Politics
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No One to Blame but Ourselves
This from Frank Dwyer: In "The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui" (1941), a play that ought to be revived tomorrow in every American city, Bertolt Brecht chronicled the easy stages by which a nondescript, graceless, charmless, talentless, ill-bred, dimwitted mob boss takes over the Chicago vegetable market. Why were the American people so ready to
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Leo Strauss & the Neocons
Andrew Sullivan is like the Matt Damon character in "Syriana"–decent, idealistic, smart, well-informed, but nevertheless naive about how things really work–too credulous of the the official cover story, too trusting of the guys in power to behave decently and according to their professed ideals. He’s just a glass-half-full kind of guy, I guess. In any
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Reason vs. Religon in Politics
Interesting post on this subject at Hullabaloo where an article, "Heaven Can Wait," appearing in Dissent magazine by Susan Jacoby is quoted at length. Jacoby wants to make the case that religion in politics creates more problems than it solves. Reason is the only way forward: the left needs to present its case in unapologetically
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On Being 99% Wrong
Gary Kamiya has a good review of Ron Suskind’s new book, The One Percent Doctrine, in this morning’s Salon. Early on he says: If there are any observers who still deny that the Bush administration is the most secretive, vengeful, reality-averse, manipulative and arrogant government in U.S. history, they will have a lot of fast
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GOP Secret Weapon: Myth
There is a very interesting article by psychologist Renana Brooks I posted about a couple of years ago. It's worth another look. Some key grafs: Bush's handlers project the President as a man of character. His team has carefully crafted an image of him as a man who is strong and moral, someone who sticks
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Cut & Run
If you haven’t seen Jack Murtha’s "Meet the Press" response to Karl Rove’s New Hampshire speech in which Rove accused Dems who want an Iraq exit strategy of cut-and-run defeatism, you can see it here. (Wait till page fully loads.) I suspect that Murtha is not just speaking for himself, but for a significant constituency
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Vote Conservative–Vote Democrat
I’ve been telling some of my more skeptical readers that I see myself as a conservative. A conservative is not necessarily a man of the right. Rather the essence of the conservative is his understanding how fragile civilization is, that we’re all walking through history on a thin sheet of ice which separates us from
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Power Politics
I’ve been struck lately, especially in response to some of my posts over the last week with how conservatives and libertarians have this irrational fear of the Left. I say irrational because the left has no power. The idea that the Left poses any threat to the power structure of this country is an absurd
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Saying Yes
Stephen Colbert at Knox College Commencement: Remember, you cannot be both young and wise. Young people who pretend to be wise to the ways of the world are mostly cynics. Cynicism masquerades as wisdom, but it is the farthest thing from it. Because cynics don’t learn anything. Because cynicism is a self-imposed blinder, a rejection
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Stolen Ohio?
Farhad Manjoo, Salon staff writer, debunks the Rolling Stone Ohio Stolen election article by Robert F. Kennedy in today’s Salon. Manjoo says nothing is new in Kennedy’s article, and most of his points have been proven wrong or inconclusive. The subject doesn’t interest me enough to get into the technicalities, but it was interesting to