The only reasoned debate left in US politics is amongst conservatives. If you're not a conservative, too bad. Your pundits are letting you down. They've traded reason for bile. What distinguishes reason from bile are rules. Primarily the rules of logic, but also rules of decency. One thing that distinguishes conservatives from their leftist opponents is moral equivalence - the idea that there is no objective right or wrong, only different points of view. Leftists believe in moral equivalence. Unfortunately you can't claim moral equivalence is right without contradicting yourself. The idea is not only illogical, it is indecent. Without right and wrong logic and decency have no meaning. But we know they do have meaning. They are important. In good politics, as in science, to be taken seriously when advancing your ideas logic and decency are not optional. But the leftist belief in moral equivalence at least explains why they come unarmed to every exchange of ideas, and why those exchanges inevitably get nasty.
Among the several gathering places of non-conservative opinion I have to admit visiting truthout is my guiltiest pleasure. Most visitors I suppose go there because it reinforces their worldview. There they find the mendacity and corruption of Bush and his cronies exposed, harrowing alarms of religious extremist influence and imminent environmental doom, disturbing pictures of trouble and strife from around the world. It's a veritable smorgasbord of sour, cynical messages. Strange that anyone would enjoy such depressing fare, but they must because the site is popular.
For me the pleasure comes from looking at the arsenal of my ideological enemies and seeing nothing but spitballs. That and confirmation of the source of the wacky ideas I often hear from political sparring partners. Ideas disconnected from reality. Ideas that form in the kind of philosophical and informational bubble that President Bush is sometimes accused of living in. truthout is a window into a giant leftist conspiracy theory echo chamber from which inanities continuously leak out and find their way into the mouths of your liberal friends and family. "Global warming." "The American Taliban." "Bush lied." A previous generation of nattering nabobs of negativity were upset about similar things. "Global cooling." "The Moral Majority." "Bush lied." It's hard to take such pollyannish fears seriously. truthout however does provide a useful service even to those of us whom it repels. It gathers leftist ideas together in pure form, where we can see them in all their glory before they are disguised and diluted and disseminated to the unsuspecting masses through more popular and supposedly objective outlets.
'No One Could Have Anticipated ...'
By William Rivers Pitt
Thursday 02 March 2006 It is gut-wrenching, more than anything else, because of this: four days later, when questioned about his flaccid response to the catastrophe in Louisiana, Bush stated, "I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees." Right. No one anticipated the breach of the levees except the Director of the National Hurricane Center, the Director of FEMA, and a half-dozen other experts who implored Mr. Bush to take this storm seriously a full day before the hammer dropped.
No one could have anticipated it? That has a familiar ring to it.
No one could have anticipated the failure of the levees.
No one could have anticipated the strength of the insurgency in Iraq.
No one could have anticipated that people would use airplanes as weapons against buildings.
No one could have anticipated these things ... except all the people who did. We are forced to get into some very large numbers today to accurately assess the body count from all the things the Bush administration would have us believe no one could have anticipated.
Readers of Power Line, where reasoned arguments rule, know they skewered this variation of "Bush lied" the same day AP released it. Pitt, on the other hand, eagerly supplied the conclusions AP could only dream their readers would jump to. By ignoring the difference between "overtopping" and "breaching", and twisting "I don't think" into "No one could have" Pitt beats up a classic straw man. He simply asserts that more than half a dozen people warned Bush of levee failure, and verily it becomes so. He hath seen it even though it doth not reside in the source he quoteth. Is a professional like Pitt, who has taught and written books, unaware that it's logically invalid to just make shit up, or is he counting on the fact that his readers are weak-minded sheep?
We can anticipate that Pitt will continue to blame Bush for everything he thinks is wrong with the world. We can anticipate that he will never provide his favored alternatives to the things he criticizes or estimates of the body counts such alternatives would produce.
Iraq: Pure War, Pure Crime
By David Swanson
Friday 03 March 2006The Iraq War is a pure war, a war for the sake of war. Congress is debating whether to spend another fortune on it, another fortune that could completely remake this nation if spent on useful projects, and Congress has no reason for the war. The reason is purely that the media won't like you if you vote against a war, but there's no actual reason for the war - not the weapons of mass destruction that Bush always knew weren't there, not the ties to 9-11 that Bush always knew did not exist on behalf of a ruler who, anyway, is no longer in power, not reducing terrorism which has been increased by this war, not improving global relations when this war has driven global opinion of the US to a record low, not preventing a civil war which the US attack and occupation have created, not supporting the troops when most of the troops want to come home - and almost half of them openly admit to pollsters that they don't know why they're there.
A war for the sake of war. That's right. We just went there to kill people and blow stuff up. Oh, and to burn money and piss off the world. Yes these things have happened. No it is not why we went to war. If Swanson wants reasonable explanations for why we're at war he'll have to broaden his information sources. If he wants to be reasonable he should avoid confusing cause and effect.
Which media won't like you if you vote against the war? And why would it matter anyway? Congress gets their mandate from the people (or their lobbyists), not the media. Bush is by far the politician most maligned by a hostile press, and it seems to affect his decision making not one wit. That quality alone is a sound reason to respect the man, though I suspect Swanson would find some way to contradict his own standards on that point.
Like most leftists Swanson seems not only to have tremendous powers of hindsight, he can read minds as well. He knows so well what's inside Bush's head he should write a book about it.
The Pursuit of Democracy
By Michael Kinsley, Slate.com
Friday 3 March 2006The case for democracy is "self-evident," as someone once put it. The case for the world's most powerful democracy to take as its mission the spreading of democracy around the world is pretty self-evident, too: What's good for us is good for others. Those others will be grateful. A world full of democracies created or protected with our help ought to be more peaceful and prosperous and favorably disposed toward us. That world will be a better neighborhood for us than a world of snarling dictatorships.
There is no valid case against democracy. You used to hear a lot that democracy is not suitable for some classes of foreigners: simply incompatible with the cultures of East Asia (because deference to authority is too ingrained there), or the Arab Middle East (because everybody is a religious fanatic), or Africa (because they're too "tribal," or too predisposed to rule by a "big daddy," or something). But this line of argument has gone out of fashion, pushed offstage by free and fair elections in some surprising places. Even those who still harbor doubts about whether democracy is possible in this place or that - and even those who think that any democracy achieved in such places is likely to be a real mess - don't generally oppose the attempt. As someone else once said, "Good government is no substitute for self-government."
But the case against spreading democracy - especially through military force - as a mission of the U.S. government is also pretty self-evident, and lately it's been getting more so. Government, even democratic government, exists for the benefit of its own citizens, not that of foreigners. American blood and treasure should not be spent on democracy for other people. Or, short of that absolute, there are limits to the blood and treasure that the United States should be expected to spend on democracy elsewhere, and the very nature of war makes that cost hard to predict and hard to limit.
Kinsley is much more clever than Pitt or Swanson. His positions are reasonable and his argument is almost sound. The best reason to spend American blood and treasure on democracy for other people is because it helps preserve our democracy. Kinsley is honest enough to admit that, and to step away from absolutes. Because of this and in that same spirit I will say not everything at truthout is completely illogical.
