Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
Jay Nordlinger:
Although, who’s to say what really resided in the hearts and minds of his hearers? When people such as Bush speak as he does, there is a lot of silent, submerged, sometimes afraid agreement.
Indeed:
Silent, submerged, sometimes afraid agreement.
Your Silence Is a Canvas For My Wildest FantasiesPost + Comments (36)
How is it that the Federal Trade Commission kicked that car warranty scam extremely hard in the junk, yet they can afford to saturation bomb my teevee with new ads?
Discuss.
***Update***
Apparently the phone scam and the TV scams (which I assume is a scam since they present customer ‘testimonials’ without showing or naming any actual customers) are run by different firms.
***Update 2***
How profitable can dubious car warranty scheming possibly be? It must bring in more dough than I guessed if the economy can support that many firms at once.
Sorry, forgot to put this up.
Damn this is a good game.
A few months ago I asked all of you what the deal was with Edmund Burke. I learned that he was a starburst-prone sovereign citizen, and, more importantly, a new category for posts was born.
Since I went to Florence today and saw a bunch of Renaissance stuff, I was wondering…what is the official conservative take on the Renaissance? I know what it is for most of the rest of history. Greeks — good, despite the teh gay stuff. Middle ages — good, people spoke Latin and obeyed the church. Age of Enlightenment — bad, too much questioning of authority plus everyone was French. Modernity — bad, too much atheism and abstract art. My gut feeling is that the Renaissance was bad. It ended the Middle Ages, which were good, it led to the atheist doctrine of heliocentrism, which is bad, and God touching the hand of man and all that seems like proto-secular humanism, at best.
So what’s the deal? Is there an Official Wingnut Position on the Renaissance? Any NRO list of 50 Greatest Conservative Renaissance Artists? And if there’s none of that, just to broaden the concept of conservative to include more general forms of wankery, if necessary, did Niall Ferguson ever write about how we’d all be better off if the Renaissance had never happened? Any Ambinder/Douthat exchanges about whether or not the Renaissance was caused by a black swan or was itself some kind of a black swan?
Update. One reader suggests perhaps conservatives like Enlightenment because it led to Burke. Not true.
When I heard the speech this morning, this portion stood out:
The fourth issue that I will address is democracy.
I know there has been controversy about the promotion of democracy in recent years, and much of this controversy is connected to the war in Iraq. So let me be clear: no system of government can or should be imposed upon one nation by any other.
That does not lessen my commitment, however, to governments that reflect the will of the people. Each nation gives life to this principle in its own way, grounded in the traditions of its own people. America does not presume to know what is best for everyone, just as we would not presume to pick the outcome of a peaceful election. But I do have an unyielding belief that all people yearn for certain things: the ability to speak your mind and have a say in how you are governed; confidence in the rule of law and the equal administration of justice; government that is transparent and doesn’t steal from the people; the freedom to live as you choose. Those are not just American ideas, they are human rights, and that is why we will support them everywhere.
There is no straight line to realize this promise. But this much is clear: governments that protect these rights are ultimately more stable, successful and secure. Suppressing ideas never succeeds in making them go away. America respects the right of all peaceful and law-abiding voices to be heard around the world, even if we disagree with them. And we will welcome all elected, peaceful governments – provided they govern with respect for all their people.
This last point is important because there are some who advocate for democracy only when they are out of power; once in power, they are ruthless in suppressing the rights of others. No matter where it takes hold, government of the people and by the people sets a single standard for all who hold power: you must maintain your power through consent, not coercion; you must respect the rights of minorities, and participate with a spirit of tolerance and compromise; you must place the interests of your people and the legitimate workings of the political process above your party. Without these ingredients, elections alone do not make true democracy.
I know a lot of the blame for the tensions between the Arab Muslim world and the US lies with the Israeli/Palestinian issue, but I think an awful lot of the blame could also be traced to the fact that we have supported ruthless dictators and corrupt autocrats and just turned a blind eye on the horrible things they were doing to their own people just so long as we got whatever we wanted in the short term and the oil kept flowing. We aren’t too big on that big picture thing.
Any thoughts?
The Part That I Think Will Resonate the MostPost + Comments (250)