Sunday, July 09, 2006

The Belmont Club: Here's Johnny

The Belmont Club: Here's Johnny: "Time was when the intellectual champions of different ideologies would post propositions on Cathedral doors or print manifestos and hold Congresses to debate subtle points of dogma. But I doubt anything so ostensibly coherent could take place today. Consider Iraq? Who is debating Iraq? No one debates Iraq. You either have one attitude toward it or another. Operational maps, casualty trends, numbers of Iraqi police and army raised, yada, yada, have nothing to do with any positions one might have toward it. The characteristic of Endian Wars is that nothing is admissible as evidence. Only the ends of eggs matter. But the absurdity coloring its fiercest edges doesn't mean it is ineffectual or harmless. On the contrary, the more irrational the grievance the deeper it runs. It may begin with Goldstein and 'Rape Gurney Joe' Lieberman but it is unlikely to end there."

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