The Gun-Toting Liberal (that card-carrying member of both the ACLU and the NRA) points out that while Republicans can't seem to stop talking about Hollywood/Limousine Liberals and how Sean Penn needs to shut up, they make whatever use of Hollywood types (when they can find any) to promote their own causes.
[quote begins from The Gun Toting Liberal: Hollywood's Loudest Critics Are Predictably Turning Once Again to (You Guessed It) Hollywood for Their Leadership]
This Washington Post article by Lieberman (linked here and quoted below) contains the sort of rhetoric I most distrust: it sounds persuasive, but is riddled with logical fallacies.
"One choice---stand, fight, and win." I loathe catchphrases partly because they provoke visceral responses without filling in the blanks. Of COURSE we all like to "win." Furthermore, I don't know a single soul from either party who thinks we should, say, surrender to Al-Quaeda, or give up doing everything in our power to protect our people. But among the ways of addressing with this pressing problem, "going to war in Iraq" was never at the top of the list of rational solutions.
"Stand, fight, and win"? Okay, "fight" I understand, but what about the notion of "standing"? To fight Al-Quaeda, we don't necessarily have to be in Iraq; as the Bush Administration itself is wont to say, Al-Quaeda is a worldwide problem. When Lieberman talks about standing, he means against Al-Quaeda and implies that the only way or place to do it is in Iraq. Why?
And if we "win," what exactly do we win? What is it we are fighting for? If it's the elimination of the baddies, the Iraq connection is a connection we created ourselves by opening up a power vacuum. If we stand, fight, and win in Iraq against AQ, the organization won't disappear, even though some of the individual operatives do. So won't they just carry the fight elsewhere?
As for fighting to secure the "freedom" of the "Iraqui people" (a diverse group with extremely divergent goals all of whom interpret "freedom" differently), this is not something I think you can do for other people. We owe them something, having incurred a debt, but it can't be paid off with freedom or democracy. Those are things people have to want. You can't pay the price of freedom for someone else, not really. If they ask you to help, you can help---but only up to a point.
Or is this what we "win"? "We fight them there so we don't have to fight them here," people tell me. But that's bad logic as well, unless the plan is to go on fighting them in perpetuity. Furthermore, fighting people tends to make not only them but also their friends and relatives very, very angry. And tearing up a country's infrastructure and killing civilians----even when it's in a good cause---makes them angry as well. So if we fight in Iraq to stop them from bringing the war over here, we certainly need to make up our minds to stay there forever because if we ever stop----or if we ever win or "win"----we will, according to that reasoning, have to fight them here. Which would by definition mean we hadn't won at all.
I am so sick of the elisions and evasions and glib slogans. Reid was wrong to say we've "lost" in Iraq because there was never in fact anything to win; and Leiberman is wrong to tell us that we have only one choice because one choice means no choices, and that's clearly not the case. We can make other choices. Whether we should or not is the question.
I didn't want the damned war in the first place, but since we started it, I do feel a certain sense of responsibility to the Iraqui people. At this juncture, I am not convinced that the best way we can serve them is doing more of what we're doing instead of, you know, SOMETHING ELSE. I am not even sure anymore how to measure "progress" of the sort Lieberman refers to because I don't understand what it is we're supposed to be accomplishing. Even assuming progress, I doubt it will be an unbroken line (<understatement of the year). In any case, I'm not likely to listen to or take seriously any member of the party that cynically manipulated the country into this war for a variety of hazy/endlessly reframed objectives that don't bear thinking about. And I'm not likely to listen, either, to that party's enablers. Fool me once, etc.
CONTRA. Since writing this, I found this excellent posting in the blog Maverick Views which perhaps reflects the view of those who see Lieberman's point. I like it because I think it nails down what I'd call a centrist view of the Iraq situation (one I don't think I share any longer).
An excerpt from Lieberman's statement---reasonable seeming but wrong----is quoted below:
Continue reading "Note to Joe Lieberman: "Stand, Fight, and Win" is an INCOMPLETE SENTENCE." »
Yes; and? I thought we'd kind of worked out by now that there are significant drawbacks to all of those things. No? Though I am not sure about "interrogation" because I don't know what he means. I am sure most Dems are all for aggressive interrogation short of acts that civilized countries agree constitute "torture," so I'm not sure what he means here unless he means the sort of thing John Warner and Lyndsay Graham and McCain were worried about once upon a time.
As for "waving the white flag," I don't think that's what the Dems mean to do at all. What was it Bush said? MISSION ACCOMPLISHED! Saddam's gone and Al-Quaeda rushed in to fill the power vacuum as everyone but the Administration knew it would. Are we really supposed to stay there till that's all settled? Because that'll take years. All I'm saying is: consider your priorities carefully, good people.
[quote begins from The Politico by Roger Simon, Giuliani 9-11 Remark Draws Angry Reply]
"If any Republican is elected president -- and I think, obviously, I would be the best at this -- we will remain on offense and will anticipate what (the terrorists) will do and try to stop them before they do it," Giuliani said....
If we are on defense (with a Democratic president), we will have more losses and it will go on longer."
"I listen a little to the Democrats, and if one of them gets elected, we are going on defense," Giuliani continued. "We will wave the white flag on Iraq. We will cut back on the Patriot Act, electronic surveillance, interrogation and we will be back to our pre-Sept. 11 attitude of defense....
"The Democrats do not understand the full nature and scope of the terrorist war against us."
After his speech to the Rockingham County Lincoln Day Dinner, I asked him about his statements and Giuliani said flatly: "America will be safer with a Republican president."...
"This war ends when they stop coming here to kill us!" Giuliani said in his speech. "Never, ever again will this country ever be on defense waiting for (terrorists) to attack us if I have anything to say about it. And make no mistake, the Democrats want to put us back on defense!"
[quote ends]
From "the divine Ms. Althouse" at Althouse: "And Then Dick Cheney Appeared and All the Angels Sang."
In a subsequent note, she quotes approvingly from Hitch (I am so sorry, but I just can't stop; Christopher Hitchens, as I've said, is an old love gone horribly wrong) at Slate regarding the sentimentalizing of the Virginia Tech massacre. "Suck It Up: After the shootings came an orgy of mawkishness, sloppiness, and false sentiment." Hitchens: "Those birds were singing just as loudly and just as sweetly when the bullets were finding their targets."
She's not wrong and neither is he.
Michelle Tsai at Slate wants to know what happens to all the babies who used to be in Limbo, now that the Vatican has shut down the day care division. Does she really not know? Wings sprout from their downy shoulders and they shoot on up straight to Heaven, where even now the angels are laying in a supply of eco-safe diapers.
I'm more interested myself in the question of whether they are stuck being babies for all the rest of eternity. In Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven Mark Twain's protagonist encounters a weeping mother who has just met her now fully grown up (grown up intellectually too) lost babe, whom she now realizes she will NOT in fact ever hold in her arms again and who has advanced so far beyond her that they can't even hold a conversation.
On a related note, HITCHENS is now prepared to set those of us still credulous straight on the subject of religion generally, to loud cheers from my (atheist) spouse. Yes, God is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything is now available and will knock the communion wafers/prayer books right out of the hands of the non-Godless on the Left and the Right. (Speaking of The Church of Ann Coulter, I think Jethro Tull got it right way back in the days when Aqualung was new: "If Jesus saves/Then he'd better save himself/From the gory glory-seekers/Who use his name in death.") Somebody somewhere (I glimpsed the quote out of the corner of my eye while scrolling through the references) stated that the work is in the tradition of Bertrand Russell ("Why I am not a Christian.") Well, I have always preferred the work of Russell's great friend, Alfred North Whitehead.
Judging by the excerpt I saw, this may be a Dawkins-like attack on God-as-imagined-by-the-credulous. [ Re: Dawkins there's something inherently naive about attacking the naive religious beliefs of a certain type of naive Christian (or other sort of believer).] But I'll wait for more information on Hitchens' book before I issue any judgments.
Maybe I'll even buy the book; I don't have a problem with the various Village Atheists among us; I was once one myself. He's certainly in august company. But on the other hand, so are those of us marginal small-c christians who----against our will----got hooked and reeled in by Christ-consciousness. It hasn't done me a bit of harm intellectually, psychologically, ethically, or spiritually as far as I can see, so it doesn't poison quite everything.
I can't get past the attack of certain self-styled conservatives on the survivors of the Virginia Tech shootings.
Donklephant led me to this further riff on what Donklephant's Gardner calls "the action hero meme." At "Human Events.com" ("Leading the Conservative Movement Since 1944"), Nathanael Blake asks this question.
[quote begins from "Where Were the Men?" by Nathanael Blake at Human Events.com]
Well, there was one who seems to have actively resisted, instead of just ducking and barricading doors. "Professor Liviu Librescu, 76, threw himself in front of the shooter when the man attempted to enter his classroom. The Israeli mechanics and engineering lecturer was shot to death, "but all the students lived - because of him."...
College classrooms have scads of young men who are at their physical peak, and none of them seems to have done anything beyond ducking, running, and holding doors shut. Meanwhile, an old man hurled his body at the shooter to save others.
Something is clearly wrong with the men in our culture. Among the first rules of manliness are fighting bad guys and protecting others: in a word, courage. And not a one of the healthy young fellows in the classrooms seems to have done that. ....I don’t know if I would live up to this myself, but I know that I should be heartily ashamed of myself if I didn’t. Am I noble, courageous and self-sacrificing? I don’t know; but I should hope to be so when necessary[quote; emphasis in original]
If these right-wingers keep insulting young men who were just murdered, or barely escaped with their lives, they may get to test their courage and nobility sooner than they think. These people have grieving families who probably would have greatly preferred not to have their sons mowed down under any circumstances and who wish they HAD escaped. Likewise, the families of the survivors are thanking God that their children barely escaped with their lives. It's not only insensitive and sanctimonious but also stupid to insult a lot of young people who barely escaped with their lives from a mass slaughter and who are doubtless going to spend the rest of their lives coping with survivor guilt.
At Donklephant, Gardner---in an article suggesting that "the armed society has its advantages when people go nuts"---nevertheless excoriates Derbyshire his "moronic and dangerous" suggestion that non-armed students should have confronted the shooter, Cho. He adds:
I think John Derbyshire’s comments about non-armed students confronting Cho are moronic and dangerous...I’m not saying that I hope John and Nathaniel are confronted with a situation like Virginia Tech in the future, but if they ever were, I hope they run, hide and live to see another day. You know…the human thing to do.
Students of Virginia Tech…you did absolutely nothing wrong. And don’t let a couple of hacky, wimpy bloggers tell you otherwise.
[quote ends].
Salon's take on Derbyshire's and Blake's Remarks ["Heartily Ashamed" by Tim Grieve, War Room]. (bonus links to Limbaugh's welcome insights and Bill O'Reilly's sorrow over the alleged gloating of "America haters all over the world:)
Continue reading "Nathanael Blake Wants to Know: Where Were the MEN?" »
I've said it before: I lack the enviable certainty of many of my liberal contemporaries.
I stand by in wonderment that they can be so sure they're right. The issues are so complicated, sos dependent on conditions that I for one can't guess at and am loth to imagine. I feel the same about them as I do about Bush.
Should we withdraw all troops from Iraq? Should we surge forward? How do they know? What's the evidence, for or against? By which I mean evidence. More and more, the evidence for my opinions consists of the opinions of other people I've decided to put my faith in. And more and more, that feels perilous to me.
Of course, I feel from time to time as if I know too, but in all honesty, it's more that I feel that I "know." At some level, I know that I don't. Other people aren't hindered by any such doubts.
The President and General Petraeus think they know what to do about Iraq, as do Nancy Pelosi, Jim Webb, and other people from my side of the fence. And this is one thing I know: all of them know more about it than I do, at least as regards logistics, risk/benefit studies, and so on.
And this is another thing I know: half the problem with the discussion is that no one ever finishes their sentences.
Now James Baker---Mr. "Grave and Deteriorating"----is weighing in on the President's, and General Petraeus's side.
[quote begins from Salon, "Still Grave and Deteriorating," by Walter Shapiro]
The president's plan ought to be given a chance," Baker told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. "The general [David Petraeus] you confirmed 81-0 just the day before yesterday, this is his idea. He's a supporter of it. He's now the commander on the ground in Iraq. Give it a chance." Baker repeated his refrain so often that it sounded like he was channeling some perverse version of a John Lennon tune: "Give Escalation a Chance."
[quote ends]
The trouble I have with the request to "give it a chance" is that it's an incomplete sentence. A chance to do what, exactly? A chance to win? Win what for whom? What measurable, identifiable goal or prize should we expect? How will we know when we get there?
I'm disconcerted that this is Baker, previously of the Iraq Study Group, telling me this. Not that I believed he was objective, but I'd given him credit for a certain level of detachment.
What's missing at this point is information from reliable sources. Everything is getting filtered through politics, including an article such as Shapiro's. As I trust Salon and have determined over the years that their views and mine are generally parallel, I am inclined to allow my opinions to be guided by them.
But the stakes at present are too high for me to rely even on Salon. I want objective data to the extent any can be had.
[published on July 22, 2006 in "The Flatland Oracles," my previous]
This posting at Wired.com (by Steven Edwards) is essential reading for those of us who want to jump into the stem cell debate. There is a lot of long information out there, it appears. Entitled "Congress' Top 10 Stem Cell Flubs," it identified 10 examples of wrong information that various members of Congress have cited in support of their various positions.
According to this article, it is not IN FACT the case that embryos are either used in research or thrown away, as both Senator Arlen Spector (R-Pennsylvania) and Senator Christopher Dodd (R-Connecticut) have stated. According to this article, these statements are misleading. [quote begins] "A 2002 study found at the time that 88 percent of the 400,000 embryos in frozen storage at fertility clinics across the country were on hold for families who might want to have another baby. Only 11,000 embryos were specifically donated to research." [quote ends; link in original]
Like the senators, I overstated the case in my recent posting---I assumed that MOST embryos are either going to be used for research or thrown out, and it turns out that only about 11,000 are actually allocated for research purposes. This information doesn't change my conclusions since the 11,000 donated embryos WILL be either used for research or thrown away. The others aren't in danger of being used for research anyway.
For those who want to get it right, here is a 'cheat sheet' published at Wired.Com that gives information about stem cells, what they are, how they are currently being used, and what the real issue really is.
[published on July 12, 2006 in "The Flatland Oracles," my previous blog]
[published on July 20, 2006 in "The Flatland Oracles," my previous blog]
PETA: Sacrifice Human, Not Animal Life for Medical Research. PETA's support for embryonic stem cell research shows that the organization values animal life over human life. By [email protected]. [FOXNews.com]
It's so sweet when they try to support this position by recourse to reasoning. Well, reason of a certain sort. But when you start from your conclusion and work backwards, the process always requires some awkward sidewise leaps and painful twists and turns.
This article ought to make me furious or very sad or something, but instead it made me laugh out loud.
The argument goes (roughly) this way.
PETA overvalues animal life at the expense of human life.
PETA say that animals are entitled to the same consideration as people. Stem cells are people (assumed, not stated).
If an action constitutes cruelty to a live animal, it follows that the same act constitutes cruelty if performed on a nonsentient clump of cells.
PETA opposes animal research.
Some of the people who oppose animal research are the same people who support stem cell research and some of those might be in PETA.
PETA is therefore saying that people aren't even as important as animals and that it's okay to be cruel to people but not to animals.
CODA: Gloria Steinem should support animal research if she's so damn concerned about women's health issues.
[published on July 19 in "The Flatland Oracles," my previous blog]
House Sustains Bush's Veto of Stem Cell Bill. The House was unable to override President Bush's veto of a measure that would ease limits on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research. By [email protected]. [FOXNews.com]
"These kids are not spare parts," Bush said over the cheering of people who clearly can't tell apples from oranges, shit from shinola, or a cluster of frozen cells from a human child. He was referring to the chubby-cheeked little former embryos who got turned into children.
But are human embryos the same as children? Are they even very similar? To say yes is OF COURSE an example of the typically faulty reasoning that the GOP constantly deploy for fine rhetorical effect. They don't believe it; I don't think BUSH believes it. But the GOP wants the votes of those who do.
Man, it's one thing to speculate that an embryo growing in a womb is a child and that it has a soul. But a cluster of cells in a petri dish?
Here's Tim Grieve's War Room at Salon.com. Farhad Manjoo succinctly sums up the egregious fallacies underlying the whole 'stem cell research = murder issue' and Bush's position on it"
Continue reading "Embryonic Stem Cell Research & the Veto." »
Did the mainstream press get it wrong then or are they wrong now? Whose side are they on, anyway? Which way is the wind blowing?
I’ve been furious with the press for a long time. But I am particularly angered by the current frenzy of fury at President Bush---not because I don't think he deserves a time out, but because I happen to think that the press have played a key role in enabling exactly the sort of policies and practices for which they are now pillorying the Administration. It makes me crazy to see them all, "The scales have fallen from our eyes!" and turning on Bush like a pack of dogs when the lead dog is down. “If they finally got with the program, don’t crap on them,” one of my progressive friends said to me brusquely. “Be glad they finally did. It's high time.” But I don't see it that way. If what they are now saying reflects the facts, and if they are indeed getting it all right for the first time, I think the members of the mainstream press has failed in their way as outstandingly as they are now claiming that Bush has failed in his.
During an interview with Anderson Cooper during Real Time, Bill Maher (my personal hero) noted that Katrina seems to have given us back our press. Anderson Cooper seemed miffed by the remark; I was miffed too, for different reasons. If Katrina has given us back the press, where has it been in the interim? What sort of courage does it take to suddenly become bold in attacking an Administration in the face of declining public approval?
Continue reading "Read All About it! "Amazing" "Revelations"!" »
