Matt and Mark, I guess you guys forgot to coordinate on this one?

The new CNN poll has the Presidents approval rating down to 32%. But don’t worry it is all part of Bush’s master plan to drive his approval rating so far in to the ground that it strikes oil, and solves our energy crisis.

How'd that Bush Doctrine taste when Hamas won the elections in Palestine?

"Take down!...Two!"

yeah - all the respect in the world we've been accorded. nothing like dropping a few hundred laser-guided bombs on their homecountry to fire-up those iranian dissidents.

like iraq - clear, concise, calculated thinking.

(of course, bet you mark doesn't even post this as he's taken to blacklisting me)

??????????

Oh, that's right---it's Barmy, and not expected to make any sense.

What the Left chooses to ignore is that throughout history, it has been ideas which drove action. They don't have a memory, or a sense of history, so they think that action in and of itself is enough. But without an ideology, a dream, a plan, action must be only against those who do have those things---and there we have a summary of the American Left.

Every revolution and every great advance in human history has been driven by a desire to improve. Whether you are talking about Martin Luther or Matin Luther King, the idea came first and then the action.

Bush is an idealist---his greatest strength and his greatest weakness. He is not interested in power for the sake of power, only in power for the ability to achieve something, and leave the world a better place than it was when he got here.

We can compare every Clinton action against every Bush action and we will see that Clinton always acted to further Clinton, sate Clinton appetites, enrich Clinton, protect Clinton, and feed Clinton's ego. All we have to do is look at Clinton since Bush took office to see the obsessive ego at work, the nonstop groveling for fame and fortune and love and approval, even if he has to look to Europe or Dubai to get it.

On the other hand Bush has allowed himself to become a target for the loony left as well as those who are threatened by his efforts, because to him the goal is not be liked, or to be safe or comfortable, it is to accomplish something, to make a difference. His vision of what is important is so clear, he can ignore the ankle-biters. (Which enrages them, of coure, but enraged ankle-biters are a nuisance at worst, all yip and no heart.)

And when he leaves office, though I expect him to be somewhat active in the party, I think he will be most comfortable with his family, at his ranch, with his friends, and living his intellectual and spiritual beliefs. And he will not engage in underhanded attacks on his successor. Class will tell.

But Barmy is like Clinton, only looking at the polls, betting it all on being liked, with no concept of anything deeper or more meaningful than life as one long popularity contest, and an afterlife of eternal orgasm. (Was that Barmy who said that, or a Barmy clone? Not that it matters---vapid is vapid.)

Almiranta: Very, very well said.

I recall Kennedy saying...do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard....

This applies to Bush's action as well.
Bush does not care if what he does is unpopular, he is doing it because it is right.

Like Bush is constantly saying "It's hard work"
ha, ha, ha.

I agree Porter; We need to falsely praise Almiranta's ego to keep him off the streets.

Or... we could break down Almiranta's well-reasoned and intellectually valid points into something that DAV, BarneyG, et al can understand...

(With your permission, Almiranta)

"If you want to make an omelette, you've got to break some eggs..."

I hope there aren't too many "big words" in there for you, boys... LOL!!

Almiranta,

I'm not sure what you're trying to get at. So Bush is an idealist. He has an ideology, a dream, a plan. He has a desire to improve. I will grant you these things, for the sake of argument. Let's call these things collectively premise (1).

What is entailed by (1)? It would be silly to say that (1) entails that Bush will make the world a better place, or will bring about great human advances. This cannot be the case since people like Hitler and Stalin satisfied premise (1), yet the conclusion does not obtain.

So what, then, in conjuction with (1) will ensure that the conclusion of this argument will obtain? Perhaps these dreams and plans are aimed at achieving good? Perhaps Bush has good intentions.
As the platitude goes, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. But so as not to base my argument on a platitude, let me point out that the autocrats listed above thought that their actions were serving a good and noble purpose.

Note that I am NOT trying to compare Bush to an autocrat. I am trying to point out that your argument is stupid. Maybe this is misguided, though, as I have no idea what your argument was hoping to accomplish.

Please, enlighten me.

His real name is Anatoly, not Natan. He does not beleive in democracy or human rights.
I found this poem about him on a website that profiled him. He is pretty much hated in his adopted country of Isreal.

Natan Sharansky, fighter for human rights in the Soviet Union.
Natan Sharansky, fighter against human rights in this country [Israel].
Natan Sharansky, Bush's mentor in his speeches about "global democracy".
Natan Sharansky, father of the infamous [Israeli] government decision to rob the property of thousands of Palestinians in East Jerusalem.
(Israeli peace bloc Gush Shalom, 4 February 2005)

ac,

Well, from what I got out of it is that since Bush is simply trying to satisfy his ideal, all of these baseless allegations that he is going to war for oil and giving tax cuts for his rich buddies are not true and serve to dehumanize Bush and undermine his efforts. Although some of his policies may be flawed, there's no reason to resort to conspiracy theories.

ac, I was with you till you just summarily dismissed my argument as "stupid". You may not agree with it, but that does not make it stupid.

Yes, I suppose that one could argue that despots have also had dreams. And perhaps despots have believed their methods would make the world a better place. But you can't just stop there---you have to look at what, exactly, would be required to advance the goals of the different men.

Hitler may have believed that he was making the world a better place, but we have to look at what it would have taken for him to achieve his goals. A short list would have been definition of people who deserved to live, and the elimination of all who did not make the list. And Hitler got to define the requirements. So to achieve his goal Hitler had to eliminate all who did not make his list----Jews, gypsies, Catholics, the disabled, and the metally ill were the first who had to go. Non-Aryans were not considered worthy of life, so if he had been able to continue, untold millions of others would have been slaughtered as well. Because, you see, his goals also included world domination. In his mind, the only way to make the world perfect was to first control it, and then to purify it.

One might believe, if one were naive enough, that Lenin and Stalin were ideologues, interested only in the advancement of pure communism as an ideological goal. But as their world view also involved imposing their views on others, actually killing those who did not agree, and keeping their people against their wills in a country which oppressed them, we can see that their view of "improving the world" involved stripping people of their freedoms. In their minds, the only way to make the world a better place was to control it, and eliminate all who did not submit.

So I cannot agree with your statement that "the autocrats listed above thought that their actions were serving a good and noble purpose." That is an assumption on your part, hard to supprt given the unspeakable horrors visited by them on those under their control. And since Lenin and Stalin and the other leaders of Russia enjoyed incredible financial advantages, which flew in the fact of pure communism, the idealistic view of their actions is somewhat flawed.

But the world view of Bush is simply to allow people the freedom to choose their own way---and to help them remove the obstacles to that simple freedom. It does not involve the imposition of any religion, any political philosophy, or any ideology. He happens to believe that people will choose freedom, and that freedom will always lead to a form of democracy, but he is not imposing his own form of democracy on any nation or any people.

Bush looks at history and arrives at the conclusion that this is the natural condition of mankind---to strive for freedom. Bush looks at history and sees the inevitable cost of depriving mankind of freedom. Bush looks at his belief in God and finds a belief that freedom is a right, a God-given right---aa stated so eloquently in our own Constitution. Bush looks at the fact that the United States has the longest-lasting form of government in world history, and believes this is because of the acknowledgement that we have certain inalienable rights, given to us by God and not by man, and that all people deserve the same. And Bush believes that it is the responsibility of the strong to protect the weak.

So while you are right to quote the proverb that "the road to Hell is paved with good intentions" I think it a fallacy to mistake removing the obstacles to freedom with the imposition of a doctrine.

BUT...the post you did not understand merely talked about the fact that different leaders have different goals, and that I believe Bush's goals to be altruistic and unselfish while I beleive Clinton's goals to be almost exclusively Clinton-centric. I believe Bush wants to uss the power of his office, and of this country, to make the world more stable, which is much to our benefit as well as contributing to the welfare of other peoples, while I believe Clinton's world view was more limited to how the power of his office could be used to enhance his own life.

And I said that I thought Bush's vision was clear and far-reaching. And I said that because this vision was based on character instead of self-indulgence, and because Bush is confident and secure in his own pesonhood and his own manhood and does not have to constantly seek affirmation from outside sources, he can focus on the task at hand and ignore the ankle-biters.

Some prefer the poll-seekers. Some think that it is a good thing to constantly change one's values and goals in efforts to satisfy others. Some find that a weakness. Some find confidence arrogant and find vacillation appealing. Fine. Elect another vacillator, and then you will be the happy one and I will not.

Almiranta,

I hold that "the autocrats listed above thought that their actions were serving a good and noble purpose" is demonstrably true, or at the very least is not refuted by your argument. This statement deals with an individual's perception; it does not make an appeal to some objective moral truth, or the external world at all. To Hitler and Stalin, all of these death in order to achieve their end. For them, the means justified the end. The end being their dream.

To clarify, I was not suggesting that Stalin or Lenin were motivated to do these things by a Communist ideology, but rather a dream or goal such as Realizing a Communist Russia, or something of that sort.

You hit the nail square on your head when you asked "what, exactly, would be required to advance the goals." But, also, the merits of the goal itself must also be judged.

I think it should be noted that "removing obstacles to freedom" has been, in various points in history, achieved at the cost of freedom itself. Consider the NSA wiretapping program for instance. Nobody, I claim, could possibly object to its goal. I certainly do not. However, if that goal is reached by a means which does not provide oversight to secure American's 4th amendment rights, are we to ignore that fact and kowtow to Bush for delivering us from the beleaguerment of terrorists? Are we to trust Bush when he assures us that this program is legal and is not voilating the rights of Americans? Jefferson prescribes that "In questions of powers, then, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution." I tend to agree.

Making decisions based on public opinion does not mean that you have to sacrifice your values. Bush is our public servant. He is not an omnipotent God who is unswayed by the opinions of his flock. Or, at least, he shouldn't be.

And finally, to respond the value of unwavering beliefs.

Unwavering beliefs are not to be valued in situations where those beliefs are brought into question by evidence. If you have a system of beliefs and certain evidence makes you form a belief that does not cohere with your system of beliefs, it is your responsibility to resolve this incoherence. This could be accomplished by rejecting the newly found belief or revising your system of beliefs. How do you make this decision? Based on the reliability of your new belief and the evidence that formed it. It's silly to say that since at time t politican A had belief B and at time t' > t politican A had belief not B, politican A should not hold a position of power because he changes his mind too much. The underlying evidence that brought about this change of belief must be examined. So yes, you are correct. I will be very happy when a president is elected that appreciates this responsibility.

I'm glad that you took the time to flesh out your argument, but I still think there are still some week points, and hopefully I've adeqately illustrated where they are.

ac. you say:
"Consider the NSA wiretapping program for instance. Nobody, I claim, could possibly object to its goal. I certainly do not. However, if that goal is reached by a means which does not provide oversight to secure American's 4th amendment rights, are we to ignore that fact and kowtow to Bush for delivering us from the beleaguerment of terrorists?"

This statement completely overlooks the fact that there IS oversight over the wireless electronic monitoring of international communications. While simple logic shows that it is physically impossible to get prior approval to monitor these calls, when information is acquired it is subjected to legal review---oversight. In addition, if information is gained about domestic crimes, it cannot be used in legal proceedings, as it was obtained without a warrant.

Jefferson helped write the Constitution which set up a system by which the legality and/or constitionality of laws was to be ruled on by the judicial branch---a checks and balances system. And in this case, there have been several rulings, including Supreme Court rulings, on the legality of what Bush is doing.

He did not just decide to do something and then told us it was OK. He went through the system, went through the process, and then acted, with legal authority and Senate committee approval.

I don't know what more you can ask. The nature of the technological world we live in precludes any dependence on traditional wiretapping, and traditional use of warrants. If Ahmed in Tripoli can call someone in New Jersey on a throwaway cell phone purchased in Montana under the name of someone who lives in California, and that is the only call Ahmed ever makes to that phone, there is no way the phone itself can be named in a warrant for that number. Not until Ahmed makes the call can the monitors know where it is going. Terrorists know this, and know how to game the system. The reason I trust Bush when he tells us this is legal is that I trust the mulitlayered research he did into the matter, involving the other two branches of government, judicial and legislative.

When the President of the United States, specifically charged with protecting the country and its citizens, gets a multitude of legal opinions on the legality of an operation, such as this, and then goes to Senate committees to discuss the plan and the legal opinions with senators in charge of security and gets their approval, and then makes sure the information gleaned is subjected to legal oversight and can only be used to thwart attacks and not to prosecute domestically, I don't see what more could be done. If you have an alternative, please present it.

And my point still stands---while anyone can justify anything, in his own mind, it is the action that counts. And stating, or even believing, that one is making the world a better place by enslaving millions and killing millions more is not an argument that holds up very well. Trying to make the world a better place by removing the obstacles to freedom, at great personal risk, is a much more sustainable argument. And the argument that this is not only of benefit to the newly freed but to the world in general, as free and self-governing people tend to be less violent toward their neighbors than repressive dictators is also compelling.

I accpet Bush's premise. If you do not, that is fine. But I do, and so do millions of other Americans who agree. For me it is a matter of general philosophy and principle, not as a matter of blindly following the President. It's one of those things that only history can judge. I'm betting that history will say that while mistakes were made, in this uncharted territory, the goal was worthwhile and did make the world a better place--and by freeing, not enslaving, by saving lives, not taking them, and by contributing to the dignity of man instead of overlooking its erosion under brutal governments.

One more thing to note. You said that the intelligence committees approved Bush's actions. My understanding is that only the chairmen and vice chairmen of the intelligence committees were informed. To be more precise, the Gang of Eight of the National Security Act were the only ones informed of the program. This is supported by the statements of both Represnetative Harman and Senator Rockefeller, both members of the Gang of Eight. In so doing, it also seems that Bush was in violation of that statute.

Representative Harman's letter:
http://www.house.gov/harman/press/releases/2006/0104PR_nsaprogram.html

Malkin's response:
http://michellemalkin.com/archives/004233.htm

If you read Harman's letter, and then Malkin's response, it seems pretty clear that Malkin fails to refute Harman's claims. What I find most noteworth is that she cites statute that is cited in Harman's letter, after which Harman explains that this does not apply to intelligence gathering. And of course there is the necessary accusation of flip-flopping, which clearly cannot be explained by her trying to be epistemically repsonsible. No, all is static in the realm of statutory salience. Her final reference to statute, provided with out comment, intended to be the final death blow to Harman's case, yet again, only applies to covert actions.

:(

Senator Rockefeller's statement:
http://rockefeller.senate.gov/news/2005/pr122005.html