Kristol's tired regurgitation of his putrid neo-conservatism (a long-running attempt by (barely)-reformed communists, like Bill's father Irving, to hijack conservatism for their messianic globaloney) and his incessant cheerleading for George Bush's dismal presidency have all but rendered Kristol a pompous (and even more) nauseating parody of himself.
Now this national socialist Kristol, currently residing somewhere in the ash-heap of history, comes out with the truth that his 'neoconservative' stain on the GOP and on "modern conservatism" most closely resembles the "we can do big government better" tripe of so-called liberals who pine for an even more massive nanny government to solve all the problems this very same government holds center-stage in creating.
Kristol suggests that Americans aren't against the big-government part of big-government liberalism, but instead are against the liberalism part.
I fail to see the distinction, but one thing is abundantly clear : Americans do NOT want Kristol's big government neoconservatism...and they don't want it in droves.
Kristol's cognitive dissonance shows him not to be a conservative in the slightest, but rather just a superficial "anti-liberal" propagandist.
This is quite bizarre given how Kristol's uber-government ethos are so much hybridized "big government liberalism" masquerading as hawkish international realism and insidery pragmatism about the efficacy of what you can force on the country through a burgeoning centralized omnipotent national government.
Amidst Kristol's confused ramble is his revisionist claim that "even the G.O.P.’s 1994 Contract With America made only vague promises to eliminate the budget deficit".
This is utter dung. The # 1 plank of the Contract was a balanced budget amendment (violently opposed by Democrats). The Contract also called for zero baseline budgeting, amongst other accountability proposals.
There is also that little fact that, with Bill Clinton's cooperation, they actually ended up eliminating deficit spending for a few brief shining moments.
This was, of course, until the Bush-Delay-Kristol ooze usurped the whole operation and went hog-wild raping the treasury for their military-industrial-intelligence establishment cronies, amongst the other murky constituencies of concentrated power and wealth for whom they pimp themselves.
The problem wasn't the vagueness of the Contract or of the limited, accountable government values underlying it.
The problem was that people of the Bill Kristol variety infected the Republican majority, intent on using power for their own twisted hybrid ideology rather than conservatism.
Kristol's claim that Ronald Reagan "campaigned in 1980 more as a tax-cutter and national-defense-builder-upper, and less as a small-government enthusiast" is such absurd revisionism on its face that no response is required.
Kristol should revisit Reagan's 1st Inaugural address, as an emblematic example of Reagan's strong opposition to government largesse and excess.
Kristol's asinine attempt to re-cast Reagan's decades-running message is quite typical of how neoconservatives would reduce conservatism to little more than a cheap moniker for their own mercenary cauldron of tax-cuts-without-spending-cuts fiscal irresponsibility and hyper-militarism.
Given what faux-intellectuals like Kristol have done and continue trying to do to co-opt and corrupt conservatism into a big government ideology, and the disrepute this has brought conservatism at least nominally, one has to wonder whether the neoconservatives ever truly abandoned their places in what was historically dubbed the "intellectual left".
[Personal note : When the more 'radical' (e.g. civil rights and anti-war) elements asserted themselves in the so-called left of the 1960's, this caused many in what was then the "intellectual left" (e.g. reformed communists) to 'flee to the right'.
My goal is, however I can, to send their misanthropic progeny packing back to the 'left' (or whatever rock they want to crawl under) by re-asserting radical values consisent with intellectual conservatism - like civil rights and opposition to war and interventionism.]
But I digress.
Kristol's blithe assertion that "modern conservatism has to include a strong commitment to limited (though energetic) government and to constitutional (though not necessarily small or weak) government" says much about the distortion people like Kristol have successfully injected into "modern conservatism".
Statements like this are perfect examples of a rendition of conservatism so adulterated it would actually treat conservatism's fundamental precepts like qualified afterthoughts to be thrown in on top of the neo-national-socialist, militarist, and imperialist pathogens with which the Kristols of the world have infected its modern political expression.
Bill Kristol is a morally and intellectually bankrupt warmongering ultra-statist. Every aspect of public policy Kristol falsely-championed as "conservatism" has proven philosophically-reprehensible and a total disastrous failure in practice.
I would say Kristol really should just stop opening his mouth and removing all doubt about what a fool he is, but it is always good to be reminded of how he and his ilk are just so wrong on everything.
We would do well to scrape away inside-the-beltway sludge like Kristol, who have made short work for their superficial conservative-hating counterparts on the "other side".
In the long run, exposing them will help conservatism as an intellectual tradition to exorcise itself of Kristol and other nefarious "neos" of his mold.
So please, Bill, keep reminding us why history shat on you.
President-elect Barack Obama and a Democratic Congress are about to serve up a supersized helping of big-government liberalism. Conservatives will be inclined to oppose much of what Obama and his party cook up. And, I believe, rightly so.
But conservatives should think twice before charging into battle against Obama under the banner of “small-government conservatism.” It’s a banner many Republicans and conservatives have rediscovered since the election and have been waving around energetically. Jeb Bush, now considering a Senate run in 2010, even went so far as to tell Politico last month, “There should not be such a thing as a big-government Republican.”
Really? Jeb Bush was a successful and popular conservative governor of Florida, with tax cuts, policy reforms and privatizations of government services to show for his time in office. Still, in his two terms state spending increased over 50 percent — a rate faster than inflation plus population growth. It turns out, in the real world of Republican governance, that there aren’t a whole lot of small-government Republicans.
Five Republicans have won the presidency since 1932: Dwight Eisenhower, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and the two George Bushes. Only Reagan was even close to being a small-government conservative. And he campaigned in 1980 more as a tax-cutter and national-defense-builder-upper, and less as a small-government enthusiast in the mold of the man he had supported — and who had lost — in 1964, Barry Goldwater. And Reagan’s record as governor and president wasn’t a particularly government-slashing one.
Even the G.O.P.’s 1994 Contract With America made only vague promises to eliminate the budget deficit, and proposed no specific cuts in government programs. It focused far more on crime, taxes, welfare reform and government reform. Indeed, the “Republican Revolution” of 1995 imploded primarily because of the Republican Congress’s one major small-government-type initiative — the attempt to “cut” (i.e., restrain the growth of) Medicare. George W. Bush seemed to learn the lesson. Prior to his re-election, he proposed and signed into law popular (and, it turned out, successful) legislation, opposed by small-government conservatives, adding a prescription drug benefit to Medicare.
Continued Here.
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