Current View (original) (raw)
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
It's another day I'd as soon spend in bed. I have got to find more energy.
Dr. Spencer, my primary physician, called yesterday. My blood work shows my sugar is all right, my kidneys are ok, and my cholesterol is still too high. All within reason. I see the oncologist next Monday, and I will probably make an appointment with Dr. Spencer after that.
My chief problem is malaise, and given my temperament I am inclined to call that funk or just old fashioned laziness, especially since everyone tells me how much better I look. But will power goes only so far. I wish I had a magic bullet to get my energy levels back up. There's just too much to do.
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I have a number of letters about McCain and why we ought to vote Libertarian and "Send a message." I understand the argument.
The fact is that the Democrats will control Congress. If they also control the White House, we will have a series of legislative packages that will make the Great Society look like a libertarian government. In opposition the Republicans rediscover their principles; it's power they haven't been able to handle since Newt Gingrich was Speaker.
The country is in trouble. We have forgotten our founding principles, and we move inexorably toward a European style socialist state, with the only winners being an enormous bureaucracy. This will accelerate the economic decline.
The argument is to give the Democrats their head, and pick up the pieces after the inevitable crash. I think that overlooks the resilience of tax and tax, spend and spend, elect and elect regimes. We haven't seen much in the way of reforms in Europe. The Democrats will create new bureaucracies that can never be dismantled: an example is the Department of Education. Reagan came into office determined to abolish it. Now it owns US education, and No Child Left Behind is entrenched. The Iron Law of Bureaucracy is inexorable.
The country was reasonably well managed when we had a Republican Congress and a Democrat President.
As to the war: if we give the Democrats full control of the government, we won't get a sensible foreign policy: see Kosovo if you doubt that. We may get a disengagement from Iraq: the price will be high, in blood of those in Iraq who trusted us, and in honor. We may not. Disengaging from Iraq will not be a simple matter. A gradual withdrawal won't work well: as we pull out, the insurgents will be heartened. The result won't be pretty.
Sure, we can retreat. We have the military power to cut and run, get out and get out fast. The results of that will be with us for a long time. Recall the last helicopter out of Saigon?
I conclude that McCain as president is a far lesser evil than Obama would be. But there are those in whom hope springs eternal: who hold the view that Obama is not what all the evidence says he is, a left wing liberal intellectual with Chicago political connections and all the ethical implications that implies. Hope springs eternal.
Thus we have the choice: a Chicago machine politician with Harvard liberal beliefs vs. a country club Republican who feels entitled.
The post-Gingrich Republicans who invented "big government conservatism" have much to answer for.
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Nuclear Weapons and Iran, with comment by Joel Rosenberg
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For an argument about Iraq and what to do, see
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/
la-oe-bacevich13-2008may13,0,7251551.story
I keep wondering what I would do if I were proclaimed Caesar. I may write on that subject.
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