Alarming News: I like Morgan Freeberg. A lot.
American Digest: And I like this from "The Blog That Nobody Reads", because it is -- mostly -- about me. What can I say? I'm on an ego trip today. It won't last.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: We were following a trackback and thinking "hmmm... this is a bloody excellent post!", and then we realized that it was just part III of, well, three...Damn. I wish I'd written those.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: ...I just remembered that I found a new blog a short while ago, House of Eratosthenes, that I really like. I like his common sense approach and his curiosity when it comes to why people believe what they believe rather than just what they believe.
Brutally Honest: Morgan Freeberg is brilliant.
Dr. Melissa Clouthier: Morgan Freeberg at House of Eratosthenes (pftthats a mouthful) honors big boned women in skimpy clothing. The picture there is priceless--keep scrolling down.
Exile in Portales: Via Gerard: Morgan Freeberg, a guy with a lot to say. And he speaks The Truth...and it's fascinating stuff. Worth a read, or three. Or six.
Just Muttering: Two nice pieces at House of Eratosthenes, one about a perhaps unintended effect of the Enron mess, and one on the Gore-y environ-movie.
Mein Blogovault: Make "the Blog that No One Reads" one of your daily reads.
The Virginian: I know this post will offend some people, but the author makes some good points.
Poetic Justice: Cletus! Ah gots a laiv one fer yew...
Soft-Bellied Arguments
Somewhere between cogitating on the claim that FEMA caused thousands of deaths in New Orleans through an ingrained hostility toward black people, and chewing over the still-unfounded prospect that America is becoming a �theocracy� (link requires registration; fourth letter down), I hit upon a realization. Leftist arguments, by and large, aren�t simply weak; they are incubated in such a way that they can be nothing else. Like anything in life that has to do with homo sapiens, other animals, or for that matter anything organic, ideas enter the realm of maturity with a strength proportional to the environmental hostility in which they grew. And leftists tend to incubate their ideas in extraordinarily friendly environments. This leads to some soft-bellied, domesticated talking points that are not only weak, but malignant. Which is to say, over the long haul, they do the ideology that hosts them, substantially more harm than good.
Perhaps the best example of this in recent memory is the �training ground� argument.
It goes like this: Ever since our national unity dissolved in the wake of the September 11 attacks, we have been told there is �no connection whatsoever between Iraq and Al Qaeda.� The two regimes did not collaborate and they would not collaborate, since the leader of one was fundamentalist and the leader of the other was secular. Talking points were put out that Saddam and bin Laden �hated each other,� although notably, nobody with a reputation to protect stuck their neck out & actually said as much. After our international coalition invaded Iraq and evidence was produced that substantial connections existed and therefore the referenced hatred was lacking, the talking point slowly morphed around to �no connection between Iraq and the September 11 attacks,� or �no connection between Iraq and 9/11.�
By the time the election season heated up, it could no longer be concealed that among the �insurgents� in Iraq who even today are responsible for the rising body count among our troops, many were Al Qaeda. This creates an obvious problem: What interest did Al Qaeda have in Iraq? We had been told there was no connection — could be no connection — between the two regimes. And yet if you have a leadership role in Al Qaeda, somehow it�s worth the time, trouble, risk of exposure, casualties, and financial expense to get your guys into this country — in which you have no stake.
Now this is not to say process-of-elimination proves an Al-Qaeda/Iraq connection; other possibilities, after all, do exist. The above-referenced �training ground� talking point, awkward as it may be, implores us to believe that Al Qaeda is sending its grunts into Iraq for shooting practice exercises; said grunts, perhaps, to position themselves on both sides of the rifle. That does help to address the issue of �stakes�; the suggestion is that Al Qaeda is not squandering trained resources, but rather, squandering a bloated class of freshmen just begging to be thinned out. Perhaps for the Al Qaeda recruit, the ticket to seniority is an initiation ritual in Iraq? A survival-of-the-fittest exercise built to toughen-up the ranks by means of sheer attrition?
Fair enough. But for what, one might ask, are they training?
Flying planes into buildings, poisoning water supplies, setting off dirty bombs � tactically, these threatening activities don�t seem to be strongly related to a firefight with a platoon of soldiers in Fallujah. These things appear to have even less to do with laying an IED by the side of a road so that a truckload of marines can be sent home in body bags. Could you possess a rare talent for sidestepping airport security, but suck big green ones when you look for cover in a firefight? Absolutely. Could you be a natural-born reservoir-poisoning savant, and at the same time, unfortunately, be the first man detected and shot during the IED-planting exercise? That actually seems pretty likely. So for lack of overlap between the “training” and the “production,” we see the entire �training� angle doesn�t pan out. Therefore, to maintain the premise that terrorists nurture unrivaled apathy toward the fate of the old Iraq regime, and somehow see fit to trek their way inbound to attack those who toppled it, the only place left to go is the political angle. Al Qaeda�s plans depend on the United States entirely losing its national will to continue the War on Terror.
That makes a lot of sense to me. Terrorism has long been held to be a political endeavor, not an exercise in exterminating people as a primary purpose. It is entirely in keeping with that viewpoint of terrorism, to surmise that our enemies intend to bombard Dover AFB with coffins, one by one, until our leaders are pressured to withdraw and fight the terrorists no more. This is entirely plausible.
But it flies in the face of a number of other leftist talking points, and is a tacit endorsement of the more controversial conservative ones. If the political angle is the only possible motive, then logically, it is true that anti-war protesters are causing injury to our troops, and the more they talk — their dismissive comments notwithstanding — the more injury they do. It�s intellectually impossible to support one premise while simultaneously rejecting the other.
Such is the weakness nurtured when arguments are incubated in overly-friendly environments. Once the soft-bellied, overly-domesticated arguments reach maturity, the few that pass the most mildly hostile scrutiny, turn out to conflict with each other. And they conflict irreconcilably.
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