The Right's Dissed Intellectuals - Meyerson

[Cassandra]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/04/AR2005100401301.html

"But the conservative intellectuals have misread their president and misread their country. Four and a half years into the presidency of George W. Bush, how could they still entertain the idea that the president takes merit, much less intellectual seriousness, seriously? The one in-house White House intellectual, John DiIulio, ran screaming from the premises after a few months on the job. Bush has long since banished all those, such as Army chief of staff Gen. Eric Shinseki, who accurately predicted the price of taking over Iraq. Yet Donald Rumsfeld -- with Bush, the author of the Iraqi disaster -- remains, as do scores of lesser lights whose sole virtue has been a dogged loyalty to Bush and his blunders. Loyalty and familiarity count for more with this president than brilliance (or even competence) and conviction.

Besides, just because the conservative intellectuals are itching for a fight over first principles doesn't mean their country is. The conservative legal movement may have been waiting for this moment, as Frum wrote, for two decades, but the conservative economic movement had also been waiting for more than two decades for its moment, its fight over Social Security. Bush indulged the economic right, and look what happened: Armed with the best thinking of Heritage, Cato and all the right-wing think tanks, the president took on the New Deal and has not yet recovered."

Fun editorial.

[tompayne1]

1. i bet the intellectuals were also very happy

with the miers nomination

[RedCloud]

2. Conservative intellectuals?

They are on the extremely endangered species list.

[donkeyotay]

3. Ouch!

With the Miers nomination, the counterrevolution proceeds again by stealth. It is, on the fundamental issues, the only way it can proceed.

That's right, because the only reason the right's philosophy has gotten this far is because it's never had to face honest, public scrutiny. When people do get to see it in action, the majority tends to say it stinks.

Consider Robert's courts review of Oregon's right-to-die law, which voters have passed twice. The right will lose either way the court rules. The religious right has gone after this law since Ashcroft, wanting it struck down as part of their right-to-life philosophy. Problem is that even conservative voters in Oregon voted for this law because anyone who has watched a close family member die a slow death knows its value. To have control at the end of life... to be able to take a fatal dose instead of having Aunt Millie blow her brains out... well, when right wing slogans meet the real world...

If the court overturns this law, most people - definitely most people in Oregon, left and right, are going to be pissed that these "intellectuals" have stuck their noses in our business, again.

[BR_Parkway]

4. Another case of those "activist judges" not leaving things up to the

will of the voters. Wonder how they are going to try to spin that one.