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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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2011-01-31
Republicans under the bed
It is just a cöincidence that I am reading Harry Stein’s I can’t believe I’m sitting next to a Republican just a few weeks after the leftist MSM press tried to sell America the meme that the Tucson shootings are part of the liberal narrative of inevitable right-wing violence . . . and failed miserably. (See here, here, here, and here.) Liberals showed all their neighbors what they really think of those who are not co-religionists. Stein’s book is about the same experience on a personal, retail scale, as conservatives find that long time friends instantly demote you to ravening troglodyte status when you are insufficiently enthusiastic about saving the environment.
One of my favorite experiences along these lines was before the 2010 elections. The Philadelphia Main Line suburbs run along the border between red-state Delaware county and blue-state Montgomery county. At the gym, a liberal friend who lives there was asked if there were many Republicans in her neighborhood--enough to be awkward. She started her reply several times, obviously embarrassed by what she had to admit, but finally allowed that, yes, mostly likely there were some Republicans, but she was pretty sure they were moderates. I left it at that, but later this esprit-d'escalier rant occurred to me: “Tracy, are there more than two or three cross-burnings a month in your neighborhood? If not, you’re dealing with moderate Republicans.”
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Should Bush's chickens come home to roost or to crow?
On a Rocochet podcast about the uprising in Egypt, a listener asked whether the popular uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt, and Yemen perhaps validate Bush’s view of the aspirations of the people in the Middle East. The answer is not necessarily Yes or No. Chris Matthews, of Hardball, who thinks the Panama Canal is in Egypt, says they show that overthrowing Saddam Hussein was unnecessary. Yes, and all that mess and fuss at Normandy was unnecessary, because, look!, eventually Berlin fell anyway.
There is a temptation to think that people protesting tyrannical governments are a democracy movement, of the sort that a popular post-Saddam regime in Iraq was supposed to model for the rest of the tyrannical, stinking, fly-specked dung heaps that make up Arab Islam. However, what the protesters are demanding are jobs and food. It may be that we are seeing the results of another Bush policy: mandatory gasohol. Diverting US corn from exports to domestic motor fuel has sent food prices soaring around the world, with resultant malnutrition, starvation, and lethal riots for two years.
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