‘The Era Of The Armed Liberal’… Nice Ring To It, Don’t You Think?

Austin Bay (disclosure – we’ve been talking about some stuff lately) nails it with this post about the future of the Democratic Party, something I’ve mused about recently while re-reading Theodore Lowi and via calls for a new set of theses to guide a Democratic Reformation:

Mr. Judis’ national upheaval has already occurred—we call it 9/11.

9/11 marked the end of multi-cultural nostrums dear to the Democrat’s hard left. It marked the end of welfare states as we know them –now the strategic game’s either globalize or die. The “die option” bifurcates: either shrink and die slowly, or submit to a fascist tyranny with borders closed by violence.

9/11 also marked the end of Vietnam as a political syndrome. Defeatism, cynicism, and anti-military anger don’t sell.

We have entered the Era of the Armed Liberal. The smartest Democrats know this. The next successful Democratic charge will ride a Truman-Jackson “defense Democrat” horse—and the candidate will be a populist. The candidate (he? she?) will damn the Republicans for fiscal irresponsibility.

Read it all. And we will chap their Republican asses about the trainwreck their policies represent for the vast majority of people in this country – the non-asset owning classes who live from paycheck to paycheck.

45 thoughts on “‘The Era Of The Armed Liberal’… Nice Ring To It, Don’t You Think?”

  1. Not if Bush makes the majority of Americans into asset owners…and indeed I’m not sure that “paycheck to paycheck” is accurate for the “vast majority” of Americans, but never mind.

    I would certainly welcome the era of the armed liberal, if for no other reason than it will make for lively conversation at the range.

  2. A whole lot of Democrats have to let go the levers of power before that happens. Do not hold breath while waiting.

  3. A “trainwreck” for the “vast majority”?

    Given the number of people I see at the malls, and driving new cars and SUVs, I have a hard time recognizing this “trainwrecK”, nor have I seen that particular “vast majority” around lately.

    It’s this kind of hyperbole that does the Dems a great deal of damage, imo. You can only cry wolf so many times before people start tuning out.

  4. A.L. isn’t completely off the reservation in targeting large numbers of working Americans. The country’s savings rate is very low, most families do not have a financial cushion in the event of serious disruption, and economic shocks can be expected over the next decade – which is about how long it will take for the Democratic Party to reach an early milestone re: fixing themselves, even assuming they get serious about the job.

    Now, these habits are long-standing, enduring, and abetted strongly by liberal policies as well as Republican ones. But that will not matter when crafting political attacks – we’re talking politics as actually practiced here.

    So, from a political perspective, the after-effects of any economic shocks are likely to give the Dems a base of people in the Republican camp who would be disaffected and more likely to listen to them – as long as the party hasn’t made themselves anathema to their values and ongoing safety.

    And that’s the combination A.L. is talking about.

  5. A decade works for me. That’s when those hands on the levers start to loosen their grip as arthritis afflicts the boomers. Ambitious young law school grads with heroic experience in the coming Great Middle Eastern, Great Chinese (take your pick) War will have to attach themselves to the incumbent rich GOP or the leaderless Democrats. Guess where the smart ones go.

    It may take another decade before the voters forget about the heroic leadership the GOP provided in the war, but then the fresh faces of the young heros will start ot have a patina of experience in peace as well as war and it will be time to pass the torch to a new generation. But I’ll be dead by then, so whatever the kids do is OK with me.

  6. 9/11 marked the end of multi-cultural nostrums dear to the Democrat’s hard left.

    Two sidenotes:

    “Mushy” multiculturalism was never confined to the “hard-left” but was staple (albiet in a watered-down form) to near the entire left. Jonah Golderberg recently reminded me of Sting’s 84 travesty, “The Russians love their Children Too,” which brought back memories of being force-fed huge, bland bowls of MC mush. Oh well, I actually yearn for those pre-9/11 days, not just because I’m a liberal but because I believe we as a country lost a level of sophistication and sublety that we’ll be hard pressed to get back.

    I remember the big show before 9/11 was NYPD Blue, and I had no idea whether those cops were in the right or not at times, the ambiguities of the situation seemed to match real life dilemnas. Nowadays cop-shows are a thin gruel of NYPD clones filled with obviously bad-cops (like the Shield), and forensic thrillers were the suspect’s guilt is as eminent as Nancy Grace’s bug eyes. Proving a foregone conslusion is boring, kind of like the marketing of Operation Iraqi Freedom. “Saddam’s a bad guy?” well, duh.

    On the other hand, relativism ain’t dead yet, as the ideological underpinnings of Leo Strauss can be traced to Nietzsche just as easily as those of Edward Said. I’d argue that the epistemological foundations of both neo-conservatism and post-modern multiculturalism (or whatever you wanna call the ideology informing the “hard-left”) are in fact quite similiar. The primary difference in my view is what is made of the inability to communicate cross-paradigmatically.

    Of course, honest post-moderns own up to the nascent violence inherent to this solipstic failure, but neo-cons went and made a whole ideology based on it. Very Mannichaean, no?

    Or maybe Joe or Cicero could correct me?

  7. No offense to John Judis and those Scoop-Jacksonians at The New Republic, but who listens to them?

    Back in my school days, the only people I knew who read TNR were Republicans and Indies. I gave some of my copies to a friend of mine who was a Democrat, and he was astounded to see liberals calling for support of the Contras, for the deployment of Pershing missiles, for Reagan’s hard line against communism, etc.

    So what happened? The Soviets and the Sandinistas went to the ash heap, over howls of protest from the left. Needless to say, nobody thanked Reagan or The New Republic. The political leadership of the Democratic party (which very few exceptions) spent the whole time engaging in their usual pseudo-pacifist histrionics, while the left wing ran interference for the enemies of the West.

    When it was all over, no lessons were learned. So far as I can tell, the Democratic Party just blacked out the whole episode like a childhood trauma. If any good thing happened in the world, they were too obsessively focused on their own political fortunes to care.

    Serious persons have to ask why it would be any different this time around. When you look at the Democratic house and senate, it’s obvious whose tune they’re dancing to. Austin Bay goes through a short list of “new” leaders, and it has to be the world’s shortest short list. Barack “Rising Star” Obama is going to change all of this, without being torn to pieces by wild dogs? Tim Johnson – a nice guy hanging by a thread in a Red State, who has far less name recognition than the brand-new junior Senator, John Thune (R).

    The people who made a muck of it last time, on the other hand, have formidable new weapons: George Soros, Howard Dean, Michael Moore, internet fund-raising and agitprop, etc., etc., etc. You could spend all day listing their martial assets.

    As for the vast majority of working Americans? Let’s be honest – the New Left has always hated their guts. They hate their pick-ups and their SUVs, their guns, their Lee Greenwood albums, their hordes of children, their Fourth of July barbecues, their yellow ribbons, and their churches.

    Politics is past hope as a force for good in this country, it’s only a means of defending against greater evils. We need a cultural revival. Somehow.

  8. It’s important to note that, at least at the national level, the last four presidential offerings (Clinton I, Clinton II, Gore, Kerry), may have suffered politically from the image of “defenseless democrats”, but this hasn’t been credibly true at the substance level.

    That’s 13 years of the image described above not being true.

    The shift FOR THE DEMOCRATS was started after Gulf War I, and the 1st Bush engaging in a cooperative, broad-based, successful reversal of the invasion of Kuwait.

    That particular anti-war vote, that democrats engaged in, was the END of the pacifist/somewhat isolationist Vietnam era democratic consensus.

    That particular vote was very humiliating, eye-opening, and sobering to the democratic party. That vote was the a blast in the face of how wrong, at the time, the party was on defense. It one of the reasons the DLC and the New Democrats, embodied by Clinton, took over.

    Clinton definitely took more seriously the threat of Al-Queda, than most Republican figures at the time did. Remember, he wanted a specific meeting on Al-Queda, with Bush, when Bush came into office.

    So the rhetoric here is a decade old.

  9. I’m one of those “asset owners.” Come try and take the stuff I have worked hard for at your own risk.

  10. > the vast majority of people in this country – the non-asset owning classes who live from paycheck to paycheck.

    I thought that over half of the population owned where the lived? Over half of the voters do….

    When I didn’t, I certainly wanted to and wasn’t too keen on things that would screw it up for me.

  11. bq. _”the vast majority of people in this country – the non-asset owning classes who live from paycheck to paycheck.”_

    When I left home I started out with a Plymouth Duster and everything I owned fit in the trunk. Yes I was living paycheck to paycheck and yes hard work and determination has pushed me beyond that point. Along the way I’ve paid my taxes, given to charities, suffered increases in taxes via wage bracket, alternative minimum tax, increased social security taxes, increased medicare taxes, increased state and local taxes. Seems to me the government somehow or another always manages to get their _*supposedly fair share*_ and in each instance has forced me to work harder to maintain or advance my financial position. Why is that? Are we really saying the vast majority of the people don’t have the work ethic or is the vast majority saying why bother (it’s a no win situation).

  12. I find it humorous to see you talk about how bad the ‘policies’ are for those who live paycheck to paycheck. What a load of horse____. It is true that in this nation there are a lot of people that have had misfortune visit upon them and their families. What is also true is that there are a greater number of people who simply have mismanaged their finances, life, health, jobs, career, education – and don’t like the consequences of that decision.

    I have one particular friend lamenting the co-insurance nature of his medical insurance and the deductibles. He is terrified of going into debt if he, his wife, or new infant daughter gets sick. Yet for 15 years he gambled, drank heavily, partied a LOT of money away when he had no real responsibility. He had no problem buying ‘toys’ for himself, living dangerously, and having fun – but all the sudden he has responsibility.

    Now, is he ‘entitled’ to be taken care of by society? All of those benefits can only be given to him if they are taken away from someone else. I am all for helping the needy – but I can’t stand it to see people pull the class warfare card to complain about their spot in life – when in reality their own behavior contributed greatly to their circumstances.

    I just get tired of seeing people bitching about the govt not ‘giving’ them anything, yet they have money to smoke or go out drinking, they have cars, SUVs, and take trips every year.

    The policies that make it hard for people to get medical insurance and jobs are not REPUBLICAN, if anything, they are DEMOCRATIC in nature. Think about it: if you are a business owner, would you want to hire people anytime there is an uptick in business? Anyone you hire is instantly deserving of all these benefits and pay and Family Medical Leave Act rights, etc. In many businesses, it is moving a mountain to fire an incompetent employee, even then you are responsible for their unemployment insurance. The entire incentive is to NOT hire anyone full time, and get away with part time or temp help.

    Look around the world – the countries with the highest unemployment rates are those with the most restrictive environments for business (developed world). Germany, France, UK, – all very high unemployement rates.

    Tort costs, too – affect everything we do. You wonder why medical costs and insurance are so high – yet you cheer whenever a $50 million verdict is reached. ALL THAT MONEY comes from us consumers – passed through to us – the end user.

    Face it people – we have the system we have bought – rightly or wrongly – over the past 30 years. We attacked businesses, we increased regulation, we increased litigation and court costs – we got what we deserved.

  13. On the med-mal; by that same logic, if it really costs all of us when a high med-mal verdict is reached, it’s hurting all of us when incompetent doctors destroy people’s lives.

  14. Exactly how will “Armed Liberals” become a political powerhouse when they continue to abort their warriors out of existence?

    The biggest difference between today’s Liberal Democrat and yesterday’s Truman Democrat is that the Truman Democrat did not abort the next generation out of existence.

    Liberal Democrats have spent the last thirty years fighting for the very platform which will eventually lead to their extinction and no amount of ‘National Defense Democrat’ rhetoric will influence the next generation of voters who were given the right to live.

    The Democratic Party will never face the reality that advocating abortion leads to extinction. Liberals were so busy gaining the pro-abortion feminist’s vote they forgot to think about the future implications of having such a vote.

    No wonder Hillary is desperate to allow felons the right to vote, she realizes that future Democratic voters are being exterminated while the other major party is procreating asset owners.

  15. It is a myth that the Democrats favor, let alone represent or have any interest in benefiting, people who live paycheck to paycheck. The party has gone big-time elitist – in particular elites willing to share with deserving incumbents. Note Democratic silence on the bankruptcy bill (Republicans are far worse there, but my point is that the bankrupcty bill proves what Democrats aren’t).

    The Democratic Party, to the extent that it represents anyone anymore, is the party of government clients – organized interest groups dependent on (i.e., more than interested in or benefiting from) government funding and/or government action.

    There aren’t Democratic hawks or pro-defense types in any numbers, let alone influence, anymore. Les Aspin found that out in 1993 when, as Clinton’s first Secretary of Defense, he had insuperable problems finding qualified, or even interested, Democrats to fill even middle level Defense Department appointive positions. That deficiency has become much more so since then.

    I don’t see any chance of a Democratic presidential nominee having credibility on national security for a long time. Those who might have such credibility can’t get the nomination precisely because of such credibility, while nominees can’t develop it in the limited period between the convention and the general election.

    The Democrats’ name-brand identification with lefty anti-Americanism and snobbish elitism means any nominee they put up is tarred with that unless he/she has a Clintonian “Sister Souljah” moment with such groups BEFORE rather than after the presidential convention. After-nomination conversions won’t work while active hostilities are on-going in the war against Islamofacism.

    Which means that Democratic presidential candidates who have a chance of winning office must first risk losing in the primaries by staking out a really visible pro-defense/kill America’s enemies in war position during the primaries.

    IMO not only are the Democrats not hungry enough yet to shut the **** up on their lefty nonsense, but they’ll cream any of their own presidential candidates who defies lefty ideology.

    And Hillary won’t square the circle for two reasons, one of which is beyond her ability to affect. First, she doesn’t have her husband’s nerve to try this or his ability to pull it off, notably his incredible sense of timing.

    Second and worse, she’s still married to him, and there are lots and lots of Democrats and independents who will stay home rather than put Bill back in the White House provided the Republican nominee is remotely decent in character.

    Polls of the party faithful don’t count here. My wife is a liberal anti-war Democrat, and she and ALL her female friends are absolutely against Hillary as President because of Bill Clinton. It’s a character issue – his and that fact that she’s still married to him.

    Even my wife’s mother, a rabid Harry Truman/Adlai Stevenson/JFK yellow dog Democrat, who believes in her bones that Democrats are for ordinary Americans and Republicans aren’t, but is pretty much apolitical otherwise, so loathes Bill Clinton that she’ll stay home rather than vote for Hillary.

    I repeat, Hillary’s biggest problem is public feelings about Bill’s character.

    The Democrats’ biggest problem is that they have given the public the absolutely correct impression that the Democratic Party is not on America’s side in the war. That IMO means they have no chance at the White House until we’ve won.

  16. bq. And we will chap their Republican asses about the trainwreck their policies represent for the vast majority of people in this country – the non-asset owning classes who live from paycheck to paycheck.

    Trainwreck ? what a bunch of leftist bulls…

    Want to help them?

    Cut their taxes, in the cost of housing, food, and durable goods is a hidden 40% income tax, the income taxes along the way from dirt to garage/table that is paid out of the consumers pocket

    The Leftist outrage of income taxation is further made evil by the fact that most imported goods do not bear this income tax burden.

    This is a 40% penalty on American workers, and its a 40% penalty on the jobs remaining in America.

    The inherent evil is the “social justice” leftist evil in the ideas the toxic scheme is based on.

    At least with a consumption tax savings and investment will be rewarded, and the 40% income tax cost hidden in the cost of US goods converted to a visable consumption tax will then be spread to cover imports as well.

    This will be a 40% boost to the american worker, and a 40% boost to the abilty for jobs to stay in America.

    The communist income tax is evil, its a harm to America, it must be abolished.

    Want to help them, try that ,, it will be effective, unlike all other leftist ideas that are not aids .. but burdens, burdens that harms Americans and Americas ability to compete in this world.

  17. _We have entered the Era of the Armed Liberal. The smartest Democrats know this._

    Yes, but there are all of *six* of them…

    _The rest_ nominated and voted for *Howard Dean*.

    I agree that this is needed, but it’s not happening before 2008. As a swing voter, I’ll ack I tend to vote GOP (although their behavior since November has disgusted me sufficiently that I’m likely to vote libertarian, next time), but I am not anyone they can rely on. Had the Dems put forth a true middle-of-the-road candidate, such as, say, Lieberman (without really looking close at him since it never mattered) they could have conceivably won that race.

    Instead they did two idiotic things – put forth a *pair* of candidates who were to the LEFT of Ralph Nader and Michael Moore, and pushed for gay marriage. Not only did this galvanize the conservatives, but it also turned away some of the Dems themselves… And for what – it’s not like going “cool it, for now!” would have cost them any substantial votes.

  18. I thought that over half of the population owned where the lived? Over half of the voters do….

    When I didn’t, I certainly wanted to and wasn’t too keen on things that would screw it up for me.

    You have to understand something. AL is banking the future on his party on the hope that enough people will no longer want to own their own homes, start their own businesses, or build up a better life for themselves in their families through their own hard work, thrift, and innovation rather than be content to line up for whatever government largess he and his party promise to dole out.

  19. USMC: When I left home I started out with a Plymouth Duster and everything I owned fit in the trunk …

    Hey, me too! It was a powder blue hunk of tin and cardboard with an outstanding 340 engine that could kick a Mustang in the butt. Very light on its wheels, but when I piled 300 books in the back I got decent traction. And so I was unleashed on the world, like a fast-moving pathogen. If anybody took offense at the big Reagan sticker, the sorry bastard couldn’t catch me.

  20. A.L., I’m curious as to what your definition of “train wreck” is. I’ve been around a long time and although a lot of people on both sides of the political fence have been shouting train wreck for as long as I can remember, the only real economic train wreck that comes to mind was from my dad’s era (1929.) You can give reasoned arguments for why you might disagree with the Bush economic policy and I will listen to them. Please leave the exaggerations to the folks that can’t live without them.

  21. ‘The Era Of The Armed Liberal’ … Nice Ring To It, Don’t You Think?
    Yup, nice to see you finally getting your due, Armed. 😉
    I think I remember something like 65% of American families are just one big medical bill away from bankruptcy.

    And, Tim Oren, have you learned nothing?
    There is a biological basis for ALL behavior. 😉

  22. Glen
    Unfortunately I couldn’t afford the 340 mine was tan with alligator brown landau roof and a slant six. To be honest about it Dad cosigned on the loan. It was a used car and he tried like hell to get me to hold out long enough to buy a new car. I still remember his words to this day buy a used car buy some else’s problems. Throughout my life I’ve bought several used cars since then and so far he’s been right every time.

  23. I think part of the Era of the Armed Liberal would only begin if the Democratic Party took on its own gerymandered districting. Until the party is forced to run outside of safe liberal districts, it cannot become a majority party that espouses these types of views.

    Patrick

  24. If there is a trainwreck it will be brought about by unsustainable entitlement programs like Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. The President and Congress have only theoretical power to control government spending, because of the Third Rail effect of trying to cut back such programs. That is the legacy of FDR and the Democrat Party.

    It’s also the result of democracy. We get the government we ask for. Citizenship is a duty that we have turned our backs on. The enemy is us.

  25. AST

    How true.

    As an Illustration “My Japan”:http://www.archive.org/movies/details-db.php?collection=prelinger&collectionid=19296

    My point, Americans have allowed ourselves to become p***Y whiped by the left into a poltically corrected effeminated weakling self hating hollowed out core of itself

    bq. CONTENT ADVISORY: Explicit racism and extreme violence.

    The interesting thing about that US propaganda film, is that there is very little in the way of propaganda, it offers a hint into the mindset of the japanese kamakazi and our 40% losses we suffered taking iwo jima

    It will also remind you why we dropped two atom bombs on Japan and firebombed dresden, that was a marshal center for man and material for the eastern front.

    How well taken would the frank talk ( the narrator is the American Emb to Japan, and the film is made with captured footage.

    When i see frank talk like that film from democrats again, when cultural marxism is looked back upon as the joke that it is such that that “ADVISORY” is looked back upon like some digarded embarrasing retro cliche like Disco the stupid clothes the stupid fake gold chains and the Bee Gees……

    But then again … the democrats would have needed to purge the commies from their ranks, not only stop sharing the stage with them, but openly loudly denouncing them and their blood stained holocaustic evil as they deserve, and all the Politico Correcto attempt to effeminate America to the point where we cant even set ourselves rightly above our enemies.

    So give a watch to “My Japan”

    When the democrats can carry that kind of message again they will be healed of their toxic vultural marxist infection that dooms them. (or dooms us, should they ever win).

  26. Armed Liberal, if the Democrats want to help those ‘living paycheck to paycheck’, wouldn’t cheaper fuel, food and clothing help? Let America build some more refineries and drill in some our untapped oil reserves, and watch oil, gas and plastic prices stabilize, if not drop.

    And it was Bush and friends that have prevented new refinery construction for the last 25 years either…..

  27. PD Shaw, gerrymandering is a bipartisan issue – one Armed Liberal has pounded the drums about quite a few times now.

    The faster it is hobbled, severely attentuated, or removed from America’s political system, the better off your polity will be. Not only would that help the Dems fix themselves, it would keep the GOP from drifting too far into la-la land.

  28. The idea that the savings rate is at historical lows is a red herring. Check out the values of IRA’s and 401k’s that people currently have their assets invested in. Check the value of individual real estate holdings. Granted, that money isn’t quite as liquid as having a savings account, but that’s the good news. Who would put money in a savings account today?

  29. JC,
    If Clinton had been able to run, I might well have voted for him. But the Democrats didn’t run even a ‘Clinton clone’. They ran Kerry the ‘only if the UN agrees’ candidate. (And I’m being polite in only mentioning that… some of his antics back in the 70s should have put him in the slammer, IMO.)

    I’m no conservative and there are a lot of things I really dislike about the President. I voted ‘anyone but Kerry’. Try to make a better choice next time, please. I’d like to have an actual choice.

  30. Uphill battle is putting it mildly.

    Within the last month, I’ve had this conversation with one of my brothers and one of my best friends, both Dean/Boxer Democrats.

    Listening was not what they wanted to do. They wanted to interrupt and wag fingers in my face. They could not accept that I was an anti-Deaniac Democrat who was trying to get them to think of how we could revive the Democratic party. One asked me if I was turning into a “John Bircher”.

    As Dan Rather said, “Courage”.

  31. AL and Joe,

    The majority of Americans, and a larger majority of voters, are asset owners. Even in “Blue States”, a majority own their own homes. Additionally, even without Bush’s Social Security reforms, a *lot* of Americans own part of their retirement, and most of that is directly in the financial markets.

    If the Democrats continue with their class warfare rhetoric, many of those homeowners and 401k holders are going to have serious misgivings about the Democrats, even if they are for strong defense and against gun control.

  32. Kathy K

    Why was not McDermit arrested for treason ?

    Ok hard to make that charge stick ? why wasnt his standing on mass graves of kids to denounce america in support of the PolPot of babylon held up to public riducule by the media,, the media are perhaps the most centrist partisan democrats, they know how the tinfoil hat moonbat nonsense will play, so they soften the image of democrat communazi’s and kooks … and paint republicans as sinister and evil.

    The best spin on us is to put forth the softest fairest but democrat version of Republicans.

    But McDermit ? that makes John kerry who embraced a communist ruler who murdered his own people with a 5% death quota, as ok for president. less surprising

    why cant they just admit it and call themselves soft commies or swedish euro socialists blindly devoted to the UN image of one world goverment and the communist internationale vision of “international law”

    The kind of vision where all US freedoms are abolished by UN agenda 21 etc,, the now current marxocrat view that forein law trumps American consitutional law

    Where countries like china and france have veto over the good peoples of the united states, who paid for the freedom of so many in blood, the freedom they threw away, and hate us because we still have much of what they threw away.

    And our own USA left that hate america for that same reason.

  33. JC — the charge of “Defenseless Democrats” is arguably VERY credible and VERY true at the national level. Clinton cut even further than GWHB suggested after the end of the Cold War. The Peace Dividend? Soft Power? Remember that? It was Clinton’s model. Don’t spend money on the Military. Don’t trust the military. Don’t ever use force, ESPECIALLY if provoked (Somalia, Tanzania/Kenya, the Cole, Khobar Towers). Clinton may have been more centrist and DLC, but still adhered to the mantra of talk, talk, talk out the worlds problems, because everyone is sensible if listened to and bargained with, etc.

    To me this is the massive legacy of the Cold War. For Dems it seemed the most logical and sensible thing was to keep the eyes on the Prize, and not blow up the world hence the anti-military sentiment, projecting our own qualities onto enemies, allergic reaction to force, etc. It was probably needed to counterbalance “hot” Warriors like JFK (ironically a Dem) with some Cold War realism and limits. However, as Emilio Estevez once said, that was then. This is now.

    Here’s the problem, as noted Les Aspin couldn’t even fill mid-level slots in 93. Who now actually follows and understands the military? Defense issues? The “Revolution in Military Affairs?” The debate in the Pentagon (both civilian and military) over fast/light/logistically supportable forces acting “faster” than the enemy can react versus “heavy forces” that use sheer (and co-ordinated power) to smash any opponent to bits even if caught off guard? Where are the Democratic Defense intellectuals debating America’s heavy bomber needs to replace the B-52 (they are all Republican)? What Dems are debating the F-22 versus the A-10 Warthog, if the current F-15/16/18 Airframes can do the job or need wholesale replacing? Where is the Democratic Party on the Spectre gunship for close air support, new body armor, small arms, or anything else?

    Nobody is willing to take these issues on because they don’t matter to Dems. They don’t look at the hostile world and say “what do we need to defend ourselves,” but rather “how do we ‘negotiate’ with the UN/EU/whoever to make the problem go away.”

  34. Jim, dead on target.

    The only thing you left out was the leftist attack on the military with all their social experments, and their open hostility to any military personell that showed any qualities of actualy being a warrior.

    Their attack on our pilots, their pushing women into combat, not only was it bizare and typical leftist quackery, but it seemed targeted to undermine the military effectivness as a fighting force

    Before the clintionista incompentencies of putting anti nuclear america hating KimJongIl worshiping hard core leftist hazel O Leary and her lesbian lover in charge of our Nukes at the DOE, who would have thought our aircraft carriers would need abortion clinics ? that we would be losing females in high numbers in warzones ?

    Hey GI Jane, meet Mr IED.

    Yes they had interst in the military alright, it was a new plaything for their bezaro social engineering experiments.

    We still have clintonista holdovers in the pentagon that attempted at every turn to press pregnant girls into service just to muck up things as much as possible, because just like the typical freak show clintonistas that flodeed in everywhere else (the more wacked out a leftist quack the better) are doing everything they can to undermine bush, just like the rest of the left.

    Which of course, is another example of democrat utter feclessness on actual defense of america, and consideration that ranked dead last if at all, in the abuse of the military itself.

    They didnt take care of the reagan military, they did everything they could to destroy it.

  35. Jim,

    You are simply wrong, and spouting partisan views. I’m interested in having this debate, with you IF you agree to a couple of basic facts (then we can go further)

    1. Clinton took Al-Queda more seriously than the Republican Congress. Most times that he DID go forward with military attacks, the Republican criticized him on it.
    2. George Bush and administration, during 2001 (before 9-11), took Al Queda less seriously than did Clinton and his administration.
    3. The idea of invading Iraq was not a thoughtful, reflective response to 9-11, but it was more true that 9-11 was used as an opportunity to execute a pre-existing agenda regarding Iraq. Note: That agenda may/may not have been thought out well. I don’t want to get into the question of “should” we have invaded Iraq. What’s done is done. I’m simply talking about the particulars.

    If you can honestly admit the three points above, then I know that will be debating from an honest, rather than a partisan “my side are thoughtful warriors that never do anything wrong while Clinton is a cheese-eating surrender monkey that should live in France”.

    I don’t need to waste my or your time on that conversation.

  36. JC unless we admit to your leftist fraud ?

    1 a million dollar missle after an ampty 10 dollar tent. yes it was correct to make fun of that, to riducule that, yo moan about them being given to the chinese, and the fact that clinton refused to replace what he was expending.

    Clinton used missle strikes to take sexcapade stories of cigars used as sex aids off the front page, and otherwise treated our military with loating and contempt, performing bizaro social experiments on them, and leaving em hanging out to dry in mogadishu

    2. a leftist fraud based on nothing

    3. another leftist fraud, Iraq wasnt about 911, wasnt said to be about 911, and didnt need to be conneected to 911, Sadamn was however, a major support of terror, and yes the mentality did change (except for the hard core stalinst moonbat zombie left) after 911,

    1 a lie and a typical leftist fake history.

    2 invented out of whole cloth

    3 the typical start with a false premise and then go off in the wrong direction in a full tilt run hoping it begins to sound right

    We arnt buying it.

  37. IF you agree to a couple of basic facts (then we can go further)
    1. Clinton took Al-Queda more seriously than the Republican Congress. Most times that he DID go forward with military attacks, the Republican criticized him on it.
    2. George Bush and administration, during 2001 (before 9-11), took Al Queda less seriously than did Clinton and his administration.

    JC,

    Basic statements, perhaps, but nowhere _near_ facts.

    1. Clinton took al Qaeda so seriously that he let Osama bin Laden go…TWICE!! Once because he was too busy playing golf with Vernon Jordan. (This is documented in the book “Dereliction of Duty”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0895261405/002-4849111-3777634 written by Robert Patterson, one of his military aids. The reason the Republicans criticized his “military attacks” is because they weren’t _effective_ military attacks. Just lobbing cruise missles at empty Afghan desert camps doesn’t do a damn thing to fight terrorism. (We also have the combo of Clinton and Wesley Clark to thank for the “peace through high-altitude bombing” debacle in Kosovo.)

    2. George Bush’s administration had been in office for less than _eight months_ when 9/11 occurred. The personnel in place at all of the various government agencies responsible for anti- and counter-terrorism were by and large remnants from the Clinton years. Clinton should have begun this war on terror after the _first_ attack on the World Trade Center in *1993*! Not to mention the USS Cole, the bombing of our barracks in Saudi Arabia, and the _two_ AMEMB bombings in Africa? How many “hints” did he need? George Bush got the message the first time. If Clinton had responded the way Bush has Gore might have won back in 2000. (Statistically speaking, the popular vote was a tie.) Honestly speaking, Clinton didn’t live up to the _”…and defend the Constitution against all enemies Foreign and Domestic”_ part of his oath. He should be incarcerated for that alone.

    Personally, as a former Special Forces Medical NCO, I vote for whomever supports the 2nd Amendment. It’s the one that guarantees the rest. Bush isn’t strong enough on that for me, but he’s better than the Left. Our regimental motto is “De Oppresso Liber”, Liberate the Oppressed. I’d go for a Libertarian party that supports strong gun rights, right-to-choose, elimination of the national income tax, expanding the war on terror/spreading democracy, privitizing social security, returning to the moon, the end of entitlement programs, and sending Teddy Kennedy to Mars.

    As to 2008, if Condi Rice runs she has my vote. She has stated that during the civil rights unrest of the 60s that her father and other black men in the neighborhood defended themselves and their families with privately owned weapons. She’s also got the resume for the job: NSA, SECSTATE, and she’s not a tenured Member of Congress.

  38. JC,

    Your “facts” aren’t facts at all. They’re partisan assumptions themselves. If you want to have an informed debate then back up and justify your propaganda, er, _proposals_ with some coherent, fact-checkable points.

    I’m neither a neocon nor a Republican. I just vote Republican because they’re in line with my “hotbutton” issue. (2d Amend.)

    Notice, too, that I didn’t call Clinton a “cheese-eating surrender monkey that should live in France”. I just said he should be in prison where he belongs.

    I’m curious as to what you think the appropriate response would have been to:

    1. WTC attack, 1993.
    2. Attempted assassination of Bush I, 1993.
    3. VIED bombing of Khobar Towers, 1996.
    4. Bombing of AMEMB Nairobi and AMEMB Dar es Salaam, 1998.
    5. Bombing of USS Cole, 2000.

  39. Its not often you see a partisan hack calling the other side partisan hacks, ohh wait …

    Its the same mentality that attempts to silence opposition to their forcefull agenda as being devisive.

    Why,, if you dont lay down and let the leftist iron boots march over you, your being devisive and partisan, and we cant have that .. thats bad…

  40. Yes, yes, yes, I know. I’m such a “leftist”, as is anyone to the left of Joe Lieberman. Blah blah blah, and all that.

    Utterly predictable.

  41. JC, the response was predictable because your grounds for accepting someone to debate were pretty badly stacked. The axioms contained the solution pretty clearly.

    In genberal we all seem to be doing a little too much namecalling and a little too little arguing. I’d like to urge everyobdy to take a breath and realize that the goal here is to convince people, not score cheap points at their expense…

    A.L.

  42. bq. ‘The Era Of The Armed Liberal’… Nice Ring To It, Don’t You Think?

    It’d be better if it weren’t “era”, which has a temporary feel to it.

  43. My God, #8–Do you mean to tell me Clinton really wanted a meeting? He really, really took Al-Qaeda seriously if he wanted a MEETING.

Leave a Reply to Raymond Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published.