Letters to the Editor
DCLaw1
Published Letters: 839 Editor's Choice: 2
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censorship (gasp)!
[Read the article: Only America-hating traitors believe in due process for journalists]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Glenn:
When the comment section becomes so unpleasant to me that I want to stop reading it, that, in my view, is a significant loss for the blog, since being able to read and interact with commenters is of great value to me. I have a very, very high bar for what becomes intolerable...
I'm late for the party again, I see. Glenn, your patient assiduousness is superhuman. I really don't know how you do it.
One of the most hackneyed and trite protests to appear on blogs (and in college student government debates) is the cry of censorship(!!!!).
When some raving lunatic comes into a cafeteria and starts screaming obscenities and alien conspiracies, oh lord, can't tell him to shut up or kick him out of there -- that's censorship. Well, I have some startling news: that's pretty much what some people do when they come to blogs and just start verbally urinating all over the place. They deserve to be banned. Yes, that's censorship. The good, necessary kind.
The difference is when you do it because you are afraid of the substance of what someone says, or you can't tolerate even pseudo-reasonable dissent. The bad, abusive kind. There's also quite a difference when the government is involved in the censorship, but even then we are dealing with a balance, competing interests. Few would argue that the Westboro Baptists should be able to go to funerals and scream that the deceased deserved to die because America is a heathen country.
Oh the power of a word to cause people to forget completely why it has the connotation it has, and how to think rationally when it is uttered or thought of.
"Censorship!" Grow up.
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cute
[Read the article: Only America-hating traitors believe in due process for journalists]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Less filling? More taste?
Less context. More stupidity.
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Paul's boon
[Read the article: The Ron Paul phenomenon]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Regardless of how one feels about Ron Paul's positions on policy and constitutional issues, the man has brought a lot of very important, often neglected issues into widespread discussion. Included in this are some very valid (and seldom spoken) criticisms of overall American jingoism and militarization.
For that alone I am glad he is a candidate.
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Ron Paul and racism
[Read the article: The Ron Paul phenomenon]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Wow, over 500 comments. I wish I could keep up, but I seldom have the time.
I want to say a word about this Ron Paul and racism topic. Let me say right out that I think it's entirely unrealistic to assume he is not to some degree racist. Now, before anyone construes me as saying he definitively is one, hear me out. I'd like to simply transcend, to some degree, the fixation on particular statements and other "proof," and talk just in terms of probabilities. Undeniable, if ugly, probabilities.
Mr. Paul is a white man and comes from the older generation (my powers of observation stun even me). Right off, this tilts the scales in favor of his having at least some racist proclivities. I'm sorry, that may not be palatable to many of you, but I'm afraid it's the hard truth.
Furthermore, he has been Republican, if libertarian-minded, during the post Reconstruction era. This further tilts the scales of probability. In fact, the attitudes he holds toward social services and the function of government have historically been, for many people, a sort of intellectual pretext for the negative effects the manifestations of those attitudes have on racial and other minorities. This is certainly not to say that one cannot espouse these abstract theories strictly for their own merit, but there is undeniably very strong correlation between the two, and I am still talking probabilities.
Finally -- and this is where some of the particulars may come in -- at the very least his proxies, for whom he must take some degree of responsibility, have indeed made some racially suspect comments, to put it charitably.
Now, I just want to make clear that this does not necessarily have any bearing on the merits of his constitutional or political beliefs. Yes, abstract philosophical beliefs and attitudes toward social groups interact in a constant, dynamic, and inseparable way. One's attitudes of a certain group of people can have a very strong effect on that person's political beliefs, and vice-versa, simultaneously and synergistically, but the strengths and weaknesses of those beliefs still exist in their own right.
That said, I think the least controversial thing one could say about Mr. Paul is that he has no chance of winning the presidency. Therefore, given that he has no chance, we should regard Mr. Paul's involvement in the campaign from an almost strictly theoretical, "macro" perspective, eschewing fixations on the particularities of his personal motives. That is, what are the merits of what he is saying; as Glenn said, why is what he is saying having such intense resonance with so many Americans of all stripes, and what effect might his presence be having on the other candidates and the way the election might play out?
These are all worthy of contemplation, and far more important than whether or not the man in particular is a racist, a Christianist, or what have you.
Just my fatigue-addled two bits.
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WT:
[Read the article: The Ron Paul phenomenon]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Furthermore, he has been Republican, if libertarian-minded, during the post Reconstruction era. -- DCLaw1
This can't mean what it seems to say. You're just talking about any time during the period between 1877 and 1964, not that RP is over 100 years old, right?
Hahah, I'm sorry, that was definitely a brain fart. Like I said, I'm pretty beat right now. I should have said post-Civil Rights era, when "Dixiecrats" migrated to the Republican Party on racial issues.
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WT:
[Read the article: The Ron Paul phenomenon]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I've been tired and pissed off lately, and for good reason.
Just between you and me (ha ha), I recently got back from an event at which many lobbyists were present. I am neither lobbyist nor lobbied, but I was at this event.
Let me just say that lobbyists are precisely as they are depicted -- proudly so.
The very nature of our republic has changed fundamentally in the last few decades. These are not differences of degree, but in kind. Nobody knows this better than the lobbyists themselves.