Sunday, January 11, 2009

Obama's moral conservatism breaks from Bush's liberalism

It's not really surprising that Obama has come out strongly again against torture, as he was quite clear about it during the campaign.  But what is notable about it is the rejuvenation of a symbolic moral high ground for Democrats on foreign policy.  Because of the various over-reaches of the Bush administration, there are many opportunities now for Democrats to represent traditional American Values

Ironically, the Bush administration with its neo-conservative foreign policy was liberal in its foreign philosophy.  They liberally interpreted the constitution, and liberally applied interrogation techniques against a liberal interpretation of enemy combatants.  Now Obama will bring back some conservatism in his beliefs that we should go back to the international footing that worked so well for us in the past.   Funny, aren't the Republicans usually the ones trying to take us back to the past?

Yes, this return to the good ol' days in foreign policy is a simile to the cultural right wistfully looking back to the good ol' days culturally; back when there were fewer civil rights and abortion wasn't legalized.  How fortunate for Democrats to be able to represent conservatism and international moralism in our moralistic, center-right country

Because the Bush administration felt that the so-called War on Terror gave them the excuse to put our highly-regarded values on hold, they gave the incoming Obama administration a political gift -- the gift of recapturing our traditional foreign policy values, and the opportunity lead our nation back to our moral comfort zone.