Yeah, I mean, it's not as if the person spouting this racist, divisive, explicitly-against-the-teachings-of-Christ bullshit was the number three ranking Republican in the Senate of the United States. So, no biggie. Matt's just being petty, pointing out that that the the number three ranking Republican in the Senate of the United States is an idiot.

Posted at July 21, 2006 3:27 AM in response to Innovations in Wingnuttery

This willpower is, to be sure, both immensely powerful and completely impotent. It supposedly suffices to bend the entire rest of the world to our will, but it is utterly insufficient to bring americans to pay higher taxes, drive more efficient cars, or send anyone to war who would be more comfortable doing something else and doesn't have a current military obligation.

In other words, one of the (though certainly far from the only) problems we face is that there is very little of Der Wille zur Macht present in the actual US civilian population. Very little desire to transform our economy and our lives into one that can support the kind of Total Effort that really would, to the extent that it is useful to do so, demonstrate Will.

So there's an extent to which we really are seeing that one of the things that is lacking in our war efforts of the last four years is Will. Bushites might fetishize it, but they cannot synthesize it. It's not there, they haven't make a true effort to rouse it (because they know the US public is only interested in world conquest to the extent that it doesn't make them late to dinner), and they're trying to fake it.

Now, I believe that obviously more than Will is needed to make a successful war effort, no matter if one's war-making and ends are just or unjust. Nobody, I think, will claim that Napolean or the Wehrmacht had insufficient Will. But it's a necessary precursor to a truly total war effort. Which is why the (appropriately, IMHO) Will-lacking US is making a decidedly less-than-total war effort.

Posted at July 10, 2006 12:30 PM in response to The Green Lantern Theory of Geopolitics

I think it Ezra Klein that noted the neat convience of Ponnuru's decision to regard abortion, stem cell research, and assisted suicide as the only relevant political issues to consider when thinking about The Party of Death. How different his book might have been if he'd instead settled on the death penalty, health care for the poor, and military adventurism!

What happy coincidence that Ponnuru's personal opinions as a conservative Catholic and partisan Republican are so congruent to the conclusions he reaches in The Party of Death!

But, of course (as others have also said, better than I), there was never any risk that would have fallen out any other way. For all of Ponnuru's supposed intellectual heft (we are told again and again what a fine mind he has), The Party of Death is not a book of popular philosophy, either personal or political. It is merely a polemic, a partisan cudgel with which he hopes to get in a few quick kneecappings while covered by his supposed acedemic seriousness, while we are all fooled by his disapointment with our failure to engage his ideas.

Posted at June 25, 2006 6:39 PM in response to Mmm...Facts

Oh, spare me.  V for Vendetta, as a piece of comic book writing and art, holds up extremely well (IMHO, better than Watchmen has).  To the extent that the people assciated with creating it may have been guilty of some hyperbole with respect to their current politlcal situation, since when did we start holding that against artistic temperments?

I only dignify your assertions of Thatcherite responsibility for any 'reversal of decline' in Great Britian with a responce as far as is necessary to fail to dignify them with any more of a responce.  'a really hot art and restaurant scene, created in part by the entrepreneurial energies which she had unleashed'?  Entrepreneurs are responsible for art and good food?  Uh, right.  Everybody knows that artists save all thier best efforts for when there are tax credits available to take advantage of.

Posted at April 2, 2006 4:27 PM in response to Defining Terrorism Down