Turkey Day Comin'

The reference to Turkey Day is not November 25 -- the national day of thanksgiving. Rather, it's January 3, when the new Congressional session starts. I don't have a much to comment about that. I just thought I'd write something here to see if I might wake up some of the echoes of the past. In the event of complete silence, I will delete this sight from my favorites and move on, alone, lonely, forlorn, and forgotten.

Take the 40 minutes to watch

I was pretty moved, and found it thoughtful and somewhat groundbreaking. Interesting to see what others thought. For example, read these select quotes from the writers (not readers, mind you) at National Review Online:

Obama's speech was absurd. It was full of contradictions and stereotypes. Most of all, he took no personal responsibility for adopting a racist as his father figure. Indeed, in excusing Wright he sought to excuse himself.

What kind of person would traduce his grandmother (who is still alive) to score a political point? Yesterday's speech, read through in the clear light of dawn, is worse than I thought: an ugly mish-mash of ancient socialist clichés and Gen-X spoiled-brat self-congratulation, all enveloped in clouds of flatulent Oprahnian rhetoric. Ugh!

The message? Wright’s motives for espousing hatred are complex and misunderstood; your motives for worrying about Obama and his Pastor are simple and suspect. When Obama the magician was all done this morning, Obama was no longer under examination for terrible judgment in subsidizing a racist by his association and purse, nor was even the racist Wright under doubt; instead almost everyone else, from the system to his grandmother, to talk radio, to corporate culture, to your rabbi or priest suddenly was.

Meanwhile, in an effort to lay blame everywhere, Obama called out his own grandmother for admitting to her, now, not so secret fear of young black male strangers. He said that when he was growing up her remarks sometimes made him cringe. Well, for my part, hearing him compare a woman who sacrificed for his well-being to a pastor who's only benefited from his association made me cringe. Real courage and real candor is Chris Rock standing on stage telling a packed black audience that seeing young black men on dark lonely night near the glow of an ATM can make him feel nervous, too.

The speech is slippery, evasive, dishonest, and sometimes insulting.

It's a speech, and a controversy, that are predictable and dispiriting — that with minor changes one could imagine attributing to Hillary or Jesse.

The more I think about this speech, the more I think Obama said: Damn straight, Rev. Wright is angry. That's how I wound up at his church. That's why I stay there. I'm mad too, I just control it better. Now let's get electing me president so we can all feel good.

I stopped listening when the senator started talking about immigrant Americans and it was clear that he was going to extend the roster of victims to include everybody. There is no excuse for Wright and his ugly sermons. Obama could have said he loved the man, but he’s wrong in his hatred of America. But that is not what Obama said. There is no excuse for Wright’s brand of hatred.

This a breathtaking attempt to pass off Wright's hateful rants by implying that they are little different than the "political views" of some priest with which a parishioner might disagree. Does he think plenty of ministers of every faith are capable of spewing Wright-like vitriol or, despite his repudiations, does he really view the comments as benign "political views" with which we're free to disagree

I thought Sen. Obama spent quite a bit of time disparaging others. All churchgoers hear insulting or offensive preaching? His grandmother's a racist? Low-income white Americans are angry and irrational, too?" Evil business meanies are throwing Americans out of work for "nothing more than profit?"
Gee, this country is kind of "mean," isn't it

After March 4 ...

"Okay ... you got Ohio and Texas, but it's still a close count."

What great race! Some pundits posit that having no clear victor yet will amp up the rancor and damage the party. I don't think so. True, the Dems have a knack for imploding even before the convention, but this year feels different. The Republicans will start chipping away at both, but at least McCain seems to eschew the Carl-Rove tactics of the recent past. Meanwhile, Clinton and Obama will need to clarify their differences -- hopefully by hammering at policy, rather than personality. All in all, this race has more energy and excitement than any I can remember.

Hope for a Statesman

Yes, they still exist. Just when you think the pettiness and the fear and the cynicism and insulting divisiveness were terminal, a rural state in the middle of our great country sends a message that enough is enough. For the first time in my life I feel like I am moved by a true statesman and patriot. God bless America.

Sifting the ruins ...

So, class, here we are at one of the mid-paleoliberal blog sites. As you know, the webscape is littered with literally thousands of these early 21st-century homesteads. Hundreds of thousands of bloggers were lured onto the Great Plains of the cyberfrontier by the promise of free space -- where a man could state his opinion, by god, and make his own way among the punditry.

No one really knows why so many of these settlers gave up on their dreams, although theories abound. We do know this. Some went bust, pulled up stakes, and retreated to their day jobs. Others found that, rather than plowing their wits into this rocky soil, they could make rather handsome fortunes exploiting those who continued to do so. These people are now called campaign consultants, and it's best not to speak of them.

Mostly, though, we can attribute the downfall of the blogsteaders to the steady drought that has afflicted the political landscape for several years now. It's difficult to scratch out a respectable living beating the Bush, and the Dust Bowl obliterated the Democratic Dream. Now, all that's left is a collection of vacant pages like this one -- the dry well of ideas, the shutters flapping in the lonely wind, and the echoes of the erudition that once fertilized these fields. Okay then, class, let's move on ...

Spiritual Experience?

Here.
2GL Contributors, lets work on getting this thing going again.

Recommends

spelling bee kid.

Falafel. Never realized fried sawdust could taste so good. top with hummus , baba ganoush, and those pickled parsely springs...oh, it's no longer just a garnish.

Recommends

Rubberbands--the lazy man's twist tie. So versatile. Bring some home from your office and secure your items in your fridge today. I had a boss constantly call them "elastics." Please don't.

Menthol-infused shaving cream--for some reason, no burn--only cool sensation. Malin and Goetz brand for best results. Makes shaving something to look forward to.

Jogging--yeah, the old-fashioned sort. Far superior a workout than any of its competitors. Just tough to get kick-started, with creeking knees and lower lumbar problems, but worth the fight. Feels like I lost 5 lbs, just thinking about it.

Buying Used Books on Amazon Marketplace--awesome concept. Usually pay about $3-$4 for all kinds of hard-to-find shit. I'd rely on the sellers' with the most feedback. You say "obviously"? I say "$500 million per year in Internet fraud." But I haven't had a problem yet with the less popular sellers. You can't be needing it, though, for a paper due on Monday. Takes a good 10-14 days to receive.

Wasabi & Soy Sauce Blue Diamond Almonds--will kick your @ss initially with bold taste, but then becomes refreshingly addictive.

The Genitive Case--a possessive of time, when you want to short cut "six years of imprisonment" to "six years' imprisonment." We use it easily in speech, on Court TV, avoid it in writing. Its simple, elegant--the new comma. Other examples: an hour's delay, three days' time.

Horse Raddish Hummus from Trader Joe's--refreshingly addictive, see Wasabi/soy almonds. Ate a whole tub straight the other night. Wasabi is just Japanese Horse Raddish, for the tyros out there.

Please feel free to add to the mix....

Patriot Act- Was it worth it?

This story does not appear to be raising as many eyebrows with the American People as the U.S. Attorneys firings. If you care about the U.S. Attorney story, this one is equally important to our system of criminal justice. The basic idea is that a few FBI Field Offices were audited to determine violations of personal electronic data gather tools allowed in the Patriot Act. (i.e. the sections of the P. Act that broadened the 4th Amendendment's unreasonable search and seizure clause or broadened power for national security reasons.) They did poorly, here's the idea:

In a review of headquarters files and a sampling of just four of the FBI's 56 field offices, Fine found 48 violations of law or presidential directives during between 2003 and 2005, including failure to get proper authorization, making improper requests and unauthorized collection of telephone or Internet e-mail records. He estimated that "a significant number of ... violations throughout the FBI have not been identified or reported.

In 1986, Congress first authorized FBI agents to obtain electronic records without approval from a judge using national security letters. The letters can be used to acquire e-mails, telephone, travel records and financial information, like credit and bank transactions.

In 2001, the Patriot Act eliminated any requirement that the records belong to someone under suspicion. Now an innocent person's records can be obtained if FBI field agents consider them merely relevant to an ongoing terrorism or spying investigation.

Fine found more than 700 cases in which FBI agents obtained telephone records through "exigent letters" which asserted that grand jury subpoenas had been requested for the data, when in fact such subpoenas never been sought.

I can not say the Patriot Act is all bad, but this should be a concern to us all. Better administration can solve this issue. Oh, and Democratic oversight.

Mendoza's Book Club: Think Oprah Style

I just finished reading A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier. Great read, not too long and rather captivating. The author tells of his childhood in Sierra Leone before, during and after civil war. Before I read the book, I thought the children were enslaved by the government or rebel military. That was not the case, this guy essentially chose to fight because he was given food, shelter and protection. Something he did not have for months when he lived day by day in the forest trying to avoid starvation or death at the hands of rebels. This book will make you truly empathize with the author as he takes you through his unfortunate journey. He finally made an unlikely escape to New York City and now, at the age of 27, is an advocate for those similarly situated.

Propaganda 101

The propaganda machine is cranking. Either that or Cheney is simply crazy.

Well, I look at it and see it is actually an affirmation that there are parts of Iraq where things are going pretty well

I would feel sorry for this administration at their pathetic attempts at trying to put a good face on this situation, if they weren't such arrogant, incompetent, self serving individuals. So the Brits pulling out is a positive thing, right? The establishment of order in Basra and Southern Iraq would be a positive event, if the VP is correct. I have more reason to disbelieve than believe anything coming out of this administration. But considering the chaos in Baghdad and elsewhere,(i.e. the Kurds essentially carving out their own country) wouldn't it follow that the Brits would offer to place those troops, the ones in Basra, in other areas that badly need help. I mean, if things were going as well as the VP says, why wouldn't the Brits want to finish the job that, according to the VP, is going so well? Realistically, the Brits are cutting their losses. They do not have the stomach that we all need to figure out a way to establish order in Iraq. And the end result is additional harm to American troops.

Airlines Passengers Stranded for 10 Hours on Tarmac

These folks were stranded on the tarmac in late December in Austin due to weather in the DFW area. For 10 hours! The plane eventually ran out of food and drinks and the toilets were overflowing. The flight was then cancelled and passengers had to get a flight the next day. They created a blog to push a "Passengers Bill of Rights". Apparently elected officials are not paying much attention. I suggested they should get the D.A. to prosecute the American Airlines agents for false imprisonment.

Does the New Year have legs?

Tradition holds that the Old Year is the Old Man with the scythe, while the New Year is an infant in diapers. However, given the lack of any vital signs shown on this blog over several weeks, this image seems to be the harbinger of 2007 for Two Good Legs.

Let's review: the Democrats take over Congress, Rumsfeld is out, Negroponte moves over to State, and so far this year, Cheney hasn't shot anyone. Surely something there puts the itch to your little blogger fingers, eh?

On the other hand, maybe I need to pay more attention to the fad lists that come out about this time of year -- blogging - out, burrowing - in.

Red? Blue? Ah, to hell with it ...

Ain't it strange -- an earthshaking shift of power in the mid-term election, and this blog snoozes on. Well, I'll report from Big Sky country. The Senate race was one of the bated-breath cliff hangers that caught national attention. Jon Tester (D) ousted Conrad Burns (3-term incumbent R) in a race decided by less than 3,000 votes. Way to go, Jonny! Rep. Denny Rehburg (R) held on to his seat by a handy margin.

With the Senate results and a sitting Democratic governor, I expected the Dems to bolster their hold on the state legislature. Not so. The state senate tied 25-25, and the house went 50-49 GOP, with one Constitutional party (i.e. radical conservative) victor.

But hold the phone! In the house, a couple recounts are underway, and one race in Yellowstone County looks deadlocked. In case of a tie, the Gov gets to appoint the winner, so it could shift 50-49 Dems. In the senate, the results were all in, then a sitting GOP senator decided to switch parties. On top of that, this senator recently went to work for the current administration's (D) revenue department and sits on the Finance Committee.

So, 4 for 2 Sam has shaken the tree of power, and a lot of vocal Republicans are going nuts. It's fun, actually. I think there's more mud in the air after the election than before it. And the campaign mud was pretty thick.

Kerry me home ...

So here's what Jody sent along ...



It is kinda funny. I sometimes chuckle at Mallard Fillmore, too.

But think back to a week ago. Our Vice President advocated a "dunk in the water" for suspects. Yeah, it got a little MSN hysteria de jour going, but nothin' like this flap over Kerry. I'm not saying the "liberal" press is biased one way or the other -- it's just that nobody can crank up the mean machine like this Administration and its party.

On the whole, I'd rather have a senator who botches a joke than a President who botches a war.

Good TNR Article; What Say You Democrats

Against the myth of American innocence.
Cowboy Nation
by Robert Kagan
From The New Republic

These days, we are having a national debate over the direction of foreign policy. Beyond the obvious difficulties in Iraq and Afghanistan, there is a broader sense that our nation has gone astray. We have become too militaristic, too idealistic, too arrogant; we have become an "empire." Much of the world views us as dangerous. In response, many call for the United States to return to its foreign policy traditions, as if that would provide the answer.

What exactly are those traditions? One tradition is this kind of debate, which we've been having ever since the birth of the nation, when Patrick Henry accused supporters of the Constitution of conspiring to turn the young republic into a "great and mighty empire." Today, we are mightier than Henry could have ever imagined. Yet we prefer to see ourselves in modest terms--as a reluctant hegemon, a status quo power that seeks only ordered stability in the international arena. James Schlesinger captured this perspective several years ago, when he said that Americans have "been thrust into a position of lonely preeminence." The United States, he added, is "a most unusual, not to say odd, country to serve as international leader." If, at times, we venture forth and embroil ourselves in the affairs of others, it is either because we have been attacked or because of the emergence of some dangerous revolutionary force--German Nazism, Japanese imperialism, Soviet communism, radical Islamism. Americans do not choose war; war is thrust upon us. As a recent presidential candidate put it, "The United States of America never goes to war because we want to; we only go to war because we have to. That is the standard of our nation."

But that self-image, with its yearning for some imagined lost innocence, is based on myth. Far from the modest republic that history books often portray, the early United States was an expansionist power from the moment the first pilgrim set foot on the continent; and it did not stop expanding--territorially, commercially, culturally, and geopolitically--over the next four centuries. The United States has never been a status quo power; it has always been a revolutionary one, consistently expanding its participation and influence in the world in ever-widening arcs. The impulse to involve ourselves in the affairs of others is neither a modern phenomenon nor a deviation from the American spirit. It is embedded in the American DNA.


ong before the country's founding, British colonists were busy driving the Native American population off millions of acres of land and almost out of existence. From the 1740s through the 1820s, and then in another burst in the 1840s, Americans expanded relentlessly westward from the Alleghenies to the Ohio Valley and on past the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific, southward into Mexico and Florida, and northward toward Canada--eventually pushing off the continent not only Indians, but the great empires of France, Spain, and Russia as well. (The United Kingdom alone barely managed to defend its foothold in North America.) This often violent territorial expansion was directed not by redneck "Jacksonians" but by eastern gentlemen expansionists like George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and John Quincy Adams.

It would have been extraordinary had early Americans amassed all this territory and power without really wishing for it. But they did wish for it. With 20 years of peace, Washington predicted in his valedictory, the United States would acquire the power to "bid defiance, in a just cause, to any earthly power whatsoever." Jefferson foresaw a vast "empire of liberty" spreading west, north, and south across the continent. Hamilton believed the United States would, "erelong, assume an attitude correspondent with its great destinies--majestic, efficient, and operative of great things. A noble career lies before it." John Quincy Adams considered the United States "destined by God and nature to be the most populous and powerful people ever combined under one social compact." And Americans' aspirations only grew in intensity over the decades, as national power and influence increased. In the 1850s, William Seward predicted that the United States would become the world's dominant power, "the greatest of existing states, greater than any that has ever existed." A century later, Dean Acheson, present at the creation of a U.S.-dominated world order, would describe the United States as "the locomotive at the head of mankind" and the rest of the world as "the caboose." More recently, Bill Clinton labeled the United States "the world's indispensable nation."

From the beginning, others have seen Americans not as a people who sought ordered stability but as persistent disturbers of the status quo. As the ancient Corinthians said of the Athenians, they were "incapable of either living a quiet life themselves or of allowing anyone else to do so." Nineteenth-century Americans were, in the words of French diplomats, "numerous," "warlike," and an "enemy to be feared." In 1817, John Quincy Adams reported from London, "The universal feeling of Europe in witnessing the gigantic growth of our population and power is that we shall, if united, become a very dangerous member of the society of nations." The United States was dangerous not only because it was expansionist, but also because its liberal republicanism threatened the established conservative order of that era. Austria's Prince Metternich rightly feared what would happen to the "moral force" of Europe's conservative monarchies when "this flood of evil doctrines" was married to the military, economic, and political power Americans seemed destined to acquire.

What Metternich understood, and what others would learn, was that the United States was a nation with almost boundless ambition and a potent sense of national honor, for which it was willing to go to war. It exhibited the kind of spiritedness, and even fierceness, in defense of home, hearth, and belief that the ancient Greeks called thumos. It was an uncommonly impatient nation, often dissatisfied with the way things were, almost always convinced of the possibility of beneficial change and of its own role as a catalyst. It was also a nation with a strong martial tradition. Eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Americans loved peace, but they also believed in the potentially salutary effects of war. "No man in the nation desires peace more than I," Henry Clay declared before the war with Great Britain in 1812. "But I prefer the troubled ocean of war, demanded by the honor and independence of the country, with all its calamities, and desolations, to the tranquil, putrescent pool of ignominious peace." Decades later, Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., the famed jurist who had fought--and been wounded three times--in the Civil War, observed, "War, when you are at it, is horrible and dull. It is only when time has passed that you see that its message was divine."

Modern Americans don't talk this way anymore, but it is not obvious that we are very different in our attitudes toward war. Our martial tradition has remained remarkably durable, especially when compared with most other democracies in the post-World War II era. From 1989 to 2003, a 14-year period spanning three very different presidencies, the United States deployed large numbers of combat troops or engaged in extended campaigns of aerial bombing and missile attacks on nine different occasions: in Panama (1989), Somalia (1992), Haiti (1994), Bosnia (1995-1996), Kosovo (1999), Afghanistan (2001), and Iraq (1991, 1998, 2003). That is an average of one significant military intervention every 19 months--a greater frequency than at any time in our history. Americans stand almost alone in believing in the utility and even necessity of war as a means of obtaining justice. Surveys commissioned by the German Marshall Fund consistently show that 80 percent of Americans agree with the proposition that "[u]nder some conditions, war is necessary to obtain justice." In France, Germany, Italy, and Spain, less than one-third of the population agrees.

How do we reconcile the gap between our preferred self-image and this historical reality? With difficulty. We are, and have always been, uncomfortable with our power, our ambition, and our willingness to use force to achieve our objectives. What the historian Gordon Wood has called our deeply rooted "republicanism" has always made us suspicious of power, even our own. Our enlightenment liberalism, with its belief in universal rights and self-determination, makes us uncomfortable using our influence, even in what we regard as a good cause, to deprive others of their freedom of action. Our religious conscience makes us look disapprovingly on ambition--both personal and national. Our modern democratic worldview conceives of "honor" as something antiquated and undemocratic. These misgivings rarely stop us from pursuing our goals, any more than our suspicion of wealth stops us from trying to accumulate it. But they do make us reluctant to see ourselves as others see us. Instead, we construct more comforting narratives of our past. Or we create some idealized foreign policy against which to measure our present behavior. We hope that we can either return to the policies of that imagined past or approximate some imagined ideal to recapture our innocence. It is easier than facing the hard truth: America's expansiveness, intrusiveness, and tendency toward political, economic, and strategic dominance are not some aberration from our true nature. That is our nature.



hy are we this way? In many respects, we share characteristics common to all peoples through history. Like others, Americans have sought power to achieve prosperity, independence, and security as well as less tangible goals. As American power increased, so, too, did American ambitions, both noble and venal. Growing power changes nations, just as it changes people. It changes their perceptions of the world and their place in it. It increases their sense of entitlement and reduces their tolerance for obstacles that stand in their way. Power also increases ambition. When Americans acquired the unimaginably vast territory of Louisiana at the dawn of the nineteenth century, doubling the size of their young nation with lands that would take decades to settle, they did not rest content but immediately looked for still more territory beyond their new borders. As one foreign diplomat observed, "Since the Americans have acquired Louisiana, they appear unable to bear any barriers round them."

But, in addition to the common human tendency to seek greater power and influence over one's surroundings, Americans have been driven outward into the world by something else: the potent, revolutionary ideology of liberalism that they adopted at the nation's birth. Indeed, it is probably liberalism, more than any other factor, that has made the United States so energetic, expansive, and intrusive over the course of its history.

Liberalism fueled the prodigious territorial and commercial expansion in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that made the United States, first, the dominant power in North America and, then, a world power. It did so by elevating the rights of the individual over the state--by declaring that all people had a right to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness and by insisting it was the government's primary job to safeguard those rights. American political leaders had little choice but to permit, and sometimes support, territorial and commercial claims made by their citizens, even when those claims encroached on the lands or waters of foreigners. Other eighteenth- and nineteenth-century governments, ruled by absolute monarchs, permitted national expansion when it served personal or dynastic interests--and, like Napoleon in the New World, blocked it when it did not. When the king of England tried to curtail the territorial and commercial expansionism of his Anglo-American subjects, they rebelled and established a government that would not hold them back. In this respect, the most important foreign policy statement in U.S. history was not George Washington's farewell address or the Monroe Doctrine but the Declaration of Independence and the enlightenment ideals it placed at the heart of American nationhood. Putting those ideals into practice was a radical new departure in government, and it inevitably produced a new kind of foreign policy.

Next: "Liberalism not only drove territorial and commercial expansion; it also provided an overarching ideological justification for such expansion."


Liberalism not only drove territorial and commercial expansion; it also provided an overarching ideological justification for such expansion. By expanding territorially, commercially, politically, and culturally, Americans believed that they were bringing both modern civilization and the "blessings of liberty" to whichever nations they touched in their search for opportunity. As Jefferson told one Indian leader: "We desire above all things, brother, to instruct you in whatever we know ourselves. We wish to learn you all our arts and to make you wise and wealthy." In one form or another, Americans have been making that offer of instruction to peoples around the world ever since.

Americans, from the beginning, measured the world exclusively according to the assumptions of liberalism. These included, above all, a belief in what the Declaration of Independence called the "self-evident" universality of certain basic truths--not only that all men were created equal and endowed by God with inalienable rights, but also that the only legitimate and just governments were those that derived their powers "from the consent of the governed." According to the Declaration, "whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it." Such a worldview does not admit the possibility of alternative truths. Americans, over the centuries, accepted the existence of cultural distinctions that influenced other peoples to rule themselves differently. But they never really accepted the legitimacy of despotic governments, no matter how deeply rooted in culture. As a result, they viewed them as transitory. And so, wherever Americans looked in the world, they saw the possibility and the desirability of change.

The notion of progress is a central tenet of liberalism. More than any other people, Americans have taken a progressive view of history, evaluating other nations according to where they stood on the continuum of progress. The Russians, Theodore Roosevelt believed, were "below the Germans just as the Germans are below us ... [but] we are all treading the same path, some faster, some slower." If Roosevelt's language sounds antiquated, our modern perspective is scarcely different. Although we may disagree among ourselves about the pace of progress, almost all Americans believe that it is both inevitable and desirable. We generally agree on the need to assist other nations in their political and economic development. But development toward what, if not toward the liberal democratic ideal that defines our nationalism? The "great struggle of the epoch," Madison declared in the 1820s, is "between liberty and despotism." Because the rights of man were written "by the hand of the divinity itself," as Hamilton put it, that struggle could ultimately have only one outcome.





It was a short step from that conviction to the belief that the interests of the United States were practically indistinguishable from the interests of the world. "The cause of America is in a great measure the cause of all mankind," Thomas Paine argued at the time of the revolution. Herman Melville would later write that, for Americans, "national selfishness is unbounded philanthropy; for we cannot do a good to America but we give alms to the world." It was another short step to the belief that the United States had a special, even unique, role to play in serving as a catalyst for the evolution of mankind. "The rights asserted by our forefathers were not peculiar to themselves," Seward declared, "they were the common rights of mankind." Therefore, he said, the United States had a duty "to renovate the condition of mankind" and lead the way to "the universal restoration of power to the governed" everywhere in the world. Decades earlier, John Quincy Adams had noted with pride that the United States was the source of ideas that made "the throne of every European monarch rock under him as with the throes of an earthquake." Praising the American Revolution, he exhorted "every individual among the sceptered lords of mankind: 'Go thou and do likewise!'"



Russian minister, appalled at this "appeal to the nations of Europe to rise against their Governments," noted the hypocrisy of Adams's message, asking, "How about your two million black slaves?" Indeed. The same United States that called for global revolution on behalf of freedom was, throughout its first eight decades, also the world's great defender of racial despotism. The slaveholding South was itself a brutal tyranny, almost totalitarian in its efforts to control the speech and personal behavior of whites as well as blacks. Much of the U.S. territorial expansion in the nineteenth century--including the Mexican War, which garnered today's American Southwest and California--was driven by slaveholders, insisting on new lands to which they could spread their despotic system.

In the end, the violent abolition of slavery in the United States was a defining moment in the country's foreign policy: It strengthened the American tendency toward liberal moralism in foreign affairs. The Northern struggle against slavery, culminating in the Civil War, was America's first moral crusade. The military defeat of the Southern slaveholders was America's first war of ideological conquest. And what followed was America's first attempt at occupation and democratic nation-building (with the same mixed results as later efforts). The effect of the whole struggle was to intensify the American dedication to the universality of rights and to reaffirm the Declaration of Independence, rather than the Constitution with its tacit acceptance of slavery, as the central document of American nationhood. The Civil War fixed in the American mind, or at least in the Northern mind, the idea of the just war--a battle, fought for moral reasons, whose objectives can be achieved only through military action.

Such thinking led to the Spanish-American War of 1898. One of the most popular wars in U.S. history, it enjoyed the support of both political parties, of William Jennings Bryan and Andrew Carnegie, of eastern Brahmin Republicans like Henry Cabot Lodge, radical prairie populists, and labor leaders. Although one would not know it from reading most histories today, the war was motivated primarily by humanitarian concerns. Civil strife in Cuba and the brutal policies of the Spanish government--in particular the herding of the civilian population into "reconcentration" camps--had caused some 300,000 deaths, one-fifth of Cuba's population. Most of the victims were women, children, and the elderly. Lodge and many others argued that the United States had a responsibility to defend the Cuban people against Spanish oppression precisely because it had the power to do so. "Here we stand motionless, a great and powerful country not six hours away from these scenes of useless bloodshed and destruction," he said, imploring that, if the United States "stands for humanity and civilization, we should exercise every influence of our great country to put a stop to that war which is now raging in Cuba and give to that island once more peace, liberty, and independence." The overwhelming majority of the nation agreed. The U.S. intervention put an end to that suffering and saved untold thousands of lives. When John Hay called it a "splendid little war," it was not because of the smashing military victory--Hay was no militarist. It was the lofty purposes and accomplishments of the war that were splendid.

It was also true that the United States had self-interested reasons for going to war: commercial interests in Cuba, as well as the desire to remove Spain from the hemisphere and establish our preeminence in the region. Most of Europe condemned the United States as selfish and aggressive, failing to credit it with humanitarian impulses. Moreover, the war produced some unintended and, for many who idealistically supported it, disillusioning consequences. It led to the acquisition of the Philippines and a most unsplendid war against independence-minded Filipinos. It also produced a well-intentioned, but ultimately disappointing, multiyear occupation of Cuba that would haunt Americans for another century. And it reignited an old debate over the course of U.S. foreign policy--similar to the one that consumes us today.



ow, as then, the projection of U.S. power for liberal purposes faces its share of domestic criticism--warnings against arrogance, hubris, excessive idealism, and "imperialism." Throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, conservatives in the republican tradition of Patrick Henry worried about the effect at home of expansive policies abroad. They predicted, correctly, that a big foreign policy generally meant a big federal government, which--in their eyes--meant impingements on the rights and freedoms of the individual. The conservatives of the slaveholding South were the great realists of the nineteenth century. They opposed moralism, rightly fearing it would be turned against the institution of slavery. As Jefferson Davis put it, "We are not engaged in a Quixotic fight for the rights of man. Our struggle is for inherited rights. ... We are conservative." At the end of the century, when Americans were enthusiastically pushing across the Pacific, critics like Grover Cleveland's long-forgotten secretary of state, Walter Q. Gresham, warned that "[e]very nation, and especially every strong nation, must sometimes be conscious of an impulse to rush into difficulties that do not concern it, except in a highly imaginary way. To restrain the indulgence of such a propensity is not only the part of wisdom, but a duty we owe to the world as an example of the strength, the moderation, and the beneficence of popular government."

But, just as progressivism and big government have generally triumphed in domestic affairs, so, too, has the liberal approach to the world beyond our shores. Henry failed to defeat the Constitution. Southern realism lost to Northern idealism. The critics of liberal foreign policy--whether conservative, realist, or leftist--have rarely managed to steer the United States on a different course.

The result has been some accomplishments of great historical importance--the defeat of German Nazism, Japanese imperialism, and Soviet communism--as well as some notable failures and disappointments. But it was not as if the successes were the product of a good America and the failures the product of a bad America. They were all the product of the same America. The achievements, as well as the disappointments, derived from the very qualities that often make us queasy: our willingness to accumulate and use power; our ambition and sense of honor; our spiritedness in defense of both our interests and our principles; our dissatisfaction with the status quo; our belief in the possibility of change. And, throughout, whether succeeding or failing, we have remained a "dangerous" nation in many senses--dangerous to tyrannies, dangerous to those who do not want our particular brand of liberalism, dangerous to those who fear our martial spirit and our thumos, dangerous to those, including Americans, who would prefer an international order not built around a dominant and often domineering United States.

Whether a different kind of international system or a different kind of America would be preferable is a debate worth having. But let us have this debate about our future without illusions about our past.

Robert Kagan is a contributing editor at The New Republic and the author of Dangerous Nation: America's Place in the World from its Earliest Days to the Dawn of the Twentieth Century.

Two lewd yeggs ...

Perhaps this blog should change its name. "TWO GOOD SIGHS"? "TWO SOFT-BOILED EGGS"? "JODY IS A SCHMUCK"? I think this image sez it all.

Here's a nice one from Hannah ...

Rumsfeld is reporting to the President and the Cabinet. He says, "Three Brazilian soldiers were killed today in Iraq." George Bush says, "Oh, My God!" as he buries his head in his hands.

The entire cabinet is stunned. Usually the President shows no reaction to these reports. Just then, Bush looks up and says, "Exactly, how many is a brazilian?"

OUR VALUES

The light of our ideals shone dimly in those early dark days [of the Revolutionary War], years from an end to the conflict, years before our improbable triumph and the birth of our democracy. General Washington wasn't that far from where the Continental Congress had met and signed the Declaration of Independence. But it's easy to imagine how far that must have seemed.

General Washington announced a decision unique in human history, sending the following order for handling prisoners:

"Treat them with humanity, and let them have no reason to complain of our copying the brutal example of the British Army in their Treatment of our unfortunate brethren."

Therefore, George Washington, our commander-in-chief before he was our President, laid down the indelible marker of our nation's values even as we were struggling as a nation – and his courageous act reminds us that America was born out of faith in certain basic principles. In fact, it is these principles that made and still make our country exceptional and allow us to serve as an example. We are not bound together as a nation by bloodlines. We are not bound by ancient history; our nation is a new
nation.

Above all, we are bound by our values.

George Washington understood that how you treat enemy combatants could reverberate around the world. We must convict and punish the guilty in a way that reinforces their guilt before the world and does not undermine our constitutional values.

Now these values – George Washington’s values, the values of our founding – are at stake. We are debating far-reaching legislation that would fundamentally alter our nation's conduct in the world and the rights of Americans here at home. And we are debating it too hastily in a debate too steeped in electoral politics.

The Senate, under the authority of the Republican Majority and with the blessing and encouragement of the Bush-Cheney Administration, is doing a great disservice to our history, our principles, our citizens, and our soldiers. The deliberative process is being broken under the pressure of partisanship and the policy that results is a travesty."

I don't think Hillary Clinton should run for president. But today, she deserves our thanks for standing up for the values of our founding fathers.

Just Watch It.

And tell me what you think. Is your government torturing people?

Immigration and Democrats

With regard to the immigration issue, Lou Dobbs and many other pundits have been asking the question, why not just secure the border first. The proposed immigration bills have generally attempted to resolve the many difficult issues all at once. I have been saying the same thing for months, just secure the border, it's a security issue (which could help the GOP)and most Americans agree that the border is a vulnerability. The Democrats should covertly attempt to rally immigration protests. My guess is that the GOP does not even want to deal with border security because it brings attention to the issue of amnesty, worker program, etc. So long as the Democrats do not appear to be supporting the movement (which they do not), the GOP will take losses for having the amnesty issue in the news. If we do not win at least one house, the embarrassment will be destructive and it will be because the D's will not exploit this issue. It's not policy kids, it's politics!!!

Burns burned on burns ...

Okay, I'm getting tired of logging on to "Hannity Sucks Ass." So I'll just post a picture of an ass. This is Senator Conrad Burns (R-MT), who is in a fight for his political life. During his life as an auctioneer, he came down with foot-in-mouth disease, and it has plagued him throughout his unfortunately extended senatorial career. (This is the guy who, when running for his first term, said he would seek only two. Now he's seeking his fourth.)

So anyway, in July Conrad approached a group of hotshot firefighters in the Billings airport. ("Hotshot" isn't a pejorative term; this is the elite crew.) These guys were bone tired, headed back home to Georgia. Based on the whines that Burns had heard from his rancher pals, he lit into them, saying they had done a "piss poor" job of firefighting. Well, that little imbroglio has cooled down a bit. Or it would if Connie didn't keep throwing tinder on the fire. And, unfortunately, the wildfire season continues in Montana.


Here's the latest. Burns wrote a condescending "official" letter to Montana Governor Brian Schweitzer, urging him to declare a fire emergency and mobilize the National Guard. Schweitzer was seven weeks ahead of him, having declared an emergency on July 11. Ah, Connie ... if only you knew your burro (ass) from a burrow (hole in the ground). Jon Tester (left -- in more ways than here) looks better every day.

"Hannity Sucks Ass"

This is great, couldn't have been stated better. This is a screenshot from Tuesday night on Hannity and Colmes. Colmes was covering the Lieberman race, Hannity was in studio asking Colmes questions. 2GL Reports, You Decide