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Thursday, January 17, 2008



Go check out this clip of a Canadian publisher lambasting an investigator from the Human Rights Commission, sent to determine whether he has committed a thought crime. Courtesy of Megan McArdle from, of course, The Atlantic.

Update
Tim Sandefur offers some closing comments from the same hearing. And here's a link to the publisher's website. I suspect he now needs to worry about being a marked man, and not just by the Canadian government.


posted by Woodlief | link | (6) comments


Wednesday, January 16, 2008


The Future of the American Idea

I love The Atlantic, and I sometimes neglect it, like others I love. Only recently have I waded through the November 2007 issue, which has the heft of a novella, due to the fact that it is the 150th anniversary issue, and has therefore crammed into its early pages a host of short essays by various luminaries on the topic of "The Future of the American Idea."

The editors did a delightful job in places, juxtaposing the mindless Sam Harris, who complains about America's "God-drunk society," with an equally mindless essay from Left Behind author Tim LaHaye, who asserts that "America's founding was based more on biblical principles than any other nation's on earth—and that's the main reason this country has been more blessed by God than any other nation in history."

Apparently they don't study Israel, or the Old Testament, in the Tim LaHaye School of Prophecy. ("Your Biblical Prophecy Headquarters," according to their website.)

There's also the juxtaposition of Judith Martin's defense of manners with Tom Wolfe's meandering celebration of Jefferson's ability to insult British ambassadors. I suppose I fall somewhere between pell-mell and white gloves, but I'm grateful for each pole.

Of the 34 essayists, eleven are university faculty members, and four are from Princeton. Fully half of Princeton's contingent, in the persons of Cornel West and Joyce Carol Oates, is quite possibly unhinged. America represents, to West and Oates (and other essayists), a Taliban-esque prison of racism and brutality. Perhaps anticipating as much, Robert Conquest noted in his essay:

"Today's challenges to the American idea, such as jihadism, are equally driven by lethal certainties. They present what amounts to the anti-American idea. The superficial blemishes to be found in any society are equated with the totally negative cancers in the vital organs of our foes. The idea, and the open society, needs a sense of proportion — not always to be found, even among our own equivalent of an intelligentsia."

After working my way through all of these essays, I found myself drawn back to the guy I used to think of only as "that fast-food journalist," Eric Schlosser, who writes:

"The America that I love bears little relation to the freak show now peddled by Hollywood and the cable-news networks. I've had the privilege of spending time with some of the poorest people in this country and some of the richest, and it's left me feeling that we have far too many of both. The best lives, the happiest and most satisfied ones, seem to be lived somewhere in between. I have no tolerance for anti-Americanism overseas or the complacency here at home. I worry about the extremes and the extremism that have deeply taken root—the anger, the arrogance, the lack of empathy and compassion. The current state of the union brings to mind Thomas Jefferson's famous remark: "I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just."

All of this left me thinking about what I'll write for The Atlantic's 200th issue, should they invite me. You'll have to buy it in 2057, of course, but be assured it will likely deal with this reality, that we are a nation besotted with our rights, and fearful of our responsibilities.


posted by Woodlief | link | (2) comments


Monday, January 14, 2008


News by Osmosis: Campaign Edition

I've come a long way from my days as a graduate student, immersed in thoughts and discussions about politics. Now I avoid political discussions like Michael Moore avoids vegetables. I even let my newspaper subscription lapse, so I could have more time to read what matters.

Political news is unavoidable, however, and so I thought I'd get you to evaluate my osmosis. Here's my ill-informed reading of the status of our national presidential marathon, based on what I've gleaned from airport conversations and the occasional glance at Google news headlines:

On the Democratic side of things, Obama isn't such a bad guy, if we can get him to renounce terrorism and stop-fathering crack babies, which you didn't hear from the Hillary camp. Clinton, meanwhile, is being perhaps a little too feminine on the campaign trail, what with the cleavage and the crying, though his wife remains the shrill, cast-iron harpy we've all come to loathe and fear. John Edwards is dragging his poor sick wife across the country in a quest to improve health care. He stands on principle against any hedge fund of which he's not a partner. The rest of the Democratic field is a collection of sissies, malcontents, and nutjobs.

On the Republican side, meanwhile, Giuliani is a polygamist. No wait, that's McCain. Sorry, I meant Fred Thompson. Mitt Romney? No, he's a hard-working, family-oriented husband of one wife who stands for everything that made America great, except that he's in a Satanic cult. The one-time darling of the Libertarians, Ron Paul, used to own slaves. Mike Huckabee, meanwhile, seems to drive Peggy Noonan apoplectic, which is reason enough to recommend him. Someone just needs to stop him from channeling Herbert Hoover. The rest of the Republican field is a collection of conspiracy theorists, isolationists, and psychopaths.

As for policy positions, as best I can tell, the Democrats want to give most of the southwest U.S. to Mexico, and invite Muslim terrorists to publicly behead everyone making more than a million dollars a year, except for Steven Spielberg and George Soros. Republicans, meanwhile, want to kick anyone with a Mexican-sounding name out of the U.S., and conquer the entire Middle East so that Halliburton will have work after it kills all the porpoises while drilling for oil off the U.S. coast, which will soon be just east of Kansas City, as a result of the Bush-Reagan-Hitler global warming conspiracy.

Both parties are convinced that government is exceptionally skilled at doing things they want more of, and entirely incompetent when it comes to things they don't like. Every candidate is a candidate for change, using the failed ideas of the past, to create a brave new world for the children.

Does that about sum it up?


posted by Woodlief | link | (14) comments