Letters to the Editor
William Timberman
Published Letters: 3298 Editor's Choice: 7
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@ jojo++
[Read the article: Brit Hume is a "journalist"; Keith Olbermann is "partisan"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I agree wholeheartedly, but I confess that I'm a bit disappointed that no one took me up on my challenge to actuarial tables, which of course do exist. When we start discussing whether or not we want to accept them as scientific population and mortality studies have bequeathed them to us, or adjust them in the public interest, then suddenly we are liberals, not libertarians.
What is in the public interest, and what is not, is a perfectly legitimate subject for political argument, and defining what is in the public interest is a perfectly legitimate function of the political process. You can't get there from here, though, if you decide at the outset that such arguments are illegitimate, or withhold from voters the information necessary to make informed decisions.
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@ ondelette
[Read the article: Brit Hume is a "journalist"; Keith Olbermann is "partisan"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]In the end, for better or for worse, the people are sovereign, not the experts. For the very reasons you list, this has to be the way it is. It's not all or nothing, but I'm afraid that an AZ motorcyclist's abject ignorance of both the laws of physics (such as F=ma), and his own actuarial risk are not sufficient cause to force him to wear a helmet. Not in my view, at any rate.
Not allowing him to buy an AK-47, on the other hand, might not be a bad idea, if we can get enough of his fellows to vote for the prohibition.
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@ ondelette
[Read the article: Brit Hume is a "journalist"; Keith Olbermann is "partisan"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Your yes, but seems perfectly reasonable to me. (And I'd certainly want you to do what your training as a medical professional, and your instincts as a human being tell you to if I was the potential subject of your intervention.)
Some things just shouldn't attract the interest of the state. The Schiavo case, abortion, etc. On the other hand, as I weighed in on here long ago, the Christian scientists with a sick child, the man from Syria living in Detroit who's decided that his 17 year-old daughter has dishonored the family by kissing one of her classmates in public...well....
Decisions, decisions.... That's why we prize democracy, if in fact we do. Not to absolve us of our responsibilities, but to make them manifest, and to allow us to discharge them as a free people.
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Paul vs. Mona and the Platonic Conspiracy
[Read the article: Brit Hume is a "journalist"; Keith Olbermann is "partisan"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Categories which are eternal, vs. categories which flex with the rhythms of the body politic. I keep telling you that Plato's behind all this. No liberal he....
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Shit!
[Read the article: Brit Hume is a "journalist"; Keith Olbermann is "partisan"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]...my sister had a dream in which we were arrested along with all our friends. There were two types of charges brought against us: Presence, which was a misdemeanor. And Existence, which was a felony. -- Paul Rosenberg
Absolutely brilliant. Absolutely depressing. Is everyone in your family a fucking genius? Do us all a favor, and let science preserve your DNA or something....
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Tasty
[Read the article: Brit Hume is a "journalist"; Keith Olbermann is "partisan"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]...recall, the Chicago boys ran out of Chile with their tales between their legs -- jojo++
Another inspired typo. Friedman was a happy guy, cause he only saw the grand design. In his estimation, pissing on the collateral damage was the only true way to water the tree of liberty.
He belongs in the same circle of hell as Reagan, as far as I'm concerned.
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@ kdwmson
[Read the article: Brit Hume is a "journalist"; Keith Olbermann is "partisan"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]My lack of charity is generally reserved for those who lack it themselves. In my judgment, Milton Friedman was just such a person. Good advice to bad men doesn't accurately describe his complicity in putting his theories at the disposal of monsters. He was the Edward Teller of economics, not the J. Robert Oppenheimer, let alone the Albert Einstein.
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Omnibus full stop.
[Read the article: Brit Hume is a "journalist"; Keith Olbermann is "partisan"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Kdwmson, the evil that men do lives after them, the good is oft interred with their bones. (I think I heard that somewhere, but I might have been mistaken, since it wasn't on either O'Reilly or Olbermann.)
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Reasonable on the face of it
[Read the article: Brit Hume is a "journalist"; Keith Olbermann is "partisan"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Yes, people do bad things here there and everywhere, KD, but why do I keep thinking that we'd all be better off if GWB were still doing bad things in a bar someplace in Texas, and not in the White House? Why can I not give up the idea that certain unfortunate characteristics of our society at the present moment have had a lot to do with why his inner pissant was allowed its full flowering at our expense?
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Theme and variation
[Read the article: Brit Hume is a "journalist"; Keith Olbermann is "partisan"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]It's a riff, I think: sic semper omnibus, thus always to all (of us.)
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Homage to our antecedents
[Read the article: Brit Hume is a "journalist"; Keith Olbermann is "partisan"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Well, okay, Gödel, but may I not also put in a good word for Heraclitus, and for Lao Tse?
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Believe it or not,
[Read the article: Brit Hume is a "journalist"; Keith Olbermann is "partisan"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]KD, it's my name. You can't help what you're born with, can you? Well, not unless you're John Wayne or Jay Gatsby. What my name sounds like, or calls to mind, isn't something which concerns me overmuch.
You claim to be a classical liberal. You sound more like he who is not to be contradicted, which is an odd persona for any liberal, classical or otherwise, to adopt. Paul R. has you, I'm afraid. Disdain for those not of your class, as God gives you to see your class, just about sums it up.
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Or Jesus of Nazareth
[Read the article: Brit Hume is a "journalist"; Keith Olbermann is "partisan"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]if it comes to that.
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Bullshit on stilts
[Read the article: Brit Hume is a "journalist"; Keith Olbermann is "partisan"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]If you don't think that American "liberalism"/progressivism/lite-leftism is a rigid ideological construction, I suppose there is nothing I can do to convince you otherwise. And that's because American "liberalism"/progressivism/lite-leftism is a rigid ideological construction. Try getting a Democrat to give a fair hearing to a school-choice plan someday and see if that doesn't change you mind. (But, of course, nothing will change you mind, because ... American "liberalism"/progressivism/lite-leftism is a rigid ideological construction.) -- kdwmson
What have you been smoking, KD? I used to think that shooter held the black belt for argument-by-assertion, but this is high dudgeon of such exquisite perfection that the planets are halted in their rotation at the sheer audacity of it. Birds fall senseless from the branches, snakes are pulled stunned from under their rocks, and the people prostrate themselves in amazement.
I gotta hand it to you, you're the finest sophist in the neighborhood these days, no doubt whatever about it.