Big news in the publishing world the last month has been rumblings about the “imminent” (now confirmed) demise of the conser… — scratch that — neoconservative “flagship” (ingrained chutzpah would tolerate nothing less) known as The Weekly Standard. It sprang to life 23 years ago, in near lockstep with its contemporary the (since dissolved) Project For A New American Century.
Both had the same goals, though couched in high-minded, erudite buzz phrases such as a foreign policy that “boldly…promotes American principles abroad” (trans: crush and subjugate countries that resist the West’s peculiar institution of modern enslavement known as private central banking); shouldering the “responsibilities of global leadership of the costs…associated with its exercise” (trans: rapidly expand US defense spending until it consumes more than half of GDP while green-lighting the most extravagant, wasteful, corrupt system of military procurement in history, simultaneously diverting tax dollars from line items that used to be devoted to infrastructure — roads, aqueducts, bridges, hospitals, schools). To do otherwise, in the deranged illogic of these self-appointed armchair warhawks, would “…invite challenges to our fundamental interests” (trans: our “interests” being to install puppet dictators on recalcitrant peoples crushed by US-led sanctions, if not to outright invade and destroy their civilian populations).
In a more chivalrous, less duplicitous age this policy would be known as “You and he fight; I’ll hold your cloak”. The Standard’s ignominious demise could not be more welcomed by those of us who bizarrely feel that our leaders should put America (and the horrendous tribute they extort from us yearly) to work for this country first, second and third, and not in the service of Israel-Firsters, the Pentagon and defense contractors having orgasmic tremors at the prospect of every coming fiscal year.