Opinion: In today’s pages: Values revisited
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In Monday’s editorial pages, the Times revisits last year’s series on values, which was written to help identify what to look for in a presidential candidate. Now, with George W. Bush on the way out and Barack Obama on the way in, we look back and we look forward and find that we prefer the view ahead.
We have lived through eight grim, violent and disheartening years. Intellectual prowess has been ridiculed, achievement belittled and virtue sacrificed for gain. It’s time to begin again.
On the Op-Ed page, a discouraging word about Bush policies from the other end. Richard A. Viguerie warns against the continuing embrace by conservatives, including Bush, William Kristol and Mike Huckabee, of what he calls big-government conservatism. Its fruits: No Child Left Behind, Medicare prescription drug benefits, deficits, and now, the bailouts.
Quoting Tennyson and (by way of Shakespeare) King Henry V, Viguerie gives his version of the St. Crispin’s Day speech on behalf of the limited-government, Barry Goldwater, libertarianish wing of American conservatism:
Whether we win or lose, future generations will celebrate us as those who fought for freedom at a crucial time in our nation’s history. No one can guarantee victory. But if we do not fight, we guarantee defeat.
An aside here: Look for Viguerie’s reference to ‘the coming battle with Chicagoism.’ Chicagoism? We’re starting to hear that word a lot, but -- is it a reference to Milton Friedman and the ‘Chicago school’ of economics, which Viguerie would presumably cheer -- or to Barack Obama and what conservatives in the campaign suggested was a kind of neo-socialist approach? Is it a battle for Chicagoism or against it? Or a battle for the use of the word?
If you’re excited by, angered at or intrigued with Viguerie, check out his website and blog, ConservativeHQ.com, and his book, Conservatives Betrayed: How George W. Bush and Other Big Government Republicans Hijacked the Conservative Cause. And see what Viguerie has had to say in past Times Op-Ed pages.
Los Angeles writer Robert David Jaffee’s touching and humorous accounts of living with and overcoming mental illness have graced the Times Op-Ed pages in the past. Now Jaffee is back with an update in which he acknowledges that (notwithstanding respect for the civil rights of the ill), forced treatment may be the best thing for some, including himself.
I can’t speak to what’s right for everyone. But I do know that for me, being involuntarily held at the hospital in 1999 allowed me to get back on my medication -- and may have saved my life.
Last but not least, columnist Gregory Rodriguez admits to watching movies that may, according to a recent study, be ruining his love life.