Agnology - a study in human ignorance

Satire forever soils your perception. Every age has its up-and-comings, its overnight geniuses and afternoon-long obsessions. The satirist has always tried to provide the antidote to such novelties—throwing random jeremiads from the street corner at those with their noses pointed toward heaven. The satirist wants to be the little boy in the fable who points out that the emperor is parading through town stark naked, while everyone else believes (or wants to believe) that the royal finery is too chic for commoners to understand. For all these reasons, satire has historically been ceded to the conservatives. At least by our modern political definitions, it is the liberal who finds novelty attractive; the conservative feels most at home with the status quo.

This is just as true for the ancient world as for ours. P.J. O’Rourke is only recasting Aristophanes’ mold. Evelyn Waugh can’t hope to be more of a curmudgeon than Juvenal or Marcus Varro. All share the same blood-line. And each satirist, modern or ancient, seems to share the same tragic fate; pop culture doesn’t mind the jeremiads. If it’s wrong to be tragically hip, it’s far worse to fall behind the times.

Even the neo-liberal 'zine, Slate, recognizes that Ron Paul's talking points might benefit Republican discourse in the future: The GOP shouldn't silence Ron Paul.

It's eerie how the GOP now views dissenters as somehow unworthy of national attention, as if the present Republican foreign policy has always been uniform (and not a neo-conservative-driven coup several years ago).

Carter continues his blather-bleating: Bush did this and Bush is that. And all this to obscure the monumental mismanagement of his own administration, which I had the privilege of missing entirely. From his recent remarks to the press:

I think as far as the adverse impact on the nation around the world, this administration has been the worst in history. The overt reversal of America's basic values as expressed by previous administrations, including [those of] George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon and others, has been the most disturbing to me.

Christopher Hitchens, who has stuck his finger in one too many pies of late, has nevertheless said some stuff that needed to be said:

Peanut Envy.

Christopher (atheist/neocon/liberal) and Peter (Christian/paleocon) Hitchens have an interesting family dynamic: from the Guardian.

Audience member: You've been casting furtive glances at each other throughout the whole event but you've never yet made eye contact. Would you for this final moment, look each other in the eye?

CH: You don't know what we've just been through. We were asked by James Naughtie to do an on-radio handshake, [and] I thought it was a handshake made for radio.

Audience member: So will you do it?

[CH and PH look briefly at each other]

PH: They want everything to be all right.

CH: They want a happy ending - that's their problem.

No good American mother would fail to warn her child about politicians. For our culture, the politician is much like the forest witch of old European wives' tales-the last person you can trust to be sincere. The politician will say anything to benefit himself; his nose is as long as the list of his lies. Even his silver tongue is forked. The political leaders we do admire are praised for their unpolished straight-talk, that is, how unlike a politician they actually appear. [1]

The idea that politics cannot be sincere is especially clear in our perception of history. As modern Christians, the last thing we want to entrust to politicians is conversion. How can you save a soul through politics? This is the mindset we have while examining the early Church. It is easy for us to recognize heroism in the stories of Fox's Book of Martyrs; but we cannot stomach how the first Christian Roman emperor, Constantine, muddled everything up by making conversion to Christianity financially and politically advantageous. He committed the sin of giving the Church success. And so, he is one of our worst embarrassments. He is the man secularists like to point to in order to warn everyone else what happens when Christians get their way.

Yet, for all this, the early Christians did not share our phobia.

With $800 million to blow, NY Mayor Bloomsburg is "quietly" threatening a third-party run at the presidency. To make matters even more grotesque, Senator Hagel (R-NE) is now being courted by the Big Apple liberal for a joint runt. Hagel hinted on Face the Nation:

It's a great country to think about a New York boy and a Nebraska boy to be teamed up leading this nation.

For all the gossip, see this from Politico.

From Reuters:

In an interview on Monday with NBC's "Today" show, Carter tried to take back some of his words, saying he was comparing Bush's presidency to that of Richard Nixon.

"I wasn't comparing this administration with other administrations back through history, but just with President Nixon's," Carter said.

More from the WP. (Thanks, Chris.)

Michael Moore is back ... beardless this time (revealing, shockingly, that he has no chin). A few random review across the political spectrum:

Rick Lowry: "The only reason to fantasize about Cuban health care is to stick a finger in the eye of the Yanquis. For the likes of Michael Moore, the true glory of Cuba is less its health care than the fact that it is an enemy of the United States. That's why romanticizing Cuban medicine isn't just folly, but itself qualifies as a kind of sickness."

The Cannes contingent: "Sicko has been rapturously received by audiences and critics at Cannes, where it is screening out of competition. Moore's last film, the President Bush-bashing documentary Fahrenheit 9/11, won the festival's top prize, the Palme d'Or, in 2004."

The Gray Lady contingent: "He’s still the P. T. Barnum of activist cinema."

The intellectuals at EW: "there's a certain robust clarity of political activism in this latest salvo from media provocateur Michael Moore that marks a new maturity."

"Other people arrange these things, and I wasn't personally involved in it."

That makes sense. Via Instapundit.

See also: Worldmag's Mister Edwards' neighborhood.

So says John Hawkins of RightWingNews.

Or, for an antidote: Mr. Ultramontane at LewRockwell.com.

Libertarian/objectivist Reason Magazine has a new article on the value and brazenness of Ron Paul's candidacy: Who's Afraid of Ron Paul?:

"These are arguments that should be on the Republican table, not pushed beyond the pale by moral posturing about an alleged insult to the victims of September 11. And surely as we contemplate the debacle in Iraq, Paul's criticisms of reckless foreign entanglements and nation-building commitments have a strong resonance."

And MI GOP chief, Saul Anuzis, has backed off his earlier stance against including Paul in future Republican debates:

"After consulting with my fellow RNC members, I believe there isn't anything to be gained by advancing a petition aimed solely at removing Congressman Paul from the debates," Anuzis wrote in his daily blog Saturday. "The primary is and will continue to work itself out."

Paul campaign spokesman Jesse Benton said Anuzis was right to reverse course, adding that banning Paul is "very unpopular among the people." (from CBS news)

But most conservative pundits for some reason view Paul's disagreement with current administration foreign policy as evidence of something far more insidious than plain old Goldwater conservatism. Hugh Hewitt, talk radio poobah, had a grand time trying to associate Paul with various liberal and crackpot fringists, neglecting to substantively interact with any actual policy discussions. It's easier to make noise than it is to say something that matters.

A nice display of wordsmithing by Peter Hitchens in a review of The President, the Pope, and the Prime Minister. From The American Conservative.

Had they been as successful as is now claimed, it is odd that so much of the supposed Reagan-Thatcher legacy has proved so easy to dismantle. The incompetent, extravagant Bush administration has probably sunk political conservatism in the U.S. for ten years to come, and perhaps longer. The British Conservative Party nowadays hopes to save itself by adopting the spending habits and social programs of its Labor opponents and shrinks like a prodded mollusk when asked to pronounce on issues of absolute morality or national independence. In both countries, actual and moral illiteracy are epidemic, and the liberty of the individual is in serious danger. The power of the Western alliance, once apparently unchallenged, has plainly passed its peak. The world has certainly changed since 1980, and to begin with, it seemed to be changing for the better. But can we now be so sure of that? It is too soon for such confident eulogies as this.

Joseph Farah goes after talk show host Hank Hanegraff for making the following claim in a recent anti-Left Behind novel:

"Much of American Middle East policy is influenced by a huge voting bloc of evangelicals who are taught not to question Israel's divine right to the land," says Hanegraff. "God is not pro-Jew. He is pro-justice. He is not pro-Palestinian. He is pro-peace. Only a gospel of peace and justice is potent enough to break the stranglehold of anti-Semitism and racism fueled in part by bad theology."

Farah reacts:

What Hannegraff and Brouwer are saying and writing is dangerous. It is untrue. It defies history. It defies logic. It defies common sense. And it makes both Americans and all of the people of the Middle East less safe and less free.

Amusing episode culled from Slate.com--They all look alike:

For someone who suddenly likes to pick on foreigners, Mitt Romney is an awfully recent immigrant himself. If you want to know just how foreign Romney is to the conservative circles he now frequents, read the Atlanta Journal-Constitution's account of his fund-raiser last week during the Georgia Republican Convention:

Romney gestured to Ralph Reed and said, "Why it's good to see Gary Bauer here." Romney then caught himself. "Oh, I'm a little mixed up here," he said. But Romney still couldn't place Reed's face—and had to move on.

From one of the blogs on NRO blogrow:

In the Blogads survey, there’s support for another theory often advanced to explain the difference between the online right and left. That Republicans have kids. Here’s a breakdown of household size; over 100% indicates a greater liberal propensity in that group.

1 143.4%
2 109.5%
3 102.2%
4 82.6%
5 49.7%
6 33.1%
7 28.4%
8+ 34.6%

These are fairly staggering numbers. Liberals are fully 40% more likely to live by themselves. Conservatives are twice as likely to have 3 kids, and 3 times as likely to have 4 kids or more.

Several writers discuss the font they compose in: My Favorite Font, courtesy of Slate (one of the more nerd-conscious cultural webzines around.

1) Reason magazine has an insightful article on the paradox of Ron Paul's candidacy:

If Paul's campaign gathers no momentum, his impact on the presidential race will be minor and salutary. If Paul's campaign gathers momentum, he will be swiftly and horrifyingly destroyed by brickbats hurled from every bunker in the 2008 field. We can shorten this to one sentence: The success of Ron Paul's message is inversely proportional to the support his campaign receives.

2) Bill Maher clip: "Ron Paul is my new hero." Strange bedfellows.

Former senator Fred Thompson makes his way painstakingly toward an official candidacy. Meanwhile, at the WP the question is asked: how is Thompson any different than McCain? (Answer: he's a bass to McCain's tenor and has the Hollywood background to make a more convincing portrayal of a conservative).

...Soon after, Lew Bryson, a columnist for a beer-industry trade magazine called Cheers, lamented that beer had "lost its way." Bryson summed up beer's predicament: "Wine overcame beer's lead in the hearts and minds of American drinkers," he wrote. "Forty years ago, wine was mired in a swamp of low-margin jug sales. Drunks were called 'winos.' Now wine has cleaned itself up, with a freshly shaved face and a fashionable suit of casual clothes, and is headed uptown."

From Slate mag.

For your daily dose of pessimism: the New Yorker on the discontent among GOP faithful.

Even if events in Iraq do eventually turn in the direction that the Administration hopes, history is weighted against the Republicans. Only once since the death of Franklin Roosevelt has a party kept the Presidency for three consecutive terms—when George H. W. Bush defeated Michael Dukakis, in 1988. Bush the Elder, though, had the advantage of being Ronald Reagan’s Vice-President, and Reagan, despite being damaged by the Iran-Contra scandal, was greatly esteemed by his party. Few of the men running now for the Republican nomination are likely to embrace George W. Bush’s record. “If the Democrats can’t win the Presidency in 2008, they’ll never win the Presidency,” David Keene, the chairman of the American Conservative Union, said not long ago.