[Marxism] Conservative Andrew Sullivan's comments on GOP's hate week

["Fred Feldman" <ffeldman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

The following two items and the introductory remarks in brackets come
from Mark Jensen from the Seattle SNOW-news list.

Andrew Sullivan pinpoints the GOP's McCarthyite-style smears of Kerry as
being unpatriotic, anti-American, anti-occupation, and so on.  These
misrepresentations are deeply reactionary and antidemocratic in
character, and should be recognized as such, including by people such as
myself who would be a lot more sympathetic to the loyal imperialist
Kerry if they contained a large kernel of truth.

If they can get away with portraying Kerry's prowar, reactionary
opinions as "soft on terrorism," what will they try to do with yours and
mine? This is the logic of the "war on terror" and the Patriot Act, just
as witch-hunting the Democrats was the logical extension of the
Democrat-intiated witch-hunt after World War II.

The gross mis-representations are aimed at de-legitimizing all dissent
and pushing it more underground, even including dissent in the ruling
circles.  And those in the rulers and media, including Democrats like
Kerry himself, are hard put to respond to this because this atmosphere
is actually a necessity in order to maintain the fundamentally unpopular
and completely antipopular "war on terrorism" and other antipopular
policies and practices.

In addition, Bush's bourgeois critics have to be concerned about what
will happen to them if Bush gets a second term and decides to reward his
friends and punish his enemies.  A New York Times and Washington Post
has many areas of subtle vulnerability to government pressure.

I think this is the reason why the media is tending to go into neutral
as the Bush campaign's rhetoric becomes more threatening and
intimidating.  They are responding to the likelihood of a Bush victory
on these themes.  If Kerry squeaks through nonetheless, they will lose
nothing (except perhaps credibility with some readers) for having done
so.

Exposing the reaction tone of Miller, Bush, and others does not detract
at all from continuing to denounce the Democratic Party's prowar,
pro-repression, and antiworker, antipopular character and course.

Nader and Camejo in 2004. End the occupation and conquest (and certainly
not "liberation") of Iraq now!
Fred Feldman




COMMENTARY: Dissent from the right (Andrew Sullivan)

[Andrew Sullivan, the former editor of the *New Republic* and now
professional
free-lance blogger who is a gay conservative originally from Great
Britain,
found Zell Miller's "gobsmackingly vile" speech Wednesday night at the
Republican National Convention to be a defining moment.  Sullivan wrote:
"Last night was therefore a revealing night for me.  I watched a
Democrat at a
GOP Convention convince me that I could never be a Republican.  If they
wheel
out lying, angry old men like this as their keynote, I'll take Obama.
Any
day."[1]  --  In his commentary posted early Friday morning, he
announced:  "I
cannot support [George W. Bush] in November."[2]  --Mark]

http://ufppc.org/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=1257

1.

THE MILLER MOMENT
By Andrew Sullivan

The Daily Dish
September 2, 2004

http://www.andrewsullivan.com/index.php?dish_inc=archives/2004_08_29_dis
h_archive.html#109409893313020605

Zell Miller's address will, I think, go down as a critical moment in
this
campaign, and maybe in the history of the Republican party.  I kept
thinking
of the contrast with the Democrats' keynote speaker, Barack Obama, a
post-racial, smiling, expansive young American, speaking about national
unity
and uplift.  Then you see Zell Miller, his face rigid with anger, his
eyes
blazing with years of frustration as his Dixiecrat vision became slowly
eclipsed among the Democrats.  Remember who this man is:  once a proud
supporter of racial segregation, a man who lambasted LBJ for selling his
soul
to the negroes.  His speech tonight was in this vein, a classic
Dixiecrat
speech, jammed with bald lies, straw men, and hateful rhetoric.  As an
immigrant to this country and as someone who has been to many Southern
states
and enjoyed astonishing hospitality and warmth and sophistication, I
long
dismissed some of the Northern stereotypes about the South.  But Miller
did
his best to revive them.  The man's speech was not merely crude; it
added
whole universes to the word crude.

THE "OCCUPATION" CANARD

Miller first framed his support for Bush as a defense of his own family.
The
notion that individuals deserve respect regardless of their family is
not
Miller's core value.  And the implication was that if the Democrats win
in
November, his own family would not be physically safe.  How's that for
subtlety?  Miller's subsequent assertion was that any dissent from
aspects of
the war on terror is equivalent to treason.  He accused all war critics
of
essentially attacking the very troops of the United States.  He
conflated the
ranting of Michael Moore with the leaders of the Democrats.  He said the

following:

"Motivated more by partisan politics than by national security, today's
Democratic leaders see America as an occupier, not a liberator.  And
nothing
makes this Marine madder than someone calling American troops occupiers
rather
than liberators."

That macho invocation of the Marines was a classic:  the kind of
militarist
swagger that this convention endorses and uses as a bludgeon against its

opponents.  But the term "occupation," of course, need not mean the
opposite
of liberation.  I have used the term myself and I deeply believe that
coalition troops have indeed liberated Afghanistan and Iraq.  By
claiming that
the Democrats were the enemies of the troops, traitors, quislings and
wimps,
Miller did exactly what he had the audacity to claim the Democrats were
doing:
making national security a partisan matter.  I'm not easy to offend, but
this
speech was gob-smackingly vile.

OPPONENTS OR ENEMIES?

Here's another slur:

"No one should dare to even think about being the Commander in Chief of
this
country if he doesn't believe with all his heart that our soldiers are
liberators abroad and defenders of freedom at home.  But don't waste
your
breath telling that to the leaders of my party today.  In their warped
way of
thinking America is the problem, not the solution.  They don't believe
there
is any real danger in the world except that which America brings upon
itself
through our clumsy and misguided foreign policy."

Yes, that describes some on the left, but it is a calumny against
Democrats
who voted for war in Afghanistan and Iraq and whose sincerity, as John
McCain
urged, should not be in question.  I have never heard Kerry say that
9/11 was
America's fault; if I had, it would be inconceivable to consider
supporting
him.  And so this was, in truth, another lie, another cheap,
faux-patriotic
smear.  Miller has absolutely every right to lambaste John Kerry's
record on
defense in the Senate.  It's ripe for criticism, and, for my part, I
disagree
with almost all of it (and as a pro-Reagan, pro-Contra, pro-SDI,
pro-Gulf War
conservative, I find Kerry's record deeply troubling).  But that doesn't
mean
he's a traitor or hates America's troops or believes that the U.S. is
responsible for global terror.  And the attempt to say so is a
despicable
attempt to smear someone's very patriotism.

THE FOREIGN AGENT

Another lie:  "Senator Kerry has made it clear that he would use
military
force only if approved by the United Nations.  Kerry would let Paris
decide
when America needs defending.  I want Bush to decide."  Miller might
have
found some shred of ancient rhetoric that will give him cover on this,
but in
Kerry's very acceptance speech, he declared the opposite conviction --
that he
would never seek permission to defend this country.  Another lie:  "John
Kerry
wants to re-fight yesterday's war."  Kerry didn't want to do that.  Yes,
he
used his military service in the campaign -- but it was his opponents
who
decided to dredge up the divisions of the Vietnam war in order to
describe
Kerry as a Commie-loving traitor who faked his own medals.  What's
remarkable
about the Republicans is their utter indifference to fairness in their
own
attacks.

Smearing opponents as traitors to their country, as unfit to be
commander-in-chief, as agents of foreign powers (France) is now fair
game.
Appealing to the crudest form of patriotism and the easiest smears is
wrong
when it is performed by the lying Michael Moore and it is wrong when it
is
spat out by Zell Miller.  Last night was therefore a revealing night for
me.
I watched a Democrat at a GOP Convention convince me that I could never
be a
Republican.  If they wheel out lying, angry old men like this as their
keynote, I'll take Obama.  Any day.

2.

THE END OF CONSERVATISM
By Andrew Sullivan

The Daily Dish
September 3, 2004

http://www.andrewsullivan.com/index.php?dish_inc=archives/2004_08_29_dis
h_archive.html#109409893313020605

But conservatism as we have known it is now over.  People like me who
became
conservatives because of the appeal of smaller government and more
domestic
freedom are now marginalized in a big-government party, bent on using
the
power of the state to direct people's lives, give them meaning and
protect
them from all dangers.

Just remember all that Bush promised last night:  an
astonishingly expensive bid to spend much more money to help people in
ways
that conservatives once abjured.  He pledged to provide record levels of

education funding, colleges and healthcare centers in poor towns, more
Pell
grants, seven million more affordable homes, expensive new HSAs, and a
phenomenally expensive bid to reform the social security system.  I look

forward to someone adding it all up, but it's easily in the trillions.
And
Bush's astonishing achievement is to make the case for all this new
spending,
at a time of chronic debt (created in large part by his profligate
party),
while pegging his opponent as the "tax-and-spend" candidate.

The chutzpah is
amazing.  At this point, however, it isn't just chutzpah.  It's
deception.  To
propose all this knowing full well that we cannot even begin to afford
it is
irresponsible in the deepest degree.  I've said it before and I'll say
it
again:  the only difference between Republicans and Democrats now is
that the
Bush Republicans believe in Big Insolvent Government and the Kerry
Democrats
believe in Big Solvent Government.  By any measure, that makes Kerry --
especially as he has endorsed the critical pay-as-you-go rule on
domestic
spending -- easily the choice for fiscal conservatives.  It was also
jaw-dropping to hear this president speak about tax reform.  Bush?  He
has
done more to lard up the tax code with special breaks and new loopholes
than
any recent president.  On this issue -- on which I couldn't agree more
-- I
have to say I don't believe him.  Tax reform goes against the grain of
everything this president has done so far.  Why would he change now?

FULL SPEED AHEAD

I agreed with almost everything in the foreign policy section of the
speech,
although the president's inability to face up to the obvious sobering
lessons
from Iraq is worrying.  I get the feeling that empirical evidence does
not
count for him; that like all religious visionaries, he simply asserts
that his
own faith will vanquish reality.  It won't.  We heard nothing about
Iran,
North Korea or even anything concrete about Iraq.  We heard no new bid
to
capitalize on the new mood in France or to win over new allies in the
war on
terror.  We heard nothing about intelligence reform.  And the contrasts
with
Kerry were all retrospective.  There was no attempt to tell us where
Kerry and
Bush would differ in the future over the Middle East, just easy (and
justified) barbs about the past.  But Bush's big vision is, I believe,
the
right one.  I'm just unsure whether his profound unpopularity in every
foreign
country has made real movement more or less likely.  I do know that the
rank
xenophobia at the convention did not help American foreign policy or
American
interests.

BISMARCK + WILSON

The whole package was, I think, best summed up as a mixture of Bismarck
and
Wilson.  Germany's Bismarck fused a profound social conservatism with a
nascent welfare state.  It was a political philosophy based on a strong
alliance with military and corporate interests, and bound itself in a
paternalist Protestant ethic.  Bush Republicanism is not as
authoritarian, but
its impulses are similar -- and the dynastic father-figure is a critical

element in the picture.  Bismarck's conservatism also relied, as Bush's
does,
on scapegoating a minority to shore up his Protestant support.
Protecting the
family from its alleged internal enemies is an almost perfect rallying
call
for a religiously inspired base.  But unlike Bismarck, Bush's foreign
policy
is deeply liberal and internationalist: promoting a revolutionary
doctrine of
democratization abroad in the least hospitable of places.  His faith in
this
respect, if not his ease with using military force, is reminiscent of
Woodrow
Wilson.  Yes, this doesn't exactly add up to a coherent philosophy --
but it's
based on the president's feelings, not on any argument.  This
administration
is not philosophically coherent.  But as a political operation, that
doesn't
seem to matter.

I CANNOT SUPPORT HIM IN NOVEMBER

I will add one thing more.  And that is the personal sadness I feel that
this
president who praises freedom wishes to take it away from a whole group
of
Americans who might otherwise support many parts of his agenda.  To see
the
second family tableau with one family member missing because of her
sexual
orientation pains me to the core.  And the president made it clear that
discriminating against gay people, keeping them from full civic dignity
and
equality, is now a core value for him and his party.  The opposite is a
core
value for me.  Some things you can trade away.  Some things you can
compromise
on.  Some things you can give any politician a pass on.  But there are
other
values -- of basic human dignity and equality -- that cannot be
sacrificed
without losing your integrity itself.  That's why, despite my deep
admiration
for some of what this president has done to defeat terror, and my
affection
for him as a human being, I cannot support his candidacy.  Not only
would I be
abandoning the small government conservatism I hold dear, and the hope
of
freedom at home as well as abroad, I would be betraying the people I
love.
And that I won't do.







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