Short Shots 2

You failed to cite the Washington Post article and I could not find it but perhaps here is some food for thought for you:

In his book, “The Coming Anarchy,” Robert Kaplan writes: “Realists almost always run foreign policy; idealists, I have found, attend academic conferences and write books and articles from the sidelines.”

(FYI: Realists = conservatives [doers?]; Idealists = liberals [thinkers?])

As someone attending an “elite” grad school right now, in my opinion Kaplan seems to have hit the nail on the head. Conservatives should not be so worried about any sort of left-wing conspiracy…

In the chapter entitled, “Was Democracy Just a Moment,” Kaplan writes: “Whereas the liberal mistake is to think that there is a program or policy to alleviate every problem in the world; the conservative flaw is to be vigilant against concentrations of power in government only – not in the private sector, where power can be wielded more secretly and sometimes more dangerously.”

But my favorite passage of his (from the same chapter and admittedly somewhat off topic) is: “I have lived and traveled in many countries with both high voter turnouts and unstable politics; the low voter turnouts in the US do by themselves worry me. The philosopher James Harrington observed that the very indifference of most people allows for a calm and healthy political climate. Apathy, after all, often means that the political situation is healthy enough to be ignored. The last thing America wants is ore voters – particularly badly educated and alienated one – with a passion for politics. But when voter turnout decreases to around 50 percent at the same time the middle class is spending astounding sums in gambling casinos and state lotteries, joining private health clubs, and using large amounts of stimulants and anti-depressants [and I would add smoking lots of dope], one can be legitimately be concerned about the state of American society…. Modern democracy exists within a thin band of social and economic conditions, which include flexible hierarchies that allow people to move up and down the ladder… Democracy is a fraud in many poor countries outside this narrow band: Africans want a better life and instead have been given the right to vote.”

One last thing, one Iraqi friend who lives in Baghdad was about to leave for Jordan until the “surge” hit his community. Now he feels he can stay put because of the added security. Bet you won’t read that in the western media or on the self-serving blogs…