Response To Conservative Beliefs
General Mark Milley
My politically conservative mother asked me to read this article by historian and author Victor Hanson, which I did. I have to say that I wasn’t too impressed; it’s just the normal conservative litany of observations that we hear on Fox News and Newsmax. I had expected much more rigor in defense of his beliefs, rather than a simple statement of the beliefs themselves, as follows:
The universities controlling young people’s thoughts and depriving us all of free speech. Same with big tech companies. Immigration out of control. The specter of runaway inflation. A woke military that is too feminized to defend the nation. Public spending on climate change mitigation covertly disguised as “infrastructure.”
My views:
It is the job of universities to teach us to think critically, and to protect us from hateful nonsense. That’s what we pay them to do. If I were to go to my alma mater’s history department and ask them to let me come on campus and give a lecture on Holocaust denial, they’d tell me to take a hike. I’d get the same response from the physics department to my request to present my flat Earth theory. The First Amendment gives me the right to stand on a street corner with a bullhorn and make a jackass out of myself, but it doesn’t require an institution of higher learning to invite me on their campus to affront their students with lies.
Big tech is rightfully responding to the spate of disinformation that is responsible for insurrections like Jan. 6th. Promoting the lie that the election was stolen and that our democracy has been usurped by the Deep State (or whatever) is driving the country to violent uprising. Private organizations like Facebook have every right (some may say the duty) to remove content that violates its terms of service, and the stolen election narrative is only one good example. Anti-vaxxer nonsense that is actively killing people is another.
Immigration is a huge, massively complicated challenge, though there is certainly controversy regarding how bad the situation is, and concern that it’s being blown out of proportion for political gain by the Republicans. In any case, I don’t have the answer, other than to say that fixing it will require, at a minimum, cooperation from both sides of the aisle. We seem to be capable of nothing better than finger-pointing.
The Fed is in charge of dealing with inflation via monetary and fiscal policy. The price of gasoline is a function of these, as well as supply and demand, market forces that Joe Biden has nothing to do with.
When the four-star generals explain how the U.S. military works, I trust what they’re saying, even though it’s not good enough for Tucker Carlson, who, on his Fox News program, referred to Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, as a “stupid pig.” Carlson is lucky Milley didn’t visit the Fox studio and leave little pieces of the spoiled rich-kid all over the floor and walls.
There will always be a debate about public spending, and maybe that’s for the best. The current infrastructure bill is just one more opportunity to bicker. As we saw during the Trump administration, the GOP doesn’t object to massive public spending, as long it’s focused on making rich people richer and provides no value for the common American. Obviously, the political right, given its belief in the folly of climate change mitigation, is going to push back here. It’s a shame that we’re so hell-bent on obstructing human civilization’s attempt to prevent catastrophe, but I guess that’s just the way it goes.
Again, I had expected more. Perhaps that’s “my bad.”
