Travesties

I saw Travesties by Tom Stoppard yesterday at the Seattle Public Threater. It was good fun; I recommend it. I was worried that references to Ulysses would be a little too erudite for myself to handle, but the play turns out to be heavily based on The Importance of Being Ernest and is therefore far more accessible. I suppose this is meant to parallel with Joyce's recanting of the Odyssey in a deeper way than I could grasp; I'll have to revisit the play when I finally make my way through both the Odyssey and Ulysses.

Non-Jewish Science Minister

Props to the Israeli government for appointing Galeb Magadla. I have never been able to internalize how the country could consider itself a modern democracy when religion and state are as intertwined as they are in Israel. I'm glad to see the country moving in a positive direction to give more rights to those that are not Orthodox Jews.

Blacks on Jury

I was thinking the exact same thing when I heard the report. Is it OK for a black man living in a white neighborhood to be tried by a white jury? If we can answer that question, then Scooter Libby's scenario should just be the inverse, no?

Filibust this

After the state of the union address, Senator Mitch McConnell was on NPR stating something along the lines of all legislation requires 60 votes to get past the Senate. If I remember correctly, weren't the Republicans pushing to eliminate the filibuster to get the president's Supreme Court nominations cleared? Something about how the filibuster isn't in the Constitution, so it can be ignored. Does Senator McConnell now think 1) Supreme Court members should require 50 votes and 2) legislation requires 60 votes? I'm waiting for some clarification...

Aqueduct

It's it obvious what we need to do? Close the viaduct and run water through it! The reserve the top part for kayaks and keep the bottom half for salmon. Over time, earthquakes will reset the existing structure so that the kayaks have rapids and the salmon have a proper ladder. I mean, isn't that what Seattle is really about? Salmon and kayaks? I know that's why I moved here.

Bread and games

A couple people seem to be upset by these comments. Personally, I don't think a significant portion of us Americans care too much about habeas corpus. People have been comfortable with conditional usage of the term for a long time; I have not seen much concern about green card holders being denied rights US citizens have come to expect for themselves. But if it's ok to deny to some aliens, maybe it's ok to deny certain classes of US citizens that fit a terrorist profile, like those that were naturalized citizens. And if we do it for terrorists, why not do it for serial killers, rapists, cat burglars, drunk drivers, tax cheats...

I do not see us questioning this habeas corpus issue because it would open an entire class of issues we never question. Why should a secret service member be willing to give his or her life to save the president? Would it not be weird to have Bill Gates require his bodyguards to agree to the same terms? Are we not all equal under God?

Surge versus pullout

To think we have fallen from the principle of 'liberating' Iraq to letting an outright civil war to flair as our least worst option. The horrors that the Iraqi people have gone through are beyond my comprehension, to let it get worse is an option I cannot support. The only thing we can do is start taking this war seriously. Double the number of troops in Iraq.

This president has failed in uniting the country behind him. The onion posted this as a joke, but I remember the lines of 'yuppie' Americans at blood donation centers after 9/11 in New York City. I remember the horror everyone felt when people realized there was no blood needed, that there was nothing we could do to help. There was and still is a powerful desire to do good in the American people, we need a leader that can channel that desire. Yes it was a mistake in attacking Iraq. It was our mistake as a people, and we should be suffering at the front, not the Iraqis or the select few that will love their country enough to serve in the military regardless of the idiocy of it's civilian leadership.

I finished the book yesterday. I was surprised at how similar our philosophies were; after living in Europe it's hard to imagine there might actually be people I could agree with :)

Andrew Sullivan's discussion of the fundamentalist mind-set was refreshing to read. It's helped me internalize how to better understand the viewpoint and that's not easy since it is very far from my own mental framework.

His viewpoint on Ronald Reagan was also fascinating. I was very young when Reagan was president, so I lacked the political engagement during that time that Andrew obviously had. Reagan to me was primarily of 'Iran-Contra' fame, which disturbed me greatly for the proceedings contempt of Congress, and by extension the people. Nixon and Reagan created the 'conservative' tendencies in myself not to trust the government by showing how it can fail us. I loved reading both Milton Friedman and Ayn Rand but always felt more comfortable around Democrats as the lesser evil; I'd rather have a government that taxes me and wastes it on unions than one that wastes it on war.

I think that's why I was wary of the weapons of mass destruction argument. I can't claim to have 'known' it to be false of course, but I was not surprised when the PowerPoint deck turned out to be a scam. BTW- Andrew states that no intelligence agency doubted the US's claims that Iraq had WMD. But I do remember a quote from an Eastern European intelligence officer (Czech maybe?) that pretty much said the claims were B.S. That's far from proving that an intelligence agency as a whole knew the evidence to be bogus, but my working theory is that some agencies did not believe the US story. It was not, however, in their best interest to oppose the US position, so they kept quiet. I tried to do some digging and find that quote on the net but was unable to do so.

I've always held high respect for the 'conservative' temperament, both because I considered myself to have one :) and because I strongly feel it's the 'conservative' temperament that has made America great. It's kept the growth of government in check, etc. Andrew does a much better job than I ever could of describing it's value in his discussion of the founding fathers. His writing has however raised my respect for 'Republicans'. Before, I never had a clear connection between 'Republican' and Andrew's use of the term 'conservative'. Republicanism has always had a Machiavellian angle to it in my mind. If the Republican soul was at some point in history a 'conservative' one, it is a great loss for the country if that is no longer the case. It's definitely worth fighting to gain back.

Which leads me to the last point that struck me about the book: I did not feel it was complete. Where will current trends likely lead? What political science drives conservatism? I expected a chapter showing how the forces of fundamentalism will always steadily increase until there is a breaking point. The increase is from the strength of faith and certainty that a 'conservatism of doubt' will of course never possess. The breaking point is when fundamentalism goes too far and causes collapse, i.e. USSR. Is the Iraq blunder enough to wake up and mobilize the country against the fundamentalist mind-set or must things get much worse before they can get any better? Perhaps the steady increase and breaking point theory is too naive; regardless I expected Andrew to propose his own political theory on this point.

To The Marine

http://time.blogs.com/daily_dish/2007/01/to_the_marine.html

Some additional cases of being kept in a bubble:

Sinclair broadcasting pre-empting the list of soldiers killed in combat because it
“appears to be motivated by a political agenda designed to undermine the efforts of the United States in Iraq.”
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4864247/

Or the White House not allowing photographs of fallen soldiers:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4807865/