On today’s All Things Considered, Ken Adelman contended that, because George W. Bush has done policy that represents boldness and change, he should be considered a progressive, whereas because Kerry supports a more cautious, internationalist approach, he should be considered a conservative.
As examples, Adelman mentions Bush’s abandonment of the ABM treaty (a treaty he, without qualification, deems “bad”) and the current administration’s “bold” policy of preemptive warfare.
There’s a bit of verbal bait-and-switch going on here, of course, and not just with the obvious “progressive” vs. “conservative” labels. Adelman boldly and preemptively commits the fallacy of equivocation by calling “change” “progress.” Change just means something different; progress is teleological: it moves toward something new and better.
I agree, however, that Bush’s policies are not conservative. They certainly don’t conserve the good ol’ American values of peacemaking and fair-dealing. They don’t conserve what little goodwill we have managed to develop with the rest of the world since the end of the Cold War.
In fact, Bush’s policies are deeply retrograde. Along with his 12th Century theology, Bush’s policy of preemption harkens back to the 19th Century and that “splendid little war” we had with the Spanish. His Anti-anti-ABM position is something more like America circa 1954, when Cold War paranoia was standard operating procedure. Only his “go-it-alone” attitude toward waging war seems unprecedented; with the possible exception of the Spanish-American war, we’ve always gone out of our way to develop a set of allies and a darn good reason before sending our fresh young soldiers off to die in major conflicts.
This is progress?
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