A university is just a group of buildings gathered around a library. ~Shelby Foote

Wednesday, March 22, 2006

Amen, Brother!

Actually, the Republican Party has never been my party. By the time I got fed up enough with the Democrats to think about the other guys, they had already been co-opted. But I say "Amen, Brother!" nonetheless to Larry Wilkerson (hat tip, Andrew Sullivan):

"My mum wrote me a letter the other day and she said, 'Son,' - she's 86 years old - she said, 'Son, please don't become a Democrat'.And I told my mum, I called her and I said: 'Mum, you know what? I want my party back. I don't want to become a Democrat. I want my party back.'

The Republican Party that I knew, that I grew up in, a moderate party, a party that believed in fiscal discipline, a party that believed in small government, a party that had genuine conservative values. This is not a conservative leadership. This is radical leadership. I called them neo-Jacobins. They are radical. They're not conservative. They've stolen my party and I would like my party back," - Larry Wilkerson, Colin Powell's former chief aide.

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Comments:
What exactly is your point, or Larry's? Radical foreign policy? Radical domestic policy? Both? Neo-Jacobins is cute, but doesn't that make you Louis XVI?
 
My point is Republican's used to stand for small government. Fiscal restraint. The conserving part of conservation.

They no longer do. Bush and the Congress during his time in office have apparently made FDR and LBJ their idols. There is so much pork in D.C. I'm surprised you aren't slipping on the fat on your way to work every morning, Greg. Do you the people you carpool with have to dodge around all the porkers roaming free there?

Republicans also used to be somewhat libertarian in their approach to social legislation. Big Brother was a bad thing after Watergate-- no longer.

On foreign policy, I have far less objections that Larry appears to have. But overall, the Republicans who came into power in the '90s on a reform agenda appear to have gone completely native in D.C. And they've slathered on a layer of moralism that is completely inappropriate to government, in my opinion.

I want the party Ronald Reagan back. Hell, alternatively, I'll take the party of JFK back. Right now, neither party seems to give a damn about much of anything except how much $ they can grab for themselves and, to a lesser degree, their constituents and trying to make sure we behave ourselves.

And neo-Jacobin is not the term I would choose. I would say, neo-Rooseveltian. Except that that doesn't sound very good.
 
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