They Make No Sense

Pivoting off my previous post, witness Sarah Palin's recent characterization of Obama's announcement regarding the curtailment of nuclear weapons as "kinda like getting out there on a playground, a bunch of kids, getting ready to fight, and one of the kids saying, 'Go ahead, punch me in the face and I'm not going to retaliate. Go ahead and do what you want to with me.'" Jeez, she's SUCH an idiot! We're supposed to take that seriously? Forget that Reagan himself envisioned a world free of nuclear weapons.

This is something that Rudy Giuliani has conveniently forgotten when he says, "A nuclear-free world has been a 60-year dream of the Left, just like socialized health-care. This new policy, like Obama's government-run health program, is a big step in that direction. President Obama thinks we can all hold hands, sing songs, and have peace symbols."

First of all, Roosevelt authorized the development of nuclear technology for weapons, Truman authorized the use of nukes against Japan, and Kennedy considered using them to defend against the Soviets in Cuba. Does that sound like the left dreaming of nuclear disarmament? Secondly, what makes Rudy an expert on foreign policy? The only thing he ever did was be the Mayor of New York, which hardly qualifies him to spout off on anything except where to get the best pizza and ticket prices for Broadway shows.

So long as the Republicans fail to make any sense -- and with their leaders like Palin, Giuliani, Boehner, and McCain sounding like complete buffoons, and with their media accomplices like Drudge, Beck and Limbaugh stoking the fires of ignorance and fear among their rabid faithful -- there's no way that they'll ever accomplish anything good for this country.

Something interesting that Andrew Sullivan wrote about conservatism this morning:

Conservatism is about applying a skepticism toward government with a desire to make government work. It's skeptical but not nihilist; it's concrete and practical and, above all, attuned to the tragic idea that the world changes, that all reforms eventually end in failure and the task of politics is not to create a utopia or even some concept of justice, but to craft new solutions to new problems in a new environment.

I see where Andrew is going here, but what he basically described was today's progressivism, not conservatism. There isn't a progressive out there (and I'm not talking about old-school liberalism here) who believes that government is the end-all-be-all. We would agree that government is a problem when it comes to neeting society's needs. Reforms generally go too far and eventually fail, and then they have to be fixed. But Reagan changed conservatism forever when he uttered those fatefully derisive nine words in 1980: "I'm from the government and I'm here to help." At that point, conservatives were supposed to hate the government and do everything in their power to subvert the role of government in people's everyday lives. Reagan started the nihilism. That Andrew forgets this point troubles me because he's been such a champion of Reagan over the years.