Brown Self-Destructs

This is not something you should do with eight days to go before an election:

Emboldened by Mr Brown's new confidence dealing with the great British public, one of his senior Downing Street staffers, Sue Nye, clearly thought he would be more than a match for Gillian Duffy, an opinionated 66-year-old widow who was vociferously voicing her views to anyone who would listen as Mr Brown visited a community payback scheme for offenders in Rochdale.

Mrs Duffy was delighted – robustly telling the Prime Minister her thoughts on a range of issues, from student tuition fee, to the deficit and, apparently to Mr Brown's disgust, immigration.

Their conversation was overheard by dozens of gleeful journalists and camera crews, again to Mr Brown's dismay.

As he climbed into his waiting Jaguar, he turned to his adviser and demanded to know who had been responsible for putting him in a situation he found so uncomfortable.

"She's just a sort of bigoted woman who says she used to be Labour," he raged.

His mic was on. This could be a meltdown moment for Labour already in third place. And if Labour collapses, all bets are off.

Limited Epistemologies

Dreher keeps the thread alive:

[If] it's true that liberalism is an epistemology, then so too is conservatism — one that, in its truest and noblest form, is far more open than liberalism to valuing the wisdom of the past as a sure guide to the present. It's weakness is that it can become fixated on tradition, and rigid in the application of its principles; conservatives can forget that theirs is not an ideology, but a temperament, and way of looking at the world — in fact, a sort of epistemology. The problem with liberalism as an epistemology is that it can fall prey to being a prisoner of the present moment, and pays insufficient attention to the wisdom of the past — this, as a result of its high idealism.

In their decadent stages — and these things are cyclical — both liberalism and conservatism forget that they are at their best limited epistemologies — ways of seeing and evaluating the world that can only show us a partial truth — and not ideologies. Epistemic humility is a virtue of which all sides have great need these days.

Against Cyber Utopia

Evgeny Morozov maintains his tech-pessimism:

Internet enthusiasts argue that the Web has made organizing easier. But this is only partially true; taking full advantage of online organizing requires a well-disciplined movement with clearly defined goals, hierarchies, and operational procedures (think of Barack Obama's presidential campaign). But if a political movement is disorganized and unfocused, the Internet might only expose and publicize its vulnerabilities and ratchet up the rancor of internecine conflicts. This, alas, sounds much like Iran's disorganized green movement.

Pipeline To Nowhere, Ctd

A reader writes:

I've been reporting on oil and gas in Alaska for about three years. Your post about the Alaska natural gas pipeline is a bit misleading.

First, the bill Gov. Parnell signed concerns a completely different pipeline than the one Palin promoted and is still promoting. It's for a pipeline entirely within the state Alaska, to supply gas solely to Alaskans. To oversimplify, it's needed because the gas fields around Anchorage are in decline. The Palin project is a much longer and larger pipeline to supply gas to people in Canada and the Lower 48.

Second, to write "The current governor is scrambling to get the project on track" is not a fair assessment of what's happening. The big pipeline is out of his hands at this point. There are two consortiums pursuing nearly identical pipeline projects. Both plan to hold separate "open seasons" later this year, where they will seek commitments from natural gas producers that want to ship gas on the proposed lines.

It's simply too early to call Palin's plan a failure. If those open seasons yield enough shipping commitments to support the cost of a pipeline, one of the projects will move forward. If they don't, both projects will stall. It's really only at that point that you can honestly judge her plan.

The Daily Wrap

Today on the Dish we rounded up commentary on the British election, Cameron reclaimed the online mantle from Clegg, and Massie and Silver nerded out to proportional representation. Economic indicators here and its political spin here. Media antics here, Twitter gaffe here, and a dose of pop culture here.

In Palin watch, DiA countered Josh Green over her presidential chances, Josh pushed back, and the Dish tallied yet another odd lie (though the perjury rumor was likely false). In immigration coverage, James Doty called the law unconstitutional, Kevin Johnson came up with a simpler solution, and an Arizonan posed an even simpler solution. Readers dissented over Andrew's take on racism, Tim Wise backed his view, and a tea-partier flipped his shit.

In random commentary, Yglesias worried about the pace of financial reform, Gideon Rachman drew comparisons between the Northern Irish and Israeli peace processes, Steven Berlin Johnson spelled out the power of Twitter, TNC begged to differ with Henry Louis Gates over racial blame, John Gray targeted atheism, Drum didn't, and Andrew tackled the "right-wing media-industrial complex." State of conservatism round-up here.

Adoption discussion here, creepy ad here, and mesmerizing art exhibit here. A reader passed along the Muhammed episode from Chinese YouTube and another shared an emotional story of letting her dog go.

— C.B.