From:
Do Neocons Want Democracy?
(The American Conservative) -- by Daniel McCarthy --
I’ll add to Daniel Larison’s criticism of Ross Douthat’s claim that “the last few weeks should bury, once and for all, the foolish idea that neoconservatism’s rhetorical commitment to democracy promotion is just a smokescreen for Likudnik dual loyalties or U.S. imperialism.” Douthat’s otherwise sensible post employs some gratuitous, right-baiting straw men. Who has ever said that democracy promotion is “just” a smokescreen? That’s not an argument one would expect to see from right-wing critics of the neoconservatives, since those critics are, as Larison observes, hardly enthusiasts for democracy. If neoconservatives are Likudniks or imperialists — and many of them are — it hardly follows that they cannot also be democracy-promoters...
To admit that this substantive democracy may be incompatible with procedural democracy would require junking an American myth cherished by liberals and neoconservatives alike (but which is far less readily subscribed to in Israel or within the Likud Party). The irony here — at least for those of us predisposed to be skeptical of democracy — is that sometimes procedural democracy really does produce substantive democracy, or something like it. This was more or less what happened, much to the surprise of the neoconservatives themselves, in Nicaragua’s 1990 elections that saw the Sadinistas lose to Violetta Chamorro. And this may happen — who can say? — in the Middle East. Of course, Daniel Ortega eventually made his way back to power in Nicaragua, albeit without a guerrilla war. Maybe there is something to be said for procedural democracy even when undesirable elements prevail. But substantive democracy is something else: an ideology detached from messy reality and a power play disguised as benevolence. As Larison points out, however, the believers in substantive democracy are quite sincere — if substantive democracy happens to align with their interests, that merely proves that their interests are as benevolent and enlightened as they have always claimed that they are...MORE...LINK
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Chris Moore comments:
‘Who has ever said that democracy promotion is “just” a smokescreen?’
It WAS a smokescreen, as evidenced by all the initial neocon hand wringing when the recent Mideast democracy movements broke out. They quickly realized they could no longer sustain the pretense of being democracy promoters necessary to cover their racket if they demanded Obama keep backing the U.S. puppet dictators.
Maintaining the window dressing for their racket is always job one, even ahead of their Israel-first ideology.
“This is why nation-building is an essential component of neoconservative foreign policy. The idea is not only to neutralize a real or imagined security threat, but to create a new personality in foreign lands, a personality that is less authoritarian and more democratic. People reconditioned in this manner will naturally — by virtue of a remade nature, that is — be friends of America and Israel.”
This method, social-engineering at the point of a gun, is so blatantly Communist/Bolshevik-like that there’s no way it can be squared with anti-authoritarianism other than through Orwellian doublespeak. And wasn’t that one of the goals of Communism, to bash the “anti-Semitism” out of the “backward” Russian Christian masses, just as the neocons tried to use the U.S. military to bash the “anti-Zionism” out of the “backward” Islamic masses?
These people are pseudo-“secular,“ statist-authoritarian Bolsheviks/Zionists who use Big Government as cover and enabler of their own supremacist ideology and agenda to this very day.
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Jim Dooley [in article comments]:
“…the grand strategy of the Republican Party here in the U.S. demands the assimilation of Christianity to substantive democracy.”
Bingo! And Substantive Democracy is for the ‘new dispensationalists’ to define for the world, and for the world to match, word for word, deed for deed, thought for thought, or else. In the new world order, if you are not with us, then you must be against us; and that includes the dispensers of the Christianity that refuses to go along with being assimilated.
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@Jime Dooley,
Dispensationalist Christianity” is not the traditional Christianity of Western Civilization, and can best be described as Judeo-Christian Zionism.
In my opinion, it is operationally fascist, and actually adhered to by neoliberal Democrats and liberal Globalists as well, who just aren’t as blatant about it as are neocon Republicans.
True Christians and constitutionalists want nothing to due with any of it, and should flog the lot of them from civil society.
Judeofascist ((Doug Emhoff))--Kamala Harris' "Second Gentleman"--has a
violent history of attacking women, even as he and MSM present him as
progressive
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*Second "Gentleman" Doug Emhoff 'Forcefully Slapped' His Ex-Girlfriend So
Hard 'She Spun Around', New Report Alleges*
Kamala Harris' husband Doug Emhoff re...
2 days ago
1 comment:
I wholeheartedly agree with your powerful comment, Chris. What a world we have inherited.
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