced Anti-Semitic rhetoric to denounce it does nothing for that cause.
Now the difference between Kevin Drum and the strict paleoconservative is this; Kevin Drum believes that big Government is just fine, while the Paleoconservatives find big centralized Government to be terrible. Which is why Paleoconservatives will never be in the mainstream of Conservative politics; between the hatred of Jews and their state — and the unrealistic foreign policy — it is just something that is not ready for prime time.
The only reason, however, that the liberal left and their policies even remain mainstream, is because of the lip service and handouts that they give to the minorities in this Country. Otherwise, the Democratic Party would have been marginalized long ago. Housing meltdown and failed economics be damned; there people who will always support the Democrats and the left, because of what they can get them.
It is a truly a sad thing; but very true.