From a somewhat interesting piece in the Woodrow Wilson Quarterly:
The simple and amazing answer is that most Americans assumed that their country has a rich and vibrant “marketplace of ideas” in which all ideas are challenged. Certainly, America has the freest media in the world. No subject is taboo. No sacred cow is immune from criticism. But the paradox here is that the belief that American society allows every idea to be challenged has led Americans to assume that every idea is challenged.
I think that is exactly right. There is a widespread belief that we have a truly open debate over ideas in this country. In fact, our media does indeed pride itself on challenging consensus, but its idea of challenging consensus is bringing in nutters like Peggy Noonan, Patty Patty Buke Buke, and an endless array of supply side “economists” to challenge the “liberal” consensus that magic dolphins don’t exist, that Latin Americans are not scrub stock, and that cutting taxes does not magically increase tax revenue. That’s why the Philadelphia Inquirer’s explanation for hiring torture architect John Yoo is hardly surprising:
“There was a conscious effort on our part to counter some of the criticism of The Inquirer as being a knee-jerk liberal publication,” Mr. Jackson said. “We made a conscious effort to add some conservative voices to our mix.”
[….]“What I liked about John Yoo is he’s a Philadelphian,” Mr. Tierney said. “He went to Episcopal Academy, where I went to school. He’s a very, very bright guy. He’s on the faculty at Berkeley, one of the most liberal universities in the country.”
Greater Philly has a population of 5 million people. That means there are most likely at least 15-20 Philadelphians on the faculty at Berkeley (I’m estimating the faculty size there at a bit over 1000). John Yoo was not chosen because he is the only Philadelphian at “one of the most liberal universities in the country”. He was chosen for his “edgy”, “outside-the-box” view on torture. Why? Because supporting whacked out, barbaric ideas shows that you’re not a typical “media liberal”.
This is where we’re at, in terms of public dialog: hiring torture advocates is a way of promoting intellectual diversity.
asiangrrlMN
Well, you know, the media has a liberal bias. That’s why all we see are Dick Cheney, John McCain, and fucking Newt Gingrich on the teevee machine.
DougJ, the earlier commenter was right–you DO put Burkean bells on every post, as well as Assholes.
southpaw
They’re stuck in the past. Old guard pro-torture columnists are a dime a dozen. What they need is a secessionist. Or maybe a pro-torture secessionist. If the President does it, it’s not illegal! States’ Rights!
Martin
Next up! Jeffrey Dahmer is hired to write the new food column to counter some of the criticism that the paper is too focused on traditional cuisine.
Robertdsc-iphone
And to think Bubba got the business for blow jobs & thong underwear. Justice? What’s that?
Of course, now that Darth Cheney is out & about defending his war crimes, I wonder what’s going to happen next time Dubya shows his face in public.
southpaw
John C. Calhoun and Nathan Bedford Forrest will be co-authoring a new feature “Race in America: Point, Counterpoint.”
Joseph McCarthy will be writing a column on ethics.
TenguPhule
DEATH: “THERE IS NO JUSTICE. THERE’S JUST ME.”
Dennis-SGMM
“What I liked about Mr. Hitler is that he’s an artist and a war veteran. Mr. Hitler is also a committed vegetarian.”
As for Berkeley being “one of the most liberal universities in the country,” the author of that statement is clearly full of shit. Berk was liberal in the Sixties (When I attended) and not so much now. Moreover, the School of Law at Berk was then as it is now anything but a bastion of liberalism.
Blue Meme
“I know of no country in which there is so little independence of mind and real freedom of discussion as in America.”
Toqueville, Democracy in America, 1835.
Same as it ever was…. same as it ever was… same as it ever was.
flounder
And that is why we get subjected to every opinion from Richard Cohen in the center to Willy Kristol on the far-right and can call it a day.
The Tim Channel
Press complicity on the subject of promoting the AMERICA LOVES TORTURE meme should be used against those in the media when the war crimes trials are ultimately held.
In the meantime, and in lieu of actual investigations, it’s pretty easy to identify the psychopaths in our midst, be they politicians or pundits.
Enjoy.
HitlerWorshippingPuppyKicker
Overanalysis. Popular media is cutthroat, and especially in print, they are running scared. I think the Yoo choice was just a panic move.
Never ascribe to some weird logic something that can be explained by stupid, pants-shitting dumbassery.
mclaren
Charles Manson for president! Who’s edgier and more outside the box than ole Charlie?
The Cat Who Would Be Tunch
Well then, I guess the Philadelphia Inquirer will be jumping at the chance to cosponsor the next “International Conference to Review the Global Vision of the Holocaust” with Ahmadinejad. It’ll just be a conscious effort on their part to
add some conversative voices to their mixcomplete the nutcases in their mix.HitlerWorshippingPuppyKicker
@mclaren:
Good one. Too bad they executed McVeigh, he would have made a great commentator on Fox News.
Mike G
“We made a conscious effort to add some conservative voices to our mix…He’s on the faculty at Berkeley, one of the most liberal universities in the country.”
Tierney supposedly hired Yoo to add a ‘conservative’ voice, then when criticized claims Yoo is a Berkeley liberal. And the dog ate his homework.
Tierney is full of shit. He hired a useful hired tool of the Repig establishment/war criminal because he “went to the right schools” in Philadelphia with him. Jobs for my crony buddies, how meritocratic. I look forward to his next diatribe against affirmative action.
Mark S.
Here’s a question for the forum: If you were the editor of a newspaper and you had to pick a conservative columnist, who would you pick?
I’d probably pick Daniel Larison, who John’s kind of gotten me into reading. Otherwise, Pat Buchanan, as long as he only wrote about foreign policy and never wrote about social issues.
Is Sully still considered a conservative?
Quicksand
You read the Woodrow Wilson Quarterly and the WaPo chats? Sweet Jesus, I need to pick up my game.
Mike S
The media loves this because they don’t have to do any work. They just find one person who supports it and another that doesn’t. That way they are giving you a “ballanced” story.
That wouldn’t bother me nearly as much if the “journalist” that brings both sides together would point out the blatant lies. But they don’t. A while back there was a perfect example of that. On CNN there was a “debate” about homosexuals. The wingnut quoted a study equating gays and pedophiles, IIRC.
The gay guy said there has been no such study and demanded a source.
The CNN “journalist” said something like ‘thanks guys, I’m sure we’ll be talking more about this.’ Nothing about the lie that had just been uttered.
I work weekends at a news radio station in LA. The reporters up there and I talk about the demise of journalism all the time. It’s driving them crazy.
asiangrrlMN
@Mark S.: Sully considers himself a conservative, but the party doesn’t want him. Um. Well. There’s…oh, wait! There’s….You know what? Call Shep Smith, give him a computer, and let him have at it.
Mark S.
@asiangrrlMN:
I forgot about Shep. He could end every column with:
THIS IS AMERICA. WE DON’T FUCKING TORTURE!
grimc
Which only raises the question: Just how easy is it to get tenure at Cal?
Not to mention he’s currently slumming it as a visiting professor at Chapman U in Orange County. Nurturing young legal minds alongside Prof. Hugh Hewitt.
asiangrrlMN
@Mark S.: That would be awesome. I would read that.
Thankovsky
WRONG. You had Special K with ba-na-na!
You knew someone had to catch that reference, didn’t you? :p
As for Yoo, that delightful sack of shit is basically getting run out of town in Berkeley, from what I understand, and transferring to Chapman (in Orange County). His timing is unfortunate, because a girl I dated in undergrad but I’m still close friends with is graduating from Chapman with her law degree right now, and I’m sure she’d only be too happy to organize a good, old-fashioned rotten egg throwing.
@Mark S.:
I suppose it would depend upon precisely what type of perspective you were trying to get in your paper. Sully fits my definition of “conservative,” but in doing so, I’m hearkening back to a brand of conservatism that may never exist en masse again in the U.S.
Thankovsky
^ Allow me to expand upon my point above, since I got distracted and ran out of time while editing: as we all know, “conservatism” in the U.S. is going through a pretty major existential crisis, and it’s going to be tough to predict how it all turns out. I would like to believe that the future of conservatism and the GOP is that which is advocated by the likes of Sullivan, Larison, et al., because I firmly believe that the progressive cause can only benefit from having a constructive, strong-but-cooperative opposition.
From my point of view, Sullivan is definitely a conservative, because his principles are, deep down, very similar to those of Edmund Burke and Benjamin Disraeli and, more recently, David Cameron. But unfortunately, I’m just a liberal grad student, so I don’t have much of a say on what does and doesn’t define “conservatism” in the U.S.
The old labels of “liberal” and “conservative” have shifted drastically in meaning over the past few decades. They continue to change, and they’re quickly losing meaning as they continue to change. For this reason, Sullivan and Larison and even Pat Buchanan and George Will don’t see eye-to-eye with the diehard core of the conservative movement in the U.S. And that’s why it really comes down to my original question: whose perspective are you seeking? The perspective of actual conservatives – or the perspective of that diehard core of the “conservative” movement? Because I think the little spat that happened a month or two back between David Frum and Mark Levin was fairly instructive on this issue: the split has grown so large between actual conservatives, and the 18 or so percent of the country that still approves of Dick Cheney, that anyone to the left of Mitt Romney will inevitably be perceived by the latter group as a liberal.
I’m not expecting you to answer my question, by the way; it was meant more as a rhetorical question. :)
Lupin
Like most powerful countries, America was more than a little hypocritical before, but under the Bush regime, it crossed a line in becoming like Chile under Pinochet, where a sizable % of the population approved of torture etc. because of some outside threat (communism/terrorism).
When Pinochet was eventually retired, at least he had the decency of staying in the shadows. Not so Cheney who keeps bragging about his crimes.
I’m glad Obama is in charge, but America is still a festering cancer upon the civilized world — because of its inherent power. (If we were Rhodesia no one would give a shit.) My angry Brit fiends, for example, would like for Obama to stay the fuck out of THEIR torture investigations.
Thankovsky
@Lupin:
I think your characterizations go too far. The Bush Administration may have used some of the same criminal tactics as Pinochet’s government, and they deserve to be held accountable for that. But Pinochet killed thousands of his own people and tortured tens of thousands more. As bad as it was, the U.S. has never been like Chile under Pinochet, at least in living memory.
And a “festering cancer”? Really? I agree that America has done a lot of wrong over the past few decades, but it’s also done a lot of good. Whether or not the good we’ve done offsets the bad is subject to debate, but we’re certainly a far cry from a “festering cancer.”
I don’t mean to pick on you, by the way; I agree with your overall point, but I think it hurts your message when you use hyperbole like that.
Brick Oven Bill
This web-site banned me for one week for suggesting that the demographics of NFL wide receivers were due to an extra 25,000 years of evolution in a hunter-gatherer society, and the benefit that this environment conveyed to those who emerged from it.
Please do not preach about an ‘open debate over ideas’.
Zuzu's Petals
@Dennis-SGMM:
As a graduate of Berkeley Law (aka Boalt Hall), I want to scream when I read about Yoo being “on the faculty of one of the most liberal universities in the country” as if it says something about HIM.
First, as you note, that “liberal university” thing simply isn’t true when it comes to the faculty, especially in the law school. Good lord, Philip Johnson, the “Father of Intelligent Design,” was my torts prof. Though there is certainly a liberal bent to the school’s philosophy, the political persuasions of the faculty are all over the map.
As a matter of fact, it was Boalt’s willingness to be politically neutral in its choice of faculty that led to Yoo’s hiring (after my time, BTW):
Onkel Fritze
“Certainly, America has the freest media in the world.”
http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=11715
Certainty is a warm and fuzzy feeling.
mt
Umm. This seems like a good place to insert my shameless whoring. I’m the publicist for Charles Manson. He has a lot to say. On the spectrum of analysis, well, I think he would provide a, something, diversity. Yep. Contact me in game. I can be found at the internet spaceships forum.
Viva Brisvegas
I take it that Demjanjuk didn’t get the gig because he wasn’t a Phillie native.
Xenos
BOB- Those were not ideas. Those were lightly coded propaganda. And you should have been banned for good, IMHO, because there is no excuse for an educated person to hold forth such nonsense. But as it is not to be debated here, I will refrain from further comment.
Xenos
To finish the thought, now that the teenager is roused and getting ready for school. Propagating pernicious nonsense (Yoo’s legal theories, BOB’s speculations about Anthropology) is not the free exchange of ideas.
It is about nonsense and wickedness being forced into the discourse, abusing a system that assumes intellectual honesty and good faith. It is a scam, a rip-off, a fraud, and it should be treated appropriately.
cosanostradamus
.
They’re just rebranding. Watch for the new restaurant reviews by David Duke: Philly’s Best Soul Food this week, Kosher Deli’s next week, then a new immigrant cuisine every week until they’re all firebombed by the Klan.
Apparently, Nazi’s buy papers.
.
bago
Bush got thousands of Americans killed when he dismissed the “bin Laden determined to strike in US” report. Got hundreds killed by appointing heck of a job brownie. Sent thousands to die in distant sands because of war crimes. Caused the needless death of hundreds of thousands across the globe. Pinochet can’t directly compare.
Little Dreamer
So affirmative action for people is a big no-no while affirmative action for political philosophies (and unpopular ones at that) gets a big nod. Hmmmmm!
TR
The irony here is that John Yoo’s new employer issued a public statement that the only reason Yoo was hired was so that the paper might have a different point of view — that it might, in a word, display greater empathy — and then in his very first column, John Yoo denounced the idea of hiring someone for reasons of empathy as a contemptible and laughable idea.
Jim Pharo
Things We All Know(tm): We all know that liberal ideas are better. Conservative crazies who challenge liberal orthodoxy are on tv (and in newspaper op-ed pages, etc.) because of this fact — their POV is by definition provocative, and therefore better tv (newspaper writing, etc.). That’s why news execs don’t want to put people on the air who advocate for what is already conventional wisdom.
I think it would be helpful to say out loud this premise: we live in a liberal society – liberal ideas work. This is something We All Know(tm).
Josh Hueco
I always kinda thunk that Americans’ penchant for continually crowing how we’re the Bestest in the World(tm) is a case of the ladies doth protesting too much. If we’re really that good, then why do we constantly have to remind the world and ourselves of it?
harlana pepper
(sigh) Anyway, that’s an interesting theory. It makes sense. It has turned out to be a morally bankrupt way of dealing with the nation’s problems and has cost us blood & treasure. In part, you can thank neocons and “conservative” think-tanks like AEI for this sort of thing. I never could navigate this type of debate because I could not get past the sheer barbarity of what was being defended, ending up in stunned, slack-jawed retreat for lack of words. None of it is as cute as Bill Kristol seemed to think back in the day.
El Cid
It’s funny how this kind of thing is always pushed to be some non-ideological business-pressured decision, and yet the news pushers’ errors always fall to the right.
We can’t have any prominent regular column pushing anarcho-socialism, etc., but, hey, you know, our readers may be challenged by someone openly arguing for genocide.
Good god, it was only a generation ago that the respectable mainstream position was that our government’s direct pushing of actual genocidal slaughter in Guatemala was either not worth discussing or should be supported.
If you suggested that there was something not only too violent but inherently evil about that U.S. policy, then, ZOMG, u r a too ebbil leftist.
Fulcanelli
Rachel Maddow ran an interesting segment last eve remarking how the more DICK Cheney goes around on his “Redemption Tour” talking about how the Bush administration’s policy on torture was justified and useful the more he keeps it in the daily news cycle and in country’s face and it’s likely to have the opposite effect that he’s hoping for; i.e. generating even more anger and disgust which will lead to prosecution versus winning converts to his loathsome cause.
In my mind that serves to demonstrate just how genuinely twisted and evil his thinking is and not to mention, the more he runs his mouth the more likely he is to trip up and slip the noose around both his own neck and the necks of others like with the whole “Was Pelosi Actually Briefed” meme which is, as I understand it, against federal law. I’m trying to placate my inner cynic here in thinking that actually matters in this country any more and it’s not easy, but I still try against all odds.
As always, it’s not the crime, but the cover up that’ll getcha… So keep talking on the TeeVee, DICK.
Lupin
@Thankovsky
I’ll gladly plead guilty of hyperbole, but what I meant by “festering cancer” is not just what we do but who we are.
As I said, the atrocities of a tinpot tyrant, or even what happened in Cambodia, Rwanda, Darfur, Somalia, etc. are — shamefully — par for the course in the eyes of the western world.
That America can engage in that kind of behavior (torture) was known, at least by some; but that it can defend it is something else altogether.
Yesterday, Glenzilla posted an eloquent diary about the Obama administration pressuring the British Government to quash (in effect) their own line of inquiries into torture.
If that is not “cancerous” behavior, I don’t know what is.
I don’t expect us to behave perfectly; we never did. But I’d like us to return forcefully to embracing the best and brightest ideals in the world — and demonstrate it through a few exemplary actions, as opposed to parading our Pinochets on TV to the applause of millions.
Cat Lady
@Fulcanelli:
I completely agree with this. Dick “dick” Cheney is an evil, sick twisted fuck who knows somewhere in his bunker of a heart, that it’s all going to come out and the jig will be up. He is incapable of just sitting around waiting for that to happen – like asking a bird not to fly. His access to the MSM is a double-edged sword for him – he has a forum to defend himself, but after 8 years of being in an undisclosed location and every act was classified, it’s jarring to see him every week. Apart from the torture issue, even normal non-political people are finding his appearances where he’s taking pot shot after pot shot at Obama unseemly and in bad form. Apart from being a sick asshole, he’s a bad sport. Wait until the really bad, indefensible ugly crap comes out, and it all was approved by him. That’s why he’s out there now. He’s trapped in a situation of his own making.
Little Dreamer
@Cat Lady:
The deeper he steps in that shit, the happier I’ll be. ;)
Fulcanelli
@Cat Lady: Approved by him? It was orchestrated and implemented by him. These vermin laid the foundations of implementing torture to gather intelligence from terrorism suspects on a wider, more aggressive scale before the Iraq invasion. It was premeditated. It was official policy. It was illegal and still is. Prosecute and hang.
If Cheney or any other torture apologist, whether inside the administration or out, thinks the world and the US in particular is ever going to overlook or forget turning Saddam Hussein’s notorious Abu Ghraib prison into a torture and detention center just as bad or worse than it was in Hussein’s Iraq he’s even more delusional than we presently believe. This is not going away. Ever.
bago
@Jim Pharo: Just Curious. What kind of Conservative that is “standing athwart history and shouting stop” challenges orthodoxy?
Is there any example you can come up with where a conservative, who is conserving things would be challenging orthodoxy?
David
There’s a tradition in India where repulsive, freaky transvestites show up to disrupt weddings. Guests take up a collection and pay them to stop being obnoxious and leave the ceremony.
Dick Cheney’s Legacy Tour is the U.S. version.
someguy
@ Lupin
You got that right, and until this country is knocked down a few pegs, nobody is safe from our meddling. Cancelling the test-free nuclear weapons program is a good start, as is cutting off funding for strategic missile defense, but we have a lot of things to work on before the world can be made safe from our democracy, including reducing U.S. economic and cultural hegemony by an order of magnitude. Chomsky has been on top of this for a long time but nobody seems to want to listen to him – I guess power worshipping is more fun than being a responsible adult.
Charity
The only people calling the Inkwire (the paper I grew up reading) a knee-jerk liberal paper are the racist fucking asshole commenters on their website. GOD, they are horrible.
El Cid
It’s funny how this kind of thing is always pushed to be some non-ideological business-pressured decision, and yet the news pushers’ errors always fall to the right.
We can’t have any prominent regular column pushing anarcho-soci@lism, etc., but, hey, you know, our readers may be challenged by someone openly arguing for genocide.
Good god, it was only a generation ago that the respectable mainstream position was that our government’s direct pushing of actual genocidal slaughter in Guatemala was either not worth discussing or should be supported.
If you suggested that there was something not only too violent but inherently evil about that U.S. policy, then, ZOMG, u r a too ebbil leftist.
*Repeated to escape moderation
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
Fix’t.
uila
When is the last time you read somebody who linked to the Inquirer (other than Atrios and his parking comment threads)?
John Yoo is troll bait.
Dennis-SGMM
@Xenos:
As if to reinforce your point, today’s WaPo has an op ed by Senator Jeff Sessions:
That would be the same Jeff Sessions who recently stated that Obama has a secret plan to wreck the economy. Having a Republican Senator write an op ed about the choice of a Supreme Court justice is perfectly sensible. Handing the job to someone who spouts pernicious nonsense every time he opens his mouth is to offer coconut covered dogshit to “the marketplace of ideas”.
Mark
Americans like a debate about every issue, in which ideas are challenged and a diversity of opinion flourishes?
Debate on the subject of Israel would seem to dispel this idea.
Nick
They couldn’t find an intelligent conservative opinion writer who wasn’t also involved in war crimes.
DougJ
Glad someone else knows that skit.
schrodinger's cat
And here I thought the purpose of news media is to gather news, as in information and keep its readers well informed and since they were so spectacularly successful during the run-up to the Iraq war, I guess they have shifted their focus to providing “intellectual diversity”.
Svensker
That is pure horseshit. All you have to do is go to Europe and listen to the TV news there and the eyes will pop out of your head. Our media is ignorant and self-censored.
Comrade Darkness
@Brick Oven Bill, I have to agree with BoB, not so much about his assertion, which I’d prefer to see studied and proven (he DID state it in the form of a theoretical question) but about how certain topics are off limits because enough people will demonize the questioner when the middle ground is breached, leaving zero middle ground. It’s not healthy and it plays into the hands of those who prefer the status quo, who can easily wield outrage as a weapon of discourse destruction.
That said, BoB should start his own blog where he can encourage these discussions; he’s fully free to do that, because John has full editorial control on this one, up to and including the DMZ surrounding the topic of what is allowed. QED.
HyperIon
@Josh Hueco:
because…shut up, that’s why!
USA, USA, USA
/waves foam “we’re #1finger”
Hob
Comrade Darkness: BOB has his own blog. If you think there’s a productive debate to be had over his innovative “the coloreds are not like us” theory, go on over there and knock yourself out. Having his own blog has never stopped him from demanding the right to drop this shit in any other forum of his choosing, though.
DBrown
@Brick Oven Bill: You really are sick racist- trying to start a racist debate on your part is not free speech; preventing a classic racist from using such A/O reasoning is proper since your point is neither based on any real fact fact except what waste spews from your sick mind and more to the point, any useful idea that is even remotely related to any useful thought other then bringing up old southern racist attitudes about blacks. You are an extreme racist and just like your gay = NAZI you are really a sick person.
Argive
Those are both horrible reasons to give Yoo an editorial column. Wow. Though this does reinforce a suspicion I held growing up; that nothing good comes out of Episcopal Academy.
Look. I’m a member of the ACLU. John Yoo is free to say whatever the hell he likes, provided he can find a forum to do so. However, what Tierney is missing here is that the Philly Inquirer has no motherfletching obligation to provide him with that forum. I’m all for controversial speech, and I didn’t care when Santorum started writing for the Inquirer. But John Yoo deserves to be disbarred at the very least. Really, he needs to go to jail. He was instrumental in providing (spurious) legal justification behind some of the worst abuses of presidential power in US history. Having someone with credentials like that on an op-ed staff does not enhance the reputation or credibility of a newspaper.
Ash Can
@Lupin:
I’m glad you mentioned this, because this is something I’d like to hear more about. I didn’t read Greenwald’s entire article itself, but my understanding is that the communication in question was sent to the British government by an unnamed DoJ official approximately two weeks after Obama’s inauguration. Now, recall that alarms were raised in the left blogosphere in the waning days of the Bush administration regarding the “burrowing” of loyal Bushies in the various agencies, including DoJ. In light of all of this, I’m left wondering just who it was who actually authored this communique and sent it to the British government, and whether Obama himself, either figuratively or literally, signed off on it.
Mind you, I’m not finding fault with Greenwald for writing this story. Quite the opposite, in fact. It shines a light on something that needs illuminating. Especially since this incident happened so early into Obama’s administration, however, it raises questions. The fact remains that it did happen on Obama’s watch, technically, so at the very least this highlights his responsibility regarding anything the DoJ does in an official capacity, and should serve as a warning for him and his team. If the incident originated with a rogue Bushie, it highlights a specific problem for the Obama administration to address, the sooner the better. And if the incident occurred with Obama’s explicit blessing, then this needs to be made known far and wide, and Obama needs to be held accountable. Personally, I think this third possibility is the most unlikely, but if it’s the truth, it’s best that I (and everyone else) know it sooner rather than later.
Xenos
@Comrade Darkness: Wrong. BOB’s question assumes a fact not in evidence – that African Americans are descendants of people who lived in a Hunter-Gatherer social formation for 25,000 years longer than other groups.
This is BS. The archaeological record does not support this. (rather, West Africa underwent a neolithic revolution at about the same time as Europe did.) It is as much a fantasy as Elijah Mohamed’s theory that white people were invented by a mad scientist. There is no basis for a free exchange of ideas with someone who would propose such horseshit.
If Bob were an uneducated but well meaning person, I would try to educate him. But he has an engineering degree; he knows how to research this stuff. He does not, preferring to publish bigoted trash. Let him be shut up, because he deserves it.
sparky
@Thankovsky: Sorry, but I have to disagree. The US (yes, you and me) is directly responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who did not attack the US.
In words that are no longer in vogue or even seem to have any meaning, it is shameful.
Interrobang
I knew Tierney was going to say that. One of the most important piles of steaming semantic pollution the right has managed to leave around the place is the ridiculous notion that “free speech” means that anyone is allowed to say anything in any forum they like, and further, that providers of those forums are obligated (by adhering to the principle of “free speech,” natch) to allow any and all opinions to appear unfettered in their forums. (Those of us who are more sane feel that if I allow you to come into my living room and you shit on the rug, I’m also allowed to grab you by the ear and toss you facefirst down the front steps. Further, sane people also know I’m not obligated to let you in my front door to begin with.)
The right has managed to turn the concept of free speech into entitled speech — not only do they feel entitled to say whatever odious thing they feel like today, they also feel entitled to say it wherever they please, and they also usually feel entitled to having someone else pay (them) for it.
That’s not free speech, that’s fucking expensive speech…
sparky
@Xenos: all good points but i’m not sure i agree with your conclusion. i don’t believe in astrology either but i sure would be uncomfortable with “shutting up” those who do. i just don’t see any good way to draw the line short of letting everyone have their own soapbox. notice that there’s no need to *give* him a soapbox, so if he and his buddies wanna stand on them in their respective basements, i don’t think we should be breaking down the door to stop them.
nb: in a forum, i think good faith is a plausible requirement, though it may be difficult to implement. in the public sphere i don’t think you can require it.
Lupin
@Ash Can
According to Glenn’s research, this is NOT the first US response which may or may not have been some remnants of the Bushista old guard, but new paperwork created by the Obama administration.
Glenn does speculate that the Obama administration is, in fact, responding to some secret request from some spheres of the British Government to help cover their asses, but (a) it is pure speculation, and (b) it is not our job to interfere with another country’s genuine investigation into this sorry mess.
We may have tortured before, but we were not exporting evil values, quite the contrary. Now we do. The Roman Catholic Church has harbored pedophiles, but it doesn’t preach that children should be molested.
This is an important line in the sand.
We really really really have to clean up our act.
Mattski
subscription = cancelled
Argive
@Interrobang:
“The right to free speech does not include the right to be taken seriously.”
-Hubert H. Humphrey
Put another way, the right to free speech does not include the right to be given a free pass for doing/saying repugnant shit.
Comrade Sock Puppet of the Great Satan
“He’s [Yoo] on the faculty at Berkeley, one of the most liberal universities in the country.”
Can we get rid of this myth that UC Berkeley is a nest of hyper-radicals. UCB might have been radical back before man walked on the moon, but it’s not now: the College Republicans used to be the largest club on campus, and the hardest major to get into is Business. Most *Oxbridge colleges* are more radical than UC Berkeley, for christ’s sake.
Berkeley City Council is one of the most liberal in the country, but that’s a *different thing*.
asiangrrlMN
@Argive: Yes, this. In addition, (and this is directed more at Carrie Prejean), the right to free speech comes with it a responsibility. You can say whatever the fuck you want, but you also have to be prepared to deal with the outcome of your words. That’s the part we seem to be forgetting. As for Yoo, he can still bite me. Fucker.
Thankovsky
@Lupin:
But you see, you’ve just proven my point: this is a perfectly reasonable argument, on your part, and neither I, nor, I suspect, anyone to the left of John Yoo could argue against this. I can definitely understand characterizing this behavior as “cancerous.” But calling the U.S. a cancer implies that we don’t do anything positive in the international community – and that’s such a ridiculous claim to make, that it really hobbles your argument.
@sparky:
As horrendous as that death toll is, I think there’s a pretty significant difference between collateral deaths in a military campaign, and actually mass-killing your own citizens. Both are evil, no doubt. But in my book, there are degrees of evil.
Zuzu's Petals
Comrade Sockpuppet:
Yes, that was also the rumor when I was there in the ‘ 80s… that the College Repubs was the biggest club on campus.
But if there’s any truth to it, I think it’s because Berkeley lefties love nothing more than infighting, hence the existence of a zillion splinter groups.
Ares Vista
Injustice is injustice no matter who is behind it. Saying that the president has the right to commit international crimes is a slap to the constitution and the integrity of the people of this great nation. George W. Bush and his administration are guilty of committing crimes, and the God they claim to be killing for will be their final judge. Mercy for them.