{"id":270,"date":"2006-11-02T09:31:13","date_gmt":"2006-11-02T13:31:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/?p=270"},"modified":"2006-11-14T14:17:06","modified_gmt":"2006-11-14T18:17:06","slug":"differences-without-distinctions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/?p=270","title":{"rendered":"Differences without distinctions"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>According to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-dyn\/content\/article\/2006\/11\/01\/AR2006110102972.html\">Robert Kagan<\/a>, the Democrats are the same as Republicans, er &#8220;fundamentally&#8221;:<\/p>\n<p>>Although [the Democrats] pretend they have a fundamental doctrinal dispute with the Bush administration, their recommendations are less far-reaching. They argue that the United States should generally try to be nicer, employ more &#8220;soft power&#8221; and be more effective when it employs &#8220;hard power.&#8221; That may be good advice, but it hardly qualifies as an alternative doctrine.<\/p>\n<p>What&#8217;s one reason there isn&#8217;t much of a difference?<\/p>\n<p>><strong>Even<\/strong> today leading Democrats who oppose the Iraq war do not oppose the idea of war itself or its utility. They&#8217;re not even denouncing a defense budget approaching $500 billion per year.<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s setting the bar for substantial difference so high that only avowed pacifists will qualify for being the opposition party.  At bottom, rhetorical strategy consists in his claiming for the Republicans every foreign policy view short of radical anti-american opposition. This strategy at once demonizes and trivializes sensible opposition to this administrations disasterous policies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>According to Robert Kagan, the Democrats are the same as Republicans, er &#8220;fundamentally&#8221;: >Although [the Democrats] pretend they have a fundamental doctrinal dispute with the Bush administration, their recommendations are less far-reaching. They argue that the United States should generally try to be nicer, employ more &#8220;soft power&#8221; and be more effective when it employs &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/?p=270\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Differences without distinctions<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,9,51,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-270","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-equivocation","category-false-dichotomy","category-robert-kagan","category-straw-man"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=270"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=270"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=270"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=270"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}