This just in! According to reliable sources, at approximately 1:37 PM EST on Tuesday, an unidentified woman known only as "Jessica Valenti" of Feministing was able to sneak a pair of breasts into close proximity to former President Bill Clinton undetected. Concealed under only a shirt and (possibly) brassiere, the offending breasts were only discovered thanks to the perspicacity of keen-eyed observer Ann Althouse, followed up by Dr. Helen Smith and her husband, Glenn Reynolds. When last seen, the trio were attempting to locate Jessica for an intervention using a burqah and a chastity belt, in accordance with their One and True Feminism.
Obviously, this is just the break President Bush and his followers have been looking for in the Global War Struggle Against War on Terror Terrorism Islamic extremism brown people Islamonazism Islamofascism Islamofeminazism Breasts. Nothing could be more important in stopping the Brown Menace. We'll keep you abreast of developments as they come in.
Followups:
Iraqi security forces will dig trenches around Baghdad and set up checkpoints along all roads leading into the city to try to reduce some of the violence plaguing the capital, the Interior Ministry said Friday....
The plan to dig trenches around Baghdad will be implemented in coming weeks, Interior Ministry spokesman Brig. Abdul-Kareem Khalaf told The Associated Press.
It comes as more than 130 people were slain in two days — either killed in attacks or tortured and dumped in rivers or on the city's streets.
"Trenches will be dug around Baghdad in the coming weeks when the third part of the Baghdad security plan is implemented," Khalaf said.
One question that often comes up when such fortifications (or moat, as John likes to call it) are conceived and built: Is it intended to keep people out, or keep people in? Especially if they might be expecting more and more Iraqis to suddenly want to get the heck out of the country.
The U.S. military confirmed Iraqi plans, announced earlier this week, to restrict access to Baghdad by forcing cars through 28 checkpoints, but denied some Western media reports that the plan involves digging a giant 60 mile trench around the city.
Short version torture definition: If you're trying to get as close as possible to what you'd consider actual "torture", without it actually being what you would call "torture", then it's torture.
Update: More on that.
And still more.
Oh, no, of course not, what would ever lead one to think that? And why would the aide even bring it up, since it's so unimaginable?President Bush said yesterday that he senses a "Third Awakening" of religious devotion in the United States that has coincided with the nation's struggle with international terrorists, a war that he depicted as "a confrontation between good and evil."
Bush told a group of conservative journalists that he notices more open expressions of faith among people he meets during his travels, and he suggested that might signal a broader revival similar to other religious movements in history. Bush noted that some of Abraham Lincoln's strongest supporters were religious people "who saw life in terms of good and evil" and who believed that slavery was evil. Many of his own supporters, he said, see the current conflict in similar terms.
"A lot of people in America see this as a confrontation between good and evil, including me," Bush said during a 1 1/2 -hour Oval Office conversation on cultural changes and a battle with terrorists that he sees lasting decades. "There was a stark change between the culture of the '50s and the '60s -- boom -- and I think there's change happening here," he added. "It seems to me that there's a Third Awakening."...
"He's drawing a parallel in terms of a resurgence, in dangerous times, of people going back to their religion," said one aide, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the session was not open to other journalists. "This is not 'God is on our side' or anything like that."
At the end of the evening, when I go into the kitchen to help Sarah with the dishes, she confesses that she’d love to go back to school for her master’s degree, but she just can’t see finding the time. “I guess it’s just not part of the plan,” she says in a soft, distracted voice....
Abolafya no longer reads secular books or speaks to her old friends.... Between her marriage ministry, the women’s Bible study she runs, her two small children, and taking care of her husband and her home, Abolafya says she doesn’t have time for many relationships anyway, and when she starts to home-school her kids soon, her time will be even tighter. “It’s not what I ever imagined,” she tells me, “or even what I ever wanted, but it’s my duty now, and I have to learn to live with that.”
"Don't let Osama Bin Laden tell you how to vote."
I don't have the exact quote yet, but here's the bit from Bush's 9/11 anniversary speech that jumped out at me: One of the defining problems with Islamic extremists is that they despise dissent.
Pot, kettle. Kettle, pot.
Update: Full quote:
Since the horror of 9/11, we've learned a great deal about the enemy. We have learned that they are evil and kill without mercy -- but not without purpose. We have learned that they form a global network of extremists who are driven by a perverted vision of Islam -- a totalitarian ideology that hates freedom, rejects tolerance, and despises all dissent.
You may have heard that tired old saw about "the ends not justifying the means." It's bunk. Sure, not all good ends can justify all bad means. But certainly some good ends justify some bad means. However, it seems to me that, in many areas of discussion and debate currently, especially in politics, there is a confusion and conflation of means and ends.
The egregious example that brought this to mind recently concerns the idea of Adam Smith's "free market". As Brad DeLong put it:
...arguing with center-right reality-based technocrats about whether it is center-left or center-right policies that have the best odds of moving us toward goals that we all share--world peace, world prosperity, equality of opportunity, safety nets, long and happy lifespans, rapid scientific and technological progress, and personal safety.
One would like to think that something like this was an agreed set of goals, and certain policies were means to achieve them, possibly one among many, possibly the optimal of all possibilities. However, it seems that many in our discourse have come to believe that various ideologies which were originally espoused in pursuit of these ends, are themselves goals, to be pursued even at the cost of other, more ultimate goals, such as those listed above. They'd sacrifice the equality, the safety nets, the progress, the fairness, if they conflict with the "goal" of, for example, having free markets.
One of the motivations for the development of free markets during the 19th century was that it was believed that they would promote peace, since free trade amongst the states implied that if you attacked your trading partners, you damaged your own economy. They were also intended to make societies richer as a whole. But, as judges have recently said (much less deservedly) about our Constitution, they aren't a suicide pact. When market failures destroy access to entire segments of our economy, e.g. the current health care crisis, there are still those who insist that the Invisible Hand of the Free Market will cure all, if given the chance. They've forgotten the reasons why free markets were proposed in the first place, and taken them up as a standard to be supported for its own sake, like those who would defend the flag by forbidding burning it, tarnishing that which it stands for.
Perhaps even more pervasive is the equation of democracy with freedom & liberty. (For an interesting study on the comparative origins of the terms "freedom" & "liberty" themselves, read poputonian here and here at Hullabaloo.) Despite the phrase "the tyranny of the majority" having been in use for over a century and a half now, many people assume that democracy automatically conveys freedom along with it. But this certainly isn't so. Witness the wishes of at least a plurality of those in Iraq, planning to impose their own version of a theocracy on the state (one could hardly call it a nation, really) through democracy. Or the current leadership of Iran, elected to bring them back to a more conservative Islamic democracy by cracking down on excesses of freedom. On the other hand, although I don't know if there are any concrete historical examples, one could hypothetically have a monarchy or some such in which the ruler granted near–perfect freedom to his or her subjects. Essentially, the principles of democracy and liberty may not be completely orthogonal to each other, but they certainly aren't perfectly parallel, either. Yet our current President constantly conflates the two concepts in speeches and strategies, and no one calls him on it.
In his Gettysburg Address, President Lincoln promised "that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth." Breaking that down, the first part might lead to some semantic confusion: Does "gevernment of the people" mean the government belongs to the people, or that the people are being governed? Regardless, the latter two are clear enough to make my point. Democracy is pretty literally "government by the people." But this does not guarantee "government for the people," by any interpretation. Even if you define "the people" to mean the majority, they can still be convinced to vote (or otherwise participate in government) in ways that are not in their own best interests. And when it comes to people who aren't in the majority, all bets are off.
Democracy does not even guarantee liberty or freedom for the majority, let alone minorities. And liberty and freedom could, hypothetically, be had without democracy. In my view, democracy is "merely" a means to achieving a government that governs in the people's best interests, including their freedom. But some seem to view democracy as a goal to aim for in and of itself, regardless of the oppression, inefficency, or other malfeasance that may follow from it if the people choose poorly, or are misled. Certainly it is a worthy object to pursue, but it is not the ultimate goal.
A more simple and concrete, if more trivial, example might be the automobile and, to a lesser degree, related internal combustion vehicles (e.g., trucks, trailers, busses, etc.). Essentially, it is a means of transportation, of getting oneself, possibly some passengers, possibly some cargo, from point A to point B. Yet, especially here in the United States, we've grown a culture that venerates the automobile as though it were an end itself. This manifests itself in a general reluctance to use mass transit, and looking down our noses at those who do. There are also movies that "worship" the car to some degree, such as The Fast and the Furious and Days of Thunder and so forth. These, along with other examples, contribute to the overall impression that American society views the automobile as an end itself, rather than a means to achieve a necessary end. Thus, people are reluctant to consider transportation options that don't involve the automobile.
Now of course, I'm somewhat more concerned at present about the first two examples than that last one. These confusions lead to a fundamental failure of common sense, morality, and logic when people come to assume that what was originally a means to achieve a certain end is now a goal worthy of pursuit for its own sake. It becomes unthinkable to question its rightness, because while the means of achieving a goal might be debated, and alternatives considered, when one comes to think of it as an end, then any doubt cast upon its rightness calls large portions of one's belief structure into question, something with which most people are rather uncomfortable.
The next question would be, how can we make this clear to people, that what they've been considering to be goals, aren't actually? And how to prevent concepts that are currently considered means from being confusedly thought to be ends? At that point, my thinking on the matter is rather lacking so far. I'm open to suggestions and discussion, either here or on other blogs (with more traffic than this one!). Let's just try to remember whether this reminder of where things actually stand is, itself, a means or an end.
I'll post more on this as I find more examples and evidence for the examples, especially as I try to track down just how means are transformed into apparent ends. I'll add links to new posts here, so we can find them all together.
A chain of related posts, interspersed with a comment from me:
Elsewhere
President Bush the other day:
Americans believe that every person of every religion on every continent has the right to determine his or her own destiny. We believe that freedom is a gift from an almighty God beyond any power on Earth to take away. (Cheers, applause.)
Do we, now? Each and every one of us? Are you sure about that?
In light of the recent revelations that Richard Armitage may have been the one who revealed Valerie Plame's CIA activities, probably without realizing it was classified, I'd like to revisit a question I asked here last October:
Something I've been pondering over the past week or so, as we were getting a somewhat clearer picture of what went on around the Plame/Wilson leak: of course, it's verboten to reveal classified information that you know to be classified to someone not cleared for it. But is there a law that would cover the specific situation of someone who shares classified information with someone who is cleared for it, but doesn't tell them that it's classified, or at what level it's classified?
I'd think that may possibly be a very relevant matter in the (still!-)current investigation.
Seems all the more relevant now, doesn't it?
Rapist, the evildoer? Where do they get these crazy ideas? Don't they read their Bible?A Vatican official has said the Catholic church will excommunicate a medical team who performed Colombia's first legal abortion on an 11-year-old girl, who was eight weeks pregnant after being raped by her stepfather.
Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo, the president of the Vatican's Pontifical Council for the Family, said in addition to the doctors and nurses, the measure could apply to "relatives, politicians and lawmakers" whom he called "protagonists in this abominable crime".
"We acted within the constitutional framework," Dr Lemus said. "We were faced with the petition of a girl who wanted to go back to playing with her toys."
He said Cardinal Trujillo "calls the doctors and nurses 'evildoers'. I think the person who raped her is the evildoer".
And again, I think it goes to the point of that their first response is, you know, come up with a catchy slogan, and then they forget to do the hard work of digging into the facts and coming up with a strategy and resources that will counter the actual threats we face.
As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Neville Chamberlain approaches one. Once such a comparison is made, the thread is finished and whoever mentioned Chamberlain has automatically "lost" whatever debate was in progress.
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