The Voice of Saruman

In soft, smooth. seductive language, right-wing pundit Cal Thomas assures us, in his Independence day column, that he acknowledges and respects the patriotism of his ideological opponents, and oh-so-piously decries the division that some have sown using the patriotism card. His reasonable and concilatory tones lull us in letting our guard down, as hope of the "reform-ability" of even the most recalcitrant is an essential feature of liberal thought. Like Saruman, though, his words are in fact tools--nay, weapons--to weaken our resolve, sow doubt and dissention among our ranks, and use us to prop up the dying neoconservative movement, as his next column so cleverly tries to do.

Having convinced us (he hopes) that he has forsworn his own history of ugly vitriolic partisanship, he attacks the "rank partisanship of the Democratic congressional leadership". He claims "liberal blogs are full of hatred for President Bush" and "are beyond debating his policies". In fact, debating Bush's policies are the major topic at most liberal blogs, and the dishonest conflation of policy disagreement with "Bush Derangement Syndrome" is one of the many ways that quasi-fascist demagogues like Cal try to delegitimize criticism of Bush's policies without actually addressing the criticism itself. He asks the opponents of the Bush-Cheney regime to be quiet, to make no criticism of the regime for the next 18 months, and to dilute the responsibility of George Bush, the Republican Party, and the entire 21st century American right wing for the debacle of the last 6 1/2 years by participating in " a panel of prominent Democrats and Republicans to help him[Bush] No where in the entire column is there any suggestion of any "rank partisanship" on the other side of the aisle. No where is any acknowledgement of Bush's well-documented life-long history of obstinate refusal to accept any advice contradictory to his own preconceived ideas (such as the Iraq Study Group).

Like Saruman, Cal hope to divide us, to depict the Democratic leadership as uncooperative rather than the President who refuses to acknowledge his mistakes, pays no attention to the continuously growing opposition to his policies, and refuses to consider any substantive course corrections.

Please, liberals, don't be seduced by the dulcet tones of right-wing propaganda shills like Cal! Please, don't follow saruman into Orthanc!

Born Losers?

The theologian Paul Tillich believed that the only thing God couldn't do was to stop being God. I would suggest that another thing impossible for a deity such as that hypothesized by the Abrahamic religions is to be surprised. Virtually all adherents of such belief systems maintain that the invisible, intangible, non-corporeal, undetectable, personified, individuated supernatural entity they worship is not only omnipotent but also omniscient; how can you ever be surprised if you have absolutely perfect and complete knowledge, of every conceivable sort, about everything that could ever in any sense whatsoever be known? This, of course, leads to another question: in a universe created by an arbitrary, non-contingent, unconditioned act of will by such a deity, is "free will" objectively possible (as opposed to an illusion of free will that OUR limits in knowledge might create)? Didn't God know what would go down if he were to make beings with the characteristics we do have? Is any conclusion possible other than that God rigged the game from the beginnning to ENSURE that the majority the creatures he had made would suffer for all eternity?

Say Anything To Get Your Way

Over and over again, we hear from right-wing propaganda shills that "Islamofascist jihadists" are an existential threat to western civilization itself because they are foaming-at-the-mouth rabid religious fanatics who believe that it is the will of Allah that a new caliphate be established and sharia law be imposed on all the peoples of the world. We are told that they are so irrationally fanatical, and so certain of their ultimate reward as to be impervious to reason and unresponsive to diplomacy; therefore we must exterminate them. On the other hand, those same shills tell us that any criticism of the Great, Grand, and Glorious Leader (aka "the Decider") will "embolden" the enemy. Tell me: how do you embolden a fanatic? If, indeed, he believes that his deity is on his side, no "emboldening" would be necessary, or even possible! No, these seemingly contradictory statements are both in service of the imperialist agenda of the right wing--statement one to justify a never-ending GWOT, statement two to squelch and demonize opponents of that agenda.

Welcome to my blog! A native Hoosier, and a liberal for as long as I can remember (at age 6 I argued with a babysitter who contended that "Kennedy [John] is paying the niggers to vote for him"), I hope to use this forum to engage in something akin to the old collegiate bull sessions, where people who actually cared about ideas could explore and debate in a free-wheeling, one might say improvisational, manner. No topic is forbidden, and no one banned except for outright dishonesty or purely personal invective. While I suspect most posts will have a political bent, posts about philosophy, music, popular culture and other topics will appear. for now, I' ll just say: Thanks for reading--stay tuned!