Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

Cold Reason

by tristero

Recently, I wrote that “[t]he essential principle of American politics is that it insists upon the exercise of cold reason in governance; revelation can play no part, nor can any religion have any kind of privileged status. Period. The End.”

I truly thought that this glancing reference to one of the more famous statements on the nature of the US government by one of our most famous statesmen was patently obvious, especially since I dropped other hints in my post as to my reference, even going so far as actually to name the author.

But apparently, no one caught it. Which would be no big deal, except that, amusingly, one of our far-right commenters, Fidel Cigar, found the invocation of “cold reason” to be nothing less than the political philosophy of “lefty totalitarian greaseballs”.

So…for those of you who agree with Mr (or Ms.) Cigar, that a government that relies solely upon “cold reason” is little more than a police state run by slippery, Brylcreem-challenged leftists, here is the original quote I was obviously referring to:

Reason, cold, calculating, unimpassioned reason, must furnish all the materials for our future support and defence. Let those [materials] be moulded into general intelligence, [sound] morality and, in particular, a reverence for the constitution and laws.

By the way, I didn’t make the quote up.

One other point. Notice how, for this fellow, sound morality proceeds directly from materials fashioned through the exercise of cold, calculating, unimpassioned reason. On the other hand, for Fidel Cigar, morality has nothing to do with reason. As well as nothing to do with any knowledge of history, science, and a slew of other reality-based paths to knowledge, as his ignorant and bizarre comments demonstrated.

PS For the pedantic, it is true that the statesmen’s topic is not religion versus reason in government. Rather it is the importance of obeying laws from the danger of the lynch mentality that would, say, hang congressmen who disagree with the president on foreign policy. Because the separation of church and state is such an essential principle of our government, it is quite appropriate to use this quote as I did.

A President Named George

by digby

…has something important to tell us:

The nation which indulges toward another an habitual hatred or an habitual fondness is in some degree a slave. It is a slave to its animosity or to its affection, either of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and its interest.

Antipathy in one nation against another disposes each more readily to offer insult and injury, to lay hold of slight causes of umbrage, and to be haughty and intractable, when accidental or trifling occasions of dispute occur.

Hence, frequent collisions, obstinate, envenomed, and bloody contests. The nation prompted by ill will and resentment sometimes impels to war the government contrary to the best calculations of policy. The government sometimes participates in the national propensity, and adopts through passion, what reason would reject; at other times it makes the animosity of the nation subservient to projects of hostility instigated by pride, ambition, and other sinister and pernicious motives. The peace often, sometimes perhaps the liberty, of nations has been the victim.

So, likewise, a passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils. Sympathy for the favorite nation, facilitating the illusion of an imaginary common interest in cases where no real common interest exists, and infusing into one the enmities of the other, betrays the former into a participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter without adequate inducement or justification. It leads also to concessions to the favorite nation of privileges denied to others, which is apt doubly to injure the nation making the concessions, by unnecessarily parting with what ought to have been retained, and by exciting jealousy, ill will, and disposition to retaliate in the parties from whom equal privileges are withheld.

And it gives to ambitious, corrupted, or deluded citizens (who devote themselves to the favorite nation) facility to betray or sacrifice the interests of their own country, without odium, sometimes even with popularity, gilding with the appearances of a virtuous sense of obligation, a commendable deference for public opinion, or a laudable zeal for public good, the base or foolish compliances of ambition, corruption, or infatuation. As avenues to foreign influence in innumerable ways, such attachments are particularly alarming to the truly enlightened and independent patriot. How many opportunities do they afford to tamper with domestic factions, to practice the arts of seduction, to mislead public opinion, to influence or awe the public councils! Such an attachment of a small or weak toward a great and powerful nation dooms the former to be the satellite of the latter.

Against the insidious wiles of foreign influence, I conjure you to believe me, fellow-citizens, the jealousy of a free people ought to be constantly awake, since history and experience prove that foreign influence is one of the most baneful foes of republican government. But that jealousy, to be useful, must be impartial, else it becomes the instrument of the very influence to be avoided instead of a defense against it. Excessive partiality for one foreign nation and excessive dislike of another cause those whom they actuate to see danger only on one side and serve to veil and even second the arts of influence on the other. Real patriots, who may resist the intrigues of the favorite, are liable to become suspected and odious, while its tools and dupes usurp the applause and confidence of the people to surrender their interests.

Just Saying…

Happy Birthday George.

.

Political Religion

by digby

Pastordan sent this Jon Meacham piece along and it’s worth sharing today on George Washington’s birthday. I’ve been hard on Meacham in the past, but I think this is good.

…For the wonderful thing about American public religion—or what Lincoln called our “political religion”—is that its creed is liberty and the rule of law, not coercion or forced belief or a link between one’s civil and religious lives. George Washington promised that the government would “give to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance,” a promise that I think is as fundamental to America as the promises of the Declaration of Independence.

[…]

We are right to be reverent about our nation—and we obligated to be respectful of the rights of others to do as they please, within the spirit of the democracy whose leaders we celebrate today.

I don’t think we have proved ourselves as exceptional as Adams and the other founders hoped we would, but there is no doubt that we are a better and more successful nation on the occasions when we follow enlightened, democratic principles in actions as well as words. Our shared respect for the Bill of Rights and the Constitution as the governing documents of our civic life is what binds us together as a people.

So, as the current administration openly undermines this civic faith, hiding behind religious faith to do it, it undermines the “political religion” that’s held this country together over two centuries. That’s something to ponder isn’t it?

.

Pull The Other One

by digby

Time has a lovely paean to Holy Joe today in which his blackmail and petulance are celebrated as acts of courage. But I think they may have gone a bit far when they bought this piece of bullspin:

…last month, after Lieberman told Reid he had stopped attending the weekly Democratic lunch because he didn’t feel comfortable discussing Iraq there, Reid offered to hold those discussions at another time. Lieberman has started attending again.

Right. Joe wasn’t “comfortable” being there:

Before Bush’s State of the Union speech in January, National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley brought in Lieberman for a private consultation with the President. Lieberman says he talks with or e-mails Hadley, Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff and White House legislative-affairs head Candida Wolff every week or two.

You don’t suppose the real story is that the Democrats thought it wasn’t a great idea to talk about Iraq strategy with a turncoat in their midst, do you?

.

Great Game

by digby

I will once again second Duncan’s prediction that Bush will not be leaving Iraq before his term ends no matter how many ponies Bob Novak sees galloping around the halls of congress.

Here’s Cheney again:

“I think if we were to do what Speaker Pelosi and Congressman Murtha are suggesting, all we will do is validate the al-Qaida strategy. The al-Qaida strategy is to break the will of the American people … try to persuade us to throw in the towel and come home, and then they win because we quit.”

It doesn’t get much clearer than that. Furthermore, Iraq and even iran aren’t the only things they are thinking about. There’s this nugget from Tony Blankley:

MR. BLANKLEY: American military involvement started in Iraq 16 years ago, in 1991. We’ve had troops or airplanes and their crews there since then. They’re going to be there for another 20 years. We can’t get a powder out of that part of the world.

MS. CLIFT: Not in combat for 20 years.

MR. BLANKLEY: And there will be combat going on for many years to come.

[…]

MR. BLANKLEY: But the fact is that when the oil is challenged in the Saudi oil fields and the Straits of Hormuz are closed, we’ll be fighting, even by your definition …

This is only tangentially about terrorism, which is no surprise. 9/11 was an opportunity for the PNAC crowd to play their Great Game over resources and domination. They are not going to stop playing it and I suspect that a Democratic administration will be stuck carrying it on to some degree now whether we like it or not. The Republicans have done a fine job of messing things up so completely that it’s going to be very, very difficult to extricate ourselves from it. The most we can hope for is that we find someone sane, competent and at least slightly visionary to manage this historic miscalculation and convince the rest of the world that we have not gone completely off the rails.

To that end, I recommend this site today, sponsored by Wes Clark and VoteVets called StopIranWar. If you have a few minutes, please sign the petition. I don’t know if we can stop crazy Cheney from doing it anyway, but we have to try.

.

Smoking Them Out

by digby

In a thoroughly egregious Hardball yesterday, even by its usual egregious standards, Chris Matthews spun some CW that I think may be growing, even though it makes little sense:

MATTHEWS: Is David Geffen smart politically? He strikes me as someone who is very smart.

I mean, here‘s a quote. It‘s an indirect quote from today‘s Maureen Dowd piece in “The New York Times,” which caused all this stir over in the the Clinton world—quote—it‘s just about Bill and Hillary, obviously, and their relationship.

Geffen says, adding that, “If Republicans are digging up dirt, they will wait until Hillary is the nominee to use it.”

That‘s what I have always thought, that, if they‘re going to really turn the guns on the Clintons and the cameras and everything else, and try to, you know, smoke them out, in terms of any problems there, that they will wait until Hillary gets the nomination, then blast her when it‘s too late for the Democrats to change horses.

I think the US government spent eight years and 70 million dollars or so digging up Clinton dirt and rich wingnuts put up several more million on top of that. Every single allegation was aired in the press either through leaks or salacious official “reports.” An entire batalion of rightwing operatives also spent eight years making up dirt, including allegations of murder and drug running. They went all the way back to the Clintons’ college days, looked into financial transactions from the 70’s and interviewed virtually every person the Clintons had ever met. Libraries could be filled with the books and magazine articles written about their personal history along with vast numbers of psychological profiles and speculation about everything from Bill being a manchurian candidate to their sex lives. There were no limits and no stone was left unturned.

What in God’s name does Chris think they could possibly find after all that?

Will the press go after Clinton for being a “calculating” bitch? (I think that word’s been used more in the past month than ever before in history.) Of course. Will they attack her mercilessly and dredge up every old trope that was used against her back in the day? Undoubtedly. But it is almost impossible to believe they could come up with any real dirt on her because there has never been a more thoroughly vetted candidate in history. Not that the swift-boaters won’t just make stuff up like they always do, but it should not be believable to anyone in the mainstream media and it should be greeted with so much skepticism as to be laughable on its face.

I have no dog in this fight and I could not care less if you vote for Hillary Clinton or if you don’t. Neither do I care if you think she’s a calculating bitch and hate her stance on the war and loathe everything she and her husband did during their administration. Those are fair game. But I will be damned if I’ll passively accept this ongoing enabling of character assassination against Democrats, I don’t care who they are. If an eight year multi-million dollar federal investigation into every aspect of his or her life isn’t enough for the mainstream media to accept that there is no unethical or criminal charges that can credibly be brought against Hillary Clinton then no candidate is safe. If they can believe that “dirt” still exists against her, imagine what they will do with the inevitable swift boat attacks on a candidate who is fairly new on the scene?

This idea that there’s “dirt” yet to be unearthed about Clinton is a pernicious rightwing meme designed to stoke the fear that we will be back in tabloid trivia land if Clinton is elected. But that’s a meaningless distinction among the candidates since we are already seeing all of them being trivialized with silly “spats” and “obambi” and “breck girl” commentary. It’s just the beginning and it will continue as surely as you can say the words “earth tones.”

.

“Why Won’t He Just Attack?”

by digby

Here’s crazy Dick Cheney articulating his sophisticated foreign policy philosophy again:

“I think if we were to do what Speaker Pelosi and Congressman Murtha are suggesting, all we will do is validate the al-Qaida strategy,” the vice president told ABC News. “The al-Qaida strategy is to break the will of the American people … try to persuade us to throw in the towel and come home, and then they win because we quit.”

I’ve written a ridiculous amount about this and yet it always shocks me when I hear him put it so plainly. He believes bin Laden’s trash talk and has fashioned this country’s national security policy around it. This was the king of the “grown ups.”

But why should I be surprised? Perhaps it’s time to drag this one up again:

Following one White House meeting at which he’d asked for more time and more troops, Stormin’ Norman reports; Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Colin Powell called to warn the Desert Storm commander that he was being loudly compared, by a top administration official, to George McClellan. “My God,” the official supposedly complained. “He’s got all the force he needs. Why won’t he just attack?” Schwarzkopf notes that the unnamed official who’d made the comment “was a civilian who knew next to nothing about military affairs, but he’d been watching the Civil War documentary on public television and was now an expert.”

And then, twenty pages later, Schwarzkopf casually drops the information that he got an inspirational gift from Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney right before the air war finally got under way. Cheney was presenting a gift to a military man, and he chose something with an appropriate theme: “(A) complete set of videotapes of Ken Burns’s PBS series, The Civil War.”

But that wasn’t the only gift that Dick Cheney had for Norman Schwarzkopf. Having figured out that the general was being too cautious with his fourth combat command in three decades of soldiering, Cheney got his staff busy and began presenting Schwarzkopf with his own ideas about how to fight the Iraqis: What if we parachute the 82nd Airborne into the far western part of Iraq, hundreds of miles from Kuwait and totally cut off from any kind of support, and seize a couple of missile sites, then line up along the highway and drive for Baghdad? Schwarzkopf charitably describes the plan as being “as bad as it could possibly be… But despite our criticism, the western excursion wouldn’t die: three times in that week alone Powell called with new variations from Cheney’s staff. The most bizarre involved capturing a town in western Iraq and offering it to Saddam in exchange for Kuwait.” (Throw in a Pete Rose rookie card?) None of this Walter Mitty posturing especially surprised Schwarzkopf, who points out that he’d already known Cheney as “one of the fiercest cold warriors in Congress.

This information was available before the 2000 election but we were too busy monitoring Al Gore’s wardrobe palette so it didn’t come up.

.

Cultural Revolution

by digby

Like Atrios I like this post on LGM about the Ole Perfesser’s homicidal rant proposing that we covertly kill all the Iranian nuclear scientists so that they will not be able to produce a bomb. Excellent idea.

But you know what? You can’t just stop with the scientists. You’d have to also kill all the science professors and students because otherwise, they could learn how to make nuclear bombs and then we’d have to go in and kill them too. And when you think about it, as long as any educated people are around the potential to learn and teach is a problem. We sure would hate to see that smoking gun turn out to be a mushroom cloud.

Maybe the thing to do is empty out all the cities and send the educated people to the countryside to work in the fields. I’ve heard that works. Or we could just apply the Bush Doctrine and take out the whole country to prevent them from ever even thinking about getting a bomb. It’s all good.

.

Faith And Reason

by tristero

I’m sitting here killing time in an aiport and thought I’d jot down a few thoughts on the revival of the big religion in politics discussion.

Religious practice in the United States is a complex, fascinating subject that, oddly, had never received the kind of attention it deserved until very recently. But religion isn’t the real topic here. Only the role of religion in American politics is of concern, not how Americans practice their faith, or don’t. And unlike the subject of religion itself, the place of religion in political discourse is so straightforward, I’m surprised at the length and prolixity of the discussion:

By conscious decision, the Founders of the United States intended that there be NO place for religious privilege or argumentation in the decision-making process of government. None. As in zero, zip, nada.

No exceptions. Ever.

That’s it. Rhetoric like Lincoln’s? No big deal. Office of Faith-Based Initiatives? That’s an assault on America’s most basic values.

I am an absolutist about this. Your identity as a Baptist, a Jew, or atheist is, according the documents penned by the (very) intelligent designers who wrote the Constitution, utterly meaningless in the American political community in its decision-making. Put another way:

The essential principle of American politics is that it insists upon the exercise of cold reason in governance; revelation can play no part, nor can any religion have any kind of privileged status. Period. The End.

It is an indication of how bizarre public discourse on politics has become that my all-American, apple-pie position is dismissed as “radical,” “secularist,” “anti-religious” and even “fundamentalist.” Those who make such idiotic accusations, among them self-styled spokesmen for the “religious Left,*” apparently are unaware that many Americans like me have a long public record demonstrating the deepest respect for, and interest in, serious religious practice. Digby is right: this is pure counter-Enlightenment trash. But Digby is more polite than I am. It is also deeply anti-American.

*Funny, I always thought the religious Left meant people like genuine heroes like the Berrigans or perhaps Archbishop Romero, not wannabe powerbrokers within an establishment political party. Wallis as the next Berrigan? I really don’t think so.

The Big One

by digby

For those intrigued by my little Paineish scribblings yesterday, do yourself a favor and read this excellent post by Bruce Wilson at Talk2Action about the long march of the counter-enlightenment. He takes particular aim at Jim Wallis because he claims to be the primary leader of the religious left. But it’s also a matter of received wisdom on the right, most recently espoused by Dinesh DiSouza, who would rather throw in with Islamic terrorists than American liberals.

Frederick Clarkson has more on Wallis here. Clarkson and Wilson are both strong, passionate and intelligent writers of the religious left. They are not part of this insider cabal that’s advising the Democratic Party today, but they should be.

.