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Entry: Don't Look Left Link: http://www.takimag.com/site/article/dont_look_left#543 Post contents: Mr Van Wortendyke: 1. I disagree that Republicans have ever "sold conservatives down the river", because the truth is that the Republican party has seldom if ever been authentically "conservative" in any real sense of that word, ever since its birth in the 1850s. Even the superficially "conservative" Republicans of, say, the 1920s, tended to believe in the American superstition of progress. 2. As I recall, America generally had high hopes for Carter until he proved himself to be an incompetent tergiversator. And do we need to be reminded that the Taliban and Al Qaeda are blowback from the Carter administration's STUPID interventions in the Soviet war in Afghanistan, inspired by the most myopic kind of Cold War hostility to Russia? The Russians were actually doing the West a favour by trying to bring Afghanistan to heel in the 1980s, and if America had any sense at the time it would have lent at least moral support to Russia's efforts, especially since by the 1980s the Russians no longer gave a damn about "Communism" anymore. Now look at the mess we, and Russia, and Europe are in. There is no reason for anyone to be "nostalgic" about the Carter administration. 4. As for Carter or Clinton "knowing their limits", this means nothing unless you say what those "limits" are. Both Presidencies were disasters and the latter one was a disgrace. 5. Obama's character, as evidenced so far, shows him to be far more of a vain fantasist than one who regards "limits" with humility. Sent at: 2008 08 21