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