The Man that's Left
Over the weekend I finished another book lent to me by my magnanimous friends, David Frum's The Right Man and I think it may be worth couple of comments.
Firstly, let me come clean: I may be the only person in Europe, but I hope Bush wins this November. There are several reasons for it – but the most important one is perhaps his loathing by media and intellectual elites on both sides of Atlantic. If anybody manages to win against them, it will not, unfortunately, change their worldview (it'd be seen just as another victory of the global capital), but it will be great fun watching them anyway.
The other reason – and please let me stress that I don't presume to to influence the US citizens, who are certainly more knowledgeable about the situation than I am – is that Kerry is not a good man for the job, and I explain shortly why.
But back to the book. It is reasonably well written, slightly longer than necessary, but it certainly does not presume to be more than an electoral may fly. The genre of legends or hagiographies suffers the dearth of new entries and the story of St. George fighting the Terror is a welcomed addition. And actually, the eye-witness account of 9/11 in Washington is really moving and worth reading the book alone. The book also gives interesting insight of the presidential administration workings and handful of anecdotes about the recent events.
What's difficult to understand from the book, is what the word 'conservative' means these days. Certainly it is not anything Edmund Burke would approve of, as Frum constantly praises Bush for being, if anything, radical. "This changed four decades of US policy to China," or "This turned the policies of six American presidents on its head," exclaims Frum as if scrapping old policies was virtue in and of itself. Obviously, David Frum, if he was reading this, would point out that the old policies left America vulnerable and allowed 9/11 to happen. This is a very strong point, but it cannot carry everything. These policies also allowed America to win the Cold War and made it into the strongest economy in the world.
Frum also tells us that Bush's favourite predecessor is Dwight D. Eisenhower. Now, this was a man that believed that most changes are for the worse and that the best strategy is to let events take their course. Dull and unattractive, but very conservative, and almost exactly opposite to what Bush is doing.
When starting to write this article, I found David Frum's homepage so that I could post a link here. I took a look at his Diary at National Review that was linked there and within minutes I ran across a piece espousing an idea that forms one of the more disconcerting threads of his book; namely, that the "right not to live in fear" is superior to any other rights, and that all other rights may be curtailed in order to honour it.
In fairness, it must be told that Frum does not use words "right not to live in fear". On the other hand, I doubt he could credibly deny that he believes that curtailing some civil rights and liberties, in order to gain information that may protect lives of thousands of citizens, is morally both acceptable and desirable.
But this an illusion. For one thing, everybody lives in fear to some extent, depending on his experience and worldview. For the other, the administrative measures short of totalitarian police state are pretty useless. The European countries, with their compulsory ID cards, national databanks not circumscribed by any Personal Data Protection Acts, and distinctly police-friendly tradition, were unable to fight effectively RAF, Red Brigades or ETA.
And most importantly, the civil liberties are priceless in themselves. There is an illuminating quote, but as my memory fails me, I don't know by whom, nor the exact wording (and I would be grateful to any reader who would point this to me). But the story goes like this: an Act was presented sometime in the middle of the 19th century to the British Parliament giving some extra powers to the police (or maybe establishing the police). To which one of the MPs replied: "I would rather that six more men are stabbed to death on Charing Cross Road a year, than such an intrusion on our liberties be tolerated!"
This is an honest stance. We cannot have the pie and eat the pie, and we cannot have complete security and complete freedom at the same time. However, I think that freedom is a central American value and all attempts to diminish it must be watched with utmost suspicion.
In this context it is interesting that the lunatic right-wing fringe groups, in themselves very useful for US political life, as they allow politicians like e.g. Ronald Reagan to appear as centrists, that these groups, whose abhorrence of the federal government is only matched by their contempt of it, embrace Bush so unquestioningly, despite his administration increasing the federal powers so dramatically.
This I think is also the biggest problem with Kerry. He is certainly no civil liberties activist and his ideas and speeches suggest he is even greater statist than Bush.
Just as he glorifies Bush's domestic measures, Frum is also enthusiastic about the interventions abroad. Now this is the most contentious issue and one that cannot be adequately covered in couple of lines. Suffice to say that now I sincerely wish Iraq may have a stable regime, respecting the rule of law, and that have a stab at creating it was an interesting gamble. But a gamble nonetheless. Frum has no new arguments that weren't repeated many times already and I am not going to dwell on them. Just as with domestic security, he seems to be fascinated by the very fact that something new is happening, the novelty to him is the mark of quality.
Back to the Right Man. Frum is certain that George W. Bush is the one for the next four years. This is an assertion that, with all due respect, I doubt. But he may be the Man that is Left to voters.
Firstly, let me come clean: I may be the only person in Europe, but I hope Bush wins this November. There are several reasons for it – but the most important one is perhaps his loathing by media and intellectual elites on both sides of Atlantic. If anybody manages to win against them, it will not, unfortunately, change their worldview (it'd be seen just as another victory of the global capital), but it will be great fun watching them anyway.
The other reason – and please let me stress that I don't presume to to influence the US citizens, who are certainly more knowledgeable about the situation than I am – is that Kerry is not a good man for the job, and I explain shortly why.
But back to the book. It is reasonably well written, slightly longer than necessary, but it certainly does not presume to be more than an electoral may fly. The genre of legends or hagiographies suffers the dearth of new entries and the story of St. George fighting the Terror is a welcomed addition. And actually, the eye-witness account of 9/11 in Washington is really moving and worth reading the book alone. The book also gives interesting insight of the presidential administration workings and handful of anecdotes about the recent events.
What's difficult to understand from the book, is what the word 'conservative' means these days. Certainly it is not anything Edmund Burke would approve of, as Frum constantly praises Bush for being, if anything, radical. "This changed four decades of US policy to China," or "This turned the policies of six American presidents on its head," exclaims Frum as if scrapping old policies was virtue in and of itself. Obviously, David Frum, if he was reading this, would point out that the old policies left America vulnerable and allowed 9/11 to happen. This is a very strong point, but it cannot carry everything. These policies also allowed America to win the Cold War and made it into the strongest economy in the world.
Frum also tells us that Bush's favourite predecessor is Dwight D. Eisenhower. Now, this was a man that believed that most changes are for the worse and that the best strategy is to let events take their course. Dull and unattractive, but very conservative, and almost exactly opposite to what Bush is doing.
When starting to write this article, I found David Frum's homepage so that I could post a link here. I took a look at his Diary at National Review that was linked there and within minutes I ran across a piece espousing an idea that forms one of the more disconcerting threads of his book; namely, that the "right not to live in fear" is superior to any other rights, and that all other rights may be curtailed in order to honour it.
In fairness, it must be told that Frum does not use words "right not to live in fear". On the other hand, I doubt he could credibly deny that he believes that curtailing some civil rights and liberties, in order to gain information that may protect lives of thousands of citizens, is morally both acceptable and desirable.
But this an illusion. For one thing, everybody lives in fear to some extent, depending on his experience and worldview. For the other, the administrative measures short of totalitarian police state are pretty useless. The European countries, with their compulsory ID cards, national databanks not circumscribed by any Personal Data Protection Acts, and distinctly police-friendly tradition, were unable to fight effectively RAF, Red Brigades or ETA.
And most importantly, the civil liberties are priceless in themselves. There is an illuminating quote, but as my memory fails me, I don't know by whom, nor the exact wording (and I would be grateful to any reader who would point this to me). But the story goes like this: an Act was presented sometime in the middle of the 19th century to the British Parliament giving some extra powers to the police (or maybe establishing the police). To which one of the MPs replied: "I would rather that six more men are stabbed to death on Charing Cross Road a year, than such an intrusion on our liberties be tolerated!"
This is an honest stance. We cannot have the pie and eat the pie, and we cannot have complete security and complete freedom at the same time. However, I think that freedom is a central American value and all attempts to diminish it must be watched with utmost suspicion.
In this context it is interesting that the lunatic right-wing fringe groups, in themselves very useful for US political life, as they allow politicians like e.g. Ronald Reagan to appear as centrists, that these groups, whose abhorrence of the federal government is only matched by their contempt of it, embrace Bush so unquestioningly, despite his administration increasing the federal powers so dramatically.
This I think is also the biggest problem with Kerry. He is certainly no civil liberties activist and his ideas and speeches suggest he is even greater statist than Bush.
Just as he glorifies Bush's domestic measures, Frum is also enthusiastic about the interventions abroad. Now this is the most contentious issue and one that cannot be adequately covered in couple of lines. Suffice to say that now I sincerely wish Iraq may have a stable regime, respecting the rule of law, and that have a stab at creating it was an interesting gamble. But a gamble nonetheless. Frum has no new arguments that weren't repeated many times already and I am not going to dwell on them. Just as with domestic security, he seems to be fascinated by the very fact that something new is happening, the novelty to him is the mark of quality.
Back to the Right Man. Frum is certain that George W. Bush is the one for the next four years. This is an assertion that, with all due respect, I doubt. But he may be the Man that is Left to voters.
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