A good analysis of the "terror memo" can be found here.
Legal Fiction had a good post today about Reagan and race. The move of many media sources to examine "Reagan America" is a commendable effort, a lot better than empty coverage of his funeral and so forth. For instance, Democracy Now! today examined his Grenada excursion among other things. Slate and others also provided mixed accounts.
An overriding lesson, I'd think, is that it's valuable to strongly believe in a cause, boil it down to its essentials, honestly carry it out (various exceptions aside), and know how to express the basic ideals to the masses. On the other hand, since life is not that simple and the cause in its particulars might not be so great, taking such things to an extreme is dangerous. Likewise, a happy exterior should not be allowed to hide underlining ugliness, even if it is just the ugliness of neglect or acceptance of rhetoric and politics that opens you up to charges of hypocrisy.
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An article today discussed a forthcoming book concerning a look at the war in Iraq from the soldiers' perspective. I believe this aspect of the war has been woefully underreported, both the good and bad. The men and women who serve this country are to be greatly respected, which is not the case when we basically ignore how our policies truly affects them.
Likewise, all the criticism of the treatment of the detainees, violence against Iraqi civilians, and so forth might be seen as ignoring the good are forces have been doing. I think there is some truth to this, but the underlining principle is that war is inherently hellish, so must only be done as a last resort. Likewise, seriously, I doubt a majority of the public do not respect our troops ... the sentiment would tend to be to believe they are doing right. Thus, the focus on the wrongs, which is a lot harder to accept.
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It's appalling, it's absurd, and it's totally unacceptable. There simply aren't any obvious solutions to things like health, energy, and education policy so it would be really useful if we could have some debates about these things. But nowadays we can't. Unless Bush and DeLay are given sufficiently solid defeats to utterly discredit their approach and lead the Republicans to put some good-faith ideas forward in the future, the country is not going to do well at all. I'm congenitally inclined to believe in the merits of pragmatic compromise, but there's no sense compromising with people who are fundamentally uninterested in accomplishing things during their time in office.
-- Matthew Yglesias
Some might Yglesias' argument that the Republican domestic policy is based not on principle but pure political expediency is a tad extreme. All the same, there is clearly enough truth to it for the nonpartisan pragmatist to be worried. Yes, the problems in the current political system is partly the fault of both sides -- the de facto surrender for so many years of the executive branch to the Republicans, and a Democratic Party that has not properly adapted to a changing political world. Likewise, President Clinton brought many of his problems on himself, including being hung by his own lowering of the dignity of the office (going on Arsenio, anyone?) petard.
All the same, a lot of the blame must be put in the current leadership, which is not Democratic in nature, is it? Leadership that is particular cynical and heavyhanded in trying to amass power, violating the principles of many of their rank and fire in the process. Government under one party only aggravates the trend. A new administration is needed as part of a move toward necessary change and reform of the system at large. It is time.