Do, by not doing...

Mike Fay suggested I start this blog... I figured I should just blame him and get it over with. ;-)

He's got an excellent post on his blog Fire and Ice, it covers a bit of ground but is certainly worth reading (as is everything I've read on his blog.) The part that got me thinking, again, about the upside down nature of the present times was this bit concerning John Edwards.

So let me see if I've got him right....getting everyone in the world to think America is swell again is the cure for international jihad. And, throwing more money at poor people will stop poverty. The moral high ground is apparently reached through good PR rather than confronting evil. Telling everyone that we're all about democracy and a just world needs to replace actually doing something concrete about it. How zen! Do by not doing grasshopper. Stop evil by not stopping evil! Stop poverty by paying the poor for being poor!

This was my response.

I think that sometimes, rather than neo-cons, the more common creature is a neo-liberal... as in classical liberalism.

Promoting liberty and democracy, certainly rule of law rather than by despot, *believing* that all people are important and valuable, not just Americans (how often have we been told that Iraq is not worth a single American life?), and that all those people, minorities in this country or goat herders and date farmers elsewhere are entirely capable as human beings to achieve what any of us can achieve... all those things are liberal beliefs and values.