Friday, February 02, 2007

He loves the 80s

One criticism that has dogged Andrew Sullivan's book, The Conservative Soul, is that it expresses nostalgia for a kind of refined conservatism that has never existed in the US. David Brooks zeroed in on this problem at the intellectual level, given Sully's attempts to root his alternative American conservatism in the very English Michael Oakeshott. But prolific blogger Glenn Greenwald takes another run at it, this time arguing that the lawless constitution-trashing conservatism practiced by George Bush, and viewed as an aberration by Sully, has clear roots in the Reagan administration. Sully responds --

His strongest arguments are on Iran-Contra and the deficit. I remember Iran-Contra well, because I was a young geek at [the New Republic] and witnessed the fervent debates in the magazine at the time. My view was that the Iran-Contra deal was wrong, illegal and stupid (and wrote editorials on those lines). I was pro-contra, but not in favor of illegal executive shenanigans to fund them.

So what is there of the Contras besides the illegal funding? Well, there's the human rights abuses, the illegal acts of war by the US against Nicaragua on their behalf, our old friend John Negroponte next door in Honduras turning a blind eye to death squads in return for Honduran help in supporting the contras, and of course the guiding philosophy for supporting them -- US military support for armed movements anywhere that were fighting perceived Soviet influence. Like this guy.

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