What Became of Conservatives?-by ex-Reagan official...talks about RW hate

This site appears to be a conservative anti-war site. Roberts is the former ass't Treas. Sec. under Reagan...

Very interesting read on the neo-cons and the media....


http://www.antiwar.com/roberts/?articleid=4056

November 26, 2004
What Became of Conservatives?
by Paul Craig Roberts


(SNIP)


In the ranks of the new conservatives, however, I see and experience much hate. It comes to me in violently worded, ignorant, and irrational e-mails from self-professed conservatives who literally worship George Bush. Even Christians have fallen into idolatry. There appears to be a large number of Americans who are prepared to kill anyone for George Bush.

The Iraqi War is serving as a great catharsis for multiple conservative frustrations: job loss, drugs, crime, homosexuals, pornography, female promiscuity, abortion, restrictions on prayer in public places, Darwinism, and attacks on religion. Liberals are the cause. Liberals are against America. Anyone against the war is against America and is a liberal. "You are with us or against us."

This is the mindset of delusion, and delusion permits of no facts or analysis. Blind emotion rules. Americans are right and everyone else is wrong. End of the debate.

That, gentle reader, is the full extent of talk radio, Fox News, the Wall Street Journal editorial page, National Review, the Weekly Standard, and, indeed, of the entire concentrated corporate media, where non-controversy in the interest of advertising revenue rules.


MORE

I've read it occasionally, & they're conservative, but on the war, they agree with people here.

Liberal and Moderate Dems plus true conservative and moderate Republicans. Now wouldn't you think that there'd be enough there to outnumber the social conservatives.

I like that quote above. That spells it out in no uncertain terms. That is EXACTLY what I've experienced. Liberals are Unamerican, Liberals are socials, Liberals are Communists (got called that to my face during this election). Liberals eat babies!

True Conservatives, not the Bush cabal, hate & fear black-box-voting as much as we do.

They know without honest elections, our democracy is doomed.

That the election was really lost, but I suppose I already have been dealing with that fact over the last few weeks.

I do hate to break it to the author, but I listen to Air America radio and NPR; there are dozens of radio stations, hundreds of radio shows, and thousands of radio callers, millions of radio listeners. Trying to label it all "neocon" material is like saying the internet is liberal. Its not that easy to even say DU is totally liberal.

Thanks for sharing

I've printed it out to share with one of my liberal friends at church tomorrow (if we don't get snowed in)!

(From a fellow New Mexican up north)

Sunny here, but last week was awful "New Jersey Weather"---rainy and raw!!!

Wish we could have a NM gathering for DUers!!!!

He kind of hits the nail right on the head!

"Delusion is still the defining characteristic of the Bush administration. We have smashed Fallujah, a city of 300,000, only to discover that the 10,000 U.S. Marines are bogged down in the ruins of the city. If the Marines leave, the "defeated" insurgents will return. Meanwhile, the insurgents have moved on to destabilize Mosul, a city five times as large. Thus, the call for more U.S. troops.

There are no more troops. Our former allies are not going to send troops. The only way the Bush administration can continue with its Iraq policy is to reinstate the draft.

When the draft is reinstated, conservatives will loudly proclaim their pride that their sons, fathers, husbands, and brothers are going to die for "our freedom." Not a single one of them will be able to explain why destroying Iraqi cities and occupying the ruins are necessary for "our freedom." But this inability will not lessen the enthusiasm for the project. To protect their delusions from "reality-based" critics, they will demand that the critics be arrested for treason and silenced. Many encouraged by talk radio already speak this way."

too pure for God, and too educated for democracy. Why require corporations to balance their checkbooks? Why must the wealthy pay taxes and obey laws in order to receive benefits along with protection of rights from the government?

Is there any special way to buy citizenship, or can anyone just lobby for it? :evilgrin:

It's also nice to find that there are some conservatives who haven't been taken in by Bush worship.

I found this especially interesting:

Liberals became Benthamites (after Jeremy Bentham). They believed that as the people controlled government through democracy, there was no reason to fear government power, which should be increased in order to accomplish more good.

The conservative movement that I grew up in did not share the liberals' abiding faith in government. "Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely."

Today it is liberals, not conservatives, who endeavor to defend civil liberties from the state. Conservatives have been won around to the old liberal view that as long as government power is in their hands, there is no reason to fear it or to limit it.

Interesting take on this bewildering dance liberals and "conservatives" have been engaging in for the last 5-10 years.

Gentlepeople:

I am truly stunned. I just read Dr. Roberts' article, "What Became of Conservatives?" and I am stunned. I had lost hope that anyone calling himself a "conservative" actually knew how to speak in terms that were thoughtful, reasoned, circumspect, objective, and NOT hate-filled. I had thought such a species was extinct.

I am a LIBERAL. PROUD OF IT, TOO. Yes, I'm SHOUTING! I'd like to thank Dr. Roberts for his shockingly civil commentary. But it makes me feel a little unbalanced. I'd become so accustomed to being lambasted as a vile, venomous, baby-killing, Saddam-loving, terrorist-embracing, America-hating, Godless, commie, amoral, sub-human traitor with multiple horns sprouting from my forehead and an arrow-pointed tail out my backside that it's hard even to read Dr. Roberts' words clearly. Pardon me if I've also misplaced my claw-studded, Satan-issued bat-wings, my poisoned fangs - and my witch's broom.

I am unaccustomed to reading anything but bile from the mouths of "conservatives" who seem grimly determined to burn both Hillary Clinton AND me at the stake in their village square. Such language is nothing but a guarantee that our seriously ailing and mortally divided country will NOT heal, OR unite, under any future circumstances. If they despise and demonize me so, how can they possibly expect me to listen to them or to be open to their dictates? My reaction is to recoil in horror from them, and to reject whatever bile oozes from their mouths. I guess Dr. Roberts is the ONLY "conservative" nowadays who's heard that you catch more flies with sugar than you do with sulfuric acid.

Thank you for your sense and sensitivity, Dr. Roberts. This liberal, pro-choice, lifelong Catholic, California Democrat, wife (in a stable near 30-year marriage) and mother-of-two - greatly appreciates what you've written. Yours is one conservative's column with which I can enthusiastically agree. I'm impressed. And, frankly, I'm surprised, because up til now, I didn't think any conservatives had even a trace of those two qualities left in them.

Respectfully (and no sarcasm intended, Dr. Roberts. I seriously feel, and mean, all the things I've just written here),

(me)

and it is one of the best opinion pieces I have read. It is remarkably frank and honest.

"In the ranks of the new conservatives, however, I see and experience much hate. It comes to me in violently worded, ignorant, and irrational e-mails from self-professed conservatives who literally worship George Bush. Even Christians have fallen into idolatry. There appears to be a large number of Americans who are prepared to kill anyone for George Bush."

Talk about hitting the nail on the head!

started...and that is within their party.
For the first godawful years all we did was take it, turning the other cheek with such speed and regularity if you listened you could hear the whirring sound and little else coming from our side.
Recently we've begun to fight back. I'm all for it.
To paraphrase Conason in the introduction to "Big Lies", there comes a time when you have to stand up to the schoolyard bully.
They must always remember where the hate started, though. With them.