Category: The Dish

A reader writes:

I’ll admit that I was growing wary of the constant book plugs on your blog. Then, for some reason this morning, as I was reading your site for the first of what will undoubtedly be many times today, the realization dawned on me that I’ve been missing an obvious point – it’s your blog. Post whatever the hell you want on it; your readers are none to complain. If I want straight-up news I’ll go to a news site. I come to you for analysis from your point of view, and right now that is heavily influenced by your thoughts from the book. So I say keep doing what you’re doing.

Well, to tell the truth, the real reason I keep plugging the book is that everything I am writing on my blog right now – and have written for six years – is better explained in the book. That’s why I wrote it. Many of the quick points I make on a blog beg lots of other questions. I’m not easily described as a ‘ conservative’ or ‘liberal’ or what-have-you in today’s climate and I get exhausted explaining myself in emails to readers. So I decided to sit down and actually write out my political and religious beliefs in as coherent and accessible a way as I could. I call these ideas "conservative" in the classical sense. But I’ve been stunned how many liberals I’ve met on the tour who have actually read the book say they agree with almost all of it. The times they are a-changing.

In other words: I’m about promoting the ideas I believe in, whatever label you want to put on them. I do this on the blog every day. But the book is a chance to go deeper, to go back to first principles and question them and explain where I’m coming from. I’m sure few will agree with all of it. But I sure hope they will better understand why and where they disagree or agree with it after reading it. I’ve written it in the same conversational tone as the blog, and although it’s about philosophy and, in part, theology, I’ve really done my best to make my case in the plain English I try and use here.

I don’t have much of a pecuniary interest in this. I’ve already gotten the advance. Most of the money will go to Harper Collins. But I want people to understand the points I’m making and they just cannot be fully elaborated in a blog post. So if this blog has prompted you to rethink your positions – political or religious – the book might do so in a deeper, more interesting way. Hence my plugs. Ideas matter. I really believe that. And today, ideas matter as much as they ever have. Hence my hope you’ll read it, and that it prompts you to more thoughts and we can continue that conversation and debate here as the days and months go by. You can buy it online here and here or in any major bookstore.

"’I am a Republican and have traditionally voted that way,’ Tony Schuler, an operations services manager at Microsoft with a Harvard M.B.A., said as he sat with his wife, Deanna, in their home above Lake Sammamish. But Mr. Schuler abhors what he sees as a new Republican habit of meddling in private affairs. ‘The Schiavo case. Tapping people without a warrant. Whether or not people are gay,’ he said. ‘Let people be free! It‚Äôs not government’s job to interfere with those things.’" – from the New York Times today.

American freedom and Bush-Rove Republicanism are increasingly at odds. Don’t let them intimidate you. If you’re a conservative who actually values the constitutional freedoms these people are stripping away, vote Democrat or abstain. If today’s GOP wins, they will take it as vindication for their authoritarian streak. And the path we have already embarked upon will only get darker.

Round II: the most recent one. Sorry for the mix-up. It’s been a long book tour.

"And let this always weigh down your feet like lead,
to make you move as slowly as a weary man,
to refrain from ‘yes’ or ‘no’ when you do not see …

because hasty opinion too often
points the wrong way and then affection
for one’s own opinion binds up the intellect."

Dante, Purgatorio XIII: 112-114, 118-120. He puts these words into the mouth of Thomas Aquinas, the thinker now purloined and abused by the theocons.

Here’s what i consider a basic moral value. You do not leave your children and grandchildren the debt that you have accrued to buy yourself a few votes. That is what this administration and Congress have done. The debt the next generation had to pay off – the unfunded future liabilities of the federal government – was $20 trillion in 2000. After four years of Bush Republicanism, it is $43 trillion. Bush won’t face the consequences. He never has. But he is immorally shunting the costs of his profligacy on the next generation. It is profoundly immoral and dishonest. Which is why values voters among Republicans and Democrats need to demand reform and honest debate about the real fiscal trade-offs we need to confront. The current GOP leadership won’t do that. Because they are immoral and corrupt. Which is why change in this election is essential. the longer we wait to deal with this, the more brutal the reckoning.

A fascinating exchange, if you missed it.

Laurie Anderson’s "O Superman." Its lyrics seems eerily prophetic twenty years before 9/11:

"This is the hand, the hand that takes/
Here come the planes/
They’re American planes. Made in America/
Smoking or non-smoking?/
And the voice said: ‘Neither snow nor rain nor gloom of night shall stay these couriers/
From the swift completion of their appointed rounds."

And oddly appropriate for our time now, under this administration:

"When love is gone, there’s always Justice.
When Justice is gone there’s always force.
When force is gone, there’s always Mom."

Bruce Bawer writes on his blog:

I have before me two news items dated October 24. One of them is from the Gay Community News, which reports that "The leading imam in Manchester…thinks the execution of sexually active gay men is justified." The imam made his comments in a discussion with a Manchester psychotherapist, John Casson, who wanted the imam to clarify the Islamic position on the execution of gays in Iran… I’ve looked in vain for it in the major British newspapers.

The other item is a story from LifeSiteNews.com reporting that the BBC "has admitted to a marked bias against Christianity and a strong inclination to pro-Muslim reporting among the network’s executives and key anchors." It has also admitted that "the corporation is dominated by homosexuals." These admissions came at a secret "impartiality summit" that the Daily Mail reported on last Sunday. The Telegraph ran an opinion column about this summit, but otherwise I can’t find any reference to it on the websites of other major UK papers.

So the question is this: did the gay-dominated but Muslim-friendly BBC report on the Manchesterimam’s comments? I searched the BBC site and found a brief story dated Thursday, October 26 – meaning that apparently the BBC took two days to get around to reporting this. And look how they spun it. The story is framed not as a report of a Muslim leader’s affirmation of the legitimacy under Islam of executions of gay people, but as a report of an effort to smear Muslims.

The headline: "Imam accused of ‘gay death’ slur."

The BBC is a disgrace.

Dick Armey gets it right:

Since the party won the majority in 1994, the GOP Conference had been consistent in requiring offsetting spending cuts for any new spending initiatives. (In fact, during the aftermath of a large Mississippi River flood, Rep. Jim Nussle even waited to find and approve offsets before moving the relief legislation for his own state of Iowa.) But by the summer of 1997, the appropriators — rightly called the "third party" of Congress — had begun to pass spending bills with Democrats. As soon as politics superseded policy and principle, the avalanche of earmarks that is crushing the party began.

Now spending is out of control. Rather than rolling back government, we have a new $1.2 trillion Medicare prescription drug benefit, and non-defense discretionary spending is growing twice as fast as it had in the Clinton administration. Meanwhile, Social Security is collapsing while rogue nations are going nuclear and the Middle East is more combustible than ever. Yet Republican lawmakers have taken up such issues as flag burning, Terri Schiavo and same-sex marriage.

They’re fooling only themselves.

An excellent, clear and sobering essay from my friend Niall Ferguson. There is not a word I disagree with. We are both conservatives who went for Kerry last time. Because we could see the disaster coming. It is now here.