Copyright 2005 - Steal what you wantMon, 21 Apr 2008 10:04:16 GMTMon, 21 Apr 2008 10:04:16 GMTDaily Kos Daily Kos This is an XML content feed. It is intended to be viewed in a newsreader or syndicated to another site, subject to copyright and fair use.
As dumbness has been defined downward in American public life during the last two decades, one of the most important and frequently overlooked culprits is the public's increasing reluctance to give a fair hearing -- or any hearing at all -- to opposing points of view.
A few years ago, I delivered a lecture at Eastern Kentucky University on the history of American secularism, and was pleased, in the heart of the Bible Belt, to have attracted an audience of about 150. The response inside the hall was enthusiastic because everyone there, with the exception of a few bored students whose professors had made attendance a requirement, agreed with me before I opened my mouth.
Around the corner, hundreds more students were packing an auditorium to hear a speaker sponsored by the Campus Crusade for Christ, a conservative organization that "counter-programs" secular lectures at many colleges. The star of the evening was a self-described recovering pedophile who claimed to have overcome his proclivities by being "born again." (And yes, it is a blow to the ego to find oneself less of a draw than a penitent pedophile.)
It is safe to say that almost no one who attended either lecture on the Kentucky campus that night was exposed to a new or disturbing idea. Indeed, virtually everywhere I speak, 95% of the audience shares my political and cultural views -- and serious conservatives report exactly the same experience on the lecture circuit.
Whether watching television news, consulting political blogs or (more rarely) reading books, Americans today have become a people in search of validation for opinions that they already hold. This absence of curiosity about other points of view is the essence of anti-intellectualism and represents a major departure from the nation's best cultural traditions.
American military fatalities in Iraq since the invasion and occupation began 61 months ago: 4039
Coalition military fatalities in Iraq: 4348
Iraqi military and civilian fatalities in Iraq: 200,000 to 1.4 million.
This evening's Rescue Rangers are Yashua, YatPundit, ezdidit, Patriot Daily, TruthOfAngels and srkp23, with watercarrier4diogenes at the wheel of the Editmobile
Tonight's diaries cover a variety of interesting issues not covered by the 'traditional media' (tm Kos) with the kind of research, perspective and analysis we see here every day.
ommzms brings us a truly profound mix of analysis, philosophy and musings in April is the Cruelest Month. (Yashua)
JeremiahTheMessiah authors a very detailed and well researched piece about upcoming senate races and their finances in JTM's Senate Rankings. (Yashua)
dansk47 brings us a very personal tribute to a friend in Appreciate this day. (YatPundit)
Tonight, as with a lot of Sundays, we have a somewhat short, but still high-quality, list of diaries for you. So ezdidit has a great tip on how you can extract even more enjoyment out of DailyKos, regardless of the current ebb or flow of candidate diaries:
jotter holds the key to a fast look at yesterday's High Impact Diaries - April 19, 2008. But if you want to find the highest-rated diaries at any time, enter sid="2008" (with the quotation marks) in the search bar, opt for the last 12 hours of diaries, sort by impact, and click! Presto! Thanks, jotter! (ezdidit)
Enjoy and please promote your own favorite diaries in this open thread (even if you're the author! Here's where that's actually appreciated). And, of course, since it's an open thread, PLAY NICE, OK? 8^)
Diary Rescue open threaddiary rescueMon, 21 Apr 2008 04:11:22 GMT
Book Review: Matt Welch's "McCain: The Myth of a Maverick"
This book examines the under-examined philosophy and track record of presidential candidate John McCain, teasing out his views on the proper role of government. It’s not a biography or a campaign memoir so much as it is a user’s guide or decoder ring for deciphering a supposedly inscrutable candidate. ... As a former soldier, an independent by temperament and a man who places high value on forming partnerships with his ideological foes, McCain was a natural at couching all of his initiatives in the high rhetoric of above-it-all patriotism. Because journalists are so accustomed to plotting politicians along a single axis from left to right, McCain’s record looked like a mess of zigzagging contradictions, desperate for coherence and interpretation. Searching for "the real McCain" became a favored pastime of wish-casting reporters and analysts from coast to coast.
There's no better book out right now on John McCain than Matt Welch's tour de force that suffered the unfortunate fate of being released this past October when the candidate's likelihood of securing the Republican nomination seemed nil. As a character sketch and rumination on this particular "maverick''s" place in the political imagination, Welch's work is unparalleled. And for those who are unfamiliar with the author's writing--he's a former assistant editor of the Los Angeles Times editorial page and a current editor at Reason--The Myth of a Maverick should serve as a perfect introduction to a must-read writer.
Like Free Ride: John McCain and the Media (reviewed here), Welch looks deeply at the cozy relationship McCain has built up over the years with the reporters who cover him; he goes beyond the documentation--in which Brock and Waldman excel in Free Ride--and tries to tease out the personality and belief system of McCain in order to explain the foundation of the media love affair. The result is an extremely satisfying and thought-provoking read, full of Welch's wry humor and basic political smarts.
Two major propositions emerge from Welch's work. The first irevolves around how the Arizona senator has managed to use the device of the preemptive confession to disarm his would-be interlocutors--the press--and turn them into his infamous "base." The author pores over McCain's interviews and, most importantly, his voluminous autobiographies and tracts co-authored with long-time aide Mark Salter, and finds a pattern very similar to the 12-step program used in Alcoholics Anonymous and its spin-off groups. And this willingness, even eagerness, to openly admit and condemn himself about his flaws--his temper, his impetuousness, even his own personal ambition--is part of the strange dynamic that makes reporters feel so protective of his reputation when they're on that Straight Talk Express. Welch quotes more than one journalist who not only did not report on some of McCain's "confessions," but felt the urge to tell their subject to clam up.
Whether McCain's self-incriminations are conscious manipulations or not (after reading Welch, it's tempting to say sometimes yes, sometimes no), there's no arguing with the result: a press that sees him as interesting, unique and--for what it's worth--"human" and therefore likable. This underlying sympathy and admiration comes across in a majority of reporting on the candidate, and it's helped propel his career to heights that are not easy to predict based on his fairly meager record on the issues for which he's gained fame--bucking the status quo, clean politics and bipartisanship.
More important than McCain's style in his advancement though, is the heart of what he's promulgating, at least to Welch. Unlike the authors of Free Ride, who argued that McCain is a true old-fashioned, dyed-in-the-wool conservative hiding in moderate clothing, Welch (who leans libertarian), sees very little conservatism in McCain at all. What he sees is neither conservative nor necessarily liberal, and is far more alarming than anything that can be measured on the traditional left-right political axis:
But the answer to his ideology was hiding in plain sight: The proper role of the federal government is to act as a beacon of faith for Americans and the world. Therefore, the state must be cleansed, then used as a tool to fix cynicism-breeding societal flaws, after which citizens will be inspired to serve, and the U.S. can go on robustly leading the world. "National greatness," he wrote in Worth the Fighting For, is "the proper object of every American’s citizenship."
The national greatness devotion, and McCain's certainty about the heroic cause of spreading America's ideals everywhere and anywhere all at once--nearly always with the help of a super-military on steroids--is certainly alarming. But to Welch, who has closely read McCain's works, of far more concern is the senator's periodic exhortations to America's citizens (often disturbingly broadcast in college commencement speeches) to subsume themselves in their country. There is a common thread running underneath much of what McCain supports that is often mistaken as "liberal," particularly by conservatives, but which is not. It is a distant cousin of proverbial nanny statism, but is far more dangerous because it postulates that the government knows best, always, and that the individual citizen's duty is to put country first, working toward a "common destiny." At one point, Welch notes McCain's approving citation of Theodore Roosevelt's admonition, "Our freedom and our industry must aspire to more than acquisition and luxury," and observes:
Not to put too fine a point on it, but this is the definition of authoritarianism. National politicians (let alone presidents) deciding whether private transactions are sufficiently oriented toward a "common destiny" is the kind of thing found in collectivist or totalitarian countries, not the nation that made "the pursuit of happiness" a foundational aspiration. To throw around a word like "must" after "our freedom" is to claim a unique authority, backed by the power of the federal government, to judge how best a private individual can conduct his or her own legal affairs.
Far more problematic than his age or his flip-flops or his pandering is this streak of advocating unquestioned allegiance to the state, a fetishization of patriotism, above all else. Welch's examination of this phenomenon in McCain's ideology is important and thought-provoking, and should be considered deeply by voters as we move closer to the November election.
SusanG book reviewMatt WelchMcCain: The Myth of a Maverick2008presidentJohn McCainMon, 21 Apr 2008 02:34:18 GMT
First DNC Ad Demonstrates McCain Clueless About the Economy
People losing jobs, people getting shafted on the job, jobs paying less, home values falling, interest rates rising, investment banks collapsing, food prices going through the roof, gas at $4.00 a gallon, people losing their homes through foreclosures, neighbors of people whose homes are foreclosed watching their property values plummet, inflation shooting up, unemployment up, wages down, the super-rich getting richer, and for the first time since the before the Great Depression, during the most recent economic expansion (2002-2007), the average family income in America went down.
What's John McCain think about the awful economy? Hell, he's so out of touch he doesn't even know things are bad:
(reviewed 
