...more recent posts
This is a national conceit that is the comprehensible result of the religious beliefs of the early New England colonists (Calvinist religious dissenters, moved by millenarian expectations and theocratic ideas), which convinced them that their austere settlements in the wilderness represented a new start in humanity's story. However, the earlier Virginia settlements were commercial, as were those of the Dutch, and the proprietary colonies in Pennsylvania and Maryland were Quaker and Catholic, and had no such ideas. Nor did the earliest colonies, the Spanish in Florida and the Southwest, and the French on the Great Lakes and the Mississippi.
The nobility of the colonies' constitutional deliberations following the War of Independence, and the expression of the new thought of the Enlightenment in the institutions of government they created, contributed to this belief in national uniqueness. Thomas Paine wrote that
the case and circumstances of America present themselves as in the beginning of the world.... We have no occasion to roam for information into the obscure field of antiquity, nor hazard ourselves upon conjecture. We are...as if we had lived in the beginning of time.
Even Francis Fukuyama, a recovering neoconservative, acknowledges in a recent book that American economic and political policies today rest on an unearned claim to privilege, the American "belief in American exceptionalism that most non-Americans simply find not credible." Nor, he adds, is the claim tenable, since "it presupposes an extremely high level of competence" which the country does not demonstrate.[2]
Mr. Kuhner
said, “Our report on this opposition research activity is completely accurate,” and he argued that all major news organizations relied on anonymous sources. Mr. Kuhner, in an editor’s note on Insight, said the Web site could not afford to “send correspondents to places like Jakarta to check out every fact in a story.”The Web site pays up to $800 for an article.
Mr. Kuhner said he was not yet convinced by reports from officials of the elementary school that Mr. Obama attended in Indonesia about its secular history. “To simply take the word of a deputy headmaster about what was the religious curriculum of a school 35 years ago does not satisfy our standards for aggressive investigative reporting,” he wrote.
might just be typical recommendation-type exaggeration but this is quite an endorsement.
Quote of the Day
"I can't pretend that I had any idea then that he would be a serious presidential candidate -- that would have been a crazy thing for anyone to project at that stage of a career -- but he was certainly the most all-around impressive student I had seen in decades."
-- Harvard Law Professor Laurence Tribe, quoted by the AP, about his former research assistant, Barack Obama.
It's almost like nothing matters at this point, but this documentary looks pretty powerful: Iraq For Sale.
For instance, check out this clip about the Halliburton run water purification plants.
I've taken to reading the NY Post during my Cup and Saucer breakfast routine. I love the op-ed page. It's filled with incredibly improbable ideas that make, say, Tom Friedman look sane. Take this beautiful one from today by Arthur Herman: How to fight Iran. LOL.
It's so simple - why didn't I think of that? Just take out all the missile launchers on the entire Iranian Persian Gulf coast. Genius. (No doubt his plan for how to actually do this was edited out for space reasons.) Then seize the entire Iranian oil sector (yes, with Marines securing the oil platforms, refineries, etc...) and then just continue to sell the oil on the world market (presumably pocketing the money so the entire operation just pays for itself!) Once we do this (along with knocking out electricity and telecommunications in the entire country) the Iranian population will - wait for it! - look to us as liberators and turn against the Mullahs. And even better, Iranian terrorist proxies in Lebanon and Palestine (who never liked Iran anyway) will see this as a cue, not to launch all out war on Israel, but to "head for the nearest exit."
I used to like to complain about the Times, but it turns out that was just because I sometimes read it. But they got nothin' on the NYP. "Real men go to Tehran." Indeed. I'm back to thinking we're doomed.
this war is older than she is.
jim webb, home run. thanks for voting, jim. (video)
saints be praised aka barack obama doesnt care about black people.
probably not the worst thing for his outsized ego but its sad to see dan rather "reduced" to a grade b sunday morning shoutfest. what a nightmare trying to get a word in edgewise between chris matthews, andrea mitchell and andrew sullivan.
Is John Burns ever going to cut his hair? He must be one powerful SOB to get on TV looking like that.