Stones Cry Out

Essentially, according to Jonah, and he's right, conservatives understand that life is messy, and that scary things can happen when people try to use government to fix ALL of the messiness of life. Yep, I can agree with that. I would agree with it too, whether the government were filled with pastors or non-Christians.

Hum... if the definition put forward is that a conservative is amoral - then can christians be conservatives???

Or is that the real problem here? That the NeoCon hijacking of conservativism has lead to the whole NeoEvangelical decision to abandon morality in favor of mere partisan politics.

Neocons didn't hijack anything. Irving Kristol and Norman Podhoretz have been part of the conservative canon for close to three decades. Try again.

Wow! Thirty Years... Gosh, and to think that Once Upon a time Ronald Reagan ran 'democrats for nixon' during the 1960 election cycle when republicans of the era were concerned about the threat of a Roman Catholic taking the white house and with it the complication of a dual allegiance.

So back to the basic question - if 'conservative' is, as the article admitted, 'amoral', gosh, then can Christians be 'conservative'.

Please try to focus on the discussion matt, and try not to get confused hoping that majikally making the logical fallacy of an appeal to authority will help.

I wasn't the one who felt the need to bring up the dreaded "neoons." Conservatism is nothing if not an appeal to an authority. My point in giving creedence to the Chicago school of neoconservatism is that when Kristol, Podhoretz, et al. made their jump from pre-Vietnam liberalism to conservatism, the Bill Buckleys of the world welcomed them. Sure, there's been some in-house discussions, but don't kid yourself - those guys are on the team. If you don't like it, I'm sure the kind folks at Chronicles will welcome you.

"So back to the basic question - if 'conservative' is, as the article admitted, 'amoral', gosh, then can Christians be 'conservative'."

Reread the line about that: "Conservatism in its most naked form is amoral. It all depends on what you’re conserving."

What that means is that the idea of "conserving" is not, itself, morally good or bad; the moral goodness or badness depends on what is being conserved.

That says nothing about the morality of PEOPLE who describe themselves as conservative. It only says that the principle of "conserving" has no moral value of its own; it is what's being conserved that gives it moral value.

Incidentally, Chicago Boyz is a very high quality group weblog that matches up with that article's definition of conservative (for reference, Hayek is pictured second from the left at the top of the page.) They're mostly focused on economics, but they cover social issues from time to time as well. If you want to know what hard-core conservatives are all about, just visit that place a few times a week and read the posts and the comments.

Conservative = Republican =

Start a War, No Money Down!

By MATT MILLER May 14, 2005 in the NYT
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And here's the kicker: you can slip the bill for all of this - both the war and your tax cut - to unsuspecting children!

I know what you're thinking: "I don't have the self-confidence or social skills to reach for such dreams." But here's the truth: neither did Republicans a few years ago. Yet just this week they came through again. On Wednesday, George Bush signed into law an additional $82 billion for Iraq, which brings the amount America has spent to oust Saddam Hussein and occupy the country close to $300 billion.

Now, whatever you thought about Saddam, the best news is this: we got this war for no money down and zero payments for 10 years. That's right: every penny spent on this war has been added to the deficit. And this latest $82 billion sailed through without a hitch, with no pesky questions as to whether we should actually pay for our own wars today.

(Yes, there was one scare, when Joe Biden said we could do that by repealing a sliver of the tax cuts with which the G.O.P. has incentivized important Americans. Luckily this notion was swatted away as "nongermane.") Now the drive for more tax cuts continues, even as yearly deficits close in on half a trillion dollars!

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Believe it or not, there was actually a time when it was considered offensive to fight wars and cut taxes at the same time. In those days, conservatives were ostracized for wanting to scrap estate taxes for wealthy heirs while soldiers died in distant lands and their families scraped by on food stamps. I know - it seems so far away!

That's when I had to ask myself: if Republicans could find the courage to put these inhibitions behind them, imagine what I could do to reach for the brass ring in my own life. Now, though I'd rather not go into the details, I make more money, pay less taxes and have a beautiful wife and child.

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WARNING: Support for the Republicans' wartime fiscal policy may include such side effects as 50 million uninsured, crumbling roads and bridges, and swelling inequality. If you are concerned about any of these symptoms, please call Dr. Howard Dean.

Chicago Boyz is a good blog, indeed, but National Review has been doing it for fifty years and quite nicely, I might add.

not a bad satire... missing some important details, but funny.

Seems your trackback is down again - but oh well - was amused at the problems with the 'pragmatism' issues. So since folks are 'worried' about that - then is it problematic that I make a distinction between 'conservativism' in it's traditional form and the NeoCon Cult? And the still problematic problem of whether one can be engaged in an amoral political philosophy?

You may not recall the 'cold war' - but one thing those of us who were involved liked about the marxists was their effort to actually work on the PP&E ( Politics, Philsophy and Economics ) problems. Unlike the nice "church going" americans - the same ones who are playing the 'victim card' now - since they seem so unsure how they want to correlate these issues.

So we may need to resolve how exactly do we want to resolve the problem PP&E - do we want to be amoral conservatives, like the NeoCons? Or do we have other obligations? Do we have an obligation to being truthful? So that we actually adopt a policy of 'strict constructionism' that would require that Congress actually pass a 'declaration of war' before invading sovereign nations? Unlike the current policy that is merely a continuation of the policy during the clinton era where congress has merely deferred to the president to use what ever force is deemed cool enough?

So please, which is the real issue you folks are hoping to work out here about "conservativism"? Does it include say folks like Jim Wallis? The Folks at Sojouner? The Wittenburg Door? Or only the sort of Presbyterians who back Frist's Theology, while opposing the President?

Please work out where you want to stand.

Calling neoconservatism a cult is just idiotic. Read Ramesh Ponurru's cover story in National Review on that topic.

I will do more work on conservatism later, but for now you might want to brush up on your Russell Kirk or William F. Buckley. And no, Jim Wallis is nothing of a conservative. He's a boring liberal quoting Bible verses.

Calling neocoservatism anything but idiotic is idiotic, at least as it applies to foreign policy and morality in general. We took over a sovereign nation based on the lie - not the mistake - that Iraq was a danger to us and the world. Our deficit is hundreds of billions of dollars greater as a result; our troops our dying; and by the administration's own admission, the Iraq war has led to increased recruiting by various terrorist organizations. On top of this the conservative-dominated executive and legislative branches cut funding for policies that help the destitute and uninsured while enacting legislation that favors the wealthy - while also adding hundreds of billions of dollars to our national deficit. That's the morality that we all live in now. So you can call liberals boring or whiners, as you frequently do on this site. But while you're busy indulging your persecution complex and fulminating against homosexuals, your ideology of choice is allowing your party of choice to harm us, our troops, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, and the legacy our children
will inherit from us.

On Bush's and Blair's appalling lies about Iraq, Paul Krugman writes in the NYT:

There has been notably little U.S. coverage of the "Downing Street memo" - actually the minutes of a British prime minister's meeting on July 23, 2002, during which officials reported on talks with the Bush administration about Iraq. But the memo, which was leaked to The Times of London during the British election campaign, confirms what apologists for the war have always denied: the Bush administration cooked up a case for a war it wanted.

Here's a sample: "Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and W.M.D. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."

(You can read the whole thing at www.downingstreetmemo.com.)

Why did the administration want to invade Iraq, when, as the memo noted, "the case was thin" and Saddam's "W.M.D. capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea, or Iran"? Iraq was perceived as a soft target; a quick victory there, its domestic political advantages aside, could serve as a demonstration of American military might, one that would shock and awe the world.

But the Iraq war has, instead, demonstrated the limits of American power, and emboldened our potential enemies. Why should Kim Jong Il fear us, when we can't even secure the road from Baghdad to the airport?

Krugman? LOL.

"We took over a sovereign nation based on the lie - not the mistake - that Iraq was a danger to us and the world."

No -- we deposed a dictator based on the true notion that he was in violation of the 1991 cease fire agreement he signed in order to keep himself in power. It was a good thing we did, too. If you don't think so, you need to talk to more Iraqis.

"Our deficit is hundreds of billions of dollars greater as a result"

Most conservatives criticize the Bush administration for this -- they still spend like liberals. They really need to cut spending...

"by the administration's own admission, the Iraq war has led to increased recruiting by various terrorist organizations."

Really? Produce a quote, please.

"...cut funding for policies that help the destitute and uninsured while enacting legislation that favors the wealthy"

Why should the government have so many policies to help the destitute and uninsured? Some policies are good, but mostly, those people should get help from their local communities. (That's the key to conservative philosophy, by the way -- less government, more individual involvement.)

Also, since government policy currently overtaxes the wealthy, it's good that there's a shift back toward equilibrium. The fact is, enacting policies that *favor* the wealthy only serve to bring things somewhat back into balance, because the current policy creates a huge shift of wealth from the wealthy and middle class to the poor.

There's nothing wrong with helping the poor -- in fact, Christians are called to do so by Jesus. But as a conservative, my philosophy is that we as individuals should care for the poor instead of having the government do it.

You dismiss Krugman laughingly, but Krugman isn’t stating an opinion here. He refers to documentation of a meeting between Blair and Bush released by members of the Blair administration. Laughing at Krugman in no way refutes the facts, and since you conveniently ignored them, I’ll restate them, verbatim from the Downing Street memo:
“Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and W.M.D. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."

You can choose to ignore the facts, and you can choose to ignore the lack of coverage of this story in the so-called “liberal” media here in th U.S. But I can assure you it was a situation that got a lot of media coverage abroad, and deservedly so. Krugman doesn’t opine; he quotes from the memo:
“"The case was thin" and Saddam's "W.M.D. capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea, or Iran."
Yet we attacked Iraq.Why? Could it be for the oil? (The Iraqi oil ministry was one of only two ministries the administration assigned the army to protect during the invasion.) Could it be to obscure Bush’s lack of a credible domestic agenda and his culpability in 9/11? After all, Iraq didn’t attack us. A bunch of Saudis did (19 of the 20 hijackers were born in Saudi Arabia). Oh, but the Saudis are Bush’s friends. It’s all so confusing isn’t it? Best just to ignore the facts, as conservatives are prone to do.

You say:
“we deposed a dictator based on the true notion that he was in violation of the 1991 cease fire agreement he signed in order to keep himself in power.” That is true. But it was a legal excuse, not the reason Bush used to justify to the American people that our country must attack Iraq. That reason was that Saddam was a threat, and the Bush administration claimed it had irrefutable evidence of that so-called fact. But as the Downing Street memo makes clear, and as liberals have been suggesting for quite some time, Bush and Blair knew Saddam was NOT a threat. So Bush lied to the American people to get them to support a war against a dictator he knew posed no danger to us or to Middle East stability.

You say: “It was a good thing we did, too. If you don't think so, you need to talk to more Iraqis.” I say, what world do you live in? Have you been speaking to the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis that are thought to have been killed since we entered their country? I bet they and their families would tell you what a swell job we’re doing. Right-wing pundits love to crow about how much better off Iraq is now than it was before the war. But where are they getting this idea from? Reporters can’t conduct interviews of average Iraqis, just as randomly-sampled polls can’t be conducted across the country. Why? Because it’s too dangerous. The army can’t even secure the main road from the airport. For your assumption to be true, one might expect the resistance would have nearly dissolved by now. After all, very few of the most-wanted Iraqis from that silly deck of cards remain free anymore. And with all the successful battles waged by the U.S. army, the resistance should be a lot smaller now than six months ago. But by all accounts it’s not. That means that the people our army is capturing and killing are being replaced by new recruits. And that means those new recruits - formerly average citizens you say are happy about our presence in their country - must be pretty upset at us.

You question my assertion that:
“By the administration's own admission, the Iraq war has led to increased recruiting by various terrorist organizations." Here’s the reference: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A28876-2005Feb16.html
I’ll save you the time of checking it. Here’s a quote from the article:
"’Islamic extremists are exploiting the Iraqi conflict to recruit new anti-U.S. jihadists,’ CIA Director Porter J. Goss told the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.”
Surprise! Just as the liberals warned: Saddam wasn’t a threat, and attacking Iraq has led to greater hatred of the U.S. and greater recruitment by terrorist organizations. By many accounts, it has also led to renewed efforts by Iran and North Korea to go nuclear, since they understand that only by possessing such weapons they have the power to deter us.

Now let’s review economics. Thanks for explaining conservative philosophy to me. I have a couple of questions for you though. You say: the destitute and uninsured “should get help from their local communities” instead of the government. Could you please explain to me how in detail how they should do that? Let’s consider two staggering statistics. First, more people declare personal bankruptcy in our country than get divorced. Recently, at the behest of the credit card industry, the Republican-controlled congress enacted legislation to make it more difficult for people to recover from bankruptcy. Please explain how that helps and how those people can expect their communities to assist them. Second, over 10% of the population has no health insurance, and the Republican-controlled congress recently enacted legislation to cut back on Medicaid, so now even more people will suffer needlessly for lack of care. Please explain to me how “local communities” can effectively replace federal medical insurance. Keep in mind also that employers are cutting back on coverage, and health care costs continue to rise.

You also say: “government policy currently overtaxes the wealthy.” Please explain exactly how much the government overtaxes the wealthy and how precisely “equilibrium” - whatever that means - can be judged to be established by you or any other fiscal conservative. Are you aware that we pay lower taxes than every other industrialized nation? And even within the U.S., federal taxes as a fraction of GDP are lower than at any other time in the last 30 years. Now let’s look at a relevant example of the impact of the recent Republican tax cuts. The president’s budget contains reductions in an array of domestic programs, including education, health care, housing, and veterans. These are to offset the cost of his tax cuts and the Iraq war. Various credible sources agree on this. I’m not going to cite them here. When these tax cuts are fully in effect, a family of four at the median income level will get no refund, while someone making over $1,000,000 will receive a tax cut of $19,000 (source: Tax Policy Center). To you, that’s achieving some nebulous notion of balance. To my family of four, it’s seeing the rich guy get the money, while my kids are stuck paying off the federal deficit that the Republicans have created, currently valued at $26,000 per man, woman and child… and growing. The supply-side economics theory that you subscribe to has been embraced by right-wing think tanks and accepted by conservatives like you but rarely by serious economists. The president’s own chief economic advisor, Gregory Mankiw, even wrote a textbook that derided supply-side economics (Principles of Economics, pp. 29-30, 1998). And when Paul O’Neill, Bush’s former Treasury Secretary, objected to Bush’s second round of tax cuts, he was told “We won the mid-term elections, this is our due,’ and was then fired (quote from “The Price of Loyalty”, by Ron Suskind, a former Wall Street Journal reporter). So let’s call a spade a spade. Giving money to the rich, as you advocate, is stealing from the poor. Somehow I don’t think Jesus would have approved.

Since your comment was excessively long, I'll just make some summary points:

1) On the Downing Street memo: we know there was disagreement pre-war. People of one political bent thought the WMD evidence was solid, while those of another political bent thought it was crap. Somebody from the "crap" side attended a Bush-Blair meeting and wrote a memo. No big deal...

2) Why attack Iraq? Because freedom -- in terms of government, and markets -- in the middle east is the only credible long-term strategy for curbing terrorism. Since most people don't know enough about long-term strategy to get this, Bush used WMD and other justifications which were really secondary.

3) Quality of life in Iraq: first, your "hundreds of thousands dead" number is probably based on the incredibly bad Lancet study. Follow my link to Chicago Boyz and read up on it. Second, I'm not listening to reporters, I'm reading what Iraqi civilians write on their blogs (I link a few of them from my homepage.) Third, according to soliders on the ground, the vast majority of fighters they're now engaging are foreign, not domestic -- and the Iraqi police are being targetted far more than the US military. They're not recruiting more from inside the country, they're being reinforced from outside.

4) "Using it to recruit" and "increased recruitment" are different concepts. The fact is, they use all sorts of things to recruit. The question is, is the sum total of current recruiting higher than before? Please get your logic straight (especially since you rather insultingly made comments about "ignoring facts" earlier. Speaking of which, you were basically a jerk in your last post. Don't be that way.)

5) In terms of how people can get help from their local communities, I didn't say it can be done right now. Just that conservative philosophy is that that's how it should ultimately be done, and that we should make steps that way. Right now, most poor / homeless people have to rely quite a bit on the government (I know this from personal experience -- I'm neither poor nor homeless, but I'm heavily involved with 2 families that are.) I want the government to shift their policies in order to change this.

6) You're right that we pay less taxes than any other country. But the rich pay significantly more than the middle class, who pay significantly more than the poor -- disproportionate to earnings, even. The fact is, the rich benefit more from the Bush tax cuts than the poor do -- but the rich pay disproportionately more in the first place. The Bush tax cuts do a tiny bit to shift them back to paying the same proportion, but only a tiny bit.

Every tax dollar the government has is taken from someone. Lowering taxes is not "giving to the rich", it's "taking less from the rich". In the interests of calling a spade a spade, let's drop all the pretentions of the government "giving" to anyone. The government takes from everyone (and only gives to those who are on the government payroll), and they take disproportionately more from the wealthy than the poor. Reducing this disparity is a good thing, and giving me the "Jesus wouldn't have approved" line is basically an emotional appeal you've substituted for solid reason.

Oh, and as for serious economists, go visit the Chicago Boyz link from above. Click the portraits at the top.

It is clear that we disagree about nearly everything, and based on your comments I see little reason to backtrack on any political point I made. I will concede though that I shouldn’t have been insulting. For that I apologize. Many people, including myself, cannot dissociate our emotions from the transformation of this country under the Republican-controlled executive and legislative branches. We see a complete rejection of many of the principles that made this country great, including freedom of opportunity, dedication to peace, fiscal responsibility, representative government, and honest dialogue with the electorate about important issues by highest members of our elected government.

You ignored some of my points, but here is my response to yours:

1) THE DOWNING STREET MEMO: You downplay the significance of this. It was written by someone in the Blair administration who was actually present at the meeting with Bush and who was privy to all the inside information. This person was high up in the British government and can hardly be disqualified as an ignorant critic, as you imply.

2) BUSH BETRAYED THE UNITED STATES WHEN HE LIED ABOUT WMD IN IRAQ AND SENT THE COUNTRY TO WAR: Despite your argument in point 1, you implicitly acknowledge here that Bush’s WMD claim was indeed a lie, but justify it with the certainty that it will lead to stability in the Middle East. Is this the kind of democracy you envision, where the ends justify the means and the electorate has to be tricked into supporting a policy? You know, Clinton was impeached for far less egregious a crime. But Bush must agree with you. His administration has paid public relations firms 250 million public tax dollars – those would include yours by the way – to secretly hire journalists and pretend journalists to advocate his policies in their columns and on television. But I digress. How can you be so sure invading Iraq will actually lead to stability in the Middle East? If you are wrong – and there is every possibility that Iraq may become a theocracy, align itself with dangerous clerics in Iran and/or dissolve into civil war and break apart (in which case the Turks would invade to prevent the Kurds from forming their own country) – then are you willing to just shrug your shoulders and absolve the west of any responsibility? You also mention “markets”, and this I strongly suspect is the real reason we went in. What do markets have to do with freedom?

3) THE INVASION OF IRAQ HAS LED TO THE DEATHS OF COUNTLESS IRAQIS: The Lancet study was published in a peer-reviewed journal using scientific data. If you or any other critic object to it, feel free to publish a report, with real evidence to support it, in a scientific (not political) journal. The Lancet study isn’t the only high estimate of Iraqi deaths either, though it’s hard to tell for sure exactly how many people have been killed since our government won’t release the data. I wonder why? Just out of curiosity, what number would be tolerable to you? As to the Iraqi bloggers, keep in mind that such people will be located only in the safest sites in the country. And even they paint a bleaker picture of their country than the one you subcribe to:
“I feel so sad when I think that the future is unknown, completely unknown..I can briefly compare the situation in Iraq now with those simple words: it was very bad, and now it is bad and I don't know whether it will continue like this or go back to the 'very bad'.” (From http://iraqataglance.blogspot.com/) In addition, they attribute most of the resistance to Iraqi citizens, not to foreign fighters, as you claim.

4) THE INVASION OF IRAQ HAS LED TO INCREASED TERRORIST RECRUITMENT, THEREBY MAKING US LESS SAFE: If terrorist organizations are using our presence in Iraq to recruit, then it’s reasonable to conclude that more terrorists have been recruited. Either your point is unclear, or you engage in a semantic argument here that is incorrect.

5) THE GOVERNMENT SHOULD HELP THE WEAKEST MEMBERS OF SOCIETY: Don’t you think that pulling one safety net out from under people before it has been replaced with another shows both a lack of compassion and a lack of responsibility? Laws that protect the vulnerable in our society are necessary since the private sector rarely can substitute at such a large scale. Consider health care. The private sector can’t possibly care for the millions of people who have no medical coverage.

6) BUSH’S TAX CUTS HELP THE RICH AT THE EXPENSE OF THE POOR AND MIDDLE CLASS: I adhere to my original statements. The rich can afford to be a little generous, and the benefit to society is something people should be happy to support. Are you advocating a flat tax? Here’s the result of a 20% flat tax: someone getting paid a million dollars per year still takes home $800,000 and can probably find a lot of loopholes and tax havens to bump that figure up. Even if he doesn’t, paying 200k won’t hurt him. In contrast, the person who makes $25,000 who has to pay $5000 will get hit a lot harder. Now look at the Republican tax break. $19,000 in returned taxes will not affect the life of a person making a million dollars a year. But shifting that tax burden to someone making minimum wage leaves one heck of a burden to bear. And those tax cuts are largely responsible for our record deficit, which my kids and yours will have to pay off since our generation is too greedy to be fiscally responsible. Also, as various studies have shown, the vast majority of people end up in the economic class into which they were born. That is, working hard contributes only moderately to upward mobility in this country. If you are rich, then you are lucky, because you would most likely be poor if you were born poor. Lastly, you object to my reference to Jesus. He reminds us that it is our duty to take care of the poor. It is indeed an emotional appeal, but in no way is my argument illogical or unreasonable.

Thank you for taking the time to read my comments and for making your thoughtful reply.

Thank you for retracting the insults.

1) THE DOWNING STREET MEMO: I don't imply this person was an ignorant critic. Only that it's not a surprise some people at that level would believe the WMD intel (etc.) to be fabricated or twisted. The fact that some higher-up held that view only shows how widely held it was, not that it was true. Others at that level believed the intel was pretty good -- again, that doesn't prove it was true, only that it was another thing a lot of people believed.

2) BUSH ... LIED ABOUT WMD: I do not "implicitly acknowledge ... Bush’s WMD claim was indeed a lie". Rather, I acknowledge that WMD was not the key strategic reason for the Iraq war. I don't fault the Bush administration for believing the WMD threat was significant -- after all, I wouldn't trust Saddam to be open, and I wouldn't have been surprised if he'd had much more extensive programs than we knew about. The only sane option was to put the burden of proof on Saddam. He acted like he was trying to hide WMD programs up until very close to the war.

This isn't a Makivellian "ends justify the means" scenario. It's a simple case of there being multiple reasons to invade Iraq, and of giving the most easily understandable one the most airtime. The key strategic reason is that free people live at peace with other free people, almost invariably. But (ironically) "progressive" Democrats who supposedly believe in such ideals as freedom and democracy seem to object to them spreading. They'd rather have a "stable" Saddam-led Iraq, I guess.

I'm not sure invading Iraq will actually lead to "stability" -- but I think it's highly likely... and it's getting to be more likely every day. (If I turn out to be wrong, you can come find me and rag on me in 5 years. But I seriously doubt I'll be wrong.)

I did mention "markets", not in the sense of profit for American companies, but in the sense that giving Iraqis access to free markets is generally a good thing for them. So is giving them a non-oppressive government. Those two factors are the single strongest determining factors in whether or not nations generally live at peace with their neighbors. Nations full of free people don't generally attack each other.

3) IRAQI DEATHS: First off, the Lancet study was a joke. I know some people view peer-review as nearly infallible, but I'm far enough along on my PhD to know better. Seriously, go read the Chicago Boyz Lancet links on the study; I'm not going to rehash things I've said over there.

It's not that Iraqi deaths are somehow meaningless... just, deaths happen when you remove dictators from power, just like they happen when you let dictators stay in power. I think, on balance, we'll come out ahead when all is said and done.

And yes, I know some Iraqi bloggers have differing opinions. Just following the links from my homepage would have told you that. (But the soldiers on the ground seem to uniformly think they're no longer shooting at very many Iraqis at all...)

4) THE INVASION OF IRAQ HAS LED TO INCREASED TERRORIST RECRUITMENT: "If terrorist organizations are using our presence in Iraq to recruit, then it’s reasonable to conclude that more terrorists have been recruited." No, it's not. That's a complete fallacy. We don't know how many they would have recruited if we weren't in Iraq. And we don't know if our presence in Iraq, while a selling point for some recruits, also keeps certain others (especially Kurds and Shia) from joining terrorists because things have improved for them. All we know is that terrorists cite the Iraq war in their recruiting; we don't know how effective it is or how much more/less effective it would be if the war hadn't happened.

5) THE GOVERNMENT SHOULD HELP THE WEAKEST MEMBERS OF SOCIETY: "Don’t you think that pulling one safety net out from under people before it has been replaced with another shows both a lack of compassion and a lack of responsibility?" Depends on the form of the safety net. Some can be replaced very quickly. Neither I, nor any other conservative I know of, is suggesting we pull any out quickly -- only that we attempt to slowly transition toward personal responsibility instead of government responsibility. (And, just FYI, the private sector *does* care for many of those who don't have health insurance -- the medical industry just passes the cost on to the rest of us.)

6) BUSH’S TAX CUTS HELP THE RICH AT THE EXPENSE OF THE POOR AND MIDDLE CLASS: "The rich can afford to be a little generous, and the benefit to society is something people should be happy to support." I agree. But that doesn't mean they should be *forced* to be generous. I'm not rich, but I can afford to be generous, and I happily do so out of my own free will. Taxes are a whole different animal -- Jesus said to care for the poor, but He didn't say for the government to steal from the rich to do it (Robin Hood was not the Son of God.)

You can spare me the tax calculations. I've got a masters in applied math (actually, I'll have it whenever I bother signing the paperwork; since I'm staying for my PhD I haven't gone to the trouble.) I know the way taxes work. The simple fact is, whether or not the rich can "afford" it or the tax cut will "affect the life of" any particular person, the government shouldn't be taking that money from anybody in the first place. (That's why I refuse to deal with people's "tax cut" calculations -- don't tell me how much the tax burden is changing, tell me how much it currently is. That guy who got a $19K cut, isn't he paying like $350K already?)

The tax cuts, combined with a lack of spending cuts, are responsible for the deficit. Blaming either one is incorrect; it's the combination that does it. I'd prefer a spending cut rather than increasing taxes in order to reduce the deficits, though. Also: deficits don't bother me, short term. What really matters is that over the next 20 years, the government spends, on average, only as much as it takes in. I don't care that it happened to overspend in the last few years, so long as it underspends sometime to make up for it.

Really, long-term, what I care about is that the government spends less money. Over time, the deficit will shrink and grow, and eventually they'll collect enough taxes to bring the deficit to zero (and then it'll grow again and shrink again.) As long as the government is spending less overall, they can run a deficit for a while and I don't really care.

Of course, tax cuts also make the private sector more able to provide a safety net for individuals, because they'll have more money in their pockets ;) It's a coherent philosophy -- you can't have one without the other. Lower taxes, and more individual responsibility, individually directed, in caring for the less fortunate. They belong together.

(By the way, these points -- and basically anything else you disagree with me on -- get debated from time to time over at The DBB. It's probably easier to debate them individually there than it is to debate them in a several-days-old post here all at once.)

First off, you keep inviting me to look at your favorite conservative web sites (which I have) and to enter your territory for a debate. Well, I have already come to conservative turf to discuss topics of interest to the right and the left, both to find common ground and to help me and people like you understand each other. You obviously view the world through a very conservative lens. Perhaps you could engage in discussions at (or at least read) liberal blogs such as DailyKos and Atrios. Although admittedly posters there can be ruder than even I was, they are far more informed than I am. And Atrios himself was an economics professor who, like most other economists (including present and former members of the Presidents administration), rejects the supply side theory you advocate. I realize you have pointed me to some possible exceptions (which you failed to explain; a mere link does not suffice), but the relative number of proponents does not favor your view. Nor does your explanation. You present a theory, not a proof. Present the evidence, not a link to something that doesnt even offer a critique.

1 & 2) Downing Street memo & Bush lied about WMD: Im not going to restate the obvious. Consider what else has been said. From the memo it is clear that Bush decided by the summer of 2002 to attack Iraq. That is long before a case began to be built for an invasion. This echoes what Richard Clarke, a member of the National Security Council, testified before Congress, and what Paul ONeill, Bushs former Treasury Secretary, said: the Bush administration decided to attack Iraq independent of the entire weapons issue. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld even argued immediately after 9/11 that the U.S. should attack Iraq because it had better targets than Afghanistan. You can criticize an individual charge, but can you deny an array of evidence points to the fact that Bush didnt care a whit about whether Saddam had WMD when he made the decision to invade Iraq? And if he didnt care, then its quite a stretch to claim that he and the other neocons really believed what Bush et al. told the American public and the U.N.: that they were certain Iraq had WMD and was willing to use them against countries like ours. You can try to revise history, but that reason not spreading freedom was why the American people supported war (at least those who believed him at the time). To me, the memo is damning on its own, but with all the other quotes and testimony from key administration officials, it is the nail in a coffin. As the memo said, intelligence was being fixed around the policy. That policy trumped fact; that policy was indeed Machiavellian; and the end justified lying to the public. Cheney perpetuated the lie when he repeatedly claimed that Saddams intelligence agents met with Al Quaida members in Prague, a claim that most foreign and domestic intelligence personnel rejected. And when former ambassador Wilson publicly repudiated the administrations claim that Iraq tried to buy yellowcake from Niger in order to build a nuclear weapon, his wifes identity as a covert CIA agent was leaked by the administration. If the rejection of facts, and vicious retaliation against those who sought to publicize them, doesnt constitute duplicity, I dont know what does.

As to your dig about progressive democrats preferring a stable Saddam-led Iraq, get real. We all want to end oppression in the Middle East. But progressives believe this goal (and strengthening our own security) should be achieved in part through multilateralism and mutual respect. Neocons believe in unilateralism, the Hobbesian view that might makes right and that respect comes from a gun. Also dont lecture me about freedom. Doing so is like wrapping yourself in a kevlar flag. And its vague. There are many definitions of freedom. Yes, Iraqis are no longer being oppressed by Saddam, just as Afghanis are no longer being oppressed by the Taliban. But neither people can move freely around their country without being killed. And the U.S. has essentially abandoned Afghanistan. As a result, opium/heroin production has skyrocketed, and the warlords that ran the country during the Talibans reign of terror now run most of the country again. How committed do you think well be to Iraq, especially as fiscal pressures mount? And what about Iran and North Korea? Not only have we been ignoring them because of Iraq, as I said before, Iran and North Korea have devoted even more resources to their nuclear programs because they believe that we wouldnt have been able to invade Iraq so easily if Saddam actually possessed WMD. North Korea is now believed to possess 6 nuclear warheads, whereas it was thought to have none when Bush took office. That doesnt seem like a recipe for security to me. Neither does the perception in the Middle East that for very oily reasons we continue to prop up the House of Saud, which truly does oppress its people and perpetuates the extremely intolerant form of Islam known as Wahabism that the 9/11 highjackers adhered to. Our country sounds hypocritical and you sound nave when the word freedom is used so indiscriminately. Besides Saudi Arabia, our government is awfully friendly toward Russia and Pakistan, the former of which has clamped down on individual freedoms recently and the latter of which does not have a democratically elected leader. Incidentally, Pakistan is also widely believed to have helped the North Koreans jump-start their nuclear program. Finally, the Bush administration didnt speak up for democratically-elected Hugo Chavez when business leaders in Venezuela temporarily deposed him in a bloodless coup. Perhaps thats because hes openly critical of us and is selling his countrys oil to our competitors. So you see, were for democracy, but only when it suits us. This hypocrisy and the appearance of colonialist/hegemonic proclivities are what make much of the world distrust us.

3) Iraqi deaths: I agree about peer review, but by this process at least some obviously flawed studies are eliminated from publication, thereby raising the standard (much like mainstream journalism). These types of journals also allow for criticism of published studies. So I repeat my challenge to you: if you or others disagree with the Lancet study and other estimates, publish a critique in a peer-reviewed scientific journal. Anyone can post a wild idea on a blog or in a receptive political journal. As far as on balance, we'll come out ahead when all is said and done, you must be quite a mathematician to be able to assess that and nearly clairvoyant to assert that the neocon experiment will make the world a better place. For the record, I hope youre right. But it seems awfully cavalier to assume that you are. As for the notion that the Iraqi resistance isnt comprised of Iraqi fighters, beyond what I have already said, ask yourself where those tens of thousands of foreign fighters are getting their food and shelter every day.

4) Terrorist recruitment: Im not going to touch this again. I still think youre using legalese speak to dodge the larger issue.

5) Government should help the weakest members of society: Please explain how the private sector provides medical coverage for most of the uninsured. Have you ever been to an urban emergency room? That is where large numbers of people get primary care because they are rarely turned away. But unless they have a life-threatening problem, that is as far as they will get. I work with some M.D.s. One told me last week that he wanted to have a biopsy done on a patient he saw in the ER. Unfortunately, she has no insurance, so it cant be done.

6) Tax cuts: Over time, the deficit will shrink and grow, and eventually they'll collect enough taxes to bring the deficit to zero. So now you think it is OK to raise taxes? You contradict yourself here. Perhaps you realize that the growing interest on our record deficit is akin to a large tax increase for everyone. Another problem you might want to think about is that the way we can temporarily afford such deficits is by issuing bonds. China and Japan together own over $1 trillion in U.S. bonds. What happens if they decide to cash those in? Doesnt it make you a little bit nervous that two of our biggest economic competitors might be able to influence our policy because of the debt we owe them?

Of course, tax cuts also make the private sector more able to provide a safety net for individuals, because they'll have more money in their pockets. Its a nice idea, but it has never been proven to work. Thus my criticism of supply side economics. More money in the private sector does not guarantee that people will have an adequate safety net. Your notion is merely wishful thinking. Even the most famous member of your Chicago Boyz agreed that the government needs to assist the poor. Milton Friedman came up with the progenitor of todays earned-income tax credit, which, according to an Op-Ed in todays NYT, delivers $35 billion a year in wage subsidies to the working poor.

I look forward to your comments and I appreciate this discussion. However I dont think you will concede anything, and Im pretty sure I wont either. Best of luck on your PhD.

All quotation marks and apostrophies were lost in my last post. Sorry about that.

I have invited you to look at one of my favorite Libertarian (not conservative) websites (chicagoboyz) because it contains a great deal of material on economics and the Lancet study. I've also invited you to the DescentBB -- which is not a "conservative" site in the least. It's a bulletin board devoted to a 10-year-old video game, and it has some of the most open, cordial, respectful, and reasonable political discussion I've ever seen, mostly because many of us have known each other for years and we think of each other like family. Because it's a forum (rather than a blog) it's easier to have really complete discussion on individual issues without having them fall off the page.

I stay away from Daily Kos and Atrios because I find them to be fairly vile, rude, and disrespectful. I can get the same commentary from the left-of-center members of the DBB, without the same level rudeness or disrespect. (Even the little bit of rudeness in your first post -- as well as this one, especially some of the subtle sarcastic cheapshots -- is more than I usually put up with.)

I again recommend that if you want real discussion instead of just posting a list of standard left grievances and getting a list of standard right responses, you can follow my link to descentbb.net and bring up these points individually.

1 & 2) Downing Street memo & WMD: you make a big deal out of the fact that Bush had decided to attack Iraq way back when. I totally agree -- Iraq needed attacked way back when. There were dozens of reasons for attacking, and while I think WMD really *was* a legitimate part of Bush's thought process, I don't think anything would've changed without it, except perhaps for the mode of argument. I think it was stupid of Bush to spend as long talking about it as he did -- there was plenty of reason to go into Iraq, but both sides got so caught up talking WMD that they lost sight of the bigger picture (which, by the way, you can find outlined in Bush's state of the union speech just before Iraq, or any other major speech from that era.)

I don't buy the "intel fixed" / "lying to the public" line. The intel was open to interpretation, and from Bush's perspective, WMD fit what he already knew about Saddam, so he interpreted the evidence that way. Those who had other thoughts about Saddam interpreted the same intel differently, and while they turned out to be right, that doesn't make Bush a liar, it just means Bush misinterpreted the evidence. (I've been accused of lying over similar things several times...)

I have serious issues with the ideas many hold about "multilateralism". Something like 30 nations were in on the invasion of Iraq, but somehow that's "unilateral"? A number of the key allies who didn't participate consider themselves the balance to America (meaning they'll oppose us just to oppose us) and had questionable ties to Saddam (via Oil-for-food), yet we were supposed to convince them through "mutual respect"? I just don't see any realistic scenario under which that would've happened. Removing Saddam in a fully cooperative way would've been best, but it wasn't going to happen, so having only 30 nations instead of 40 was the best that could be done.

Your complaints about the current state of Afghanistan don't bother me. People get killed? Well people used to get killed there under the Taliban, too. Security isn't perfect (it's not perfect in Chicago, either) but it's improving. All but abandoned? Tell that to the tens of thousands of troops still there. (I'm not going to go down the list of other countries you mentioned; suffice it to say, I'm critical of US policy especially toward the Saudis and Russia, but at least we got it right with respect to Afghanistan and Iraq, which is more than Clinton or Bush I can say.)

3) Iraqi deaths: I, personally, don't have the time nor the expertise to write a critique of the Lancet study. But I do know a few things about credibility, and it didn't have it -- an estimate of 98,000 with a margin for error of over 90,000 basically demonstrates their survey had no statistical power. The methodology was questionable, and the journal's editors admitted to rushing the story through an accellerated peer review in order to influence the elections. (It's disturbing that people rely so heavily on that study for their arguments -- if you want to argue civilian deaths, you can make your point just as well talking about an underestimate of 10K dead instead of an overestimate of 100K or 250K dead, and you avoid the whole issue of the study's credibility.)

4) Terrorist recruitment: There's a difference between "this is one of the terrorist's recruiting tools" and "this recruiting tool has been effective enough to offset the loss of camps and funding due to the war". That's all I'm trying to highlight here -- they might be using it, but I'm pretty sure on balance we've come out ahead.

5) Government should help the weakest members of society: The private sector absorbs the cost of emergency medical care for the uninsured. I certainly didn't mean to say the uninsured get all forms of medical care, only that the private sector does already absorb the cost of some of the care they do get. (I do have a ton of issues with the medical industry and with the government regulations surrounding it, but I won't get into them here.) As long as we're talking about wishful thinking, I think the idea of universal and responsive health insurance is also wishful thinking -- as far as I can tell, in every country that has it, "universal health care" really means "everybody's health care is equally bad".

6) Tax cuts: I wasn't implying tax raises were OK. I was implying that spending would shrink and grow over time. And yes, I realize that interest on the deficit will eventually have to be paid off -- but, again, it's not equivalent to "raising taxes", it's equivalent to EITHER raising taxes OR cutting spending by that amount.

Let's back up and look at this from a fundamental level. There are two ways to go about bringing down government spending long-term. Either you get them to cut spending first, and then you give tax cuts from the surplus, or you cut taxes first and force spending cuts due to the shortfall. Unfortunately, the first is simply not viable -- congress won't voluntarily spend less. The only viable way to bring down government spending, long-term, is to put less money in their hands and force them to deal with it. For a couple years, they'll run a huge deficit -- but eventually they'll have to cut spending (by enough to cover the tax cut AND the deficit), and that's a good thing in my book. I wish it could be done without a deficit -- I wish we could just cut taxes and have the government only spend what they get, but unfortunately politicians aren't quite that responsible (this is probably my biggest complaint about Bush.)

And no, money in the private sector doesn't *guarantee* a safety net for the poor. But I trust in the goodness of people -- if the government safety net is dissolved, individuals will step up to care for their neighbors. (You might view it as wishful thinking, but my experience says otherwise.) Unfortunately, many of the traditional routes for this -- such as families and the church -- have deteriorated somewhat...

In reality, there's probably a balance to be struck here -- there are things the government can do that individuals really can't (at least not without a major cultural shift back toward stronger families), and there, the goverment should do those things as long as culture doesn't shift (under the direction of the people, by the way -- we should get a vote on how it's done.) But, right now, the government collects far too much money and it spends far too much money on unessential things.

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By the way, I've conceded far more than you give me credit for.

I've been to your site a number of times, even to DBB. You have clearly thought a lot about the topics we have discussed. I just wanted to let you know that I truly found your take on news and politics very interesting. A coworker of mine seems to share many of your views, but she isn't as informed as you are. And as my coworker it is difficult to have such conversations. Otherwise I don't personally know anyone who can articulate these kinds of views. Obviously I disagree with you quite a bit, but I didn't mean to sound like I was dismissing you. In fact, my girlfriend is visiting from out of state, and I had her read through my last response to identify anything that might have been perceived as combative before I posted it. I'm sorry if I failed. The one bit of sarcasm I detected was a response to something I thought was equivalent in tone to something you wrote. In retrospect, perhaps I was rather aggressive in places in which I could have been more respectful and I apologize for that. In any case, I appreciate the time you took to respond. You did concede more than I anticipated - more than I did, in fact. This may not be much on my part, but I did want to acknowledge that I thought you were right when you said of Iraqi deaths, �you can make your point just as well talking about an underestimate of 10K dead instead of an overestimate of 100K or 250K dead, and you avoid the whole issue of the study's credibility.�I also agree with your statement about balance. The rest could be debated ad nauseum, but perhaps you�re right that that shouldn�t be done here anymore.

I may yet join in your DBB discussions. Unfortunately, I have very limited time, despite the appearance to the contrary at SCO. Also, at the moment I find it much more productive/educational to visit sites in which my views are not represented frequently. One thing I really respect about SCO is that the bloggers who run the site let people like me post objections to their views. You are probably right that posters at Kos and Atrios would pounce on someone with your take on the world, but I still think they are worth a read.

On a final note, it seems to me that the divide that separates the left and the right in this country is growing into a dangerous chasm. Lots of shouting and accusations fly back and forth, but despite the check on abuse these charges might seem to provide, in the end they have a poisonous effect on substantive discussions. The firestorm in the Senate these days is one manifestation of that ideological divide. I realize some people see it differently, but silencing the minority (de Tocqueville called it something else) will only exacerbate that situation. In any case, there don�t seem to be a lot of attempts to identify what we all have in common so we can figure out how to honor that and to achieve shared goals. The cloud of distrust that has enshrouded both the left and the right - the us vs them mentality - must be overcome. Unfortunately, I have no idea how to achieve it. As Lincoln said, �A house divided against itself cannot stand.�If people lose faith in the institutions of representative government, I think we both agree we�ll all be in a lot of trouble.