by Ira Chernus

Shrouded in the fog of the war on terrorism, “compassionate conservatism” is making a stealthy comeback. Before September 11, that slogan was slowly dying. Now George W. Bush and his administration are making the most of an unexpected chance to resurrect it. Over and over again, the president has praised the “compassion” of Americans. The word sounds innocent enough. Behind it, though, is a right-wing religious agenda ready and eager for war without end. Liberals make a big mistake if they dismiss "compassionate conservatism" as just a hypocritical catch phrase. For the right, it is a serious scheme to give tax dollars to churches through so-called “faith-based initiatives.” But that is not even the half of it. "Compassionate conservatism" is an ideological crusade to reverse the progressive social and cultural trends begun in the 1960s. It aims to take the United States back, not just to the 1950s or even the 1920s, but all the way back to the 1820s, when reformers preached the Gospel to the poor.

The ideological godfather of the movement is Marvin Olasky, a Texas professor and born-again Christian. In his preface to Olasky's book, Compassionate Conservatism, Bush wrote: "It is an approach I share." Olasky wants tax dollars for churches because the poor need religion. They got poor, he argues, because they are sinners, unable to control “appetite and lust and idleness." This is the old Christian belief in original sin, scarcely disguised: "Man is sinful and likely to want something for nothing.” “Man's sinful nature leads to indolence." "Many persons, given the option of working, would choose to sit." No amount of aid will make any difference, Olasky insists, until the poor decide to live a disciplined life and earn their daily bread by the sweat of their brow (at low wages, of course).

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by Ralph Nader

U. S. corporations aren't even subtle about it. Waving a flag andcarrying a big shovel, corporate interests are scooping up governmentbenefits and taxpayer money in an unprecedented fashion while the publicis preoccupied with the September 11 attacks and the war in Afghanistan.

Shamelessly, the Bush Administration and Congress have taken advantageof the patriotic outpouring to fulfill the wish lists of their mostgenerous corporate campaign donors. Not only is the Treasury beingraided, but regulations protecting everything from personal privacy toenvironmental safeguards are under attack by well-heeled lobbyists whowant to stampede Congress to act while the media and citizens aredistracted.

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by John Nichols

Historians reflecting upon America’s rough transition from the 20th to the 21st century will identify two crises on which the nation’s future turned. Both will be recalled to have arisen with little warning, to have exposed fundamental flaws in the political, legal and bureaucratic structures of the nation, and to have demanded dramatic responses that would change forever how the United States conducts its affairs. And historians will explain, with the wisdom of time, that it is unnecessary to debate the relative consequence of these two crises; rather, they will argue, it is vital to recognize the clear consequence of both.

One of these crises is, at this critical stage, inescapable. The September 11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, and the response to them, have consumed the interest and energy of the nation. The second of these crises, though it too demands dramatic responses, has been shunted aside with such force that political and media elites do not dare address it—for fear the mere mention of the issue will affront a newly stirred patriotic fervor.

The contested presidential election of 2000 has been pushed so far off the national radar that a consortium of media outlets, after spending more than $1 million to sort through Florida’s uncounted ballots in search of a winner, felt no compunctions about delaying revelation of the results for two months in order to avoid the suggestion of disloyalty to a president whose electoral legitimacy remains dubious at best.

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by Anthony Lewis

George W. Bush has focused effectively on the need for an international alliance against terrorism. But he has not yet understood what a wartime president has to do at home: Put aside ideological politics so he can be president of all the people.

With his evident approval, the ideologues in his administration are riding their conservative hobbyhorses as if the country did not have a higher purpose now. They, and the president, seem oblivious to the way those actions threaten national unity.

A striking example is the decision by Attorney General John Ashcroft this week to try to overrule the voters of Oregon and undo that state's assisted-suicide law. He said he would move to revoke the drug prescription license of any Oregon doctor who used drugs to help someone who wanted to die.

Mr. Ashcroft is a fervent opponent of abortion and, like many social and religious conservatives, sees any state sanction of suicide in the same light. His decision this week was praised by the National Right to Life Committee.

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by Christopher Brauchli

These two hated with a hate found only on the stage.
Lord Byron, Beppo

Since no one else has answered his question it falls to me to do so. The question was posed by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. It's probably not surprising that he didn't know the answer because when it was happening he was in private industry and not concerned with affairs of government. However, it is useful to provide him the answer now since it may inform future decisions.

In what appears to be a softening attitude toward Iran, there seems to be a growing consensus in the Bush administration that the Clinton administration policy of "dual containment" which isolated and punished both Iran and Iraq was not a good one and that we should not have both of them as enemies. Commenting on the fact that they were both enemies a New York Times reporter said that Donald Rumsfeld asked a journalist at a black-tie dinner: "How did it happen that we are on the opposite side of both Iran and Iraq?. It makes no sense." The reporter does not indicate whether or not the question was answered for the secretary but on the off-chance that it was not, I shall venture to do so since it all goes back to the 1980s. The way we got be enemies of both of them was the same way we were friends of both of them back then.

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by Seth Sandronsky

As the year lurches to an end, crises are shaking the capitalist system. Perhaps the major crisis is the end of America’s economic expansion. The growth of the U.S. economy, driven in big part by private debt during the 1990s, allowed American consumers and corporations to buy products from around the world. Such lending and spending required a profitable return for investors, who aren’t in the business of losing money. What is there to learn from the U.S. boom turning to gloom?

Here’s a key point. The system’s fatal flaw is its drive to accumulate too much money (capital) in too few hands—the super rich and corporations that own society’s productive forces. One result is that industry after industry has produced more products than can be sold at a profit to workers and their families.

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by Howard Zinn

I believe two moral judgments can be made about the present "war": The September 11 attack constitutes a crime against humanity and cannot be justified, and the bombing of Afghanistan is also a crime, which cannot be justified.

And yet, voices across the political spectrum, including many on the left, have described this as a "just war." One longtime advocate of peace, Richard Falk, wrote in The Nation that this is "the first truly just war since World War II." Robert Kuttner, another consistent supporter of social justice, declared in The American Prospect that only people on the extreme left could believe this is not a just war.

I have puzzled over this. How can a war be truly just when it involves the daily killing of civilians, when it causes hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children to leave their homes to escape the bombs, when it may not find those who planned the September 11 attacks, and when it will multiply the ranks of people who are angry enough at this country to become terrorists themselves?

This war amounts to a gross violation of human rights, and it will produce the exact opposite of what is wanted: It will not end terrorism; it will proliferate terrorism.

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