Reformedville

When up is down and right is left

I have long held and written on the fact that our current President out-democratted the democrats in most areas of his first two campaigns and administrations.  The major exception which gave him a voting block of Catholics and Evangelicals was his pro-life stance (which he violated in approving the morning after pill under heavy  legislative pressure spearheaded by Senator Clinton ) and his pro-Israel stance, and willingness to risk an Armageddon and bring on the end of the world.

Today it seems like the descriptive terms of conservative and liberal are all confused and the entire political lexicon is skewed, making it difficult to hold an intelligent political conversation with any historic perspective.

Conservatives love war, empire, and the military-industrial complex. They abhor peace, the sole and rightful property of liberals. Right? Wrong.

According to Bill Kauffman, true conservatives have always resisted the imperial and military impulse: it drains the treasury, curtails domestic liberties, breaks down families, and vulgarizes culture. From the Federalists who opposed the War of 1812, to the striving of Robert Taft (known as “Mr. Republican”) to keep the United States out of Korea, to the latter-day libertarian critics of the Iraq war, there has historically been nothing unusual about anti-war activists on the political right.

And while these critics of U.S. military crusades have been vilified by the party of George W. Bush, their conservative vision of a peaceful, decentralized, and noninterventionist America gives us a glimpse of the country we could have had—and might yet attain.

 Passionate and witty, Ain’t My America is an eye-opening exploration of the forgotten history of right-wing peace movements—and a clarion call to anti-war conservatives of today.

Watch the Event in Real Video
Download a Podcast of the Event (MP3)

For balance,  Michael Tomasky, the former executive editor of the American Prospect who now edits the Guardian newspaper’s American online edition, begs to differ.

In years past, it was the Republicans who got us out of wars, but since the Bush Republicanism has redefined the party it is now the Republicans who gets us into them.

Filed under: culture, Government, Media