I wish neo-conservatism was more like conservatism. I don't know when the Republican Party changed, but they've strayed so far from their original small government, non-interventionist platform. They're like the nation-building spendthrifts of the Democratic Party but with a heavy heaping of religious arrogance thrown into the mix. I think the two parties just need to fuck and get it over with. Then we can just call that party the DemoPublican Party and we'll all continue to lose.

That's pretty funny. I like how they were up in arms about Spitzer, who announced he was resigning almost immediately, but Vitter still has a job.

I mostly feel sorry for Larry Craig, though.

@blankfist, I missed something, which exercise in nation-building was the product of a Democratic president in the last 50 years?

As for national debt, look at the history, Reagan and Bush made it go up, Clinton made it go down, Bush made it go up. Only neocon Presidents favor deficit spending.

You want to blame both parties for something, pick something easy like lying, taking money from lobbyists, deregulating media, sex scandals, supporting the military industrial complex, and pork-barrel spending that benefits the political allies of the politician (and the customers of those lobbyists).

Nation building and fiscal irresponsibility is a Republican thing, at least during my lifetime.

Whoa, simmer down there boiling water. Fiscal irresponsibility and nation-building are Democratic "things", too. Democrats have proven to be interventionists. Have we forgotten about Wilsonian interventionism? Woodrow Wilson believed every man had the right to self-determination and further believed it was America's duty to protect democracy throughout the world. Wilson sent troops to Mexico to proclaim martial law during a revolution. He was quoted saying his efforts were to "teach Latin Americans to elect good men." And, let us not forget his interventionist role in Europe which aided in the Versailles Treaty. We know how that ended for us.

What about Franklin Roosevelt? Hey, tell me which right-wing mouthpiece publication is responsible for this quote: "Franklin Roosevelt relished his nation-building" Fox News? Nope. The New York Times did in regards to his interventionist policies in Haiti. FDR even said "I wrote Haiti's Constitution myself, and if I do say it, it was a pretty good little Constitution."

What about Lyndon Johnson in Vietnam? The Vietnam War has been categorized as LBJ's war. But, our involvement with Vietnam started during the cold war, which started to be realized when Harry S. Truman tried to contain communism in Southeast Asia in the 50s. And, hell, JFK was guilty of increasing financial aid and advisory assistance in South Vietnam. He fully adopted the National Security Action Memorandum 52 which was left over from the Eisenhower Administration that read in regards to South Vietnam: "The U.S. objective and concept of operations stated in the report are approved: to prevent communist domination of South Vietnam; to create in that country a viable and increasingly democratic society, and to initiate, on an accelerated basis, a series of mutually supporting actions of a military, political, economic, psychological and covert character designed to achieve this objective."

Will that do or should I continue?

I'll continue, just for a little bit before I go to work.
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Fiscal irresponsibility is only on the part of Republicans? I think not. Democrats have consistently raised taxes to cover spending programs versus balancing the budget. Take Maine, for example: We've been a Democrat-run state for the past ~10 years an in that time, the Republican minority has repeatedly introduced a balanced budget act and the Democrats have repeatedly voted against it, instead choosing to raise taxes in order to cover costs.

good stuff.
lots of tasty morsels here for a libertarian to munch on.

>> ^blankfist:
> I wish neo-conservatism was more like conservatism.

fiscally, yeah. you, me, ron paul, and a massive majority of the sift, and the internet in general, clearly wish that. which means the younger fiscal conservatives. the ones whose opinions will actually matter in 10 years.

> I don't know when the Republican Party changed...

reagan.
for better, and worse, but undeniably pivotal. he changed things.

> ...but they've strayed so far from their original small government, non-interventionist platform.

no doubt. here's a quick outline of how i see some of the important bits.

basically, (fiscal conserv) republicans got sick of watching (fisc lib) democrats get so much mileage out of what they saw as often milking the middle class, with the false promise of helping the poor, with your tax money.
but often helping themselves first. the poor get some crumbs. that way, you'll always have more poor people around, to beg on behalf of.

but hey. the social safety net sells well.
getting up to debate it, and replying, "instead, i promise not to raise anyone's taxes, or coerce you with the comforting illusion of security, supposedly provided by a more powerful and centralized government."

no. we want smiling poor, soft pillows, and free beer.

that was a watershed where many republicans said fuck fiscal conservatism because otherwise we'll keep getting our asses kicked.
party fundraising is noticeably easier in the free beer tent.

ergo, neither party is fiscally conservative anymore.

so we'll take the same taxes, and instead of feeding the crumbs down to the bottom of the system, we'll feed them into the top of the system and let it just sorta...
trickle
down.
aka corporate welfare, and a very un-free market.

which reagan's own vp, ghw bush, referred to at the time as...
anyone? anyone?
voodoo economics.

oh, and reagan himself wasn't really a neo-con. but enough of his cabinet was, and many were still-embittered nixon aides. some with ties to large defense contractors, hence...

> They're like the nation-building spendthrifts of the Democratic Party but with a heavy heaping of religious arrogance thrown into the mix.

and that was the other seismic shift with reagan. prior to that, it was the democrats who were perceived to be god's party. because they wanted (or pretended) to help the poor.

> I think the two parties just need to fuck and get it over with.

party at my place in november.

> Then we can just call that party the DemoPublican Party and we'll all continue to lose.

one of many alternate scenarios i'm clinging to:
whichever party starts getting real about fiscal solvency, continues to enjoy the kind of response ron paul has been getting.
often across previously well-established party lines.

lines drawn by those 2 parties, neither of which existed in 1776.

lines neatly down the middle, of what i believe to be the government we clearly started with.
socially liberal.
fiscally conservative.

damn. that's so much more than i had intended to write, and i haven't even gotten to a 10th of what i wanted to say here. oh, hey. i've got one o them blogothingies, maybe i oughtta' use that again sometime soon...

@blankfist, I got my math wrong, I should have said 40 years.

Notice that your most recent example is from the 1960's. I'm not that old.

You're right about earlier Democrats with interventionist policies, but both the Democratic and Republican parties were pretty different back before the 80's.

If you look at the history of the Democratic party, the whole Vietnam debacle, and the fight with Dixiecrats over civil rights triggered a transformation in the Democratic party. The south went for Nixon, and the anti-war movement took hold in the Democratic party by 1972. By the time of Carter, it was a different party from the one that produced Lyndon Johnson.

That Wikipedia page is actually pretty good; the 2005-Present section pretty well explains how big a shift the Democratic party has had just in the years since Kerry.

@MarineGunrock, I don't know much about state-level politics, but here in Ohio neither party has done much about debt, having roughly tripled since Republicans gained control in the early 90's. To be fair, as far as these things go that's only modest growth, considering Ohio's economy has taken a beating over those years.

At the national level, if you look at the chart of national debt, you'll notice how every Republican since Reagan made it go up, while the last two Demorcats (Carter and Clinton), both made the debt go down.

Raising taxes to cover spending programs is fiscal responsibility. You can certainly take the stance that you'd prefer the spending programs get cut to balance the budget instead, but at a national level the Republican MO has been to raise spending, while lowering taxes, which is far from fiscally responsible.

You need more recent proof? How about Clinton's intervention in Kosovo?

I don't think it really matters whether it's a Democrat from one year ago or one from one hundred years ago. You can say the party was a different party before the 80s, but was it really that staggeringly different than the Dem Party of today? I don't think that's accurate. Bill Clinton is just as much an interventionist as Woodrow Wilson, IMO. And so is George W. Bush for that matter.

And, for the record, I'm not trying to defend the Republican Party. To the contrary, I was pointing out how neo-conservatism is the opposite of conservatism, and the party used to adopt a rather strict conservative policy. In fact, it's what the party still boasts, though their actions are to the contrary in most cases. That was my original point. Right now, the Democratic Party scares me less than the Republican Party, to be honest, so when election time comes and it's between Obama or McCain, I'd begrudgingly choose Obama over McCain any day. He'll be less awful than McCain, I think. I digress.

NetRunner, do you seriously think the Democratic Party does NOT adopt an interventionist policy? Even Clinton was guilty of intervention. Who else do I need to show you? Intervention, nation-building and unconstitutional policing abroad of the rights of human self-determination is native to the Democratic Party, and sometime not too distant in the history of the Republican Party (even before Regan), the Republican Party has adopted this Democratic policy, as well. What else is necessary to prove this to you?

"Raising taxes to cover spending programs is fiscal responsibility. You can certainly take the stance that you'd prefer the spending programs get cut to balance the budget instead, but at a national level the Republican MO has been to raise spending, while lowering taxes, which is far from fiscally responsible."

I don't think you can argue overspending and increasing taxes to accommodate that overspending to be fiscal responsibility. Overspending is irresponsible not responsible. To wit, forcing taxpayers to pay more on programs, services and aid they are NOT directly using nor have the right to opt out of is immoral because it involves the forced transfer of wealth. But, this is a whole other debate that I'll save us all from.

Call me a pessimist, but I think the bottom line is people suck, all the way across the board. Every method of government at some level seems to rely on people acting in a certain socially responsible way.

If the rich let all that money they'd save by not being taxed actually trickle down by investing in better pay for their employees or more community/social projects, the Republican's method would work great. There would be no need for social programs because individuals would take responsibility for everything in their community, and there would be little need for taxes because individuals have already used their money to support their community. But that doesn't happen, most people don't give a crap about anyone else, especially if they're living high on the hog. And the more money a person makes the more they feel they deserve it and the more they feel they have a right to suck up as much money as they can like some economic hoover.

The dems feel you need a social program for everything so everybody's well being can be seen to and opportunity is open to everyone. Taxes are levied at higher rates, specially among the rich with the idea the redistribution of wealth into certain areas will help create a society that benefits everyone. This of course doesn't work because many poor see the social programs as entitlements rather than a temporary option to support them during hard times and will cheat the system in order to draw benefits they really don't need/deserve.

And of course to top it all off the lawmakers themselves are greedy bastards, or at least enough of them, and manipulate the laws so their constituents (not necessarily the people who voted for them) reap the benefits rather than everyone as a law might have originally intended to do.

Plus the united state's population is so large and diverse it can be extremely hard to get all the groups to agree on what's important, or rather they're more involved in looking out for themselves than trying to find something that benefits everyone, even if it means they have to make a sacrifice.

Anyway you slice it someone is going to be pushing for a bigger chunk.

>> ^blankfist:
You need more recent proof? How about Clinton's intervention in Kosovo?
I don't think it really matters whether it's a Democrat from one year ago or one from one hundred years ago. You can say the party was a different party before the 80s, but was it really that staggeringly different than the Dem Party of today? I don't think that's accurate. Bill Clinton is just as much an interventionist as Woodrow Wilson, IMO. And so is George W. Bush for that matter.

I'd say you're changing terms -- I'd argue that nation-building involves dethroning a government unfriendly to us, and replacing it with one that is friendly to us, with bonus points if the country involved has importance to us either materially or geographically.

The intervention in Kosovo wasn't an America-only, purely pro-American move, it was to intervene against a regime involved in genocide. Clinton's involvement in Somalia, and Hati were similar, if less dramatic.

I'd say those were interventions, but not nation-building, and certainly not the craven imperialism of our invasion of Iraq.

I'm all for the ideal of a non-interventionist government, but in cases like Kosovo, or now Darfur, I'd seriously consider intervening for humanitarian reasons. If the Darfur situation turned into a proxy war with China over oil...I'd oppose our involvement vehemently.

I also think you're not giving Democrats a fair shake, if you feel comfortable painting Wilson, Johnson, Carter, and Clinton with the same brush. Both parties have had huge changes since the time of Wilson, and sizable ones since Johnson (e.g. would Democrats today filibuster the Civil Rights act?).

>> ^blankfist:
I don't think you can argue overspending and increasing taxes to accommodate that overspending to be fiscal responsibility. Overspending is irresponsible not responsible. To wit, forcing taxpayers to pay more on programs, services and aid they are NOT directly using nor have the right to opt out of is immoral because it involves the forced transfer of wealth. But, this is a whole other debate that I'll save us all from.

Yeah, I think this is just a core difference in political philosophy.

I'd argue fiscal responsibility has a non-partisan definition, though. It just means you don't spend more than you make, and balance your budget. How you do it, whether it's through spending less, "making more", or both, doesn't have much to do with whether it's fiscally responsible or not.

>> ^NetRunner:
I also think you're not giving Democrats a fair shake, if you feel comfortable painting Wilson, Johnson, Carter, and Clinton with the same brush.

What's not fair? If I attacked only the Republicans, I probably wouldn't heard complaint number one from anyone on this largely left leaning site. What's fair about that? To be clear, my intentions initially were to shine a light on the current hypocrisy of the Republican Party. I am more than fair, because I pick apart the atrocities of both parties without bias.

>> ^NetRunner:
I'd say you're changing terms -- I'd argue that nation-building involves dethroning a government unfriendly to us, and replacing it with one that is friendly to us, with bonus points if the country involved has importance to us either materially or geographically.

I'm not changing terms. Nation-building is intervention. Here's a definition that says nation-building involves the "use of armed force as part of a broader effort to promote political and economic reforms, with the objective of transforming a society emerging from conflict into one at peace with itself and its neighbors." Here's another that says the recent understanding of nation-building is programs where "dysfunctional or unstable or 'failed states' or economies are given assistance in the development of governmental infrastructure, civil society, dispute resolution mechanisms, as well as economic assistance, in order to increase stability." These sound an awful lot like our involvement in Kosovo or Somalia or Europe after WWI. Acts of aggression to change a current sovereign nation's policies in the name of humanitarian efforts or otherwise are still acts of nation-building. It doesn't only mean government coups or puppet governments. It's always been about intervention. Though I feel we're arguing semantics at this point, and I'm not sure it's clear why you'd think interventionism is wholly separate from nation-building.

With that said, interventionism is unconstitutional. If you believe it is okay to intervene in a sovereign nation's government because you're nation is powerful enough to play cop for the world, then it really comes down to developing a new Constitution and scraping the old. If you were to rewrite the Constitution in that way, central government wouldn't be exhaustive and would be given the power to intervene whenever and wherever in the world. I would say to a government like that, beware the tyranny of good intentions. It may sound great to intervene in the hopes of bringing about humanitarian change or aid, but in the end it creates more enemies than allies, and it opens the doors to tyranny and abuse.

>> ^blankfist:
If I attacked only the Republicans, I probably wouldn't heard complaint number one from anyone on this largely left leaning site. What's fair about that?

I'd say going against the grain isn't a virtue unto itself, and it's certainly not proof of the validity of a certain argument.

I'm perfectly happy to attack Democrats, though mostly it's for their spineless complicity in the mess we're in right now.

To be fair, the next part of your reply explained why you painted them with the same brush, and that:

...I feel we're arguing semantics at this point, and I'm not sure it's clear why you'd think interventionism is wholly separate from nation-building.

We are at this point. With those definitions of nation building, I'd argue they're not necessarily good or bad, and I wouldn't really have a problem saying "just to be sure, we shouldn't do it at all." That would be a huge change from America's past viewpoint, though.

I think the semantic point I was trying to make was that while all nation-building is intervention, not all intervention is nation-building. I still say that's true, but that second definition seems to disagree with me (that definition would turn our diplomatic agreement with North Korea into a nation-building exercise as well).

Given that second definition in particular, I'd struggle to come up with any post-WWII president who didn't do something you could qualify as nation-building, and there's a long list of them before that, stretching back to the beginning of the 19th century.

I'm not so sure about intervention itself being unconstitutional. My understanding is that it's the use of military force without a congressional declaration of war that's unconstitutional. Military action for the nation's interest is a topic the founding fathers wrote about, but did not explicitly forbid in the Constitution itself. As for the foreign aid bit, treaties are covered too, they just need to be ratified by Congress. Am I missing something?