Category: The Dish

An impressive showing. The Republichameleon is not to be under-estimated.

The Brits now have experience of the transition to a modern, inclusive, professional military. A total non-event. Except, of course, for the many honorable and admirable gay servicemembers now able to serve without fear, deception, dishonesty and isolation.

Larry Flynt remembers. Money quote:

Over time, Falwell was forced to publicly come to grips with the reality that this is America, where you can make fun of anyone you want. That hadn’t been absolutely clear before our case, but now it’s being taught in law schools all over the country, and our case is being hailed as one of the most important free-speech cases of the 20th century.

No wonder that when he started hugging me and smooching me on television 10 years later, I was a bit confused. I hadn’t seen him since we’d been in court together, and that night I didn’t see him until I came out on the stage. I was expecting (and looking for) a fight, but instead he was putting his hands all over me. I remember thinking, "I spent $3 million taking that case to the Supreme Court, and now this guy wants to put his hand on my leg?"

Like Glenn Close out of the bathtub. Reality has a habit of provoking these things, doesn’t it?

This is an online poll so the usual caveat. But it’s in the Military Times, an outlet without that many general readers. With over 5,000 responses from readers, over 50 percent believe torture is legitimate simply "to gather vital information." Another 20 percent support it to save troops’ lives. Those two categories basically make torture an option for all soldiers in a dangerous war-zone. Six years after Bush’s approval, 70 percent of Military Times readers endorse torture – not even the newspeak "enhanced interrogation techniques" – as a routine military option. Congratulations, Mr President. Bonus congrats to Joel Surnow and Fox.

There are murmurings afoot – from disgruntled Republican Congressmen to a skeptical defense secretary to a maverick but refreshing Republican candidate, Ron Paul. My column in the Sunday Times is on this strange and perhaps fleeting convergence:

[Ron Paul’s] very presence reminded Americans of what the Republicans used to be. They were once the fiscally prudent, freedom-loving isolationists of the United States.

The idea that the party of Eisenhower or Goldwater would have suspended habeas corpus indefinitely, as Bush has done for “enemy combatants”, would be unthinkable. The idea that they would have tried to occupy and rebuild an entire country in the Middle East is unimaginable. They were ferociously anticommunist, but also wary of direct engagement in foreign countries and deeply suspicious of all wars.

This kind of prudence and caution was once the hallmark of the middle of the country and its Midwestern American values. Paul reminded Americans of this past. He told them that the Republicans opposed the second world war, ended the Korean war and ended the Vietnam war. Why not the Iraq war? Why not indeed.

"The believer will open his mind to the truth on condition that it fits in with his preconceived ideas and wishes.  Faith, on the other hand, is an unreserved opening of the mind to the truth, whatever it may turn out to be.  Faith has no preconceptions; it is a plunge into the unknown.  Belief clings, but faith lets go.  In this sense of the word, faith is the essential virtue of science, and likewise of any religion that is not self-deception," – Alan Watts, "The Wisdom Of Insecurity."

It’s correlated to complacency about cancer. Which is correlated to the prevalence of preventable cancer. Or so a new study finds.

Here’s Wiki’s explanation for that Y in Provo: Brigham Young University.