Obama '08?

Cycloptichorn wrote:

VDH should concentrate more on drinking Gin and less on writing. He's better at the former, by a lot.

Cycloptichorn

A typical answer when one has no good argument to counter one's opponents.

Cycloptichorn wrote:

VDH should concentrate more on drinking Gin and less on writing. He's better at the former, by a lot.

Cycloptichorn

A typical answer when one has no good argument to counter one's opponents.

Time to make more popcorn. This show is far from over.

In order to equate Hagee and Falwell with Jeremiah Wright, you have to put McCain into Hagee and Falwell's churches, you have to show that he contributed heavily to those churches, that he considers Hagee and Falwell to be his spiritual advisors and mentors over decades, and he would have to put Hagee and Falwell on his campaign. Fairness requires acknowledgement that we are comparing apples to oranges trying to equate Hagee and Falwell with Jeremiah Wright.

says one of the biggest trolls in the history of A2K...

When Hanson gets on this theme, his voice rises slightly. One senses he has not entirely forgiven the sneering welcome he received at Fresno State a quarter century ago. Railing against America's intellectual establishment, he hits his target from both sides--as both a rural farmer who feels urban America's patronizing sting and as a scholar who can easily unmask the elites' intellectual pretensions.

"Go out and quiz a history post-grad," he says. "What were the tactics employed at Gettysburg? Who was General Thomas? What was the Anaconda plan? They won't know. Look instead at the titles of their dissertations: The Cuban medical system, the history of footwear, gender in the revolutionary war."

"Do you know why Michael Moore doesn't like people filming him when he speaks?" he asks, summoning a name that appears often in his writing. "It's because he can't finish a sentence. Because he's uneducated, and that's exactly how he sounds. I saw him speak on C-SPAN once and it went mostly like this: 'You know, like, they're coming to get--you know--like you and you. For the army. And it's for oil, man. You know. Bush and Cheney.' And that was the range of his delivery. We apparently no longer apply any litmus tests to public figures who assume positions of wisdom. We no longer ask, 'Is the man educated? Does he speak well? Is he a man of honor who speaks the truth?'... There is only one way to be educated. Read narrative history, read the great novels, read philosophy, learn foreign languages. But we've forgotten all that in our therapeutic culture."

By 21st-century political typology, Hanson's love of the pastoral life, distrust of large corporations, and embrace of old-fashioned values might put him in the paleoconservative camp. And indeed, he was once horrified by the "neocon" projects he now defends. "I remember it was 1998 and I was in the library reading a magazine article about the [Project for the New American Century's] letter to Bill Clinton asking for regime change in Iraq," he tells me. "And I thought, 'That's crazy!' The whole idea of preemption in Iraq made no sense to me."

Those still capable of looking at it objectively are willing to look at all of it.

Victor Davis Hanson wrote:

He's most definitely wrong about this. Does anybody honestly think that wrapping himself in the American flag is going to convince the Hannity's of the world? The people who think this is a big deal and who seriously entertain the thought that Obama is some Black Panther in Senator's clothing will never, ever vote for Obama or any other Democrat. Patriotism has to do with loving one's country and wanting and working for the best for it. Obama has this. The people who have come very close to destroying this country over the last 8 years wore lots of lapel pins and certainly do not love this country or its Constitution as evidenced by their actions.

Foxfyre wrote:

Those still capable of looking at it objectively are willing to look at all of it.

Good. So assuming that you're including yourself amongst "those still capable of looking at it objectively", why then did you write that Obama was "claiming he didn't know anything" about it?

If you are really willing to look objectively at all of it, you'd know that this was not true.

Then again, you might be trying to tell us that it's impossible for you to look at things objectively...

old europe wrote:

Foxfyre wrote:

Those still capable of looking at it objectively are willing to look at all of it.

Good. So assuming that you're including yourself amongst "those still capable of looking at it objectively", why then did you write that Obama was "claiming he didn't know anything" about it?

If you are really willing to look objectively at all of it, you'd know that this was not true.

Then again, you might be trying to tell us that it's impossible for you to look at things objectively...

Did you read the piece I posted? Did you look at the video clip I linked? Obama initially claimed he knew nothing of Jeremiah Wright's more radical views. He thought his church wasn't particularly controversial. If he had heard that stuff repeated, he would have quit.

Saying later in the now famous speech that of course he heard things in church that were controversial and of course he disagreed with some of Jeremiah Wright's political views simply did not erase those earlier statements. And it is THAT which makes Obama not credible to many of us.

On a microcosmic level, Obama's handling of the Wright imbroglio will give rise to accusations of dissembling. The Friday before the speech, Obama told the Chicago Sun-Times, "I'll be honest with you. I wasn't in church when any of those sermons were issued … I had not heard him make such, what I consider to be objectionable, remarks from the pulpit." But in the speech itself, Obama declared, "Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes."

Now, it's true that you can parse these statements so that they are not strictly in conflict. Yet the fact that Obama and his campaign have thus far refused to specify what inflammatory sermons he did witness raises a red flag. And to Republican ears, the apparent inconsistencies and revisions ring familiar bells. As Pete Wehner, who ran the Office of Strategic Initiatives in George W. Bush's White House, observed last week, "This story, which seemingly changes in every retelling, is beginning to resemble nothing so much as Bill Clinton's evolving explanation about his draft notice."