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logomachy--1. A dispute
about words. 2. A dispute carried on in words only; a battle of words.
logomachon--1. One who argues about words.
2. A word warrior.
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2004-03-12
The liberal War on Terror
Michael J. Totten has another example of the fecklessnees of liberal prescriptions:
The greatest irony of the post-911 world is that so many Democrats hate the Bush Doctrine. Liberation, anti-proliferation, and nation-building are activist and liberal, not defensive and conservative. The perceived immorality of our actions may weigh heavily on their souls. But it's nothing compared to what we might have to face if our goal of limited war for democracy fails.
If the Middle East gets nukes before it gets freedom, it will be extraordinarily difficult, if not impossible, to wage a war on liberal grounds. We'll be back where we were during the Cold War. The only difference is that the equation of Mutually Assured Destruction won't balance. Say what you will about the Communists. They did not want to martyr themselves to destroy us.
If terrorists detonate a portable nuke in a Western city, what's left of the Terror War will be nasty, brutish, and short. The West's so-far limited response will instantly become total and, in effect, genocidal. Any and all WMD-producing states will be considered targets for a unilateral nuclear counterattack, starting with capital cities. The UN will not be consulted. Millions could die in a day. Thanks to the Federalist for the tip.
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2004-03-10
I just have a dif-fer-ent phil...uh...intelligence
Misunderestimating Bush's intelligence
Let me run this by you: The Democrats are right. Bush isn't all that smart, in the sense of quick verbal analysis and spouting the latest shibboleths of untrammeled progressive thought, or untrammeled heartless Liberal thought, for that matter. He doesn't take his bearings from the chattering classes. But that isn't why he drives liberals so crazy.
Bush is very secure emotionally, and very perceptive and adept emotionally. He also has a healthy sense of his own failings and righteousness. Since leftist rhetoric operates at the level of emotions, in particular through equivocation and imputing guilt, Bush is neither easily manipulated or nor easily distracted. You'd think they would acknowledge his "different intelligence", but how much power would that get them?
Reporter: Mr. President, the Democrats are charging that your tax cuts have gone mostly to the rich, while half the population languishes below the median income level.
Bush: Our tax cut--tax rate cuts--have gone to folks at all income levels, and the people at the lowest incomes received proportionally the biggest changes. The tax rate cuts have helped stimulate economic growth, providing more opportunities for people to lift themselves above the median. . . what did you say?
In other words, Bush is the Republicans' Bill Clinton, except he isn't a sociopath.
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2004-03-09
J'Ack-ooze Ass
J'Ack-ooze AssJ'accuse Ass is an irregular department. It recognizes a public accusation, complaint, insinuation, alarm, or whining notable for its arrogance, irrelevance, spite, stridence, obtuseness, or mendacity.
The inaugural J'Accuse Ass is appropriately French-looking and horse-faced: Senator John F. "Band of Mongols" Kerry.
On 27 February, Senator Kerry was asked by the editors of the San Francisco Chronicle why he says he was misled into voting to authorize the President to go to war to remove Saddam Hussein. Kerry explained that he thought he was voting to bind Bush to a UN time table, to make it "harder to go to war".
Why did he say this when Bush had told the UN that its credibility as a peacekeeper depended on its enforcing the 16 Security Council resolutions requiring Saddam to disarm? Because the word among Washington insiders was that Bush didn't mean what he said, that he was only trying to placate the war hawks at the Pentagon and really wanted to go with the accommodationist follow-the-U.N. faction at State.
In other words, Kerry claims that a vote to attack is a vote to restrain an attack and that Bush misled Kerry by doing what he said he would do. Such ineffectual strategic subtlety is not what we want in a Commander in Chief, and perhaps explains why Kerry has gotten no legislation through the Senate.
Kerry isn't the only Democrat who thinks like this. Senator Jay Rockefeller's insists that Bush got us into Iraq by falsely claiming that Saddam posed an imminent threat. Well, yes, Rockefeller admits, Bush said just the opposite, that in an age of terrorism we can't afford to wait until a threat is imminent. But not saying that there is an imminent threat "is talking about the danger of an immediate attack . . . if the word imminent threat wasn't used, that was the predicate; that was the feeling that was given to the American people and to the Congress".
I've said it before: Liberals live in a different world and want to make the rest of us live there, too. To that end, they will believe whatever makes what they say "true". So when Bush says A and does A, when the Democrats want him to do B, they claim he was lying when he said A. And that's "true for them".
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