It’s amazing how much we’ve learned over the last four years. We’ve learned about how a large segment of the Democratic Party is sympathetic to neo-conservatism and doesn’t care about our civil liberties or the balance of powers. We’ve learned that the mainstream press is more likely to aid and abet an obstruction of justice than they are to report what they know about White House crimes to the America people. We’ve learned just how much New Democrats and the Democratic Leadership Council hate the left-wing of the Democratic Party. We’ve learned that the Washington Post editorial board is little better than the Wall Street Journal editorial board or FOX News. Now, we learn that even the New York Times editorial board is more inclined to amplify the most discredited people in the country than they are to push new voices that have been proven prescient.

The Huffington Post has learned that, in a move bound to create controversy, the New York Times is set to announce that Bill Kristol will become a weekly columnist in 2008.

The New York Times’ editorial space is precious and highly coveted. The decision to award some of that space to William Kristol seems to confirm that neo-conservative principles are so entrenched in our country’s power centers that the weaker the record becomes the more necessary it is to provide them with a platform for their ideas.

If, instead of maintaining a forward military basing strategy (along with the ridiculous and ruinous deficit military spending that makes it possible), the Establishment were laser focused on maintaining a system of Jim Crow segregation…we’d more easily see this for what it is. It’s a deeply unpopular and immoral policy that cannot compete on even playing field in the market of ideas. It therefore becomes incumbent to distort the market by flooding it with fear-mongerers and extremists like Bill Kristol. Kristol’s s job is simple. Sow enough fear and doubt to carve out a place for unending occupation of Iraq, military basing in approximately 150 countries, and the staggering national security spending required to maintain it and to protect us from the inevitable backlash.

It’s a self-sustaining loop of death and waste. And it comes at the expense of human investment and decency. The New York Times should be too humiliated by the flame-out of William Safire in the lead-up to the war in Iraq to take a risk on Bill Kristol. But, apparently, they think maintaining the engine of war and empire is more important than a commitment to honest debate.