Voters rejected GOP extremism

To the editor:Interpretations of the meaning of the election are many. In an act of pure blind wishful thinking, Chad Craft claimed it a victory for conservatism while Joe Martin inanely saw it as a victory for socialism. I suggest a different interpretation.

The names Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Perle, Armitage, Bolton, Abrams, Libby and Feith are familiar to anyone following U.S. politics and the White House. These were the folks selected by George Bush to govern our country. They are also prominent members of a little-known but not secret group formed in the 1990s called the Project for A New American Century (search "PNAC" on the Web). They promoted the invasion and occupation of Iraq when Bush was an unknown Texas governor. They advocate the use of American military power to bring foreign nations under the dominance of U.S. power to serve U.S. corporate interests. Their guru was political philosopher Leo Strauss who argued that government should be in the hands of elites who use power for their own purposes, who may use religion and fear to maintain a passive populous and who may reasonably use deceit and state power to suppress opposition.

By evicting Republicans from office (a party that had largely been taken over in Washington by PNAC), the electorate recognized and repudiated the extremism of PNAC. Let's hope reason returns to Republicanism across the country so the rational discourse of 30 years ago can be reborn. We all live on the planet -- its conservation and our future demand cooperation.

ALAN R.P. JOURNET, Cape Girardeau