Monday, August 2, 2010

The Disloyal Opposition

It's increasingly clear that righties, who endlessly bleat about others' failure to accept personal responsibility, and a myriad repugnant counterincentives to doing so arising out of statist, totalitarian Democratic Party ideology, bitterly oppose the notion that the right might accept responsibility themselves.

An interesting position: the country is not just flawed, but going to hell in a handbasket, and not a bit of it, not even a little bit, is our fault. So we need make no contribution to governance other than the obstruction of anything Democrats want to do.

Bipartisanship. It's not just for breakfast anymore...

Which brings up the new nuclear weapons treaty with Russia. Today, the Times informs me that the nuclear arms treaty up before the Senate soon--endorsed by wild-eyed, Birkenstock-wearing former Weathermen like James Schlesinger, Henry Kissinger, Sam Nunn and George Shultz--can't yet command the necessary 2/3 majority

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/02/opinion/02mon1.html?hp

The stated Republican reluctance revolves, apparently, around a non-binding line in the preamble to the treaty which doesn't gleefully endorse missile defense: a non-issue surrounding a non-program, but one forever identified with Ronald Reagan and which, rather humorously, some hold the key factor in winning the Cold War and inducing the Soviet Union's collapse. The actual Republican reason, of course, is that ratifying it would give Obama a foreign policy victory, and, of all things, a bipartisan one. Which would reveal current Republicans as rejecting something that mainstream Republicans, and some highly conservative Democrats, endorse. Which would demonstrate that when Republicans say they are willing to work with Obama, and that only Obama's radicalism keeps them from being able to do so, they are lying.

The Republicans' endorsement of the treaty, therefore, in some ways, makes it more, rather than less, imperative that it be defeated.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Whenever a rightie has a tragedy or screws up royally, it's always someone elses fault. The Gov't, Cadillac welfare moms, Bill Clinton, etc.

However, when a rightie hears of tragedy or disaster befalling another person, they blahblahblah about personal responsibility. You brought this on yourself. You made bad choices. Why don't you stand on your own two feet, you co-dependent loser? Yaddayaddayadda.

ProfWombat said...

Yup. The left, or even centrists, look for problems they can try to solve. The right sees virtue in themselves, vice everywhere else, and no reason to change anything for the better.