In trying to understand Conservatives I've found it convenient to break down the philosophy of government into two perhaps overly simple sections: money and people. There's crossover, of course, but those are the broad divisions.

Liberals seem to think about government in terms related to people: individual freedoms, privacy, health care, quality of life, compassion, altruism and the like. Conservatives seem to think about government only within an economic framework: lower taxes for the rich, deregulation, cronyism, legislative favoritism for the wealthy, non-prosecution of fraud, and so on.

When the Soviet Union crashed the U.S. government had a unique reaction. At least it was unique from a Liberal perspective. They flooded Russia and the former Soviet republics with McDonald's. Not just McDonald's, of course, but every sort of consumer chain extant. The emphasis, clearly, was to drastically and immediately change those countries into capitalist societies. The totalitarian nature of communism was quite all right with them; what they hated about communism was that it wasn't  an open market for U.S. companies.

This will be a pretty simple diary, that I hope everyone takes a sincere look at. It will be an attempt to confront many of the myths the religious and non-religious alike think about when they hear the term atheist. I will try to make it obvious that we are not Satan's minions, so to speak, and that we are actually quite nice people in general.

So please, I encourage all of you to take a look, and even if you decided you are too lazy or stubborn to read it, at least answer the poll question, so I can get a better knowledge of just how untrustworthy Atheists are.

...Or, Fear And Loathing in the 1980's.

I don't mean this to be a hit diary, or a pile on. But in reading the discussions around the blogs today on Obama's growingly-infamous comment about Reagan's legacy, I feel like some folks just don't get it, they truly do not empathize with those of us on the left who hear the word "Reagan" and see red. I think a lot of this is due to not sharing a common history.

So, briefly, these are some recollections that jump into my brain when I hear "Reagan"...

Hillary, John Edwards (even though he's sorry now), all the GOP and George W. Bush have something in common - the same Pre-Emptive Strike Mentality.

As we all heard this morning, Republican Presidential Candidate Fred Thompson fired a warning shot across the bow of Iran and it's communist allies:

I’m afraid that the Soviet Union & China are not ever going to do anything that’s going to hurt them that badly but we need to ratchet those up if at all possible.

This is exactly the type of leadership we need in this country.

Certainly not an earth shattering headline, but disturbing nonetheless.  The lack of love between George Bush and the United Nations is an old "dog-bites-man" story.  Having put haters like John Bolton at the helm of the U.S. delegation, Bush's in-your-face "go fuck yourself" hostility to all things UN is no secret.  

But today's performance in New York set a new low even for the Bush Administration.  Except for tepid applause when Bush was introduced and when he left the podium, no one clapped.  Not even our allies.  The world has caught on to the George Bush propaganda game and declines to show him a modicum of respect.

Bush's efforts to wrap himself in the aura of AIDS prevention, feeding hungry children, rescuing refugees in Darfur, and restoring freedom in Myanmar fell flat.  There was a time when the United States could stand proudly before countries like Cuba, Myanmar, Sudan, and Iran and lecture them on human rights and democracy.  But in the wake of Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, secret renditions and kidnappings of innocent Arab men, flaunting the UN Declarations on Human Rights, the creation of a million-plus refugees in Iraq (and the deaths of hundreds of thousands), and the suspension of habeus corpus, America has pissed away its credibility.

SouthAmerica: Here is why it is imperative that Americans elect Al Gore president of the United States in November of 2008.

Al Gore has the necessary understanding that is required for a country to operate as part of the new global economy, and he can be instrumental in helping shift the American economy once again in the direction of the future.

Al Gore’s election would cause a new "Paradigm Shift" in the American economy, but it would be a very positive shift that would place the United States into the path to prosperity in the 21st Century.

The American economy under President Clinton's stewardship was moving into the future, the internet, the information superhighway, and the American economy’s resources were being applied to that end – in building the infrastructure of the future.

The Bush administration shifted completely the American economy to the past, to the economy of the cold war, to excessive defense spending, to the boogieman is going to get you. They turned the American economy in the direction of a world long gone.

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In a stunning upset the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (U.S.S.R) has been declared the winner of the cold war.

The surprise victory by an adversary some already considered defeated, came with the passage of S.1927, A bill to amend the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 to provide additional procedures for authorizing certain acquisitions of foreign intelligence information and for other purposes.

Few expected the surprise move by the socialists which left the U.S, formerly the world champion of democracy and citizen's rights, staggering around the mat in a state of fear swinging wildly at anything even, supporters trying to help.

ARLINGTON -- Charles T. McDowell, 85, a retired U.S. Army colonel and a professor emeritus and former director of the Center for Post-Soviet and Eastern European Studies at the University of Texas at Arlington, passed away Sunday, July 8, 2007.

Memorial service: 1 p.m. Wednesday at First Christian Church, Arlington. Graveside service: 11:30 a.m. Wednesday in Moore Memorial Gardens. Visitation: 6 to 8 p.m. Tuesday at Arlington Funeral Home.

Charles T. McDowell was the first Eagle Scout in San Saba County, and remained a lifelong leader in the Boy Scouts of America. At 15, he attended the 1935 National Boy Scout Jamboree in Washington, D.C. and met President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Serving in the military, US State Department and as advisor on Sino-Soviet affairs during the Cold War, he would serve nine more Presidents of the United States.

When asked to describe Charles McDowell, Gen. W.C. Westmoreland wrote that he was "one of the few outstanding officers that I know."

The B-29 "Enola Gay" climbs away as the mushroom cloud of the first Atomic Bomb bellows above the doomed city of Hiroshima, August 6th, 1945.

August 8, 1945, Russia finally joined the Allies and declared war on Japan. Despite that and the atomic bombing of Hiroshime, the Japanese still did not surrender. By 10:00 that same night, a second atomic bomb was placed in a B-29 Superfortress named Bock's Car which released its atomic bomb on Nagasaki.

According to the Daily Mail, the Russian Federation is trying to become Santa's landlord. According to the paper, Vladimir Putin is claiming the North Pole is on the same continental shelf as Russia, and therefore Russian territory.....

Russian leader Vladimir Putin has made an astonishing bid to grab a vast chunk of the Arctic, giving himself claim to its vast potential oil, gas and mineral wealth.

His audacious argument that an underwater Russian ridge is linked to the North Pole is likely to lead to an international outcry. Some commentators have already observed it is further evidence of growing Russian assertiveness under its authoritarian president.

History is a powerful weapon in political debate, but it's a dangerous one, too – especially for wingnuts who don't know what they're talking about.  The name-dropping, analogy torturing, and metaphor mixing surely must provide a heady mix of near-intellectualism and affected pomposity for the conservative with more important priorities than context.  Still, a couple of hours in front of the History Channel does not a Thucydides make, nor does a recent front page post at RedState constitute anything approaching the history-based argument against the Employee Free Choice Act it purports to be.

Join me, if you will, in the Cave of the Moonbat, where you resident historiorantologist has prepared a dissection of a conservative history diary.  Feel free to poke, prod, and tell stories of the times you've seen history abused by our conservative friends, but do be careful of the slippery floor – you know how those liberals' hearts bleed!  (yuck, yuck)

These are the passages that struck me most strongly in reading this classic novel of authoritarian Communism.

Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler
NY:  Macmillan Company, 1941

(34)  "The Party can never be mistaken," said Rubashov.  "You and I can make a mistake.  Not the Party.  The Party, comrade, is more than you and I and a thousand others like you and I.  The Party is the embodiment of the revolutionary idea in history.  History knows no scruples and no hesitation.  Inert and unerring, she flows towards her goal.  At every  bend in her course she leaves the mud which she carries and the corpses of the drowned.  History knows her way.  She makes no mistakes.  He who has not absolute faith in History does not belong in the Party's ranks.

A brief look at Chris Matthews' "Hardball", circa Moscow 1930...
(Alternately titled "Lady Dowd of the Mtsensk District," or "Quiet Flows the Potomac.")

Well, now.  That's a headline that we here at home surely would not relate to.  Or, perhaps, we might.

President's comments risk stoking dispute with Russia over missile shield.

Risk?  Risk?  

I'd say that is exactly what those words are being used to do.  You know, stoking dispute with Russia.

More below.

Today, the world lost one of its greatest artists and political dissidents.  Mstislav Rostropovich, cellist and symphony conductor, died at 80 in Moscow.

Rostropovich was, first and foremost, a brilliant musician and champion of music.  One of the world’s most legendary cellists, he was also a teacher of music, inspiring and mentoring musicians such as Jacqueline du Pre, Mischa Maisky, Natalia Gutman, David Geringas, David Finckel and Han-Na Chang.  Rostropovich was also a champion of modern composers of classical music, helping to bring to audiences, many for the first time, over 100 original compositions, including Shostakovich's two cello concertos, Prokofiev's Sinfonia Concertante and Britten's Symphony for Cello and Orchestra.

"Life dictated that our fates crossed. Together in important posts, we had to solve problems linked with the changes that were occurring in the country, democratic changes. We were able to do a lot, but we had serious differences — very big differences that the forces against perestroika and changes took advantage of."
— Former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev.

The heady days of 1991--the fall of the Soviet Union, the bringing down of the Berlin wall, the end of apartheid in South Africa--are hazy memories just a decade and a half later. The end of history certainly has turned out the way we, and particularly Fukuyama had envisioned. So Boris Yeltsin's death reminds us of those days past, when this man helped change the course of the world.

In America, of course, the fall of the Soviet Union is generally couched in terms of the masterful policy of the neocons and the take-no-prisoners leadership of Ronald Reagan. What's forgotten generally, on this side of the Atlantic, is the transformative leadership of Mikhail Gorbachev and the reformer he brought to power, Boris Yeltsin. Gorbachev recognized that in order for Communism in general and the Soviet Union in particular to thrive, some of the basic tensions between a civil society and an authoritarian system of government would have to be loosened.

Gorbachev brought Yeltsin with him to power in 1985, installing him in the Politburo. Gorbachev's reform efforts, glasnost, perestroika, and uskorenyie, weren't moving fast enough for Yeltsin. After a confrontation with Gorbachev over the pace of reforms in 1987, Yeltsin was kicked out of the Politiburo but elected to the new Congress of People's deputies in 1989, elevating him to a prominent position. His reputation as a reformer made him an early hero of a populace feeling their way toward a civil society.

The disastrous economic situation brought on by the years of quagmire in Afghanistan, and the growing movement of nationalism, particularly in the Baltics and Central Asia (a result, ironically, of Gorbachev's reforms) added to the increasing tensions within the Soviet Union, between republics, and between the people and the Politburo. But particularly between the Politburo and Gorbachev.

That very loosening of tension that Gorbachev knew was necessary to save the Soviet Union precipitated its entire unraveling, and in a desparate attempt to bring it to an end and restore the Soviet Union that was, hardliners in the Kremlin staged the August coup. And Yeltsin the hero was made, organizing a popular resistance from atop a tank near Russia's parliament. The coup was put down, Gorbachev all but deposed, and Yeltsin became the leader who would try to bring Russia to democracy.

His legacy is certainly mixed. The war in Chechnya, rampant corruption, and his championing of the Vladimir Putin, Russia's new tyrant, all mar his place in Russian history and are perhaps the inevitable coda to Yeltsin's life. But primarily, he will be remembered for his stand on the tank in front of Russia's "White House," staving off at least for a while a return of the bad old days of Soviet rule.

"Yeltsin gave our citizens freedom," said Boris Nemtsov, a former deputy prime minister, Monday. "He himself loved it, and he loved our homeland. Remember what he told Putin when he left: He said, 'Protect Russia.' "

Previously posted on the Young People For Blog.

Genocide continues, people continue to be murdered, lives continue to be lost. The next month will mark the anniversary of the Darfur Peace Agreement. The crisis in Sudan's western region of Darfur is only getting worse. The Sudanese government claims to be making it easier for aid groups to provide humanitarian support, yet aid groups are at times allowed to work and later denied. Under-staffed and under-supported African Union troops are being threatened and killed. The US deputy secretary, John Negroponte, sees this as the last opportunity to bring in a hybrid UN-AU peacekeeping force as hope seems to be running out for a solution. As Negroponte travels to Sudan he will be bringing the message that Washington's patience has run out. Ban Ki-moon says that he thinks a misunderstanding with the Sudanese government is holding up the peacekeeping force.