No, I just used Pinochet as an example because that is the example that Mr. Simon used.

“As to your larger point, I am somewhat older even than our host and distinctly recall Republicans in the Fifties and Sixties to have been consistently more isolationist than Democrats. The reverse now seems to have occurred…”

The Democratic party has changed a lot since the 1950′s, but at least part of that is that is due to conservatives switching to the Republican party. I don’t know how much of the change is due to individuals changing their minds.

That’s why I raised the question of why Roger Simon changed his views. The answer might or might not generalize to other individuals, but at least we would know we were talking about an individual changing his mind.

An academic will tend to prefer a neat theory to messy reality any day of the week. A command economy (with limited centralized actors) is just a hell of a lot easier to model than a demand economy (with unlimited independently-motivated actors).

It’s like that old saw about the drunk looking for his wallet under the streetlight. He didn’t lose it there, but at least the light is good….

Conservatives, by nature, are pragmatists (even at times hardheaded pragmatists). For conservatives, the bottom line for any foreign adventure was “Show me the strategic and/or economic value to the United States” (and, yes, for many conservatives, Vietnam passed that test–we really, really hated Communism and feared its spread). One of the reasons I voted for Bush in 2000 was his natural skepticism of “nation building” (I remember Condi Rice at the convention talking about how the world had to get out of the habit of “dialing 911-USA”).

Then came September 11, 2001. By the time the South Tower crumbled, I was a new kind of conservative. The sea change for many conservatives that day was just as significant as it was for those of you who were catapulted over from the left. We all became something different that day, something better I think.

As to your larger point, I am somewhat older even than our host and distinctly recall Republicans in the Fifties and Sixties to have been consistently more isolationist than Democrats. The reverse now seems to have occurred, with the exception of the Buchananite wing of theRepublicans who have become, oddly something of heroes to the far left as noted above.

I’m a member of group B, but like most Americans I haven’t paid a lot of attention to South America. I never formed an opinion about whether the United States should attempt to replace the Pinochet government with a democracy because I didn’t know that the people in group A were raising the question. The big foreign policy question at the time was how to deal with the Soviet Union, and to the extent that I thought about foreign policy, that’s what I thought about. Group A is limited to people who spent enough time thinking about American foreign policy that they could think about Chile as well as the Soviet Union, which means in contains a small minority of the American public. In contrast, group B is a fairly large chunk of the American public (otherwise it wouldn’t be broken out in poll results). If this is correct, it is impossible for your assumption to be true. Even if every member of group A is a member of group B, most members of group B are not members of group A.

What you need is logitudinal data, and you have at least one data point available. You are a member of group A, and your opinions have changed. Does your hypothesis explain these changes? Admittedly, a sample size of one is hardly conclusive, but I would think you would look at it anyway, if only because its a sample that must be of particular interest to you.

Some people are educated beyond their intelligence. Some ideas are too stupid to be believed unless one is first educated into believing them. In my experience, this is a not uncommon way that the liberal sensibility rots. (Conservatives tend to rot in other ways, when so inclined.)

On the other hand, if the liberal sensibility doesn’t rot, and the person doesn’t turn into a conservative–then whatever amount of wisdom, intelligence, and education is available can be put into advancing liberal ideas.

One reason that conservatives don’t tend to go down the “educated into foolishness” road is that conservatives already accept it as a fact that highly educated and intelligent people are as likely to be complete morons in leadership posts as anyone else.

Well, yes, I suppose so among the soft left or polite left – but among the more serious socialists, I don’t think so. I’m sure that you felt that way, but are you really so sure about all of your contemporaries?

Much of the left sounds like Buchanon and he is now a hot ticket on the Pundit circuit because his isolationist policies dovetail perfectly with the lefts opposition to the war. The man that the left was calling a caveman and a thug after his Houston speech has become their ideological darling of the left. Politics makes strange bedfellows.

My opinion of them before was a bit cartoonish and stereotypical, I admit. But they’ve grown to match my cartoon stereotype – not the opposite.

Yes, I think that there is a tendency to overlook the fact that such acts can be enjoyable. It is not that only evil persons do such things, it is that ordinary human beings can do such things and enjoy the doing. That is why I prefer a religious outlook that says that we must guard against sin and temptation. The easier philosophy that says that one should express their inner feelings and do what feels good is a dangerous temptation. I believe history bears this out.

I have been having this discussion with my boomer cohort since the early 70′s. What a generation!