Posted by caraher on November 2, 2005, at 14:04:28
In reply to Joe Wilson, posted by verne on November 1, 2005, at 23:40:50
> I was really struck by how articulate and genuine he was. In contrast to everything I had heard about him in the press - fox news etc... Buchannan had said that Wilson was a "liar" and "night and day" from Libby when it came to credibility - yet I was really impressed at his humility and sincerity.Buchanan had the "night and day" part absolutely correct, though he had who was which mixed up. The current practice of the administration and the media who defer to him has been to smear the messenger, and this has happened time and time again - to Paul O'Neill, to Richard Clarke - people who one day are respectable members of the government and the next portrayed as pathological liars.
I respect conservatives, but I think a traditional American political conservative ought to view the Bush administration more as radicals than conservatives. They are "conservative" on certain social issues but beyond that stand for US interventionism abroad, fiscal irresponsibility and a federal government growing not only larger but more and more intrusive. Calling the Geneva conventions "quaint," playing word games to justify torture, running record deficits, launching "pre-emptive" wars and pushing for greater government surveillance powers through diminished expectations of privacy and high-tech national identity card standards are not the actions of a truly conservative government. Conservatives would rightly be up in arms against a Democrat presiding over such moves, and I'm sure that well-informed, principled conservatives oppose these aspects of the Bush record.
Unfortunately, I think many of those who would make this principled stand are not ill-informed so much as actively misinformed. I'm glad you caught a glimpse of CSPAN, operating outside the Bush camp's "filter."
poster:caraher
thread:574381
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/poli/20050924/msgs/574564.html