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Politics : Sharks in the Septic Tank -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: epicure who wrote (72642)	8/20/2003 11:29:23 AM
From: Lane3	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 82486

I've reached the point of exasperation with Bush that I think I would consider voting for Al Sharpton over him. <g> Well, maybe not. I'd probably just slit my wrists if that were the choice. No matter whether there are liberals or conservatives in the WH, I tend to disagree with about half of the program. The lefties are statists, big spenders, international meddlers, and holier than thou. The righties are mean spirited, against reasonable restrictions on business, backwards, and holier than thou. I have no expectations of ever getting the mix I want, but with Bush, I get the worst of both worlds. The only complaint of mine he avoids is mean-spiritedness. Whoopie. Ran across this a few weeks ago on the topic. <<Conservatives- are losing their sense of direction By George F. Will This is the summer of conservatives' discontent. Conservatism has been disoriented by events in the last several weeks. Cumulatively, foreign and domestic developments constitute an identity crisis of conservatism, which is being recast - and perhaps rendered incoherent. George W. Bush may be the most conservative person to serve as president since Calvin Coolidge. Yet his presidency is coinciding with, and is in some instances initiating or ratifying, developments disconcerting to four factions within conservatism. The faction that focuses on foreign policy has four core principles: Preserve U.S. sovereignty and freedom of action by marginalizing the United Nations. Reserve military interventions for reasons of U.S. national security, not altruism. Avoid peacekeeping operations that compromise the military's war-fighting proficiencies. Beware of the political hubris inherent in the intensely unconservative project of "nation-building." Today a conservative administration is close to asserting that whatever the facts turn out to be regarding Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, the enforcement of U.N. resolutions was a sufficient reason for war. The administration also intimates that ending a tyranny was a sufficient justification for war. Foreign policy conservatism has become colored by triumphalism and crusading zeal. That may be one reason consideration is being given to a quite optional intervention - regime change, actually - in Liberia. The conservative faction that focuses on low taxes as the key to economic dynamism and individual opportunity has had two good years. But this faction must be unsettled by signs that Bush's refusal to veto last year's abominable farm bill was not an aberration (in fact, he has vetoed nothing). The tax cutting seems unrelated to any thoughtful notion of what the government should and should not do. Howard Dean says the Bush administration aims to "dismantle" Medicare. But the administration probably will approve an entitlement of unknowable cost ($400 billion over 10 years is today's guess, which is probably low) without reform of Medi-care. The conservative faction that focuses on constitutionalism and democratic due process winced when Bush seemed to approve of Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's opinion affirming the constitutionality of racial preferences for diversity in higher education - and perhaps in many other spheres of life. Finally, this summer the faction called "social conservatives" has been essentially read out of America's political conversation. Their agenda has been stigmatized as morally wrong and constitutionally dubious by the Supreme Court, seven of whose nine members are Republican appointees. Justice Anthony Kennedy - like O'Connor, a Reagan appointee - wrote the opinion striking down a Texas law criminalizing consensual adult homosexual acts. Kennedy asserted, in effect, that laws intended to strengthen a majority's moral principles are constitutionally suspect. Bush is rightly reluctant to endorse a constitutional amendment defining marriage as a heterosexual institution: Constitutionalizing social policy is generally unwise. But the administration's principal objective may be to avoid fights about cultural questions. Two weeks ago, the administration reaffirmed the irrational and unfair implementation standards of the Title IX ban on sex discrimination in college athletics. Those standards are now immortal, having received a conservative administration's approval. What blow will befall conservatives next? * George F. Will is a columnist for The Washington Post, 1150 15th St. NW, Washington, DC 20071; www.washingtonpost.com.>>