Onward Christian Warriors! (Taibbi Blog)

[douglas9]

Onward Christian Warriors!

But after Vietnam, most liberals moved on. It became unfashionable to talk about evil. Some liberals came to believe in the inherent goodness of man and the limitless possibilities of negotiation. Some blamed conflicts on weapons systems and pursued arms control. Some based their foreign-policy thinking on being against whatever George W. Bush was for. If Bush was an idealistic nation-builder, they became Nixonian realists.

via Op-Ed Columnist – Obama’s Christian Realism – NYTimes.com.

I’m always afraid to write about David Brooks, because I worry that my attitude toward this guy is colored by certain strong feelings I have about his appearance — he just looks like a professional groveler/ass-kisser, and every time I see him in public I have to fight off visions of him home at night in his Versace jammies, feverishly jacking off with one hand while caressing in the other an official invitation to, say, a White House event, or a Harvard Club luncheon.

http://trueslant.com/matttaibbi/

[invictus]

1. K&R

[housewolf]

2. This article is a tough critic of David Brooks

Here are a few more quotes:
'''George Bush openly sold the invasion of Iraq as an absolutist exercise in Christian goodness versus non-Christian evil — remember his famous dictum that “God is not neutral” in our fight for justice and freedom — and for his trouble was roundly bashed as a fundamentalist lunatic among the very people Brooks is pitching this column to, educated east coast liberals.
Now Obama is quietly tiptoeing up to the same sorts of policy decisions, and in rushes David Brooks, as willing an official mouthpiece as this country has ever had, and pitches exactly the same ethical argument as justification for Obama’s moves.
The difference here is entirely about style and marketing: instead of referencing the Bible-thumping fire-and-brimstone/snake-handling Christianity that so appealed to Bush’s base, Brooks enlists Princeton, Scoop Jackson, Peter Beinart and Reinhold Niebuhr as cultural markers in his hyping of Obama’s brand of liberal Christian missionary zeal.

'''“Cynicism” is invading a country for the sorts of reasons that have guided the United States in most of their interventionist actions since World War II. There is a American kid in Afghanistan who is going to die tomorrow because Rahm Emanuel doesn’t want his boss to have to answer toughness questions from somebody like Brian Williams in a 2012 electoral debate.

'''Brooks is a perfect example of the kind of spineless Beltway geek we always see beating the war drum at times like these.

'''That sounds like a simplistic explanation, but anyone who doesn’t have a keen ear for the pencil-pusher’s eternal quest for macho cred is going to have a hard time understanding Washington politics. Brooks’s columns have always been the easiest way to take the pulse of that particular dynamic, and it sure seems now that bureaucratic momentum for intervention and more intervention is re-inflating the chests of these Beltway generals. ...