Historians criticize bush

Wills is right on target re fake issues occupying the public's attention. Gay marriage is a perfect example of this. An interesting issue, for sure, but the most important thing we have to decide in 2004? No way, but you watch how the Bush Team tries to work this issue to his advantage...

[By the way, you may be confusing Garry Wills with George Will. The latter is a well-known conservative.]

Interesting thought, D'Artagnan. I have both men pictured in my mind now and you may be right. Garry Wills is certainly snobby, no matter what he says!

Can't picture Garry Wills; but, there is no one snobbier than George Wills

Garry Wills

George Wills

And, of course....

Maury Wills

These pictures remind me of when Diamond David Lee Roth said in an interview that critics prefered Elvis Costello to Van Halen because all the critics look like Elvis Costello......same principle applies to these rightwingnuts who are more worried about where someones dick goes than how the country is being run......just look at these uptight geeks....

Awe, come on, bi-polar, Maury doesn't look all that up tight to me!

I recently ran across the following text from "Memory and the Mediterranean" by Fernand Braudel, pg 249-250:

"Apart from political events, there took place what one has to call, for want of a better term, a colonization of the Middle East by the Greeks, as a people and a dominant culture became established there. This colonization, which Rome inherited, lasted about ten centuries, until the Muslim conquests of the seventh century A.D.

Ten centuries elapsed - in other words, enough to embrace the whole of the known history of France. And yet, after ten centuries, at one stroke of the Arab scimitar, everything collapsed overnight: Greek language and thought, western patterns of living, everything went up in smoke. On this territory, a thousand years of history were as if they had never been. They had not been sufficient for the west to put down the slightest roots in this oriental soil"

I am not a historian by either training or vocation, but I do enjoy reading history, and pondering what lessons past events may have for us today. I do suspect our current efforts in Iraq will have similar long term results as those descibed above.

I'm gonna have to leap to Garry Wills' defense here. He's not a rightwing nut. George Will is. Garry Wills has written extensively (and perceptively) about the abuse crisis in the Catholic Church, among other topics

I'm all for bashing those who deserve it, but let's be careful with our cudgels!

Thanks, I've been waiting for clarification........

Re: Historians criticize bush

What could it possibly matter whether Bush lost the popular vote, since presidents are chosen based not on popular vote, but on the number of electors who vote for them, and what did Congress have to do with it?

You're a little confused, Brandon, but that's OK. Her point is that Congress caved in to Bush after the "election" and went along with his legislative ideas.

I see. I guess I jumped to that conclusion because I've heard the argument many times that Bush is not the legal and rightful president because he may have lost the popular vote. I'm still not sure why some possibility that Bush lost the popular vote by a millionth of a per cent is relevant as to whether Congress should have supported or opposed certain policies. It seems to me that each congressman ought to support policies if and only if he deems them to be morally and practically correct.

I think the point being made at the time was that Bush, despite not even having a plurality, behaved as if he had a large mandate for promoting his agenda. As if he'd been elected by a landslide.

To tell the truth, even though I opposed Bush (and now oppose him even more strongly), I never bought that criticism. If he wanted to believe he had a mandate, and Congress went along with it, then it's hardly his fault...

I pretty much hate to argue, and I certainly don't disagree with anything you've said, but I'm not sure what it means to act as though one has a mandate. What did this president, for example, do that was appropriate behavior for elected officials who have a large plurality or majority, but not ones who don't?

I hate to argue, too, but let's continue because we're having a civil discussion....

Bush fought for what some of us see as a hard-right agenda. He presented himself as a compassionate conservative, and (you may disagree with this), for the most part he's been conservative and not compassionate. As though he had a plan all along and saw his election as an endorsement of it. Even though he never really told us what he had in mind when he was running!

My interpretation would be that a president has a right to implement those policies that he believes in, and doing so does not constitute a claim that he was elected by a huge majority. It is my feeling that those people who disagree with his policies should argue, as they do, that those policies are wrong and why they are wrong, and try to do better in the next election, as opposed to trying to attribute unworthy motives to him. I hope this still sounds civil, because that is what I intend.

Fair enough; I can't disagree with that. The Democrats, apart form Daschle, Dean and a few others, haven't done a great job in providing an alternative to Bush. We'll see what happens next year...

You can still

at least, to this President - as I believe his motives are unworthy. I define unworthy as setting policy based upon self gain.................