The Rant

Time to retire the Congress?   "Pathetic.  Craven. Irresponsible. Unprincipled." The Farm Bill . 

President Bush gave a speech at the World Economic Forum today in which he said:  Too often in the Middle East, politics has consisted of one leader in power and the opposition in jail.  In our democracy, we would never punish a person for owning a Koran. We would never issue a death sentence to someone for converting to Islam.  Democracy does not threaten Islam or any religion.  Democracy is the only system of government that guarantees their protection.  Well said. 

I have been reading "Liberal Fascism" by Jonah Goldberg.  The point of the book is not so much that liberals are Nazis, but that after World War 1, Fascism was in the air. If you look at the language of many of the political leaders of the time, including both Roosevelts and Wilson, they are hard to distinguish from statements made by Mussolinni, Hitler, not to mention Stalin and Lenin.  The same was true of George Bernard Shaw, Dewey, and most popular journalists.    It was "common sense" at the time that some kind of war government, if it put its mind to it, could solve all the problems of the day and bring us some kind of utopia.   Any one who disagreed was something akin to a "traitor."  It is only the grim history of totalitarianism in the 20th century that makes these early 20th century popular dreams so embarassing.  As for limited government liberalism of the 19th century, it was near brain death during this period.   There was virtually no conserv