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Bruce Bartlett, a Republican operative, was canned on Monday as a senior fellow at the National Center for Policy Analysis, a conservative think tank based in Dallas. In a statement, the organization said the decision was made after Mr. Bartlett supplied its president, John Goodman, with the manuscript of his upcoming book, "The Impostor: How George W. Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy."
The dimissal of Bartlett is "Exhibit A" of why conservative "ideas" can't be taken seriously and almost always lead to disaster. In most think tanks or universities, free thinking is encouraged. But in conservatives settings, those who deviate from the strict party line are ostracized and fired. Much of this has to do with the grant making process. Right wing foundations tell "researchers" and "thinkers" the results they want, so the job of these "experts" is to fix intelligence to support the point of view paid for by a foundation.
Bartlett had the nerve to stray off course and tell the truth. For this, he was made to pay the consequences. Conservatives want to be taken seriously in academia, but until they learn the difference between scholarship and dollarship, which is selling one's mind to the highest right wing bidder, they will continue to be a laughing stock.
8 Comments:
How wrong you are. We conservatives have just as much smarts as anyone else. We get a bad wrap because we live in the south and the cenralized part of the nation. Liberals are the dumb ones who have ruined the nation with their Commonist ideas.
Harvard is going downhill. Look at who is rising - Southern Methodist University. Harriet Miers went to SMU. That shows the intellectual gravity is shifting southward. Give it up libs - we control the world!
So there you have it from the horse's mouth. Will equates equal/civil rights for all, ergo democracy with communism. Having said that, then he obviously doesn't believe in the constitution guaranteeing equality and justice for all. Interesting.
No, Will, you conservatives do not get a bad "wrap" because of the fact that you live in the South. You get a bad "wrap" because you DON'T have "as much smarts" as everyone else, as is clearly evidenced by your misspelling of the words "Commonist" and "cenralized".
posted by Chris L., at
10/18/2005 1:16 PM
The word conservative basically means *no change*, so why would they promote or allow free thinking? Their "think tanks" are only to find ways to turn back the clock. And Will, comparing Harvard to southern methodist is like comparing NASA to Taggarts driving school. The only think Harriet learned at SM, was how to be an obsequious lickspittle to her master, bush. Gary (NJ)
posted by Anonymous, at
10/18/2005 2:07 PM
Harriet Miers is an unstable, unreliable, unsuitable choice for the supreme court, period. In 1989, she voted to ban abortion and only several days ago, she told Sen. Chuch Schumer (D) NY, that she would not overturn Roe v. Wade. Schumer felt far more uneasy listening to her responses than anything John Roberts told him.
Conservatives should go live in Iran, I think they'd find more in common with that ideology than democracy and what it stands for. Its so hard to tell the difference today.
It is a huge problem for us, at the moment, that "conservative" nowadays means ultra-right wing, both in business and in social policy. Real conservatives like, say John McCain, are way on the outer fringes of the Republican party. Right now, we don't like it because the ultra-right wing types have the power. But they are losing it - look at all the in-fighting over the Miers nomination. They are ultimately going to do themselves in by ousting all intelligent, reasonable thinking people from the power scene. It's coming. They have overreached, and they are going to crumble.
