Search
Gerald Ford : The Godfather of Neo-Cons
Today is a national day of mourning to commemorate Gerald Ford's passing.
In refreshing my memory about Gerald Ford's legacy, I reckoned what he in common with James Brown : They're both godfathers of two American cultural movements.
James Brown, the godfather of soul, funk and the African American pop culture revolution.
Gerald Ford, the godfather of soulless compassionate conservatism.
It's so clear to me now. Ford, called healer of the nation was the poster child for compassionate conservatism.
Yet, as Timothy Noah explains in Why Pardoning Nixon Was Wrong, Ford's blanket pardon of Nixon opened the doors for not only a "teflon president" with Ronald Reagan; but it created the unaccountable monster that is George W. Bush.
Gerald Ford should go down in history as the godfather of the GOP's soulless compassionate conservatism and neo-con corruption.
Nothing 'neo' about this con
Good points, but a quibble on nomenclature, Lisa. Ford was no neo-con, but an old-fashioned midwestern Republican, more in the myopic Robert Taft tradition than in Bush, Jr's. His was a lousy tradition, too--anti-union, anti-Semitic, millenarian in its religious beliefs and certainly racist--but the neo-cons are a different type of rightwinger. These are folks who used to be lefties (or the children of same) who initially backed civil and labor rights, but whose over-the-top anti-Communism and loyalty to the most conservative elements in Israeli ruling circles made them end up on the same side with the older type of reactionary once Reagan took office. Think Commentary Magazine, which went from publishing James Baldwin to Jeanne Kirkpatrick in one decade.
Define 'over the top'
What does that mean exactly? Communism is a horrific doctrine for those of us who remember it. One of my big quibbles with parts of the American left was that they didn't realize this.
So what's 'over the top' in terms of opposition to it?