While I just recently started reading this book, and it was a late addition to my readings essay list of books I wanted to use, this is a very good book. A collection of essays from Paul Krugman’s years at the New York Times, and some before he started there, give insight into the “revolutionary power” we face in the current administration. The third and final installment of my PolySci readings essay can be found below. Be sure to read part 1 and part 2 as well.

When Paul Krugman finished the introduction to the hardback edition of The Great Unraveling, US forces had just taken Baghdad. Krugman had went out on a limb, and as he states, ?I went beyond criticism of specific policies to argue that the Bush administration poses a challenge to America as we know it, that Bush represents a ?revolutionary power? that aims at a transformation of American politics? (Krugman, xv). Krugman goes on to explain how the current administration is the first to ever cut taxes in the face of a war. The Bush administrations strategy of ?starve the beast? has cut the revenue and pushed us into the largest deficit ever. This is now being used as an excuse to cut, or reform, social programs that are popular with the public, but not with conservatives on the right. This can be seen in the current push to reform social security with private accounts.

Krugman attempts to explain how it was possible for our country, a country with so much going for it, to go downhill so fast, and why leaders in the private sector and government made such incredibly bad decisions. The book is a collection of columns that Krugman wrote for The New York Times between January 2000 and January 2003. He promises that taken as a whole these columns tell a coherent story.

Between 1992 and 2000, 32 million workers were added to U.S. companies and unemployment fell to a 30-year low. Poverty also sharply fell for the first time since 1960s.

Krugman asks the question, what went wrong? ?The Onion, a satirical weekly, published the mock news story for January 18, 2001, reporting President-elect George W. Bush declaring, ?Our long national nightmare of peace and prosperity is over.? And so it has turned out.? (Krugman, xxxiii). Krugman suggests the turning point for many people was September 11, 2001, but he states for him, the turn was much slower and broader than that. He states we knew people were out to attack us in our own country; it wasn?t that big of a surprise when they finally managed to do that. ?The real surprise was the failure of leadership, private and public, right here at home? (Krugman, xxxiii).

Krugman calls the Bush administration a ?revolutionary power?, that is, they are a power that does not accept the current political system?s legitimacy. He discovered a book that describes this situation almost perfectly. ?It?s not a new book by a liberal, writing about contemporary America; it?s an old book by, of all people, Henry Kissinger, about nineteenth-century diplomacy? (Krugman, 5). Krugman claims Kissinger had it right: ?people who have been accustomed to stability can?t bring themselves to believe what is happening when faced with a revolutionary power, and are therefore ineffective in opposing it.? (Krugman, 12)

Krugmans columns read like a snapshot in time, from the soaring stock market uneasiness of 1997 to the post September 11th environment we live in now. Accounting scandals, hidden agendas and revolutionary powers, Krugman paints the bleak picture of how we got here, and why no one has noticed until it was too late.

Hitchens and Krugman both point out failings in our current political leaders, and even hint at the much bigger problem of a failing of the media. As the people we entrust with delivering us with the truth, the current administration has used the media?s old standing tradition of pointing out both-sides of an opinion while never really calling any government proposal a flat-out lie. This has enabled the current administration to hide its ultimate motives behind falsehoods and phony numbers that don?t add up to their stated purpose. If there was a reporter brave enough to stand out from the crowd, the right-wing media would quickly label them as conspiracy theorists or unpatriotic to question the current administrations handling of a particular problem. We have lost our way in this new era that has been swept in underneath us. Hopefully we can find our way once again before it is too late.

Today I turned 25. Woo, I guess. I also added album art to my complete mp3 collection. W00 again. Tomorrow: a night full of drunken drinking fun, HOORAY!

This second part to my PolySci readings essay is focused on Love, Poverty, and War by Christopher Hitchens.

Love, Poverty, and War is a collection of journeys and essays written by Christopher Hitchens. Hitchens reminds us of an antique saying, that I think was his basis for this collection of writings, in his introduction, ?a man?s life is incomplete unless or until he has tasted love, poverty, and war? (Hitchens, xi). Some have claimed, as Hitchens points out, that people say there is too little of the first ?condition? while the second and third have an over abundance. Hitchens then poses the awkward question ?Can one love a country?? (Hitchens, xiv), to which he answers that in his youth in England; this was something that didn?t have to be affirmed publicly. In a post September 11th America, Hitchens has become a defender of his adopted country.

I was more interested in the Poverty and War sections of this book, and those were the areas I focused in reading. In Hitchens? piece Against Rationalization he speaks of his time in the Pakistan-Afghanistan frontier as the Red Army was being defeated. He has met his guide, and the faction he witnessed again, ?in one form or another, the people who leveled the World Trade Center are the same people who threw acid in the faces of unveiled women in Kabul and Karachi, who maimed and eviscerated two of the translators of The Satanic Verses and who machine-gunned architectural tourists at Luxor? (Hitchens, 411-412).

Hitchens suggests that ?now is as good a time as ever to revisit the history of the Crusades? (Hitchens, 413), as what ?the bombers of Manhattan abominate about ?The West,? to put it in a phrase, is not what Western liberals don?t like and can?t defend about their own system, but what they do like about it and must defend: its emancipated women, its scientific inquiry, its separation of religion from the state? (Hitchens, 413).

Hitchens then goes on to dismantle ?human intelligence? as ?the very faculty in which our ruling class is most deficient? (Hitchens, 413). Stating the $43 million given to the Taliban for assistance of fundamentalism in the ?war on drugs?, ?missile defense? and ?Democrats who seek to occupy the void ?behind the president?(Hitchens, 413), are all failings of our leaders.

Even critical of his own fellow members of ?the left?, Hitchens takes on and debunks some of the myths and obvious omissions to the extremely popular film Fahrenheit 9/11 in his article Unfairenheit 9/11: The Lies of Michael Moore. He starts off the piece recalling his days at The Nation when he said ?How many times, in my old days at The Nation magazine, did I hear wistful and semienvious ruminations? Where was the radical Firing Line show? Who will be our Rush Limbaugh? I used privately to hope that the emphasis, if the comrades ever got around to it, would be on the first of those and not the second.? (Hitchens, 289). He then goes to say about the film itself, ?To describe this film as dishonest and demagogic would almost be to promote those terms to the level of respectability. To describe this film as a piece of crap would be to run the risk of discourse that would never again rise above the excremental.? (Hitchens, 289).

He goes on to debunk six listed points, as well as point out some of the glaring omissions by Moore as well as dissecting the rapid-fire delivery in which Moore attempts to confuse and hastily move the audience past the contradictions. ?Either the Saudis run U.S. policy (through family ties or overwhelming economic interest), or they do not.? (Hitchens, 291). However, Hitchens? also compliments Moore?s film for the things it exposes the American audience to. ?I have already said that Moore?s film has the staunch courage to mock Bush for his verbal infelicity. Yet it?s much, much braver than that. From Fahrenheit 9/11 you can clean even more astounding and hidden disclosures, such as the capitalist nature of Ameircan society, the existence of Eisenhower?s ?military-industrial complex,? and the use of ?spin? in the presentation of our politicians. It?s high time someone had the nerve to point this out.? (Hitchens, 296).

I’m working on my PolySci readings essay, and I have finished the first half of it, the conservative half. I still have some reading to do to balance the paper, and as that will be a few days away, I thought I’d take the time to go ahead and post the first half of the essay before it’s completely polished.

The Right Nation written by John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge examines the conservative movement?s power, which has veered America sharply to the right. Now we are a distinctly more conservative nation than compared with past administrations. They explore the factions that influence power in the Republican Party, and how the party has been able to expand conservative values into America?s new foreign policy.

The United States sides to the conservative on most of the controversies that divide global opinion. ?America tolerates lower levels of government spending than other advanced countries, and far higher levels of inequality, at least in terms of wealth. One in six American households earned less than 35 percent of the median income in 2002? (Micklethwait/Wooldridge, 7). And in terms of healthcare for its citizens, ?America is the only developed nation that does not have full government-supporeed health-care system, and the only Western democracy that does not provide child support to all families. America is one of only two countries in the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development that does not provide paid maternity leave? (Micklethwait/Wooldridge, 7).

Just fifty years ago the power of the Right was considerably less of an influence than it is today. The Great Depression and the Second World War had put its two great ideas to rest. Moderate progressives controlled the head of the Republican Party and President Eisenhower appointed liberal Republican Earl Warren to the Supreme Court. The platforms of Richard Nixon and Jack Kennedy were almost identical in the 1960 presidential race.

Barry Goldwater?s failed presidential campaign in 1964 would go on to influence the Republican Party extraordinarily. ?The senator from Arizona shifted the balance of power in the party westward, to a region where the American dream was being refashioned by sunlight and open space? (Micklethwait/Wooldridge, 9).

Mickletwait and Wooldridge argue that conservatism explains why America is different. America, they say, has produced a far more potent conservative movement than anything else and America as a whole is a conservative place. ?Most Americans still do not realize how extraordinary their brand of conservatism is? (Mickletwait/Wooldridge, 11). While the left has their equivalents in other nations, there are few conservative talk-radio shows and only a handful of Christian radio stations in Europe.

The most recent return to conservative power in America would be George W. Bush?s administration. ?Bush certainly looked an Accidental President? (Mickletwait/Wooldridge, 127) as The Econimist had dubbed him. Bush was able to bring the conservative ideology in a much more tolerant package than America had seen. That coupled with Al Gore?s drifting from the Eisenhower Republicanism of Bill Clinton saw voters willing to take a bet on Bush.

Bush?s strategy of cutting taxes while increasing spending was first attempted in Texas, and resulted in a $10 billion hole in the Texas budget. Bush also kept many of the closest advisors around him Texans. Karl Rove, Karen Hughes, and Alberto Gonzales are all Texans with ties to previous Bush campaigns. However, the influence of Texas is less about people and more to do with his state of mind. Early in his first term he spent as much time as he could at his ranch in Crawford. Texas is conservative America?s America. The ?characteristics, good and bad, that make America distinctive ? its size and diversity, its optimism and self-confidence, its materialism and braggadocio, its incredible ability to make something out of nothing, its violence and religiosity ? and you see them in their purest form in Texas? (Mickletwait/Wooldridge, 135).

Texas also provides the best introduction to Bush?s conservatism. Two particular things that have always loomed large in Bush?s makeup are business and religion. Bush was the first president with an MBA, and he appointed more CEOs to his cabinet than any previous president. ?Bush was the businessman?s choice? (Mickletwait/Wooldridge, 143). ?Pandering to businesspeople is hardly new in American politics, but it is noticeable how many of the shakier periods of the Bush presidency have been produced by either pandering or the appearance of it? (Mickletwait/Wooldridge, 144).

Religion also influences Bush?s decisions, and ?Bush frequently speaks in religious terms, sometimes movingly so, sometimes disastrously so?. ?The influence of religion also pervades the White House? (Mickletwait/Wooldridge, 145). Religious ties can be found in many of Bush?s closest advisors. Bush is careful to choose when he pushes religious beliefs into policy; he has been much bolder in promoting Christian ideas in areas that are less likely to cost him votes.

Conservatives complained for decades that it was impossible to get their message on television. Under Bush, Fox News replaced CNN as the most popular news channel in 2002 giving the conservatives a way to spread their ideas. Fox used cheap talking heads rather than expensive foreign reporting and used the talking heads to wrestle each other intellectually. ?One point that should not be underestimated about Fox is that, for all its partisanship, much of its political reporting is first-rate? (Mickletwait/Wooldridge, 164).

The authors point out that one of the reasons the Right won is that they were clear in getting their message out. ?The conservative foundations know exactly what they want?to change the world in a conservative direction. And they know exactly how they want to achieve their aim?by bringing their ideas to bear on policy making? (Mickletwait/Wooldridge, 166).