“Because the outlook of progressives was based on the idea of a liberated future, there was no way to disagree with them without appearing to oppose what was decent and humane.”

It is indeed this idea, that liberals are for all that is good in the world and for all people, that drives the popularity of the ideology. To criticize a child by correcting his paper in red ink; to suggest that there is such a thing as a moral absolute; to come right out and say that some minorities suffer from the effects of their cultural baggage or that they underperform other minorities on standardized tests; to suggest that Affirmative Action is a form of discrimination; is to make a value judgement. This is un-liberal.

I like to think the success of this party is due to the fact that they generally want to give the public’s largesse to everyone. That said, they can’t run the risk of criticizing or offending anyone or they would lose their vote. In this way, liberals are like bland and predictable public entertainment fare. The product cannot be said to be good or stimulating, but rather, at best can only be inoffensive and not bad.

I have been very much enjoying your blog these past months. My story is similar to yours and others in your comments section. I live in Cambridge, MA; need I say more? It is difficult with friends and family, to say the least.

Last night I was reading V.S. Pritchett’s (one of the literary giants of the 20th century, in my opinion) second volume of memoirs, Midnight Oil, and came across this passage:

“In the thirties those who came from the upper-middle class and who had been to public schools and the old universities were easily drawn toward Communism because of the discipline, the training for leadership, the team spirit and elitism at these places. To some, Marxism was for a time scripture, and not having met anyone in the working class up till then, they tried guiltily, masochistically and idealistically to get in touch with them, often making absurd declarations of feeling inferior. My parents and relations, my grandfather the bricklayer, my eccentric great-uncle, the cabinetmaker, my mother the shopgirl and my father the errand boy and shop assistant in Kentish Town, had belonged originally to this class. Marxism as a dogma could have no appeal to me, but as a way of analyzing society and of presenting the interplay of class and history, it stimulated. The fundamentalism and the totalitarian consequences of Marxism were naturally repugnant to one like myself who had been through the mill in a religious form. It would be impossible for me to become a Communist or a Roman Catholic after that; and, in any case, I was constitutionally a non-believer. Rarely have the active politicals had a deep regard for imaginative literature. Writers are notoriously given to ambivalence, and live by giving themselves to the free mingling of fact and imagination.”

It seems to me many of the ideas you discuss on your excellent blog are touched upon in that paragraph. I am especially interested in his acknowledgment that active politicals rarely care for imaginative literature, (and by implication imaginative art of most kinds), and I think that Neo-Neo’s blog is very much about writerly ambivalence.

Thanks for being a voice for so many of us. There are some here in Cambridge, even at Harvard. We meet in darkened rooms wearing hooded gowns to whisper blasphemy and apostasy while smoking cigarettes and reading aloud from Neo-Neo-Con’s blog.

The inability to deal with the reality of their policies is what makes their current use of “reality based politics” all the more laughable. You have to wonder how many of them would have been snake oil salesmen and carpetbaggers in the Wild West.

I’d respond to “Friend to Aeneas,” but everyone else has done so well, and I’d only be repeating what they’ve said.

“Did it ever occur to anyone here that other people and nations might want to decide their own fate…?”

I think this has indeed occurred to most people on this blog. Under Saddam Hussein the Iraqi people could not decide their own fate. Just because a dictator is home-grown doesn’t mean that he is in any sense an expression of the self-determination of a people.

Now obviously, many argue that the American occupation is no better. I, and most on this blog, disagree. By attempting to set up democratic institutions then withdrawing (as is the plan one of these days) one sacrifices a little self-determination now for the promise of pure self-determination in the future.

Saddam was too powerful to be destroyed from the inside. We destroyed him from the outside, and are now attempting to set the scene for democracy before we go. What better option was there to let the Iraqis “decide their own fate”?

Did it ever occur to anyone here that other people and nations might want to decide their own fate, whether it’s better or worse than what they might have if we came charging in and decided everything?

You know, a general statement like above addresses nothing, absolutely nothing. Are we working against the will of the majority of Iraqi’s? Are we working against the will of the majority in Afghanistan?

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And I shouldn’t have fallen into the trap of calling it ‘democracy’; what the neocons are spreading isn’t ‘democracy’ in any meaningful sense of the word.

Again, if you are going to claim we are not spreading democracy at least define what we are spreading. Loyal, you offer nothing, no ideology, no ideas, you are just a reactionary.

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Not once has an American occuppying force ever brought democracy out of nothing. It HAS on several occasions restored democracy where it had been suppressed for a time.

Not once? If you consider Japan pre-WWII a former democracy being restored then certainly Iraq and Afghanistan were.

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But I know you won’t listen; this isn’t a blog, it’s therapy. Other than me, I can’t remember the last time anyone ever disagreed with neo-neocon on anything important… And they call me the ideological one.

Not listening? The proper term is not agreeing. I’m not surprised at the general pot shot insult of the blog, but as with most reactionaries you have reacted to much, yet offered nothing. As far as being called the ideological one, you have not declared one bit of ideology, just reactionary naysaying that shows opposition without putting forth your own solutions.. If your answers are akin to “I wouldn’t have done what Bush has done” and other like statements concerning things that can’t be undone then you can join my brother in having nothing to offer, but are left to just stand aside and watch history unfold while you complain and show little vision concerning the winds of change as they occur. Will you listen or change when all your predictions of doom continue to be proved wrong? I doubt it.

Did it ever occur to anyone here that other people and nations might want to decide their own fate, whether it’s better or worse than what they might have if we came charging in and decided everything?

You know, a general statement like above addresses nothing, absolutely nothing. Are we working against the will of the majority of Iraqi’s? Are we working against the will of the majority in Afghanistan?

—

And I shouldn’t have fallen into the trap of calling it ‘democracy’; what the neocons are spreading isn’t ‘democracy’ in any meaningful sense of the word.

Again, if you are going to claim we are not spreading democracy at least define what we are spreading. Loyal, you offer nothing, no ideology, no ideas, you are just a reactionary.

—

Not once has an American occuppying force ever brought democracy out of nothing. It HAS on several occasions restored democracy where it had been suppressed for a time.

Not once? If you consider Japan pre-WWII a former democracy being restored then certainly Iraq and Afghanistan were.

—

But I know you won’t listen; this isn’t a blog, it’s therapy. Other than me, I can’t remember the last time anyone ever disagreed with neo-neocon on anything important… And they call me the ideological one.

Not listening? The proper term is not agreeing. I’m not surprised at the general pot shot insult of the blog, but as with most reactionaries you have reacted to much, yet offered nothing. As far as being called the ideological one, you have not declared one bit of ideology, just reactionary naysaying that shows opposition without putting forth your own solutions.. If your answers are akin to “I wouldn’t have done what Bush has done” and other like statements concerning things that can’t be undone then you can join my brother in having nothing to offer, but are left to just stand aside and watch history unfold while you complain and show little vision concerning the winds of change as they occur. Will you listen or change when all your predictions of doom continue to be proved wrong? I doubt it.