Wishing the U. S. Was More Normal

Matthew Yglesias writes from Germany that "one of the oddest things about being in Germany during an election campaign is that I’m pretty sure I have right-of-center views relative to German politics."

But we're the weird ones, not the Germans.

Matthew Yglesias is a liberal blogger who counts as part of the left-wing of the Democratic Party in the U. S. As a blogger for ThinkProgress and journalist for several left-wing news outlets, Yglesias is as wired into the left-wing media establishment as he can be. But Yglesias would still be a conservative in Germany. Probably in France, Britain, Italy, Spain, and the Scandanavian countries as well.

That means the U. S. has a conservative left, a very conservative middle, and an ultra-conservative right.

Really, we could stand to be more like the rest of the advanced industrial world.

The Need for Neo-Con Bashing

Matthew Yglesias has an important post about the necessity neo-con bashing up on his web site. I quote it in full.

Greg Djerejian offers up something of a mea culpa and something of a defense against Jeff Weintraub’s charge of “rather tiresome ritual ‘neocon’-bashing which is becoming too much of a reflex in some quarters.”

It’s actually true that neocon bashing is a bit on the tiresome side. That said, I think it really has to be understood as a vital social necessity. Adherents of a deranged and sociopoathic “neocon” conception of America’s role in the world continue to be tremendously influential in our society. They have columns at The Washington Post and dominate the foreign policy coverage on Fox News. They have The Weekly Standard and Commentary and a healthy slice of The New Republic. And most important, as best as anyone can tell their ideas remain utterly dominant in the Republican Party. Their intra-party critics like Colin Powell, rather than winning intra-party arguments seem to be simply drifting out of the GOP coalition.

This is a dangerous situation. In the United States, the opposition party is always one ill-timed recession or political scandal from taking power. So a set of ideas that dominates one such party is something you need to keep a watchful eye on, no matter how marginalized that party may seem at any particular moment.

It's just important to remember that neo-cons like William Kristol and John Bolton are sociopathic and deranged. Likewise, the fact that these men occupy significant positions within the American policy elites makes the United States a constant source of danger to the world.

Yglesias does us all a service by reminding us of these facts.