Random thoughts on a Sunday afternoon *UPDATED*
Bookworm on Jun 07 2009 at 1:36 pm | Filed under: Uncategorized
An excellent article about the history of the settlements, and how the Obama administration is turning against Israel in every particular when it comes to these settlements.
Ralph Peters harshes on the myriad misconceptions and outright falsehoods peppering Obama’s Cairo speech.
Torture: Maybe wrong, but definitely legal. Apropos torture, that’s become my Mom’s pivot to justify supporting Obama. He promises no more torture (if you don’t count listening to his speeches as pain and suffering, of course). What’s interesting is that she makes no distinction between the torture the Nazis meted out to civilians because they viewed civilians as vermin for Nazi play; the torture the Spanish Inquisition meted out to Protestants and Jews in order to coerce behavioral changes; the torture Muslims use against Christians and Jews because it’s fun; the torture Vietnamese used against POWs, becasuse it’s fun; and the legal (and hard) coercion tactics Americans used against a small number of high placed Al Qaeda operatives to get them to cough up information about upcoming massive attacks against American citizens. Also, Obama’s refusal to produce the proof that these tactics were effective is proof positive to my Mom that the torture was just for fun.
IBD highlights the fact, missed by many, that Obama greenlighted the development of nuclear weapons for every nation in the world. Somehow that seems at odds with his promise to de-nuclearize the world. But so much is at odds with his promises, right?
Elie Wiesel, of course, spoke from the heart, which gave his speech at Buchenwald power, but am I the only one who simply finds Obama dull? I learn nothing from his speeches, I’m not moved by his speeches, and I’m getting really tired of how self-referential his speeches are.
Incidentally, I’m not the only one finding Obama’s obsession with Obama off-putting. George Will, in a column about the tax-payer screwing the government is lining up with respect to Detroit, opened with an attack on Obama’s self-love: “‘I,’ said the president, who is inordinately fond of the first-person singular pronoun, ‘want to disabuse people of this notion that somehow we enjoy meddling in the private sector.’”
As someone who blogs anonymously because of the personal and professional hits I could take for my blogging, I strongly support the “never expose” side of this debate. I’m creeping out of the closet in my own way, at my own speed, but the blog is an outlet for thoughts that, if expressed in public in my community, could well destroy the delicate balance of my life, affecting not only me, but my family too. Of course, I’m a fairly polite blogger, I attack only public figures, and I stick to the facts as I know (and can support) them. In other words, nobody should ever need to rip aside my anonymity, because nobody should ever need to punish me — even if they want to challenge my ideas.
UPDATE: Just a little bit more on why some bloggers — at least, some conservative bloggers — might want to retain their anonymity. You need to be really, really tough to take the absolutely vile and threatening garbage thrown your way. And it’s probably easier to be tough when you’ve got a solid, real world conservative support network out there, starting in the home. I don’t, so I need to keep my barriers up.
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18 Responses to “Random thoughts on a Sunday afternoon *UPDATED*”
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“In other words, nobody should ever need to rip aside my anonymity, because nobody should ever need to punish me — even if they want to challenge my ideas.”
Irrelevant.
Review again your latest “conversation with a liberal”… it’s not a matter of “punishing” you…it’s a matter of ensuring that you hold the “correct” ideas.
And besides – there are no “facts” if they disagree with you.
What’s more…they won’t challenge your _ideas_…they will challenge _you_ – and your right – to have ideas that are “unacceptable”.
I finished that response, then moved on, but my mind came back to it and I suddenly had a vision of the robot from “Lost in Space” swinging its “arms” and calling out “Danger!! Danger – Will Robinson…Danger!!”
Liberals need to identify those among them who have “dangerous” ideas. So…if they can out you, they will.
They are like robots…computers. Computers know so much they’re stupid. Think about it. If my email address is Me @myhouse.com, but I write Me@my.house.com, it gets rejected. “no such isp or whatever”. If it’s so smart, why doesn’t it know that there isn’t a my.house, but there _is_ a myhouse and take out the dot? That’s like my telephone – which, if I dial a 1 and a local number will tell me “you do not need to use a 1 with that number”…so ok…then drop the 1.
Libs seem to know a lot of facts (which are not always correct, but that’s another issue) but when it comes to putting them together to reach a logical conclusion, it does not compute.
Heh. And if as to prove it, the program highlights the email addy that is correctly formatted, but does not highlight the same address without the dot, but which has a space between the Me and @. So smart they’re stupid.
Quite all right with me if you want to stay in the closet.
Personally, I think it’s a great place for a sneak attack. You are correct in your assessment of the need to balance family and private life.
There will come a time when your personal and family life are no longer an emotional choice. Children grow up, sometimes even partners grow up and see the light rather than be blinded by it. Everything in it’s time.
As to your mom’s pivot, it mostly requires standing on one leg, so it’s never really firmly rooted. It’s like the word shekar (liar in Hebrew) שקר see the letter in the middle the ‘koof’, it has a single stem/leg and so the expression goes…a lie stands on one leg. Maybe your mom just needs to lie to herself to justify the results.
Privacy is important….but it can be misused. As it is when someone makes a habit of attacking a non-public figure BY NAME in an aggressive way. Worse when the attacker is misrepresenting, or misconstruing the facts in ways that consistently make his target look bad.
If someone “outed” the Bookworm over her political opinions, it would be an egregious wrong. But for “publius” to whine about his “privacy” being violated, after his history of savaging Ed Whelan in what can easily be construed as an unfair manner, just makes me retch.
Sorry, BW, I’m not taking his side in this one.
Book, here are a couple of questions for your mom:
1)During WWII, the British government gave captured spies two options: you can “turn” (keep transmitting, but we will tell you exactly what to transmit), or you can hang immediately.
Question: is giving someone that choice (which surely causes great psychological suffering if the spy is at all loyal to his cause/country) a form of torture?
if so….
2)Should the British government have stopped this program, even if it would result in the death of thousands of British & American troops and the extension of the war by several months?
What if it would have resulted in the death of *hundreds of thousands* of British and American troops and the extension of the war by *years*?
Bookworm,
RE: “Elie Wiesel, of course, spoke from the heart, which gave his speech at Buchenwald power, but am I the only one who simply finds Obama dull? I learn nothing from his speeches, I’m not moved by his speeches, and I’m getting really tired of how self-referential his speeches are.”
No, you aren’t the only person who finds Obama’s speeches dull. I’m sure many others do also. But I do think your opinion of Obama colors your opinion of his speeches. What is the purpose of a speech? Is it to educate or inspire, or both? I’m sure the answer is, it depends on who is giving the speech and to whom he/she is speaking and the occasion for which the speech is given. Now, I rarely share your political views, but I do think you are an informed citizen. Consider that the less informed might be learning more than you. I don’t think you are the “average” citizen, whatever that means.
No one can deny that Elie Wiesel spoke from the heart. Are there a finite number of people who can do that? Why compare Obama to Wiesel? What do you or your readers gain from that?
Now, as to Obama’s self references. It’s in the vein of Martin Luther King, Jr. King often (in both sermons and speeches) gave personal references. I am in no way trying to compare Obama to King, except in the fact that they both worshiped in black churches, and that might have influenced their ideas of what constitutes a speech and how the personal informs rhetoric. (Yes, i know that both men were educated in white universities.)
The problem, Helen, is that the “less informed” citizen who is “learning” from Obama’s speeches is put in the position of Will Rogers, who once said “It ain’t that I don’t know very much….it’s that so much of what I know ain’t so!”
Without doubt, Helen, my dislike for Obama colors my perception of his speeches. I can’t tell whether that dislike allows me to take off the rose colored glasses and really see the emperor sans clothes, or whether that dislike causes me to put on dun colored glasses that dull down his speeches. I think, though, if he were a truly lyrical and inspiring speaker, I love the English language sufficiently that I would catch that. For example, even though I think both Sharpton and Jackson are bottom feeders, I can recognize their oratorical skills.
As for the church influence, you may be right, but he’s not in church any more. He’s the leader of America, not someone standing in the pews.
Results are in..the EU has awoken from their slumber party.
Maybe there’s a chance for us on this side of the pond.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090608/ap_on_re_eu/european_elections
I’m surprised Helen thinks that Dr. King and Barack Obama attended the same kind of church.
King attended churches that preached Christianity, not hatred and racism like Rev. Wright’s “church.” (Bear in mind that the Rev. Wright, a “former” Nation of Islam member, can be said to be practicing the Muslim form of Allah-sanctioned deception called taqqiyah—that is, if we are to take the foam-at-the mouth tenor of his writing and speeches at face value.)
Also, I’m not sure what a “white university” is. How does what one learns at a “white” university differ from what one learns at a black university? I mean, aside from the odds that Honky U will have more courses in victimology and critical race theory than Black U?
More breaking news from Lebanon – Hezbollah Defeated!
http://gatewaypundit.blogspot.com/2009/06/votes-counted-in-lebanon-election.html
SADIE, not to worry. Hezbollah will begin assassinating the winners and blowing up things forthwith.
Charles…that’s no taqqiyah!
Anti-Syrian leaders Assassinated in Lebanon:
Rafik Hariri -February 14, 2005
Samir Kassir -June 2, 2005
George Hawi -June 21, 2005
May Chidiac (attempted assassination) -September 25, 2005
Gebran Ghassan Tueni -December 12, 2005
Pierre Amin Gemayel -November 21, 2006
Walid Eido -June 13, 2007
Antoine Ghanem- September 19, 2007
Francois al-Hajj -December 12, 2007
Unless someone is commiting a crime there is never a reason to “out” someone. Outing is clearly used as a tactic to attack someone personally, hoping that they will be punished.
Thoughts and their accompaning words, whether by named individuals or anonymous, should be able to stand on their own merit.
I think many of the founding fathers understood this simple concept and that’s why so many publications back then were published under pseudonyms.
Charles Martel – Honky U. – now that’s funny!
Also, Obama’s refusal to produce the proof that these tactics were effective is proof positive to my Mom that the torture was just for fun.
Your Mom doesn’t understand the psychology of torture or of torturers. Which is how it should be. Only specialized people tend to research such subjects in depth to get to the truth, because only specialized individuals have the desire and motivation to reach into asocial behaviors or other darker human behaviors.
The rest of the human sheep live in fences, as they should. It is when they start thinking they have the wisdom or strength to tell the shepherd and the guard dogs what to do and where to go, that problems ensue. That is, ultimately, the one great flaw of democracy, which Plato saw first hand. And we will see it once more, regardless of how hard the Founding Fathers tried to avoid it.
Charles…that’s no taqqiyah!
Assassination is always a good tool in the toolbox.
It may be annoying, and I think it reflects very poorly on Publius, but that’s the kind of ad hominem attack bloggers get from Day One.
But he is a demagogue and what he knows he acquired from personal hit men.
I prefer the more permanent hit style, but that is just me. Personal assassination, is of course, more effective in the long term simply because it is more deniable and isn’t so extreme as killing, thus allowing for a veneer of justification.
But I consider those two things just simply tools in the same toolbox. You have an enemy, you eliminate that enemy. And it doesn’t particularly matter what consequences occur to their families or to their careers. They are your enemies and that’s the fate of enemies, which is just too bad but that is how it is.
The Left understands this very well, because everyone who has alternative viewpoints in comparison to their own are termed ideological enemies that must be outed or eliminated.
As for Ed here, he is prototypical of the modern day publishing venues where pride is taken in the fact that their careers are symmetrically the same as their published names. This is hubris of an ungodly sort. Not even the manipulative Greek gods thought of mortals as having the same views in the same circumstances, beholden to the same standards, as the Olympian gods. The Christian and the Muslim gods also do not deem their followers as equals in power or in wisdom.
Re: Exposing an Irresponsible Anonymous Blogger
Ed’s title exposes his inner perspective. He sees himself as the whistle blower or responsible media journalist exposing illegitimate behavior in his venue of choice, public writing. This makes him no different than the Main Sewer Media editors and reporters; it makes him no better than the propagandists at Media Matters, paid by George Soros to enact anti-American agendas destructive to the public body and health. They believe, that because they are part of the published world, that they have the right to declare Holy War on those that don’t meet their standards. They believe they have this right because they believe they have a line to Holy Wisdom, to Divine Inspiration because they are “responsible”. Or in the case of Axelrod and Obama, they believe they have the power, which gives them the right to destroy the Lives of Others.
The British used to tell the Colonists that sniping from the tree lines was dishonorable and cowardly. They ignored the nature of war, which is not to appease the sensibilities of one side or another. Wars fought for the benefit of Princes can be fought by rules, for it doesn’t truly matter which side wins or not. Wars fought for ideologies will be fought to the death, or until one side gets tired of the dying or runs out of bodies.
And if war is that important, how much more important is the open public debate that molds and determines the policies that will lead or not lead to war? On what justification do writers, conservative or fake liberal, have to restrict a segment of the population’s views by enacting Draconian and personal assassination methods designed predominantly by the Totalitarian Left to silence opposing views? These are tools in the toolbox, but you don’t open the toolbox against allies or those of the opposing side in a democracy. Cause when you do, all the other tools become acceptable then. If you are not willing to kill a man or a woman and their families, then you have no position to stand upon in calling others cowards while you get to restrict yourself to the tactics of personal destruction from afar and from a position of nominal safety.
So far we have seen accredited writers and reporters and publishers destroy the fundamental nature of American free speech with their alliance with government thieves, crooks, plutocrats, and megalomaniacs. Their open names served as no restriction on their unbridled lust for cruelty, lies, and the deception of the common man. They have no right, no authority, to tell the regular citizens of America, of whatever political stripe, that “their way” is the responsible way. Their way has been discredited. Their way has led us to Obama. Their way is for the shits. And they don’t even realize it.
Consider that the less informed might be learning more than you.
The less informed, when they listen to Obama, becomes less informed. What they become more about is that they become more misinformed.
Why compare Obama to Wiesel? What do you or your readers gain from that?
The human mind is supposed to make comparisons and then make decisions upon the comparative advantage. Only the fanatic and the ideological make decisions from a priori premises only.
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