Paul Craig Roberts on Truth

[carincross]

http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts01262009.html

In America, Speaking the Truth is a Career-Ending Event By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

"The Bush regime was a lawless regime. This makes it difficult for the Obama regime to be a lawful one. A torture inquiry would lead naturally into a war crimes inquiry. General Taguba said that the Bush regime committed war crimes. President Obama was a war criminal by his third day in office when he ordered illegal cross-border drone attacks on Pakistan that murdered 20 people, including 3 children. The bombing and strafing of homes and villages in Afghanistan by US forces and America’s NATO puppets are also war crimes. Obama cannot enforce the law, because he himself has already violated it.

..."Obama’s order to close Guantanamo Prison means very little. Essentially, Obama’s order is a public relations event.

... "Obama’s order said nothing about closing the CIA’s secret prisons or halting the illegal practice of rendition in which the CIA kidnaps people and sends them to third world countries, such as Egypt, to be tortured. Obama would have to take risks that opportunistic politicians never take in order for the US to become a nation of law instead of a nation in which the agendas of special interests override the law.

..."Truth cannot be spoken in America. It cannot be spoken in universities. It cannot be spoken in the media. It cannot be spoken in courts, which is why defendants and defense attorneys have given up on trials and cop pleas to lesser offenses that never occurred. Truth is never spoken by government. As Jonathan Turley said recently, Washington ‘is where principles go to die.’ ”

[izquierdista]

1. Put a sock in it, asshole

I have little patience with Republicans, even rehabilitated ones like Roberts, when they start bitching on day 3. How about you make amends for the last 28 years of Republican shit that YOU, YOU started before you open your piehole?

[tom_paine]

2. Actually, Paul Craig Roberts has been anti-Bush probably longer than you have

Paul Craig Roberts is a True Conservative, and if we disagree with him, at least we can both know that he is no Bushies, but rather an American like us.

He has been decrying the Neocons probably since BEFORE 2001, but I cannot vouch for that as i did not know his name.

I understand your feelings. It's just that Paul Craig Roberts is not someone in that category.

Not even close. And Paul Craig Roberts may be a conservative, but I would sure trust him more than that weak and empty vessel, Nancy Pelosi, and all the spineless Nancy Pelosi Democrats that now make up the vast majority of our Democratic Leadership.

Maybe Obama can change that. I am not hopeful, since how do you turn a whole group of people like that into something that they're not, which is to say, principled and courageous?

[izquierdista]

3. Conservatism has FAILED

I wouldn't trust him to do anything. He should shut up, observe, and learn, instead of spout off his erroneous True Conservative principles. Ones that we now know only exaggerate the ups and downs of the business cycle and enrich the already wealthy. He was a designing architect of Reagan's ruinous policies, and that alone is enough for him to chew on socks for the rest of his days.

[tom_paine]

5. Sigh. We agree to disagree then. Not that conersvativism has failed, it HAS failed.

Of course, what the American People consider failures the Bushies consider successes.

It sounds like you are bound and determined in your rage to condemn Roberts, so fine. Condemn away. I understand your feelings.

I disagree, though, in the case of Roberts.

[acmavm]

6. Conservatism 'failed' only if you don't understand the true meaning

of the word. There was not one 'conservative' in the bush** admin. They were all criminals, not 'conservatives'.

<snip>

1. disposed to preserve existing conditions, institutions, etc., or to restore traditional ones, and to limit change.
2. cautiously moderate or purposefully low: a conservative estimate.
3. traditional in style or manner; avoiding novelty or showiness: conservative suit.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/conservative

[tom_paine]

10. Agreed. My bad. n/t

[Name removed]

8. Deleted message

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[Alcibiades]

4. You're right

Restoring the rule of law should be a priority, and it would be nice if Roberts and other republicans would join with us in that task.

[Baby Snooks]

7. True American...

Before anyone starts condemning this man they should read his writings and realize he looked in the Reagan mirror and saw the Bushes and has consistently spoken out against what he saw.

Some Democrats simply do not like "Truth" because it necessitates moving beyond ignorant partisanship. Which is the same problem some Republicans have. Which is why this country is a fallen empire.

He does have a point about Obama continuing the policy of the Bushes and again you cannot prosecute some and not others.

Why he chose Gates to continue on as Secretary of Defense is something only Obama can explain but a growing number of Americans who reject this "Might Makes Right" policy of intervention know it to have been a major mistake.

[LeftishBrit]

9. But 'True Conservatives' are very dangerous!

(I have been rapped on the knuckles a couple of times for using the supposedly 'mediaeval' word 'evil' to describe them; so I will simply say 'dangerous' this time! Even though they are pretty mediaeval themselves!)

Just because someone isn't a neocon or a Bushie doesn't make them good or wise. Right-wingers were running and ruining much of the world in the first half of the 20th century, before Bush was even born.

Roberts was an architect of Reaganomics: a policy which has done a great deal to destroy the economies of America and the world, and has caused a great deal of suffering and death through poverty.

While he has turned against the Republican party, he does not seem to have turned against RW economics. As recently as 2006, he published an article in 'Counterpunch' in which he said that 'in the 20th century the rich were the class most persecuted by government'.

He has spouted disgusting stuff about 'Zionist' control of the USA; e.g. that 'the US media is owned by 5 giant companies in which pro-Zionist Jews have disproportionate influence.' It's perhaps less well-known that he has spouted equivalent or worse vileness about Muslims. In a 2001 article, 'Abolishing America' on the disgusting anti-immigrant site vdare.com, he wrote:

'Do you know that there are 15,000 Muslims serving in the U.S. armed forces? Are you aware that the U.S. military has Muslim Imams?

....Can you see where multiculturalism has brought us? The chain of command in the U.S. Army has Arab clerics at its head.

The idea of a multicultural state is an obvious insanity. The problems of multicultural politics led to the breakup of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire. In our own time we have witnessed the breakup of the multicultural Yugoslav state and Russian Empire.

Why do so many educated people believe multiculturalism will work in the U.S.? Or do they believe it?

The political left endorses multiculturalism as an assault on U.S. national identity. Libertarians endorse multiculturalism, because they favor anything that dissolves the state, and there’s no better way to dissolve a state than to dissolve national identity.

Neoconservatives endorse multiculturalism, because they see it as endorsement of American values by outsiders. The unending flood of immigrants from different cultures is the neoconservatives’ answer to the denigration of American values by the political left.

These positions are understandable if incompatible, but none are legitimate reasons for constructing a political Tower of Babel.

Even under the old rules of the “melting pot,” it is doubtful that the U.S. could assimilate the high rate of third world, non-European immigration it has been experiencing for the past three decades. Under the multicultural Balkanization policy in effect, non-assimilation is a guaranteed outcome.

Of all the hyphenated-Americans, Muslims pose the greatest challenge. Islam assimilates neither into a Judeo-Christian civilization, nor into a secular one. Secular Muslim states are experiencing difficulties themselves and have to rely on force to remain in power.

The assimilation of Muslims in the U.S. would be daunting even for a culture aware of the challenge. It became impossible when civil rights policy turned every hyphenated-American into a “preferred minority” and endowed them with special legal privileges.

....The U.S. has forsaken national identity for a Tower of Babel'


His RW racist views seem to extend or have extended more broadly. He published a book in 1995 called 'The New Color Line' where he attacked not only affirmative-action legislation but even the Voting Rights Act, and claimed that white males were now 'second class citizens'


Is this a person whom progressives should be endorsing?


And: even when Bush was in power, I considered that it was a big mistake for progressives to regard 'the enemy of my enemy as my friend' and to give aid and comfort to right-wingers even if they opposed Bush and the war. But Bush is now out of office. Being an 'enemy of Bush' can no longer absolve anyone. And hard economic times *always* increase the danger of RW-populist, sometimes even neo-fascist movements arising. Add to that the nature of the now current world political 'establishment' with a black, comparatively liberal American president with many personal and political international connections - and we can be sure that the anti-establishment so-called libertarian Right will attempt to extend its tentacles wherever it can. Left-wingers should not in any way co-operate with this.

[tom_paine]

11. All good points. However, I am not sure I am "endorsing" him, though that may just be semantic

quibbling.

I do agree with much of what you said, however, my listening to Roberts' words is a far cry from wishing he would run for office, voting for him, or saying "treu conservative" philosophy is something I agree with.

I was merely speaking to the individual who reflexively ripped him a new one, and pointing out that while I disagree with Roberts to a guy like Ron Paul on most everything, I somewhat trust them as Fellow Americans and NOT Loyal Bushies.

Would I vote for Ron Paul? Maybe if the only other choice was McPalin, but otherwise, a resounding NO.

But as loopy as I might think Paul's individual ideas, however much I might vriulently disagree with them, I semi-trust them as not being in the pockets of the Bushies.

Conservatives I can work with, Right-Wing Authoritarians like the Bushies are another matter and must be opposed with every fiber in anyone's body who wishes to remain free.

Anyway, I am far from endorsing Roberts' every view, but I welcome his words as a former insider with knowledge and a unique perspective.

As to the overall bankruptcy of the philosophy of conservatism, that may well be the case. But ideally, this nation was designed to be a moderate nation by the Founding Fathers and so I am filled with as much disgust at eradication of conservative ideas as I am with Bushies' and their beliefes that liberalism should be 100% eradicated.

That sort of mentality does not serve us I do understand and respect your feelings As I said, you make many very good points. I just disagree with your overall theme.

[LeftishBrit]

12. I think 'conservativism' has many meanings

Firstly, I agree that one cannot/should not 'eradicate' conservativism, as that would require totalitarianism.

Also, there are many 'conservative' individuals and parties in various parts of the world that are conservative just in the sense of distrusting radical change, and preferring to stick to tradition/ the status quo. While I would not vote for this position, I accept it as valid, and think it in fact quite useful for left-wingers to have to *justify* the changes they support, rather than just run headlong into them. In that sense, the conservatives offer a potentially useful brake.

The more liberal Conservatives can in fact be moderate progressives. (To give an example from an area that I know well, in the UK, some Conservative Education Secretaries have been much more progressive than some Labour ones, for example.)

However, I do consider the extremes of free-market libertarianism to be dangerous. I would guess that far more people worldwide have been killed by the poverty resulting from extreme free-market ideology than by any terrorist group, for example!

Also - and this is perhaps really my biggest concern about Roberts in particular - I think that there is EXTREME danger in anyone promoting xenophobia; pandering to racism; promoting the concept of 'enemies within', of certain ethnic or religious groups not being true citizens or needing to prove their loyalty more than others. My perception of Roberts is that his views would correspond more to those of the far-right parties in Europe - the BNP in England or the National Front in France - than to mainstream conservatives in these countries. The BNP and the National Front are also opposed to the Iraq war - and they are probably NOT overall as economically RW as someone like Roberts! But they have the same exaggerated preoccupation with 'national identity'; with the evils of multiculturalism; with the dangers of Jews, Muslims and immigrants having influence over our countries. It is this sort of attitude that seriously worries me, and which I think it's important for progressives to repudiate under all circumstances.