Michael Barone’s Time Warp

Here is a column that could have been written twenty years ago and that's based, as Barone explains, on an impression formed twenty years ago. The argument requires total amnesia of the Bush-Cheney years and the enormous damage they did to America's reputation for human rights, and basic competence. If the torture and pre-emptive war era are erased from one's memory, it makes some kind of sense. It's a useful ideological device and is common elsewhere on the amnesiac right. If you erase the memory of massive debt and growth in government under Bush, it also makes sense to blame the man who inherited it on top of a brutal recession for being a socialist. 

Late To The Fiesta

Newt Gingrich, in an attempt to court conservative Hispanics, launches a bilingual news/opinion site. Benen reminds us:

It was [Gingrich] who, in giving a speech to a Republican group in 2007, described bilingual education as teaching "the language of living in a ghetto." He's also mocked the idea of printing government documents in anything but English, and promoted English-only measures. In 1995, Gingrich said bilingualism poses "long-term dangers to the fabric of our nation" and that "allowing bilingualism to continue to grow is very dangerous." And earlier this year, it was Gingrich who blasted Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor as a "racist" […] But now that Republicans are worried about losing the Latino vote for the indefinite future, Gingrich is going to help bring the GOP message to the Latino community? Good luck with that.

Theodicy, Once More

Coyne responds:

Humans do not have a unique capacity to “rise above suffering.” Every animal rises above suffering.  It has to, if it is to live and leave offspring.  It’s ADAPTIVE to be resilient!  Any dog who hobbles along on three legs after an accident is rising above suffering.  How are we humans different? We have big brains that can mentally come to terms with suffering, but that’s adaptive too. It’s certainly not evidence of “God’s love for us,” much less for a god itself.  It’s better evidence for evolution, for those individuals who couldn’t rise above suffering left no offspring.  Ergo we cope, both mentally and physically. Sullivan goes on to talk about the terrible diseases that afflicted his loved ones, and for that he has my deepest sympathy. But even atheists recover from such traumas.

One feels as if one is talking past someone.

Yes, resilience is obviously built into our genetics, but my point was the unique ability to transcend suffering, not just endure it. That requires a mind that renders humans uniquely self-conscious, which has led to inquiries into ultimate meaning that, so far as we can tell, no animal experiences in the same way. Many survive suffering – most, in fact. The question is whether it is overcome, rather than endured. For that, something beyond mere physical processes are necessary. Which is where religion has its place.

Celebrities Against Greed

Jim Geraghty notes:

[Will Ferrell] is by some accounts the highest paid star in Hollywood (Forbes said this year he was merely the 20th-highest-paid). On a similar note, I was stunned to learn that you have to pay money to watch Michael Moore's movie about the evils of capitalism.

Chris Good fact checks the claim that "80% of Americans support the public option."

The Balloon Juice Dictionary

The web is wonderful for many reasons but one of them is its capacity to generate new language. You can get fisked or becked; there are money quotes and hat tips; and then there are the private languages that can develop among regular commenters. Balloon Juice has now compiled a dictionary of its readers' best neologisms and acronyms. Check them out. My faves:

Glibertarian—a portmanteau of glib and libertarian, a person who affects libertarianism when it’s convenient. Used by those not ready to admit that all libertarian philosophy can be boiled down to “I got mine, fuck you”, or by those attempting to be polite to libertarians.

Magical Unity Pony (MUP): affectionate-mocking nickname for presidential candidate Barack Obama.

MUPpets: Especially during the 2008 campaign, individuals said to be unduly enamoured by then-candidate Barack Obama.

WATB – Whiny-Ass Titty Baby, or Babies. Originally appended to the ombudspersons of the Washington Post, possibly by Sadly, No! , for complaining that unpaid bloggers were making the ombudspersons’ highly-compensated jobs too hard.

Rebunk – to bring back a myth, lie, urban legend or totally discredited idea as though the evidence which reliably debunked the nonsense never existed. Almost always committed by Re-publicans.

And these from the comment section on the comment section:

IOKIYAR – It’s OK if you’re a republican. (var fm. IOKIYAAR)

Doughy Pantload: A derogatory nickname for LA Times columnist and former National Review Online Editor Jonah Goldberg, who inflicted a book-length violation of Godwin’s law upon an unsuspecting (and, among his readers, undiscerning) public. Frequently mocked for statement he made about his book, entitled “Liberal Fascism”, roughly a year prior to its publication, that it was a very serious, thoughtful, argument that has never been made in such detail or with such care.

Burkean Bells, n. An auditory hallucination experienced by people who consider themselves to be “authentic conservatives” who have been driven from the Republican Party by the wingnuts. Most often experienced by people who think Edmund Burke was the title character in an obscure 1960s television series.

Oakeshott, n. 1. mid-20th Century conservative philosopher, subject of Andrew Sullivan’s doctoral dissertation.
2. Three ounces of Maker’s Mark in a wooden cup.
Most self-proclaimed conservatives think 2 is the correct definition.

Dear Mr President

Bush-torture-wide

A reader writes:

I read your Oct 2009 "Dear President Bush" piece in the Atlantic online today, and just wanted to write to say what an eloquent and persuasive piece it is. It was FWD'd to me by a close friend who used to be a Republican. I used to be a moderate independent.

The Bush years and the changes in the American political landscape have pushed us both far to the left… or rather, I think we each believe now in the things that we believed in a decade ago, but the political landscape has changed so much that, without having moved much, we're both somehow standing in a completely different place. It reminds me of an anecdote told by a man from the former Soviet Union; his family lived in the exact same house for 60 years in the 20th century, during which time the house was in five different countries.

While reading your article, I was thinking about the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa (upon which I gather the Rwandan T&R Commission is based, though I know less about how the Rwandan one functions).

It was a structure set up to examine crimes similar to the ones discussed in your article, and which the perpetrators committed at home, on their fellow citizens and most often against civilians, including women and children. Utterly horrific crimes. But the perpetrator's punishment at a Commission hearing was not imprisonment or execution; it was to be confronted by witnesses, survivors, and mourners, and then to publicly accept responsibility for his actions and apologize to those whom he had harmed. The Commission was in keeping with tribal tradition about what a community needs to do to normalize and move on; it's necessary to air grievances, discuss injuries, accept responsibility, apologize, and forgive.

I really don't know if could ever forgive former President Bush and his associates for what they did to this country, to our Constitution, and to others. But their acknowledging wrongs, accepting responsibility, and apologizing would indeed be a big step toward reconciliation in OUR society–and perhaps toward the reconciliation we must achieve with the Islamic world if we're not to spend the next century in another Cold War.

Thanks for writing a thoughtful, intelligent piece amidst all the irrational screaming and hysterical name-calling. I hope it gets noticed.