Bush turns world on its head!

3/12/07

In today’s Chicago Sun-Times, columnist Neil Steinberg wrote a column contrasting the virtues of capitalism with the failures of socialism and giving President Bush credit for ignoring Hugo Chavez on Bush’s tour of Latin America. This is not the type of column one would normally expect from Neil Steinberg, who is quite liberal and very much opposed to Bush. Steinberg’s column gave me grist for a reply, most of which I have posted below, in which I outlined the ironic attitudes of those who, like me, still consider themselves conservative but who, judging by today’s litmus test for conservatism, apparently aren’t: We believe in free men, free markets, and limited government, and believe that these virtues do not stop at the U.S. border, so that makes us somehow anti-conservative, if not downright unpatriotic. I’ll say one thing for Bush: he really has the power to turn the world on its head:

(I address Mr. Steinberg as “Brother Neil” because, despite our many points of disagreement on politics and religion (He is, by his own admission, skeptical of, almost hostile toward, religion.), we share a generally curmudgeonly and pessimistic view of today’s society.)

Brother Neil,

You are a stronger man than I. Even though I completely agree with your analysis of the merits of capitalism vs. socialism (I used to be called a “conservative,” which I, and most people, once defined as a strong belief in free men and free markets until this George Bush came along. Since then, the test of one’s conservatism is blind, undying, unquestioning loyalty to George II. By that measure, I am about as far from being a “conservative” as one can be. But that is a topic for another discussion.), I can’t “give Bush credit where credit is due” on anything, even something as advisable as ignoring Hugo Chavez. Of course, it would be easier to give credit to Bush for ignoring Chavez, or for anything, if Bush himself actually believed in capitalism, rather than the system of mutually reinforcing big government and big business that is properly labeled as fascism, but that, too, is grist for another mill.

It’s gotten to the point at which it is difficult for me to find fault with people like Chavez and Castro, who are diametrically opposed to everything in which I believe and who I thus would normally find repugnant in every way, because they, too, so ardently oppose our president. Anyone who despises Bush as much as these two guys do can’t be all that bad, right?