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The Republican Task: No Obamacare, No Iran Nukes
ADVANCE EDITORIAL from the November 18, 2013 issue.
1:00 PM, Nov 7, 2013
• By WILLIAM KRISTOL
Watching the Obama administration at work this week, a friend
offered this judgment: Under Obama, Iran keeps its nuclear program and
Americans lose their health insurance.
Historians and political scientists will have much to say, after its
collapse, about contemporary liberalism’s propensity to be at once tough
on American citizens and soft on Iranian mullahs. Today’s liberals are
pleased to use the power of the state to nudge—not to say bully—their
fellow Americans, while shunning the exercise of power abroad,
preferring to accommodate—not to say appease—the nation’s enemies. It
would seem to be a paradox.
Or perhaps not. Aren’t the bossy often insecure?
Aren’t bullies often cowards? Those who throw their weight around when
they aren’t resisted often shy away from confrontation with those who
won’t yield. A fatal conceit at home can be the flip side of a fatal
loss of nerve abroad.
This is a moment that reveals the
bankruptcy of
contemporary liberalism.
It’s also a moment of truth for American
conservatism, which, at its best, com
bines the sound judgment of an
older
conservatism and the fighting spirit of
an older liberalism. It’s
a moment of truth for an American conservatism that embodies “that
honorable determination which animates every votary of freedom, to rest
all our political experiments on the capacity of mankind for
self-government” (Federalist 39). This suggests the immediate
task of American conservatives: resistance to the nanny state at home
and the enemies of freedom abroad.
The spirit of resistance is there. The rise of the
Tea Party shows that. But the energy of the Tea Party, as Tea Party
activists know, isn’t enough. A strategy of successful resistance has to
be embodied in and carried forward by a real political party. That’s
the Republican party.
Netanyahu says nuclear deal with Iran would be a 'mistake of historic proportions'
LAST UPDATED: 11/07/2013 17:29
Binyamin Netanyahu attends the weekly cabinet meeting in Jerusalem, November 3, 2013. Photo: Reuters
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