You know Tom Delay's new book, No Retreat, No Surrender is going to be a disgusting defense of radical conservatism. You know it's going to paint liberalism as an evil, godless threat to all that is good and righteous. You know it is going to be a laughably transparent defense of himself against what he sees as liberal witch hunt against him.
You know it's going to be all this and more. You've already gotten a sulfurous whiff of it from his TV and radio appearances. But you still have a sort of sick curiosity about the book, right?
Well, don't worry. I work in a bookstore, so I can go through it for you, without even having to buy it. So follow me below the fold, if you have the stomach for it...
The Alice-in-Wonderland quality begins right in the opening paragraphs, as Delay relates an event when he was twelve years old that helped shape his worldview. Much of Delay's early childhood was spent in Venezuela, where his father worked in the oil business for the Tulsa-based Helmerich and Paine. But things were dicey in that period, recalls Delay:
But in time it had all become too much, particularly for my mother. There were revolutions and murders. Dead bodies sometimes hung from lampposts in our village square. I even had a near miss with a death squad, and not long afterward my mother understandably insisted that it was time for us to go home.
It was late 1959, and the flight home stopped in Havana, just months after Castro had taken control. Delay reports:
[I] saw a handful of men in shabby green uniforms gathering on the tarmac. They each had a rifle slung across one shoulder, and several of them restrained thickly-muscled German shepherds on leather leashes. A moment later, one of the soldiers stepped into the front of our cabin and ordered all the Americans off the plane....
would
They did not know that I spoke Spanish and so they did not know that I understood their vulgarity, their snarling insults. Their words and their stench filled me with a sense of wickedness that has never left me....We were kept there for hours, the leering suggestiveness of the soldiers tormenting the women
Wow. I sympathize with Delay for going through what must have been intensely frightening episodes in his childhood. I imagine he would have taken some powerful lessons into his adulthood. I imagine that those death squads and corpses hanging from the lampposts that he saw while living under the right-wing dictatorship of Marcos Perez Jimenez in Venezuela would make him a strong advocate for liberal democracy. I imagine that the frightening looks and gestures of the Cuban soldiers would have made him abhor it when decades later, his own country rounded up innocent people, jailed them, set upon them with "thickly-muscled German shepherds," and even subjected them to torture.
But no. That doesn't seem to be the lesson Delay learned. Rather,
The scene came to me, sometimes several times a day, during the years I served on the floor of the U.S. Congress. It has been present every time I faced down some liberal advance, knowing that today's liberalism is an early stage of the same evil I experienced in Havana.
Well, he was only twelve at the time. Of course, you think he might have done some reading in history or some critical thinking in his adulthood that would have enabled him to get beyond basing his worldview on a scary childhood incident.
Is there anything in Delay's book that gives even a hint of concern or remorse over Abu Graib, our secret detention centers, or Guantanamo Bay? Not that I can find. The Iraq war itself makes only a brief appearance on pages 168-170:
I should say here that I completely supported Donald Rumsfeld's approach to the war when he was secretary of defense...I also believe that his leadership was wise and his strategies were effective while he was in office. (Page 169)
So what went wrong in Iraq? Well, there's this:
Our failures have not been on the battlefield. They have been in not winning the minds and the hearts of the American people. (Page 169)
Yep. If only the American people knew what was REALLY going on in Iraq, how great things were and furthermore how much it was gaining us a victory in the Greater War on Terror, they wouldn't be such obstructionist, America-hating fools who were undermining our nation and surrendering to the forces of evil. If the terrorists win, blame the American people.
Delay sets out what he calls "My Political Manifesto:"
I am not a man who apologizes for his beliefs. This is because I did not create my beliefs, I received them: from the Bible; from great minds of the ages; from the experiences of nations; and from the principles of American freedom. Liberals may hate me for it, and weak-kneed Republicans may back away from it, but I cling to these ideas because I believe them to be true. (Page 11)
No, Tom, I don't hate you for your beliefs, though I am most assuredly and proudly a liberal. I do NOT, however, agree that it is a point of pride to declare that everything you believe is "received" wisdom. I believe that wise people bring critical thinking to what they learn and through that process develop their beliefs. I further believe that good people may very well draw differing conclusions when examining the same writings of the great minds of the past or from the experiences of nations.
Indeed, I agree with certain things from your 'Manifesto.' For example, I agree that
The Constitution of this country is a contract between the people and their leaders. Government should observe its constitutional boundaries and amendments should be made sparingly....
No American should be sent to war without constitutional cause, clear objectives, and the best tools available to accomplish those objectives. Pages 12-14)
Problem is, I don't see you as backing up your ideals, not when I see your support for how the war in Iraq has been waged, not when I witnessed you seeking to amend the Constitution with such petty issues as same-sex marriage
I do indeed disagree with you on many issues in your Manifesto, but can respect that you have your opinions. The biggest problem I have is that you do not seem to respect the opinions of others, because you declare your beliefs to be not opinions, but rather unassailable moral truths:
Because there is a God who has spoken, issues like marriage, abortion, homosexuality, and the death penalty are not matters of opinion. They are matters of revelation. There are moral absolutes and public policy should be built upon them. (Page 12)
The next several sections of Delay's book recount his life. Not the most gripping reading, but nevertheless a creditable humanizing account: the alcoholic father; the pretty girl who, when he tried for his first kiss at age 7, instead gave him his first black eye; his conservative epiphany watching the 1964 Republican convention on television. Then we learn of his first job out of college, with the Redwood Chemical Company:
My first six months at Redwood Chemical were the worst of my life....I loaded and unloaded boxcars. I worked in the warehouse among the worst fumes and toxic chemicals imaginable....In the evenings, I came home reeking, but those torturous months taught me valuable lessons. (Page 45)
Surely those lessons would have been about the importance of workplace safety and hazardous material regulations, right? Well, no:
In 1972, the Texas legislature began considering legislation that would have meant unprecedented regulation of the pest-control industry. This legislation was part of a trend of environmental activism, encouraged in large part by the birth of the Environmental Protection Agency...Under pressure from environmentalists, the Texas pest-control industry was being threatened with government-sanctioned licensing requirements for pest-control operators. Previously, the pest-control industry in Texas had a free market....Yet without any evidence that the pest-control industry had failed to police itself adequately, liberals were urging extremely restrictive licensing requirements....
The real issue wasn't protecting Texas from mishandled pesticides; the real issue was protecting Texans from freedom. (Page 47)
So the lesson young Delay learned was to oppose anyone who tried to take away his freedom to come home reeking after handling the worst toxic chemicals imaginable all day long. Those fumes must indeed have been powerful.
He next goes on to describe his entry into politics, a period in which he confesses that he did not live up to the standards he now professes:
[I] was not the man I might have been. I gave in to my lesser appetites in my private life. Even in my political life, I lived out of a smallness of soul that made me hard to get along with, moved me towards the politics of anger, and left me an uninspiring figure. And in political leadership, as in all leadership, inspiration is everything. Thankfully, I learned from my mistakes, and...I hope others will learn from me, and because I honor God by describing the dark side of my life with the same honesty that I describe the bright, shining moments. (Page 58)
I'm sure you all are dying to hear what evil things Delay did early in his career that he now regrets so deeply, and how he changed to become the inspirational, ethical and compassionate politician we all know and love.
Unfortunately, I have to go out now, so this will have to continue in a second diary tomorrow night. I'll be back in several hours to check in on any comments generated by this first installment...