Letters to the Editor
jwr_12
Published Letters: 149 Editor's Choice: 45
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Bush the incurious
[Read the article: Bush on Iran: I didn't know about halt to weapons program (but it doesn't matter)]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I think the explanation for why Bush himself kept coasting along on WWIII rhetoric long after the contradictory information came in is that he had already made up his mind and wasn't going to listen to any new information. This is a man who is congenitally incurious and also couldn't reason his way out of a wet paper bag, at least not on matters of intellectual substance. (I guess we have to credit him with having a nose for politics).
Even if he was briefed 20 times on this since July he may not have heard the message, so painfully obvious to everybody else.
And before the trolls come out, I'm not saying the US shouldn't have an Iran policy, or a nuclear non-proliferation policy. I'm saying that in the end the Bush administration hasn't been thinking about Iran, or non-proliferation, but rather about their own tough-guy posturing and Churchillian egos. These are people who will not confront reality, on a basic level.
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Will they face up?
[Read the article: Romney: "Freedom requires religion" ]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I'm not sure the Republicans will ever "face up" to their dependence on Christianists, just as they will never "own up" to the Southern Strategy.
The basic problem is that both strategies work and they are likely to work for the foreseeable future.
I know that there are stacks of books out there that talk about things like the "coming Democratic majority," etc., but they all seem dependent, to my mind, on the optimistic idea that Southern racism and Christianist activism are stagnant, undeveloping forces--hangovers from some other age.
Au contraire. Unfortunately, racism and religious anti-secularism are dynamic, constantly self-reinventing forces that are quite capable of doing things like 'converting' new immigrant populations and catching the fire of the young. Just the other day my college newspaper published a mystical, almost speaking in tongues piece by a young woman, who said that like it or not, the reality is that we must all bow down to Jesus as savior. To look at her picture, you'd think this is a hip, twenty-something New Yorker of the metrosexual type. But no. She's a thoroughly modern young woman of a distinctly millenial stripe.
Liberals and progressives have to beware thinking that progress is going to take care of the current anti-secular, authoritarian brand of Republicanism, because it won't.
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Infotainment (RE: jlamkin)
[Read the article: Bloggers mature, the New York Times stumbles]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I couldn't agree more with jlamkin, above, that this move marks the Times' further degradation into the realm of "infotainment" rather than informed commentary.
Editorial pages should not be platforms for paid hackery. It's bad enough that the paper's political reporting tends to focus on horse-racing. When you hire commetators solely based on their political positions--he's the mister right to balance our left, or vice versa--what gets lost is one core function of journalism: to provide the public with real, honest debate.
What we have here is simply the contest of paid flunkies--with the left, as it were, not particularly well represented.
I should also say that as a person who'd rather not place himself on a left-right spectrum, but rather recognize the complexity of the world and the need for complex, often eclectic solutions, I am completely unserved by this practice of hiring hacks.
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On my definition of the term "hack": One might argue that as a hereditary member of the conservative power structure, Kristol has more power than the term 'hack' implies. True enough. He doesn't need to shill for a living or influence. He could have power and money without prostituting himself.
That said, he's still a hack in my book because he long ago sold out his integrity as a thinker by embracing an inflexible, unrealistic, and dishonest rhetoric over the problem of grappling for the truth. Just why he did so--for power, money, or the hobgoblin of consistency--I don't know, but his intellectual collapse before a complex world is what makes him a hack in m book. That I think this son of privilege did so for power and money only makes it worse in my eyes.
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Democracy in Action
[Read the article: Chris Matthews is right ]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I have to say I'm downright thrilled by Clinton's win, even though I'm no Clinton supporter (and also no Clinton hater).
What's great about this is that it thwarts the attempt of the Parties, the Clintons, the Obamas, and the Press (and the states of Iowa and New Hampshire) to determine, in advance of real contest and debate, who the nominee will be.
Now, everyone will have to slug it out. Perhaps some real policy questions may actually be debated! And we will see who the better leaders are.
RE: Anonymous's complaint that this must be about the crying; no: it's about a slightly larger percentage of the people of New Hampshire, as motivated by a well organized campaign with an impressive leader, refusing to be bullied into some mythical Obama bandwagon.
Make no mistake of it, I'll vote for Obama if he's the nominee. I'd vote for any of the Democratic candidates, because in my opinion they're all light years more competent than the current Republican crew.
But I'm glad this election is no longer about Iowa momentum and vague promises of 'change' (or for that matter settling scores with the Clintons). This election needs to be about things much broader than that, and if Clinton's victory helps set the stage for more subtanstive or at least longer debate, I'm all for it.