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Another Reason To Go!
Canadians shouldn't fear the U.S. anymore, Harper's editor says
Bush heads sham democracy: Lewis Lapham
HUBERT BAUCH, The Gazette
Published: Wednesday, June 14, 2006
Canada should take the United States less seriously, a leading American liberal intellectual urged yesterday.
Lewis Lapham, editor emeritus of Harper's magazine, told a conference of Canadian self-styled "progressives" that freedom of mind is shutting down in an America that is drifting toward superstition and spectacular misjudgment, as typified by the U.S. Middle East policy.
"I wouldn't be as afraid of the United States anymore," he said. "I think this is the lesson we have taught the world in Iraq."
Lapham, a withering critic of the Republican Bush administration who recently proposed the impeachment of the president in the pages of his magazine, spoke at the opening of a conference organized by Canada 2020, a newly formed think tank of liberal persuasion.
He said he fears that the U.S. experiment with democracy may have run its course under the Bush administration.
"I look at the Bush administration as the antithesis of the idea of democracy as I understand it," he said.
"What we now have is a sham democracy in the United States."
He suggested the essence of democracy lies in caring for others, an idea being lost in today's America where most people think of it as a matter of consensus and parades.
Instead of being quiet and orderly, democracy should be loud and contentious.
"We don't have that at the moment," he said.
Lapham called the current war on terrorism unwinnable - ''a war against an unseen enemy and an abstract noun."
He accused what he called the Republican oligarchy of hating the people and holding the core belief that money ennobles the rich and corrupts poor people, and that there is a class war under way in the United States that the U.S. media pretends isn't happening.
"The regime change the Republicans have in mind is not the one in Iraq, it's in the United States," he said.
Lapham was almost as hard on the Democratic Party, saying he agrees with California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's characterization of Democrats as "girly men" or, as he put it, the distaff side of the Republican Party.
"I get the sense that the Democrats don't really want to change anything," he said, adding the Democrats want the world to be a kinder, sweeter place, but aren't prepared to do anything about it.
He said redemption for U.S. democracy lies in the recognition that national security lies in the health, intelligence and freedom of the American people - not in fleets and armies, but in liberties now being eroded.
"We don't have a democracy in the U.S., but we have a chance to make one," he said. "We must find a way to bring stores of energy and hope into the political conversation."
***
Well, I think this sort of thing should make Canadians fear the United States MORE, as it seems to devolve into some kind of bizarre theocracy ruled by people who would actually welcome the Apocalypse...
Bush heads sham democracy: Lewis Lapham
HUBERT BAUCH, The Gazette
Published: Wednesday, June 14, 2006
Canada should take the United States less seriously, a leading American liberal intellectual urged yesterday.
Lewis Lapham, editor emeritus of Harper's magazine, told a conference of Canadian self-styled "progressives" that freedom of mind is shutting down in an America that is drifting toward superstition and spectacular misjudgment, as typified by the U.S. Middle East policy.
"I wouldn't be as afraid of the United States anymore," he said. "I think this is the lesson we have taught the world in Iraq."
Lapham, a withering critic of the Republican Bush administration who recently proposed the impeachment of the president in the pages of his magazine, spoke at the opening of a conference organized by Canada 2020, a newly formed think tank of liberal persuasion.
He said he fears that the U.S. experiment with democracy may have run its course under the Bush administration.
"I look at the Bush administration as the antithesis of the idea of democracy as I understand it," he said.
"What we now have is a sham democracy in the United States."
He suggested the essence of democracy lies in caring for others, an idea being lost in today's America where most people think of it as a matter of consensus and parades.
Instead of being quiet and orderly, democracy should be loud and contentious.
"We don't have that at the moment," he said.
Lapham called the current war on terrorism unwinnable - ''a war against an unseen enemy and an abstract noun."
He accused what he called the Republican oligarchy of hating the people and holding the core belief that money ennobles the rich and corrupts poor people, and that there is a class war under way in the United States that the U.S. media pretends isn't happening.
"The regime change the Republicans have in mind is not the one in Iraq, it's in the United States," he said.
Lapham was almost as hard on the Democratic Party, saying he agrees with California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's characterization of Democrats as "girly men" or, as he put it, the distaff side of the Republican Party.
"I get the sense that the Democrats don't really want to change anything," he said, adding the Democrats want the world to be a kinder, sweeter place, but aren't prepared to do anything about it.
He said redemption for U.S. democracy lies in the recognition that national security lies in the health, intelligence and freedom of the American people - not in fleets and armies, but in liberties now being eroded.
"We don't have a democracy in the U.S., but we have a chance to make one," he said. "We must find a way to bring stores of energy and hope into the political conversation."
***
Well, I think this sort of thing should make Canadians fear the United States MORE, as it seems to devolve into some kind of bizarre theocracy ruled by people who would actually welcome the Apocalypse...
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