– by Mary Madigan
Many thanks to Michael for this opportunity to guest blog (and congratulations!)
As a female blogger, I guess I should discuss subjects that are interesting from a woman’s point of view. So I’ll talk about fighting.
[Fights are interesting from a woman’s point of view if you’re an Irishwoman]
In his New Republic* article, “A Fighting Faith” Peter Beinart suggested that Democrats should return to old-style liberalism; the liberalism which inspired the belief, held by Democrats like Arthur Schlesinger Jr., John Kenneth Galbraith, and Eleanor Roosevelt that:
“[B]ecause the interests of the United States are the interests of free men everywhere,” America should support “democratic and freedom-loving peoples the world over.” That meant unceasing opposition to communism, an ideology “hostile to the principles of freedom and democracy on which the Republic has grown great.”
I’d always thought that the New Republic was a sort of liberal hawk voice, and I thought their readers would agree with Beinart. I was wrong.
In the letters to the editor section, TNR readers made it clear — they don’t agree with Beinart at all. They believe that:
A self-described “lower middle class rube” believes the Democrats’ enemy is Bush and big business
“Moore has been–and continues to be–a man fighting for economic justice. Fahrenheit 9/11 was sometimes puerile, but the film made convincing arguments that the 2000 election was stolen in Florida and that the Republicans’ wars are being fought primarily by those who are daunted by their economic prospects in this country. His point was not, however, that all wars are pointless, but rather that the reasons for war need to be true, not lies, and clearly in the national interest, rather than for personal gain or personal payback. Even though I may disagree with much of what Moore postulates, I admire his willingness to take on President Bush and big business.”
A history teacher says: JFK was not a good leader
“Beinart argues that the Democrats must take a strong line on terrorism, just as Democrats after 1945 did on communism. He cites John F. Kennedy, who, in 1960, ran a campaign tough on communism and, while in office, “dramatically increased military spending.” Kennedy also campaigned on the missile gap, which he used to frighten audiences…
..He increased the number of military advisers in Vietnam to 16,000, and he helped unseat Cheddi Jagan in Guyana. I am not sure that these are examples to be followed.”
A lady from Missouri believes the “morality of fighting communism in order to save the world was nonsense.”
“Beinart’s comparison of the present war on Islamic fundamentalists with the cold war doesn’t hold up under scrutiny. He claims that the postwar Democrats had to oppose communism in the Soviet Union, but he fails to mention that, when Richard Nixon went to China, the morality of fighting communism in order to save the world was revealed as just plain nonsense. We did not need to fight communism then, and we do not need to embark on a world conquest of Islamic fundamentalism now.”
Out of six published letters, only one agreed with Beinart.
“We did not need to fight communism”?? I hope these letters to the editor don’t express the opinions typical of centrist Democrats. But I wonder. After all, this is TNR, not The Nation.
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