Month: August 2008

The Real Ayers Problem

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Jonah Goldberg,

I am amazed, simply amazed, at the amazement of many liberals that Ayers and Dohrn should matter to anyone.

As I have noted before, the real troubling aspect of the Obama-Ayers relationship is that Obama comes from a political subculture in which Ayers is an accepted and unremarkable individual. Looking at Ayers, one is forced to ask exactly what kind of leftist extremism would be considered unacceptable by Obama and his cohorts. 

[h/t Instapundit]

[update(9:59am 8.27.2008): Commenter Jjv says:

I think the bigger problem is what did Ayers see in Obama?

end update]

[update(10:12am 8.27.2008): If you wish to argue that you consider Ayers acceptable and unremarkable please provide an example of what Ayers would have had to do for you to consider him unacceptable.]

[update(12:37pm 8.27.2008): I contacted the Chicago Tribune and ask them about Ayers. They said that they had only published a commentary i.e. basically a letter to the editor. So the idea that Ayers is mainstream because the Tribune published him is dubious.]

[update (2:32pm 8.27.2009): The Tribune editoral page editor, Brian Dold, graciously called me back. He said that the Tribune, as part of its public mission, publishes a wide array of opinion without passing judgement on the character of the authors.]

[update (2:34pm 8.27.2008): Commentator Foo Bar has shown that the Tribune did publish several opinion pieces by Ayers over a period of several years.] 

If the Clintons Are Racist…

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…what does that say about the judgment of all those leftists who supported, elected and defended them all these years. 

What does it say about those same people’s judgment of Obama? Nothing good. 

[Update: Notice how the first poster manages to change the subject from the poor judgement of leftist to a discussion of the worst U.S. presidents. He’s good at that technique.]

Quote of the Day

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In most online conversations I’ve been involved with, you eventually come to a point where the people interested in an evolving, exploratory dialogue, in learning something new about themselves and others, in thinking aloud, in working through things, find themselves worn out by a kind of rhetorical infection inflicted by bad faith participants who are just there to affirm what they already know and attack everything that doesn’t conform to that knowledge. (Or by the classic “energy creatures” whose only objective is to satisfy their narcissism.) I used to think that was a function of the size of the room, that in a bigger discursive space, richer possibilities would present themselves. Now I don’t know…

–Timothy Burke

(via Megan McArdle)

How Free Speech Became a Zone

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When we bemoan the creation of free-speech zones around conventions, conferences, summits, etc I think it important to remember whose actions made those zones necessary in order to protect the right of free assembly. 

Prior to 1968, such precautions never occurred to anyone, because the culture of the time abhorred the idea of actually attacking someone engaged in political activity. For the narcissistic lefty boomers, that wasn’t good enough. As individuals gifted with intellects and morals far beyond those of mortal men, they had the inherent right to impose their will on others by force. Ever since then their intellectual progeny have attacked every major political event in the North America. 

Viktor Frankl observed that freedom resulted from the combination of liberty and responsibility. He we see he was correct. People once had the freedom to protest close to conventions and similar gatherings because they behaved responsibly when doing so and protected the rights of others. After leftist extremists developed an utter disdain for the rights of others, they abandoned any concept of responsibility towards others. 

And here we are. This is how freedoms die, not with the loss of liberty but first with the loss of responsibility. 

Return of the Vanquished

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Via Instapundit comes a story about the return of a once-vanquished nutritional disease, rickets, due to people not watching their children’s nutrition because they assumed that breast feeding would supply all the nutrients needed. This fits a similar pattern in which health concerns that disappeared in most of the West by the 1960s have begun to reemerge. 

In all these cases, the cause is an exaggerated concern for an unrelated health matter that generates unintended side effects. 

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