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So the New York Times editorial board seems to have reached a position on engagement with Iran that is every bit as stupid and internally incoherent as the one proposed the other day by the paper’s own Roger Cohen. While Cohen moved seamlessly from proclaiming in one breath that Obama should “refrain indefinitely from talk [...]
Filed under: foreign affairs, politics
No, really. And here’s that, like, totally suspicious “Sarah Palin pregnant” picture, too, together with a list of character traits that applies to … well, you determine whom it applies to: The narcissism, the pathological and incessant lying, the viciousness, the delusions of grandeur, the vindictiveness, the fathomless and proud ignorance, the opportunism, the vanity [...]
Filed under: media/culture, politics
Conor has a definition: In construction, a prefabricated house is produced in a factory, shipped out to building sites, and assembled by folks unequipped to design anything better. The prefab conservative, or prefab-con, brings the same attitude to political discourse: rather than using reason and critical thinking to craft arguments that fit the real world, [...]
Filed under: conservatism, media/culture, politics
Alex Massie asks what effect the recent events in Iran will have on the Obama administration’s plans for diplomatic engagement: Obama’s preference for engagement is, I think, likely to be untenable assuming, as seems quite likely, that Ahmadinejad and Khamenei survive. At the very least, it’s going to be put into the freezer for a [...]
Filed under: foreign affairs, politics, war
The Caucus has the text of Obama’s (prepared) remarks on the situation in Iran, and it seems to me that his increasingly critical rhetoric is likely to be counterproductive: He began his opening remarks with Iran, saying that “The United States and the international community have been appalled and outraged by the threats, beatings, and [...]
Filed under: foreign affairs, politics
by JL Wall I was catching up on long-forsaken contact with the rest of the blogosphere (like I said, Sammy Sosa gave me the flu) and while reading Jack Ross on Goldfarb vs. Sullivan, I realized something: the trouble with that word, “Zionist” (or any of its other forms)* — why you can find it [...]
Filed under: media/culture, politics
The point I was making was that, one could take the conservative notion of a free market to an extreme to where one argued there should be no government intervention at all. I also pointed out how foolish it would be, but said it would be hard to say the position wasn’t a “conservative” one [...]
Filed under: conservatism, politics
Ryan Avent’s take is similar to Kevin Drum’s, and Tyler Cowen’s is similar to mine. Unsurprisingly I agree with Cowen, though there’s one principle that he cites quite often that seems a bit unrealistic to me: 2. If a policy idea cannot survive the opposition being partisan and also lying about it, I submit the [...]
Filed under: environment, politics
Via Jim Manzi, I see that Kevin Drum is blaming the Republicans for the deeply cynical legislative sham that is the Waxman-Markey climate bill: Why is there no line in the sand that the bill’s sponsors won’t cross to get support from midwestern Dems? Why are they so eagerly giving away the farm? And the [...]
Filed under: environment, politics
I haven’t found the time to listen to the Riehl-Friedersdorf-Payne Skypecast on the future of conservatism, but if Dan Riehl really did say that the defining character of a conservative is favoring “an economy free of government interference”,* then Conor’s frustration is entirely appropriate. As even the most amateurish historian of the American conservative movement [...]
Filed under: conservatism, politics, war