Tag Archive 'November'

Implications of the Pletka Purge

Lee on Dec 22 2008 | Filed under: Foreign affairs, Lee's Page, Military Matters

Roland picks up an interesting piece by Jacob Heilbrunn for the National Interest, describing an ongoing purge of neoconservative intellectuals from the American Enterprise Institute, allegedly instigated by Vice President Danielle Pletka. So far Michael Ledeen and Reuel Marc Gerecht are gone, with Joshua Muravchik soon leaving. Others are said to be soon in following.

This could signal the reemergence of an old conflict over machtpolitik and just war doctrine, which used to exist in Republican security policy circles (ie, coercion-for-values vs. coercion-for-interests). If Pletka is indeed purging with intent, we may even expect AEI to shift its attitude toward the Middle East, Asia and Africa, given how much more amenable authoritarian regimes tend to be to interest pressure.

And the idealism of the AEI departed is considerable. Gerecht for instance wrote a fascinating but bizarre book I read in the late 1990s under the pen name Edward Shirley, in which he smuggled himself into Iran in the trunk of a car, essentially for the romance of it.

(more…)

Sphere: Related Content

2 Comments »

Deep Political Time

Lee on Dec 09 2008 | Filed under: Domestic Politics, History

When James Hutton, the father of modern geology, took his friend John Playfair to look at some stratified sedimentary rock, and Playfair realized that he was gazing into a chemical abyss recording the passage of hundreds of millions of years, he said the human mind went “giddy” at the apprehension. Genuine recognition of the titanic scale of geological time required to produce even in a lowly hill on the Earth’s crust, has always been a temptation to flirt with madness.

It happens that democracies can produce a political equivalent of this sort of experience of scale, due to their tendency to compile and preserve vast quantities of generational voting data over time, like strata for a human historical edifice. Thus consider the awful and incredible parity of nineteen presidential elections, producing one and one half billion votes, with a mere one hundred thousand to separate the two parties:

Total Democratic Presidential Votes Since 1932: 745,407,082
Total Republican Presidential Votes Since 1932: 745,297,123
(Crossing Wall Street via Pundit Review)

As with geology, there is a buried volume and timescale to this enterprise which can be easily missed whilst standing in a November voting line.

Sphere: Related Content

No Comments »

A Rosy Future for Anti-Americanism?

Lee on Sep 10 2008 | Filed under: Domestic Politics, Election 2008

Longtime Clinton ally Leon Panetta pronounces Barack Obama “intimidated” by Sarah Palin, and lost in a deepening cycle of reactive defense. With McCain now winning a majority of independents and erasing the gender gap, the blood is most definitely in the water. It’s now a legitimate question to ask whether McCain can finish him off. My sense is that the Obama campaign isn’t too many more mistakes removed from a serious structural collapse in a significant segment of its support outside the Democratic ranks. Panetta is quite right, Obama needs to regain the initiative and fast.

On that matter Jonathan Freedland is pessimistic. So much so, that he is evidently consumed with stomach pains of grief. He warns us that the entire planet will seek revenge against the United States if we fail to appoint Obama president.
(more…)

Sphere: Related Content

1 Comment »

Get rewarded at leading casinos.

online casino real money usa