Asim has this exactly right. It is important to speak the truth and to remember.   To ignore is to consent to the erasure of the collective memory.  Truth perishes with too little care. Soon you have the media trying to present "both sides of the issue."

Ovid

Posted at December 12, 2006 4:48 PM in response to Why Does Holocaust Denial Matter?

Amen.  The defeat of the Republican Party in its current incarnation is more than a Demorcratic priority, it is a national priority.  Reaching out to enablers like Chuck Hagel or John McCain would retard progress toward Republican defeat, upon which genuine national security depends.  I disagree with most of Reed's posts, though sometimes he surprises me with a discerning one.  This was not one of them. 

Ovid

Posted at November 27, 2006 5:58 AM in response to 2008 Ticketing

George W. Bush will probably not be able to solve the national health crisis in two years . . . . But he can produce a peace agreement.  

I agree with the gist of your comments, but I don't share your optimism that anything good or worthwhile can come from this Administration.  After all, many in the President's base are waiting for the the Mideast to go up in flames as the sign that The Rapture is at hand.

Ovid

Posted at October 24, 2006 6:27 AM in response to Israel's "Best Friends" Are Its Worst Enemies

 the [conservative] movement stands, and always stood, for nothing but the greed and self-advancement of its members.

John Kenneth Galbraith made the same observation years ago, when there was still such a thing as moderate Republicanism. 

Today the smiling Reagan mask has dropped and the ugliness beneath has been fully revealed.  If people choose to go further down this path they will have no one to blame but themselves.  All the cards are now on the table.  Even the media-bamboozled can read them.  

A fine piece, Stirling.  Thank you. 

Ovid

Posted at October 21, 2006 8:09 PM in response to The Troll of a Conservative

. . . Broder has to try to fit the world into a paradigm in which each party is driven equally by extremists, in which there are responsible centrists in both parties who can lead us to hope.

This is exactly why there is an "Alice in Wonderland" feel to so much political reporting in the MSM these days.  The old paradigm of "responsible" political coverage no longer applies because it arose in a United States that had two centrist parties.  The press has no roadmap for covering a political situation where one of the major parties has gone dangerously off the rails.  The old press model of "the truth lies somewhere between the two" is appallingly inadequate in a country where the dialogue is between a timid, but recognizably mainstream political party and a party that is skirting the edges of fascism. 

Ovid

Posted at September 25, 2006 6:57 PM in response to The Pure Centrists of America Go Crazy

You expressed my feelings exactly.  I've had plenty of disagreement with Clinton's policies over the years, but there is no doubt he towers over any other political leader on the scene today.  Now let's see if the weak-kneed Dems can take at least one page -- or even a paragraph! -- out of his playbook. 

Ovid

Posted at September 25, 2006 6:02 AM in response to Clinton Saves Dems...Again. Perfect Storm Brewing.

Thanks for this moment of clarity, Todd. There is no "extreme left" that counts for anything in American politics these days. There is only a rabid extreme right that used a national emergency to aggrandize the power it won in a stolen election.

The Republican Party is no longer a normal political party.  It must be defeated utterly if it is ever to renew itself as a voice of responsible conservatism.

Ovid

Posted at August 10, 2006 7:36 PM in response to Extremists

". . . [Lamont] in fact occupies the middle-to-left position that his defeated rival claimed to represent, but had abandoned in his mistaken alliances with the current President."

This really nails it, Reed.  Opposition to Lieberman was only secondarily about the Iraq war (pace Zogby).  No other pro-war Democrat has faced a similar primary challenge.  Lieberman lost because, out of a spectacularly misguided notion of bipartisanship, he forged alliances with a radicalized and very dangerous Republican Party.

I can grant Lieberman his position on the war, even though it seems untenable to me.  I will never forget that he equivocated on Social Security while the Administration was trying to destroy it, and that he only stated his opposition to the Bush scheme once it was going down in flames.

Ovid

Posted at August 9, 2006 3:10 PM in response to The Democratic Response to the message from Conn.

Larry, I've enjoyed your trenchant criticism of Israeli policy, which manages to avoid the hysterical Israel-bashing that we've seen in some of the comments on this site.  But I have a question.

Isn't the high ratio of Arab to Israeli civilian casualties what one would expect from competently-waged asymetrical warfare?  It is a standard guerilla tactic, after all, to blend military targets into the civilian population and infrastructure.  This gives the stronger power a tough choice between hitting military targets, with accompanying civilian casualities and international condemnation, or not hitting these targets at all.

My point is that the disparities in casualties you allude to are the result of the type of warfare that is being waged, not a desire by Israel to maximize the suffering of the civilian population. 

 Ovid

Posted at July 26, 2006 6:51 AM in response to Middle East Math

Another fine post, Stirling. The media cant these days is that bipartisanship such as Lieberman's is good in and of itself. But it should be obvious that the party you're being "bi" with makes all the difference in the world.

Being bipartisan with the Republican Party of Gerald Ford, or even of Bush 41, is not the same thing as being bipartisan with the party of Bush 43, which has been captured by a lunatic fringe that is destroying the country.

Part of the eerie disconnect of reading the MSM these days is its autistic refusal to acknowledge that these are extraordinary political times.  In such times bipartisanship and compromise do not equal statesmanship, they equal moral cowardice.  They should not be a cause for self-righteousness like Lieberman's but for shame. 

Ovid

Posted at July 22, 2006 8:01 PM in response to Pro-Joe Hysteria Strikes the Financial Times