enthalpy

Tuesday, January 25, 2005


I'd really like to forget the inaugural address, but there's just too much there to ignore. Besides, if Republican lapdogs like Peggy Noonan [from The War Street Journal] are criticizing his speech, he must have gone, as she says, "over the top." But what about the neo-cons? I can't believe I never thought about the similarities between them and the Jacobins:
Bush’s crazy talk has even upset rah-rah Republicans. One Republican called Bush’s speech "God-drenched." It has begun to dawn on the formerly Grand Old Party that a bloodless coup has occurred and that Republicans have lost their party to Jacobins, who cloak themselves under the term "neoconservatives."

Unlike America’s Founding Fathers, who exhorted their countrymen to cultivate their own garden, Jacobins were not content with revolutionizing France. They were driven to revolutionize the world.

President Bush’s second inaugural speech is Jacobin to the core. It stands outside the American tradition. Declaring American values to be universalist principles, Bush promised to use American power to spread democracy and to end tyranny everywhere on earth.
Considering how the current Republican party (helmed now almost completely by neocons) is now the complete antithesis of anything previously defined as "Conservative," it's easy to see how quickly a party in power will give up on its core beliefs.



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