Proving that you NEVER know who might say something sensible, and that monkeys can be expected to take wing out rectal portals from time to time, Andrew Sullivan is attacking Bush on his moralizing. Of course it could also prove that Andrew cares more about gay marriage than he does about being a Bush Republican, but I am feeling generous today:
- There's barely a speech by President Bush that doesn't cite the glories of human freedom. It's God's gift to mankind, he believes. And in some ways this President has clearly expanded it: the people of Afghanistan and Iraq enjoy liberties unimaginable only a few years ago. But there's a strange exception to this Bush doctrine. It ends when you reach America's shores. Within the U.S., the Bush Administration has shown an unusually hostile attitude toward the exercise of personal freedom. When your individual choices conflict with what the Bush people think is good for you, they have been only too happy to intervene. The government, Bush clearly believes, has a right to be involved in many personal decisions you make - punishing some, encouraging others, nudging and prodding the public to live the good life as the President understands it. The nanny state, much loved by Democrats, is thriving under Republicans.
....In his speech, the President unveiled millions of dollars to randomly test high school kids for drug use. He is doubling the federal money currently spent to admonish teens to practice sexual abstinence. He is spending hundreds of millions of dollars on antidrug propaganda and sending federal agents to bust pot clubs for those using medical marijuana to ease the pain of crippling diseases. Republican Senators are even trying to withhold federal funding from states that allow medical-marijuana ads on public transport. These are not unrelated measures. The President is proud of his Big Government moralism. As he put it in his first State of the Union message, "Values are important, so we have tripled funding for character education to teach our children not only reading and writing, but right from wrong." Sounds inoffensive enough. But who exactly determines what is right and what is wrong? Churches? Synagogues? Parents? Teachers? Nah. The Federal Government.
Article comments
1 - mike
Any moron could see this coming: Bush has always stood for these things and has never wavered. Sullivan's been appeasing the Revolutionary Power for years, and now he's stuck with them. He's the Neville Chamberlain of the gay intelligentsia.
As Gore Vidal once said, gays, blacks and Jews have no business trafficking with the hard Right since they're all going to end up in the concentration camps together.
2 - Eric Olsen
Between Sullivan and Vidal, I would have to say Sullivan is somewhat less psychotic, narcissistic, and despicable, which is pretty amazing.
3 - BB
All one has to do is look at the French Revolution. There is a fine line between freedom and anarchy. The state must find that balance and can only be accomplished by a strong sense of mortality.. what is considered right and what is wrong. Not an easy task to accomplish but nevertheless necessary.
4 - Eric Olsen
I agree, but this has to be achieved carefully through he broadest possible consensus that is not based upon religious dogma - that's kind of what we are fighting in the war on terror.
5 - Craig Lyndall
It's good to have politicians with morals. A religious president isn't a bad thing either. When they start writing policies based on those beliefs though, we get into a dangerous emotional territory. I can't say I disagree with high school abstinence programs, but the war on drugs and the attempt at protection of the sanctity of traditional marriage by the President is offensive to me. I can't imagine that I am wrong about the marriage situation, and I feel that it will be embarassing for generations to come.
Who would have thought in this day and age we would have the threat of an amendment that guarantees inequality?
6 - BB
Erratum:
"strong sense of morality"
I believe if you took a vote you would probably find as many non-religious people that agree with the President. Just because somebody publicly expresses religious values doesn't necessarily make it "dogma".
7 - mike
Less despicable than Vidal? That's a laughably ludicrous statement.
Sullivan is a courier for power, Vidal a messenger for the old Republic--a society tragically flawed but containing within it the seeds of a great democracy.
As opposed to today's America, which has degenerated into a bloated oligarchic monstrosity.
8 - Eric Olsen
mike, your general view that the US is going to hell in a handbasket, that the state of the union and its democratic values are somehow more at risk now than ever before is just bizarre and almost perversely contrary to reality.
The US, despite its ideals, began as a near total oligarchy, a racist patriarchy, a plutocracy, and has been gradually moving in the opposite direction ever since. The Robber Baron era was hardly egalitarian, but the establishment of unions and anti-trust laws acted to curb those excesses, which then became excesses in the other directon, which has now swung back toward the other way, and so it goes in a rather perfect Hegelian exercise that has been as regular as human endeavor can be, with the big arrow clearly pointed toward progress.
Are you telling me that the average American doesn't have more freedom, more opportunity, more education, more self-directing power, greater social and legal equality and access to government and the media than at any time before in our history? What alternative universe do you live in?
And Gore Vidal is a crazed, aristocratic, desiccated, bitter, snide, petulant, hateful ancient queen who stands for nothing but his own jaundice.
9 - Craig Lyndall
I think it is good to never be content, because nothing is ever perfect. To be outright discontent with everything is another thing entirely, and I think Mike might be guilty of that. We still live in a society with lots of freedoms, and certainly the richest poor people in the world. Sure our government is bloated. Sure our president is the son of a former president.
Is this a "society tragically flawed?" I think not. The bleak outlook means nothing if the good things aren't recognized as well. It will cause the holder of the bleak outlook to be passed over as a cryer of wolf.
10 - mike
La dee da.
I'm saying that the freedom and democracy Americans have is like a pool of capital that is being steadily drawn down by the oligarchy--or, more precisely, one where deposits are outweighed by withdrawals.
Another way to put it is that the oligarchy has taken the inheritance of the Founders and squandered it.
The Slave Power was an attack on the Republic and was repulsed. The Robber Baron age was an attack on the Republic and was repulsed. Vietnam era militarism was an attack on the Republic and was repulsed.
I don't think the Republic will survive the current assault.
I hope I'm wrong.
11 - Eric Olsen
We agree on the latter.
I see these movements as cyclical with the big picture moving in the direction of democracy, individual empowerment, equality.
I don't agree with your perspective, but at least I now understand it.
12 - John Dennis
(found the following web item)
BUSH, WETBACKS HELP WATER SHORTAGE
There's a water shortage in the southwest, but Pres. Bush has been helping the situation with his surplus of wetbacks !