The most outspoken and angry editorial I’ve ever seen in the NY Times. Oh, and it’s completely true as well.
It is only now, nearly five years after Sept. 11, that the full picture of the Bush administration’s response to the terror attacks is becoming clear. Much of it, we can see now, had far less to do with fighting Osama bin Laden than with expanding presidential power.
Over and over again, the same pattern emerges: Given a choice between following the rules or carving out some unprecedented executive power, the White House always shrugged off the legal constraints. Even when the only challenge was to get required approval from an ever-cooperative Congress, the president and his staff preferred to go it alone. While no one questions the determination of the White House to fight terrorism, the methods this administration has used to do it have been shaped by another, perverse determination: never to consult, never to ask and always to fight against any constraint on the executive branch.
One result has been a frayed democratic fabric in a country founded on a constitutional system of checks and balances. Another has been a less effective war on terror.
That’s just for starters. It’s long, and shrill and you should read every word. It’s about time the media shook itself out of the post-911 stupor where we had to kiss Commander Codpiece’s ring or be seen as anti-American.
1
By Arthur McVarish
If there were any doubts that the “intellectual” inbreds of the NYT and its lackies have become (what Czeslaw Milosz termed)CAPTIVE MINDS to their own anti-President Bush agenda in deliberate genesis of hatred and SELF-hated of this/our(not their epicene anti-Judaeo/Christian)homeland, it is now patently manifest. Their furious BLUE hatred of the United States is no longer invidiously masked as JOURNALISM. These(NYT) people( Der guten Leute) are dedicated to the destruction of this nation which they promote with totalitarian manifestos of Heideggerian fascism. AF McVarish
July 16, 2006 @ 11:51 am | Comment
2
By OtherLisa
Wow. Neat use of caps, there, Arthur. Nice to hear from a representative of the 23%, Dear Leader Right or Wrong contingent.
Great editorial.
July 16, 2006 @ 12:04 pm | Comment
3
By Sven
totalitarian manifestos of Heideggerian fascism.
Oh, Irony, take me away.
July 16, 2006 @ 12:13 pm | Comment
4
By Mike
Nice post. I particularly like “epicene”.
Of course, the difference between you and I is that I love my country like an adult, not like a 5 year old loves his mother: unwilling to admit under any circumstances that we have done the wrong thing.
July 16, 2006 @ 1:17 pm | Comment
5
By Mike
Oh, and by the way, if you want to use German, use it correctly. It should be “Die gute Leute”. I know this because I work for a Department of defense hotel in Garmisch, Germany. That’s right, I hate my country so much that I care for the R and R soldiers coming back from Afghanistan and Iraq!
July 16, 2006 @ 1:20 pm | Comment
6
By OtherLisa
Why do you hate America, Mike? 😉
July 16, 2006 @ 1:25 pm | Comment
7
By DrShf
Actually, if we are correcting German, we might as well also correct English. The difference is between you and “me” not “I.”
July 16, 2006 @ 3:05 pm | Comment
8
By Steve
Mike, I enjoyed your comments but the correct German is “die guten Leute.” The def. article in front of the plural noun means the adj. must end in “en.”
BTW, Arthur’s use of “der guten Leute” means “of the good people, as it is in the genetive case. Arthur’s incorrect German doesn’t make him an idiot, but his statement certainly does.
July 16, 2006 @ 3:34 pm | Comment
9
By richard
Do you think he meant to use the genitive case? I’m skeptical. It sounded like he was using it as the subject, which would make it accusative. Either way, he reaches breathtaking heights of pomposity.
July 16, 2006 @ 6:28 pm | Comment
10
By Ivan
I always use a few mangled phrases of German whenever I want to rise to the breathtaking heights of pomposity.
July 16, 2006 @ 6:37 pm | Comment
11
By Herman Cost
This editorial convincingly demonstrates that the New York Times is acting as a fifth column for the increasingly isolated and hysterical left wing in this country. It belongs in the Daily Kos, not in the supposed newspaper of record. It also makes it clear why a great newspaper’s reputation has continued to sink under its current “leadership,” and why it no longer deserves to be taken seriously.
July 16, 2006 @ 6:50 pm | Comment
12
By Ivan
Actually my main gripe with the NYT is that it took them so long to wake up to what should have been obvious years ago.
July 16, 2006 @ 7:04 pm | Comment
13
By Ivan
In fact, that editorial reminds me of Oscar Wilde’s line about “pursuing the obvious with the enthusiasm of short-sighted detectives”
July 16, 2006 @ 7:07 pm | Comment
14
By Herman Cost
Its a perfect editorial….for the right. Its hysterical tone will appeal to those ready to surrender the country to the forces of disruption, but it will certainly turn off any reasonably moderate person who is unsure where he stands.
July 16, 2006 @ 7:08 pm | Comment
15
By Ivan
“surrender the country to the forces of “DISRUPTION?”
WTF?
Dude, did you go to the Bush-41 school of diction? Or do you just know less than nothing about American history?
When did defending the country from “disruption” become a cardinal American value? “My only regret is that I have only one life to give, to save my country from disruption. Including mass-transit unions’ strikes….”
July 16, 2006 @ 7:17 pm | Comment
16
By William
Ahhh, rise Jeffersonians…it’s about bloody time…
July 16, 2006 @ 7:33 pm | Comment
17
By Herman Cost
I believe I understand quite a bit about American history, probably more than you do, I suspect. Lets just say that the Federalists did not have to deal with terrorists potentially obtaining nuclear weapons. Different times call for different measures as most Americans appear to comprehend.
Oh yes, and let’s also state Roger Toussaint and his merry overcompensated and underworked band don’t exactly fit with the Wobblies and the Haymarket riots in the annals of great American labor struggles, or in those of civil disobedience either.
July 16, 2006 @ 7:58 pm | Comment
18
By Ivan
(sniffing for marijuana in Herman’s bedroom…maybe it’s hidden beneath his copy of Catcher in the Rye…)
July 16, 2006 @ 8:03 pm | Comment
19
By richard
Where’s the hysteria in this editorial? This proves my point – simply stating what’s going on is branded as “hysteria.” Seriously: Cut and paste the hysterical part. There isn’t any. But if there’s criticism of Boy George it’s hysterical. It’s un-American. It’s disruptive.
July 16, 2006 @ 8:16 pm | Comment
20
By Ivan
And yet the real hysteria was the run-up to the war.
If raving about a mushroom cloud over New York and weapons which don’t exist isn’t hysteria, then what the hell is?
July 16, 2006 @ 8:21 pm | Comment
21
By OtherLisa
“Mommy, there’s an Islamofascist under my bed!!!”
July 16, 2006 @ 8:31 pm | Comment
22
By richard
Thank you, Ivan and Lisa, for showing how foolish Herman’s comment is. He speaks of hysteria – while ever since the first World Trade Center was hit hysteria has been the prevalent emotion in America, fanned by Cheney and Rove et. al. Americans are drunk on the notion of sleeper cells and imminent danger and are even encouraged by Momma Wingnut to inter Moslems, the threat they pose is that severe and terrible. And the NY Times posts a reasonable editorial laying out what’s actually happened and they are called “hysterical.” I again ask Herman to show us where the hysteria is. It’s all inside of himself.
July 16, 2006 @ 8:42 pm | Comment
23
By Ivan
Now everybody just keep calm, keep calm or else THE BOGEYMAN WILL GET YOU!
July 16, 2006 @ 8:45 pm | Comment
24
By The Iron Buddha
This editorial convincingly demonstrates that the New York Times is acting as a representative of the vast majority of Americans who are concerned that their democracy might be devolving into a one party state.
And don’t you dare quote Milosz Herman. When he wrote Captive Minds he was describing how otherwise intelligent people can be persuaded into supporting a totolitarian regime and be enlisted in wiping out all opposition to that regime. In other words Herman, people like you.
July 16, 2006 @ 11:09 pm | Comment
25
By edouardo
Actually, if he was using it as the subject, it would be not the accusative case, but the nominative:”Die guten Leute”.
July 17, 2006 @ 3:25 am | Comment
26
By richard
Ah, you are right about it being the nominative. Sorry.
July 17, 2006 @ 3:50 am | Comment
27
By Andy
You want someone to post the hysterical parts: “Given a choice between following the rules or carving out some unprecedented executive power, the White House always shrugged off the legal constraints”; “One result has been a frayed democratic fabric in a country founded on a constitutional system of checks and balances. Another has been a less effective war on terror.”; “But by week’s end it was clear that the president’s idea of cooperation was purely cosmetic.” Thats hysterical.
July 17, 2006 @ 5:32 am | Comment
28
By Andy
BTW ‘hysterical’ is in the memo this moringing – marching orders. This idiot did not even think of this word himself: “Which side are they on? The New York Times settles the question definitively with a hysterical, unreality-based lead editorial today recycling the BDS attacks on the War on Terror” etc from the blogs today…..
July 17, 2006 @ 5:37 am | Comment
29
By Mike
Okay, after consulting my German wife, I stand corrected. “Die guten Leute” it is. As for “between you and I”, I have no reservations about butchering my own language. In fact, I consider it one of my favorite recreational activities.
As for the so-called “hysterical” aspect of the NYT column, I am still having trouble finding them. The three quoted above sound like well-reasoned statements, whether on agrees with them or not. Here’s what I would consider hysterical: ” These(NYT) people( Der guten Leute) are dedicated to the destruction of this nation which they promote with totalitarian manifestos of Heideggerian fascism.” Dedicated to the destruction of this nation? Really? Wouldn’t that eliminate their market?
July 17, 2006 @ 6:07 am | Comment
30
By vince
GWB is already seen by most of the world as a very ignorant, greedy,small minded despot and war criminal and will be remembered as such by posterity. Let’s just hope that threat America represents to world peace and democracy will be defended by other more enlightened world leaders.
July 17, 2006 @ 7:23 am | Comment
31
By Karl R
I agree Disruptive elements will not be tolerated in the efficient running of our well ordered state……
July 17, 2006 @ 8:19 am | Comment
32
By Q
Mike, Iron Buddha, Ivan are all right on: the real problem has been lack of outrage.
Rumsfeld, Cheney and the Bush family have inflicted serious political and cultural damage to this country- which may be more than temporary.
Disssent is a democratic right. That anyone who calls out the Bush regime is Swift Boated a la Animal Farm is symptomatic of democratic breakdown- again, which may be more than temporary.
And branding “hysterical” a wholly justified, even way-too-late and thus toothless report of the regime’s flouting of the Constitution is totally stupid, narrow-minded and deeply insecure. It’s a faux machismo born of being scared shitless.
July 17, 2006 @ 8:23 am | Comment
33
By B
Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both.
This was Benjamin Franklin’s idea. How again does the terrorist hysteria hold up with the Constitutional protection and Founding Fathers?
July 17, 2006 @ 8:44 am | Comment
34
By Mike
These comments sound eerily familiar, because I see them in the Stars and Stripes daily. The soldiers themselves continuously question the Administration, and are often told, in essence, to shut up because they are soldiers and are sworn to defend the Constitution. Note the bitter irony of that statement.
July 17, 2006 @ 10:45 am | Comment
35
By Peter Harrison
What’s remarkable from a Londoner’s point of view is that you’re all trying so terribly hard to prove how much better educated you are than one another, while your President has laid the foundations of a fascist state in the US without any of you being able to do a thing about it. Something dreadful is happening in your country and to your country.
July 17, 2006 @ 11:44 am | Comment
36
By kiddolizzie
RE: Rumsfeld, Cheney and the Bush family have inflicted serious political and cultural damage to this country- which may be more than temporary….
Rumsfeld and Cheney came out of the Nixon administration, Nixon the Eisenhower administration, and Eisenhower out of the military, MIT, & Associated Universities (Brookhaven Lab, Radio Telescope in WVa. and the evacuation plans of Project East River). MIT, at the time, produced Milikan and Rostow and their plans to win the psychological cold war on behalf of the CIA. Project East River gave rise to the bombshelter studies of Herman Kahn and the Hudson Institute, and in these, you’ll even find Guy Panero, & his partner Weidlinger, whose firm still exists and did the two structural analyses of the World Trade Center, one after the first attack, and again after 9/11. Weidlinger sat down with CNN interviewers the next day. If you want to talk damage to culture, look at the CIA’s Congress for Cultural Freedom, it’s influence on world culture since 1950, and how it continues to influence culture today. The cultural damage may be temporary? It’s our history.
July 17, 2006 @ 12:04 pm | Comment