Since news came out that Dick Cheney got a heart transplant there has been an eruption of hatred against him from our ever civil cousins on the left.
The funny thing about Cheney is that almost all of the major charges against him made by the left turned out to be false.
We know from two Congressional commissions that he did not "cook the books" on Iraq intelligence. He didn't lie about Iraq. He didn't have untoward influence on the decision to go to Iraq. He and Bush were just saying what everyone including the Democrats, including Clinton, knew to be true about Iraq, which is that they had chemical and biological weapons and wanted to restart a program for nuclear weapons.
The intelligence on Iraq came up through the CIA via normal channels and was vetted by the director of the CIA and published in the NIE as usual. We can read the executive summary of that NIE if we wish.
Moreover, Cheney is responsible for putting the US on track to energy independence, which we are gaining by degrees despite the efforts of the Obama administration to limit oil production by denying permits to Federal land, slow rolling offshore permits, and blocking the Keystone XL pipeline.
And yet they all still hate Cheney's guts.
Reality based? I don't think so.
Sunday, March 25, 2012
Sunday, March 11, 2012
Totalitarianism: All the Rage
Totalitarianism is becoming more popular in the West. Australia is discussing the implementation of a "News Media Council", which, like the Ministry of Truth, would have the power to reprimand news organizations that it thought were being "irresponsible." The American left is forever advocating various forms of restriction of speech in the name of tolerance. The term "hate speech" has been expanded to cover any form of speech critical to them or things they like. In Canada a bureau with the Orwellian name of "Human Rights Commission" has been prosecuting people who run afoul of dicates against speech critical of certain ethnic groups, especially Islam. News organizations have been sympathetic to Muslim insistance that Islam not be criticized, and so they self-censor in a way that they will not to protect Christianity and other religions.
One gets the impression that many of these people long for the regularity and regimentation of the totalitarian society. Commentators such as Thomas Friedman at the New York Times wax eloquent in their praise of the Chinese Communist government that can get things done without the obstructions thrown up by democracy. Over at The Nation magazine when they publish stories about free speech it is often about the "right" of left wing mobs to occupy buildings and disrupt business and services on a campus or some other venue. The "right" most of all to shut down the free speech of others. The "right" in other words to use intimidation and even violence in the name of some leftist cause. The "right" to act like a bunch of brownshirts.
It never seems to dawn on them that their own concerns and passions might be the ones crushed by such a regime. Many of them are so used to being in the elite that they can't imagine it otherwise. They did whatever it takes to become one of the elite, they will do whatever it takes to stay in the elite, but what they don't realize it that it might not be in their hands, that things like identity can be used to exclude them. For example, in Cambodia it was simple markers of identity, the possession of reading glasses, the possession of books, that decided who would go to the killing fields.
One gets the impression that many of these people long for the regularity and regimentation of the totalitarian society. Commentators such as Thomas Friedman at the New York Times wax eloquent in their praise of the Chinese Communist government that can get things done without the obstructions thrown up by democracy. Over at The Nation magazine when they publish stories about free speech it is often about the "right" of left wing mobs to occupy buildings and disrupt business and services on a campus or some other venue. The "right" most of all to shut down the free speech of others. The "right" in other words to use intimidation and even violence in the name of some leftist cause. The "right" to act like a bunch of brownshirts.
It never seems to dawn on them that their own concerns and passions might be the ones crushed by such a regime. Many of them are so used to being in the elite that they can't imagine it otherwise. They did whatever it takes to become one of the elite, they will do whatever it takes to stay in the elite, but what they don't realize it that it might not be in their hands, that things like identity can be used to exclude them. For example, in Cambodia it was simple markers of identity, the possession of reading glasses, the possession of books, that decided who would go to the killing fields.
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