Rescuing Conservatives from Burning Buildings

Paul Craig Roberts: Nothing to Fear But Bush Himself

They keep coming... Another op-ed piece by another old-school conservative who is looking on in disbelief as the Bush Administration sows the seeds for armageddon in the fertile crescent.

This time it's Paul Craig Roberts, former Reagan Administration cabinet member, Wall Street Journal Associate Editor and Contributing Editor of National Review. (He wrote a piece in October called The Brownshirting of America and was dismissed at the time as a "moonbat.")

Like the patriot conservative "turncoats" before him, he will be attacked by the right-wing radio talkshow hosts and the right-wing blogosphere. He'll get a wave of hateful emails telling him that he should be arrested, imprisoned, tried for treason or shot. Angry conservative Bush-worshippers will tell each other that he is yet another senile old man who has lost his mind - too much Hollywood, too much liberalism.

The sad thing is that these op-ed pieces being written by thoughtful conservatives critical of the war aren't being written for people like me. I'm already on board the anti-war train. These thoughtful conservatives who, like me, happen to see their country being destroyed as well, are trying to alert their fellow conservatives. Trying to wake them up. It is something like an intervention for drug-addicted friend. A group of friends corner the addict in a room and confront him with the realities of his problem, but he doesn't want to hear it. It is the friends' problem - not his. He pulls himself away and storms out of the room and drives off in a drug-addled state. The next time his friends see him is at the coroner's office.

One night probably 15 years ago when I was in college in Berkeley, I was driving home from a party with a housemate in the wee hours of the morning. We were driving down Solano Avenue in the dark and it was deserted at that hour.

As we drove down Solano, we could see the flashing lights of fire trucks and police cars many blocks down. "I wonder if the fire is on Steve's block?" I asked.

Sure enough, it was. Our friend Steve and his roommates lived in an apartment over a bookstore in the middle of this short city block. Two doors down from them on the corner of the block was a liquor store and it was on fire - a raging inferno - not anything to sneeze at. As it was a commercial block/street, the firemen weren't focused on the fact that there were people in the building.

We parked and let ourselves into Steve's apartment and found Steve and his roommates passed out drunk, comme d'habitude, in their beds and on the couches. We tried to wake them up but they were OUT. We grabbed Steve, lifted him up, shook him awake and yelled at him, "STEVE! THE BUILDING IS ON FIRE!"

Steve, through squinty stoned-red 3/4 closed eyes said, "Yeah, yeah, yeah..." and promptly passed out again, collapsing back on his bed.

Meanwhile, flames were shooting out of the roof of the building 30 feet away from Steve's attic apartment window.

Desperate times call for desperate measures... My roommate ran into the kitchen and filled a saucepan with cold water and dumped it in Steve's face, which brought him back to life immediately.

"Steve! The building is on fire!"

"Holy shit!"

Within minutes we had Steve, his roommates and most of their valuables out on the sidewalk across the street in front of the burning building.

It was one hell of a fire, but the building was saved, thank god, along with Steve's roommates, apartment and things.

Will old-school conservatives be able to save their conservative brethren from the fire that threatens to consume us? Right now, they aren't even aware that they need to be saved.

The world is on fire! Yeah, yeah, yeah.

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