The Daily Doubter

Via Maxspeak (courtesy of John) today's update for the New American Newspeak Dictionary is:

Capital account surplus: trade deficit

Stories in the Amber

Tens of millions of years ago, a tropical forest existed on what today is the island of Hispaniola in the Caribbean. In a matter of seconds but repeated thousands of times over, a wide variety of animals and plants became trapped in resin produced by a single tree of that forest, a canopy species known as the algarrobo. Over the ensuing eons, some of that resin became amber, preserving a representative sample of the primeval forest's denizens. While virtually all of those organisms are now extinct, close relatives living today provide behavioral and ecological clues that help tell stories in the amber. Here, take a look at a striking sample of flora and fauna discovered in amber from the Dominican Republic, dated to between 15 and 40 million years ago.

These images, frozen in time for millions of years, are amazing. They are a window into a time long past and a vivid connection to the history of life.

"'Freedom of speech!' the American Civil Liberties Union will protest. Before we buy into the slogan, we must remember our history" - Ben Shapiro, before proceeding to argue for a revival of the Sedition Acts and the supression of civil liberties.

In most every circumstance, I would say that saying something is unAmerican is unAmerican, since I view plurality and freedom of expression as one of the cardinal strengths of American society, but when someone says that freedom of speech is a "slogan" we should be weary of buying into and then cites our rich (sarcasm) history of suppressing it, I think that falls into the unAmerican category.

Click here and then watch this.

That's it. I have no words to describe the emotion that this makes me feel. It's a strange feeling of disgust, anger, sadness, and frustration.

Disgraceful. That's what this administration is. Absolutely, irredeemably, utterly disgraceful.

Meanwhile, this twit (who Michelle "I police extremism from my side" Malkin linked to) is suggesting that anyone who speaks out about such things should be thrown in a concentration camp. I'm sure he'll be pleased to know that Halliburton has the contract.

Ok, the press is still all over the Cheney shooting accident. But could they possibly tear themselves away from that for a second, and consider the implications of the recent National Journal story that revealed that a large portion of the 500 prisoners held at Guantanamo are being held there in error and that the government knows this. (Recall that Erik Saar suggested exactly this in Inside the Wire.)

Why is this not one of, if not the, biggest stories of the hour? Gitmo is where our leaders decided that the Geneva Convention prohibitions against torture did not apply. It is where Donald Rumsfield first approved his "enhanced interrogation techniques," techniques that have resulted in death at Bagram and Abu Ghraib. How many innocent people has the United States government violated the basic human rights of in our name?

A U.N. Human Rights team just concluded after 18 months of investigation that Gitmo should be shut down for violations that amount to torture.

This is a shame. A horrible shame that has been committed in the name of the American people. How can we tell the world we stand for human rights and then show such this sort of antipathy for what is going on in Guantanamo?

This month's issue of Discover magazine contains this quote from Karl Popper:

"[T]he growth of knowledge depends entirely on the existence of disagreement."

This, in itself, is an excellent quote. Yet, the full quote, taken from The Myth of the Framework, is even better:

I hold that orthodoxy is the death of knowledge, since the growth of knowledge depends entirely on the existence of disagreement. Admittedly, disagreement may lead to strife, and even to violence. And this, I think, is very bad indeed, for I abhor violence. Yet disagreement may also lead to discussion, to argument and to mutual criticism. And these, I think, are of paramount importance, I suggest that the greatest step towards a better and more peaceful world was taken when the war of swords was first supported, and later sometimes even replaced, by a war of words.

If one did not know better, one might think Popper was speaking in defense of the Danish cartoons which sparked riots around the Middle East.

"[T]he return on investment in lobbying is often so substantial that experts and insiders agree that Washington's influence industry will continue to thrive no matter how lawmakers decide to rein it in." - Jeffrey H. Birnbaum, "Clients' Rewards Keep K Street Lobbyists Thriving"

Watching footage of Scott McClellan get absolutely ravaged by the White House press corps yesterday, I was amazed. The press were relentless - baraging McClellan with questions about Cheney's shooting accident while not tolerating any spin. Which makes me ask: why don't the apply the same zeal to real issues of substance? This one was easy, its sensational stuff, good for ratings, but when it comes to other more relevant issues they are passive and tame.

Of course I think Cheney should be reprimanded for suggesting the shooting was the fault of the person he shot, and that the Vice President shooting someone is newsworthy. But while the reporters focus intensely on this story, they ignore numerous other stories that have much more significant ramifications for the American public.

Imagine if the press had applied the same tenacity to questioning the White House on:

- The GAO report finding that our electronic voting systems have significant flaws which have "caused problems with recent elections, resulting in the loss and miscount of votes" that has gone virtually unreported since the report was issued last October.

- The American Bar Association denouncing the NSA surveillance program as unConstitutional.

- Ex-CIA agent Paul Pillar's allegation that the decision to invade Iraq was made irrespective of the intelligence.

- Lewis "Scooter" Libby stating that Cheney authorized him to leak classified intelligence (similar to what the Dept. of Justice is looking to criminally prosecute the New York Times for)

- Allegations that outed NOC agent Valerie Plame, whose identity was part of the intelligence Cheney would have authorized Libby to leak, worked specifically on Iran's nuclear capabilities and that outing her has compromised our intelligence gathering activities on Iran.

- The report that a significant number of those detained at Gitmo, where it has been ruled the Geneva Convention rules don't apply, where Donald Rumsfield authorized harsh interrogation tactics, and which we were assured that they were the "worst of the worst", are being held there in error.

- The fudging of the budget and the hidden private retirement plan.

- Tom Delay being given a seat on the subcommitee which oversees the Justice Dept. - the same Justice Dept. that will be investigating the Abramoff scandal.

-Allegations of a Bush/Blair pact to go into Iraq and plans to stage their own version of the sinking of the Maine (by flying UN disguised spy plane over Iraq)

- The Downing Street Memo and other leaked memos, also virtually unreported, in which we see that "the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy" of invading Iraq.

- The Bush administration having spent 1.6 billion dollars on PR in the last 2.5 years (considered in the context of the administration's demonstrated efforts to manipulate the 4th estate)

The list goes on.

I've been extremely critical of Michelle Malkin on this blog, so I feel that its only fair that I link to this post where Malkin chides Ann Coulter for her recent "raghead" comment at the CPAC meeting.

But since Michelle also took this as an opportunity to again assert that "liberals" are more unhinged than "conservatives" I feel it fair I respond to that. First, Malkin claims that "the Right is far more self-critical than the sanctimonious liberals who never say a peep about the routine hatred and poisonous ethnic/racial/religious identity politics exhibited by their own" and that "we don't need your prodding." Well, despite her protestation, it did take some prodding. After all, Ann has been a hate-monger for years, and Malkin has never seen fit before to distance herself from Coulter. As I previously blogged, Michelle has before referenced Coulter as a "better way to lay into liberals," and that was well after Coulter had made numerous eliminationist remarks about liberals.

I also take issue with this:

I'll show you 100 liberal hate mails and blog posts referring to me as a "gook" or a "chink" or a "filipina whore" for every 1 "raghead" controversy on the right.

Well, yeah. If you compare mainstream media figures versus the thousands (perhaps millions of web surfers) then odds are you're going to find more uncivil remarks from the web. And obviously those comments are inexcusable. Does Malkin really think that the majority of people she considers liberal find that sort of speech acceptable? I expect that the majority of Americans - regardless of their politics - find this sort of behavior intolerable. Also, there are idiots across the political spectrum who will respond like juvenile assholes to something they disagree with - that is simply a fact of human nature.

All in all though, she is still scolding Coulter, and that's a good thing.

Update: Um, John had brought this to my attention in a previous post, but I forgot that at the same CPAC meeting Coulter also said

Iran is soliciting cartoons on the Holocaust. So far, only Ted Rall, Garry Trudeau, and The New York Times have made submissions.

Malkin has made no denunciation of this completely slanderous, malicious, and false statement.

In response to his well developed post on the way in which critics of the Bush administration are labeled "liberals," even if they are in fact conservative on most issues, defensive Bush bloggers have already taken to dismissing Greenwald's post as "leftist," which precisely makes his original point for him.

The reason why it is so very important to highlight this sophistic argumentation tactic is because it has been used so extensively that it is now generally accepted as a legitimate refutation of an individual's argument. Look no further than Bill O'Reilly - a man with a massive tv audience - who constantly is dismissing the ideas or views of someone as far leftist, liberal, Communist, secular progressive, etc. without regard to what the content of their views really are or without answering their arguments, for a case in point.

This tactic is actually the propaganda technique of name-calling:

The name-calling technique links a person, or idea, to a negative symbol. The propagandist who uses this technique hopes that the audience will reject the person or the idea on the basis of the negative symbol, instead of looking at the available evidence.

And to help facilitate the effectiveness of this technique we have a line of books that equate liberals with mental disorder, treason, evil, fascism, attacking Christmas, monsters, and such. We have Michelle Malkin incessantly calling people "luny leftists" and "moonbats," Rush Limbaugh and others brandishing the "useless idiots" taunt, and a whole host of others, what former anti-Clinton pundit David Brock has dubbed "the Republican noise machine", which works tirelessly to make "liberal" a dirty word.

The double-danger of this technique is that it has increasingly been coupled with eliminationism. Indeed, the two go hand in hand, since as a group becomes linked to a negative symbol, it becomes easier to advocate their elimination. The more the symbol, with all its negative associations comes to represent the group, the less that the group is perceived as human, the easier it is to rationalize injustice committed towards the group.

From Media Channel

Sometimes it’s the small abuses scurrying below radar that reveal how profoundly the Bush administration has changed America in the name of national security. Buried within the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 is a regulation that bars most public access to birth and death certificates for 70 to 100 years. In much of the country, these records have long been invaluable tools for activists, lawyers, and reporters to uncover patterns of illness and pollution that officials miss or ignore.

In These Times has obtained a draft of the proposed regulations now causing widespread concern among state officials. It reveals plans to create a vast database of vital records to be centralized in Washington, and details measures that states must implement–and pay millions for—before next year’s scheduled implementation.

The draft lays out how some 60,000 already strapped town and county offices must keep the birth and death records under lock and key and report all document requests to Washington. Individuals who show up in person will still be able to obtain their own birth certificates, and in some cases, the birth and death records of an immediate relative; and “legitimate” research institutions may be able to access files. But reporters and activists won’t be allowed to fish through records; many family members looking for genetic clues will be out of luck; and people wanting to trace adoptions will dead-end. If you are homeless and need your own birth certificate, forget it: no address, no service.

Perhaps I should change my blogging moniker to Cato and end every post with "Ceterum censeo Bush Administration esse delendam."*

*The sad irony is that although I say this in jest, the Bush administration takes the war metaphor quite seriously. When George W. Bush ran for President in 2000 a pamphlet entitled the Art of Political War, written by David Horowitz, was distributed to every Republican member of Congress and to 2,300 conservative activists nation wide. On the cover was an endorsement from Karl Rove. In it, Horowitz says

You cannot cripple an opponent by outwitting him in a political debate. You can do it only by following Lenin's injunction: "In political conflicts, the goal is not to refute your opponent's argument, but to wipe him from the face of the earth."

"To argue with a man who has renounced his reason is like giving medicine to the dead." - Thomas Paine, The Crisis

"We can't think of a president who has gone to the American people more often than George W. Bush has to ask them to forget about things like democracy, judicial process and the balance of powers — and just trust him. We also can't think of a president who has deserved that trust less." - New York Times editorial

Peter Daou has a roundup of the 11 (count 'em ELEVEN) Bush related scandals that were in the news last week. I'm not sure what else needs to come to light before the American public has had enough of this administration's lies, deceit, ineptitude, and corruption.

These aren't just minor, trivial, partisan issues. They are huge scandals. The NSA surveillance of Americans without a warrant. The outing of a covert CIA agent working in the field of WMD's to discredit a political opponent. Lying us into a war.

Daou does not even include other scandalous stories, like the alleged plot of Bush and Blair to disguise a spy plane with UN decorations in the hopes of provoking Saddam into shooting it down - their own version of the sinking of the Maine - a revelation from another leaked Downing Street Memo that reveals Bush and Blair made a pact to go into Iraq regardless of what the UN Security Council decided, according to Phillip Sands, the British Proffesor who brought this to light.

There is also the revelation (which isn't a revelation for anyone who's been paying attention) that "fewer than 20 percent of the Guantanamo detainees, the best available evidence suggests, have ever been Qaeda members" and that "many scores, and perhaps hundreds, of the detainees were not even Taliban foot soldiers, let alone Qaeda terrorists. They were innocent, wrongly seized noncombatants with no intention of joining the Qaeda campaign to murder Americans."

Then there was the case of a 24 year old Bush appointee with a fake resume attempting to muzzle one of the most respected scientists at NASA.

What will it take? How many different lines of evidence need come out? How many different whistle-blowers need come forth? How many different lies will be tolerated?

When will the American public say: ENOUGH!

Perhaps you have noticed that I sometimes put the word liberal in quotes when I'm using it in the context of something someone like Michelle Malkin has said. I do that because Malkin, Coulter, Hannity, et all use the term not as a reference to any ideology or set of ideas, but as a perjorative label to identify an out-group. And into this group they will cast anyone that they dislike or disagree with, regardless of whether 'liberal' is actually descriptive of their views or not.

Today, Glenn Greenwald has written a long post touching on this subject. Glenn's attention focuses on the flip side of this coin, self-styled conservatives who are not conservative, or at least who do not apply the principles which they consider conservative consistently. The example Glenn pulls to make this point is an article from Free Republic which denounced the Clinton adminsitration's use of the FISA courts as a dangerous threat to liberty. These same people at Free Republic are now defending the Bush administration's choice to bypass the FISA courts and engage in surveillance with even less oversight than that which the previous administration did.

This is difficult to understand, but it makes sense if one applies the interpretation of conservatism that was put forth by F.A. Hayek, who in the essay "Why I'm not a Conservative," writes

In general, it can probably be said that the conservative does not object to coercion or arbitrary power so long as it is used for what he regards as the right purposes. He believes that if government is in the hands of decent men, it ought not to be too much restricted by rigid rules. Since he is essentially opportunist and lacks principles, his main hope must be that the wise and the good will rule - not merely by example, as we all must wish, but by authority given to them and enforced by them. Like the socialist, he is less concerned with the problem of how the powers of government should be limited than with that of who wields them; and, like the socialist, he regards himself as entitled to force the value he holds on other people.

When Hayek states that the conservative "lacks prinicples" he does not mean that the conservative lacks moral values. What he means is that conservatism, by its nature of being a reactionary force, lacks a coherent philosophy from which to derive political positions, and is thus opportunist in that it will seize on whatever tactic will achieve its ends. If we take this description of conservatism to apply to the individuals Greenwald refers to, then the apparent contradiction of approving an action for one President, and disaproving it for another, disappears.

As I've previously written, I consider one of the biggest obstacles to constructive debate is the way in which we use terms to label people, and I suppose I should take the opportunity to reiterate my third suggestion for elevating the level of political discourse:

Conservative or liberal may be used as adjectives to describe persons or ideas, but only within the context of what the words actually mean, not what they have come to be negatively associated with. Under no circumstance should either term be used as an insult.

The Bush administration awarded Halliburton an open-ended contract to build mass detetention facilities as a contingency for an "immigration crisis."

Dave Neiwert covers the issue. (See here and here)

"Well, when the president does it that means that it is not illegal" - Richard Nixon, answering if the President can do something illegal if its in the nation's interests

"We believe ... that we have all the legal authority we need." - Dick Cheney, answering if the White House would work with Congress to resolve the legality of the NSA surveillance program

Alonzo Fyfe at the Atheist Ethicist has an excellent post rebutting an e-mail that his wife received from a coworker who deemed it "too good not to pass along." The e-mail equates liberals with excusing terrorist activity and, more disgustingly, implicity fantasizes about liberals being killed by terrorists.

The typical response to this hate rhetoric, which is clearly eliminationist propaganda, is that it's just a joke. It is not a joke because this sort of rhetoric helps clear the way for action by serving to demonize a group so that they can be viewed as less than human.

In a post entitled The hunting of liberals, Dave Neiwert noted that

This is how propaganda is supposed to work: Circulate ideas on the popular level first, perhaps disguised as "humor" or "edgy commentary," until they become part of a broadly popular "conventional wisdom." Seemingly "outrageous" ideas gradually gain broader acceptance, leveraging the populace toward the movement's agenda. Then, when these notions are enunciated at the official and most powerful levels of government, any outrage that might be voiced is easily ignored.

Michelle Malkin, who has written a book claiming that "liberals" are unhinged, would respond that mainstream conservatives are quick to condemn extremism from their own ranks. As I've demonstrated before, that claim doesn't even make it past Malkin, and in the Neiwert post he gives an example of Karl Rove engaging in this sort of demagogery. Not only did Malkin and her ilk not denounce Rove, but they said he was correct.

Citizens should be alarmed when their leaders engage in or encourage this sort of propaganda because it can have practical consequences. For example, Timothy McVeigh's Oklahoma City bombing in some respects can be seen as the culmination of a decade and a half of anti-government rhetoric. In the introduction to Reagan's America, Gary Wills writes

Not orderly rule but violent overthrow is the fantasy haunting the minds of some of Reagan's heirs. Rush Limbaugh, expressing sympathy for the militias said: "The second violent American revolution is just about - I got my fingers about a fourth of an inch apart - is just about that far away. Because these people are sick and tired of a bunch of beuracrats in Washington driving into town and telling them what they can and can't do." Representative John Boehler of Ohio called OSHA regulators the "Gestapo of the Federal Government."

It may be objected that this is "just rhetoric" - an odd thing for any Reaganite to say. It was his rhetoric about an Evil Empire that helped destroy one system. Why should we take any less seriously his rhetoric about the evils of our government? Oliver North did not. The Freemen of Montana do not. The airwaves are full of citizens' vituperation of the representatives they have themselves chosen. Though Reagan was to courtly and well mannered to use the caustic insults orchestrated on talk radio, he made the world safe for Rush Limbaugh. And Limbaugh, down through the ranks of his even less contained fellows (like Oliver North and G. Gordon Liddy), made the world safe for the militias, the Freemen, the bombers of the Federal building in Oklahoma City. If the government was the enemy, these people would fight it, with guns if necessary; and feel that they worked under the aegis of the man who most effectively taught them that government is the enemy.

The rhetoric against goverment no longer predominates the airwaves. Now, the biggest target of talk radio is liberals, who have been deemed the "enemy within." How long might it be before we see the results of the seed of hate that is being planted by the people who "joke" about the elimination of liberals?

So days after a Senate Judiciary Committe inquiry into the nature of the NSA spying the President authorized begins George W. Bush announced that a 9/11 style attack on LA was prevented in 2002. For those who might have forgotten, this administration has a history of raising the specter of terrorist attack at times that coincide with negative publicity for the administration.

Why does he bring it up now? He brings it up because he wants the Patriot Act reauthorized, and because he wants to not be questioned on his authorization of domestic spying on US citizens without a warrant. And he intends to do that by scaring the American public into agreeing. And as Glenn Greenwald notes, "the White House doesn't care how transparent their manipulation of terrorist threats is, because this manipulation is not aimed at our rational faculties."

The Founding Fathers, having won a war to cast off the yoke of monarchy, thus freeing themselves from the tyranny of despotism, were acutely aware of the ways in which their newly won liberty might be lost.

In the Federalist #8 Alexander Hamilton wrote

Safety from external danger is the most powerful director of national conduct. Even the ardent love of liberty will, after a time, give way to its dictates. The violent destruction of life and property incident to war, the continual effort and alarm attendant on a state of continual danger, will compel nations the most attached to liberty to resort for repose and security to institutions which have a tendency to destroy their civil and political rights. To be more safe, they at length become willing to run the risk of being less free.

He knew that the fear of external threat erodes liberty, and that in a state perpetually threatened

The perpetual menacings of danger oblige the government to be always prepared to repel it; its armies must be numerous enough for instant defense. The continual necessity for their services enhances the importance of the soldier, and proportionably degrades the condition of the citizen. The military state becomes elevated above the civil. The inhabitants of territories, often the theatre of war, are unavoidably subjected to frequent infringements on their rights, which serve to weaken their sense of those rights; and by degrees the people are brought to consider the soldiery not only as their protectors, but as their superiors. The transition from this disposition to that of considering them masters, is neither remote nor difficult; but it is very difficult to prevail upon a people under such impressions, to make a bold or effectual resistance to usurpations supported by the military power.

The Founders foreseeing this, sought to create institutions that would prevent such from happening. The Constitution and the Bill of Rights was the fruit of their labor. It was with an eye to the future and a memory of past injustice that they wrote these documents.

President Bush, instead of upholding and defending these institutions, seeks to undermine them by his use of fear as a political device. This administration has done so by creating a war frame, despite the fact that we are not at war. No matter what anyone might say, 'Terror' is not a state, it has no armies, and it will not sign a ceasefire. It is an abstraction, and declaring war on it puts us perpetually at war with an intangible enemy. Orwell recognized in both Animal Farm and 1984 that such an enemy coupled with fear can be used to justify totalitarianism.

This is not to say that terrorists are not a threat that must be taken seriously. The potential devastation that could be wrought by a fanatic in possesion of a nuclear device is indeed frightening. Which is another reason why it should be unacceptable for an administration to 'cry wolf' in order to gain political capitol.

Via Orwell's Grave

"This program has been an important part of that intelligence capability. And as I said, the tragedy is, now that it has become the subject of so much discussion in the press and in the public arena that there is a real danger here that we will lose our capabilities in this area and will not have the kind of intelligence going forward that we've had in the past that has made it possible for us to successfully defend the nation against terrorist attacks. It doesn't mean there won't be future attacks. There may well be." - V.P. Cheney on the NSA wiretapping

This is, quite frankly, despicable. All the evidence we have seen to date suggests the NSA program results in thousands of dead ends, signal noise if you will, that does not yield intelligence on terrorists. There is no indication that it has ever prevented a terrorist attack. And, as has been pointed out, it is ridiculous to assert that terrorists don't know the United States government has the capacity to spy on them.

Cheney also does not entertain the possibility that the public exposure of the NSA program is the fault of the administration for not acting in accordance with the FISA law; this is not surprising, as the modus operandi of this administration is to never take accountability. What he is doing is attempting to silence criticism and avoid defending a policy decision by denouncing critics for exposing the country to danger. That is a familiar and disturbing tactic.

"[V]oice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country." - Nazi Reichsmarshall Hermann Goering

"Perhaps it is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged to provisions against danger, real or pretended, from abroad" - James Madison, from a letter to Thomas Jefferson (1798)

"It is important, likewise, that the habits of thinking in a free country should inspire caution in those entrusted with its administration, to confine themselves within their respective constitutional spheres, avoiding in the exercise of the powers of one department to encroach upon another. The spirit of encroachment tends to consolidate the powers of all the departments in one, and thus to create, whatever the form of government, a real despotism. A just estimate of that love of power, and proneness to abuse it, which predominates in the human heart, is sufficient to satisfy us of the truth of this position. The necessity of reciprocal checks in the exercise of political power, by dividing and distributing it into different depositaries, and constituting each the guardian of the public weal against invasions by the others, has been evinced by experiments ancient and modern; some of them in our country and under our own eyes. To preserve them must be as necessary as to institute them. If, in the opinion of the people, the distribution or modification of the constitutional powers be in any particular wrong, let it be corrected by an amendment in the way which the Constitution designates. But let there be no change by usurpation; for though this, in one instance, may be the instrument of good, it is the customary weapon by which free governments are destroyed. The precedent must always greatly overbalance in permanent evil any partial or transient benefit, which the use can at any time yield." - George Washington, Farewell Address (1796)

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed." - Dwight D. Eisenhower

Via the Washington Post

President Bush plans to propose a $2.7 trillion budget tomorrow that would shrink most parts of the government unrelated to the nation's security while slowing spending on Medicare by $36 billion during the next five years, according to White House documents.

The spending plan Bush is to recommend to Congress will call for the elimination or reduction of 141 programs -- for a savings of $14.5 billion -- across a broad swath of federal agencies, according to administration and congressional officials who have had access to budget documents in advance. Wide-ranging as they are, those cuts pale in comparison with the White House's attempt to carve money from Medicare -- the first tangible result from a vow the president made in his State of the Union address last week to constrain the massive entitlement programs for the elderly and the poor.

"A democracy cannot survive long without freedom of expression, the freedom to argue, to dissent, even to insult and offend. It is a freedom sorely lacking in the Islamic world, and without it Islam will remain unassailed in its dogmatic, fanatical, medieval fortress; ossified, totalitarian and intolerant. Without this fundamental freedom, Islam will continue to stifle thought, human rights, individuality; originality and truth." - Ibn Warraq, Democracy in a Cartoon

Western Europe now faces a serious dilemma: how do you tolerate the intolerant? My answer is short: you don't because, as A.C. Grayling put it, "the result is too often the death of toleration itself, because those who live by hard principles and uncompromising views in political, moral, and religious respects always, if given half a chance, silence liberals because liberalism, by its nature, threatens the hegemony they wish to impose."

The Danish cartoons depicting the Islamic faith in what enraged Muslims deem a blasphemous light has led to violent reactions around the globe, including the burning of Danish embassies in Syria. There is no excuse for such actions, as there is no right to not be offended which supercedes the right to expression. Tolerance means being allowed the freedom to practice your faith without interferance so long as you do not violate the rights of others, it does not mean being allowed the freedom to impose your religion on others by silencing their freedom of expression. Otherwise, 'toleration' becomes, as expressed by Thomas Paine, "not the opposite of intolerance but the counterfeit of it. Both are despotisms: the one assumes to itself the right of withholding liberty of conscience, the other of granting it."

Now, I'm not calling for militant actions against Muslims. But what I am suggesting is that Western Democracies should not budge nor compromise on this matter. There should be no laws protecting religious sensibilites from offense, no laws giving legitimacy to the violent fanatacism which calls for the death of infidels who insult a religion. In essence, this sort of barbaric response will not be tolerated nor condoned, in any shape or form.

At the Secular Outpost, Taner Edis writes

Sigh. On one hand, this whole fracas reinforces my general contempt for the human species. On the other hand, I can't even get my usual fool's compensation of a bitter sense of superiority. I'd like to come out and say I know the right and proper way to respond to incidents that (possibly deliberately) provoke religious offense, but I don't see any way to do it without appearing a morally outraged twit myself. Again, sigh...

I can sympathize to an extent. But we (humanists) are not cultural relativists, and the response seems clear enough to me: denounce the violent reactions and defend the freedom of expression, while holding any individuals who participate in militant reprisals legally accountable for their actions.

Why should Islam, or any religion, be granted legal or social protections from criticism? Faith must stand or fall on the intellectual defense of its claims, not on legal prohibitions against critique, or upon violent intimidation of those who would question it.

And how any human being ever has had the impudence to speak against the right to speak, is beyond the power of my imagination. Here is a man who speaks -- who exercises a right that he, by his speech, denies. Can liberty go further than that? Is there any toleration possible beyond the liberty to speak against liberty -- the real believer in free speech allowing others to speak against the right to speak? Is there any limitation beyond that?

So, whoever has spoken against the right to speak has admitted that he violated his own doctrine. No man can open his mouth against the freedom of speech without denying every argument he may put forward. Why? He is exercising the right that he denies. How did he get it? Suppose there is one man on an island. You will all admit now that he would have the right to do his own thinking. You will all admit that he has the right to express his thought. Now, will somebody tell me how many men would have to emigrate to that island before the original settler would lose his right to think and his right to express himself? - Robert Green Ingersoll, "The Limitations of Toleration"

View of Bonnières (1866) - Paul Cézanne

Green Knight and John catch a particularly frustrating instance of political spin. From Knight-Ridder:

One day after President Bush vowed to reduce America's dependence on Middle East oil by cutting imports from there 75 percent by 2025, his energy secretary and national economic adviser said Wednesday that the president didn't mean it literally.

For those that might not see what is so wrong about this it is that the President's words were completely misleading. There is absolutely no way anyone listening to the SOTU would have come away with the understanding that the President was speaking figuratively when he said he would be replacing "more than 75 percent of our oil imports from the Middle East by 2025."

Hello Georgia residents. Did you know that the Atlanta Journal-Constitution is a "far-left publication that slants news coverage and engages in defamation." Well, it is, because Bill O'Reilly says so.

Can someone please provide Mr. O'Reilly with a mirror, as it will be an invaluable tool in his campaign to call out media smear merchants.

In last night's State of the Union address President Bush claimed

It is said that prior to the attacks of September the 11th, our government failed to connect the dots of the conspiracy. We now know that two of the hijackers in the United States placed telephone calls to Al Qaida operatives overseas. But we did not know about their plans until it was too late.

If that is what he thinks it is no wonder 9/11 happened. There was no law that would have prohibited listening to phone calls placed to Al Qaida. The simple fact of the matter is, that these hijackers weren't apprehended because our government was not paying attention. The President continues

So to prevent another attack -- based on authority given to me by the Constitution and by statute -- I have authorized a terrorist surveillance program to aggressively pursue the international communications of suspected Al Qaida operatives and affiliates to and from America.

Previous presidents have used the same constitutional authority I have and federal courts have approved the use of that authority. Appropriate members of Congress have been kept informed.

The terrorist surveillance program has helped prevent terrorist attacks. It remains essential to the security of America. If there are people inside our country who are talking with Al Qaida, we want to know about it, because we will not sit back and wait to be hit again.

What he did was authorize domestic spying on US citizens without a warrant, utilizing a radical interpretation of his executive powers authored by a man who believes the President has the authority to crush a child's testicles if he deems it necessary. Previous Presidents have not used the same "constitutional authority," unless you want to count Richard Nixon who was forced to resign to avoid impeachment.

The President says "appropriate members of Congress have been kept informed."
1. Even if so, that would just mean some members of Congress knew about this extralegal activity and withheld that information from the public
2. This claim is disputed by members of Congress (see here and here)

And the claim that this "terrorist surveillance program" aka warrantless domestic spying has helped prevent terrorist attacks is unsubstantiated. The last line is totally dishonest and misleading - there is nothing in the existing law which would prevent listening in on "people inside our country who are talking with Al Qaida." You can even listen for 72 hours without getting a warrant.

The simple truth is the President lied to the nation. He told us that no wiretapping would ever be done without a warrant, despite his having authorized just that. Instead of standing behind that decision and defending it, the President obfuscates the issue with dishonesty and untruths. The last President was impeached for lying about extramarital oral sex, this President is lying about violating the 4th amendment rights of the entire nation.

Another aspect of the address that, to me, seemed, quite frankly, insane, was the portion where the President said making his tax cuts permanent would help reduce the deficit. Um, THE TAX CUTS CAUSED THE DEFICIT. At what point will reduced government income plus increased government spending somehow magically make the deficit disappear? By my own admission, economics isn't my strongest subject, so perhaps someone can explain the President's reasoning to me.

Update: Mark Crispin Miller links to an article by a former Reagan administration Assistant Sec. of the Treasury who believes the economic state of the union is, in fact, disastrous.

Update 2: Media Matters has parsed the NSA section of the SOTU, too, and concludes that "nearly every argument Bush made in defense of the program is either false or misleading." They note that despite this, several figures in the media have characterized Bush's defense of the NSA spying as "strong," "vigorous," and "fierce." I suppose Peter Daou can consider this as more evidence for his case that the media favors pro-Bush narratives. (See here and here.)

Update 3: I was right, Peter Daou does take the above as evidence.