"As he wrote a couple of weeks ago"

The most predominant mentality in right-wing discourse finds expression in this form: "I am part of/was born into Group X, and Group X -- my group -- is better than all others yet treated so very unfairly" . . . . Here again we find the same adolescent self-absorption: the group into which I was born and was instructed from childhood to believe is the best [] is, objectively, superior. It is so much better than everyone and everything else that even to suggest that we have flaws comparable to others is to engage in "false moral equivalencies." To do anything other than emphatically proclaim my group's objective superiority is to treat my group unfairly.

And perhaps we ought to have a little of what he wrote only the day before yesterday, Friday 27 June 2009, as well:

UPDATE III: Goldfarb replies ... with the full array of textbook neoconservative platitudes. The only point worth noting is that he agrees with the observation I expressed last night that Goldfarb's views (like those of most neoconservatives) "ultimately come down to nothing more complicated than: what we do is Good and Right because we are superior and because they are inferior." Goldfarb admits he thinks torture is tolerable when we do it to Them but not when They do it to us because -- as he puts it -- "Of Course We Are Superior and They Are Inferior" (that, of course, is the very definition of "moral relativism," which Goldfarb and his allies like to pretend they oppose even as they exemplify its core premise). And -- other than a view that Muslims generally are inferior -- what possible ground is there for claiming moral superiority over the numerous detainees at Guantánamo and elsewhere who, even by the Bush administration's reasoning, were guilty of nothing? (...) Goldfarb's reply is a pure expression of that warped and self-glorifying mentality.

And then there was Señorito Miguelico de Goldfarb

itself. Apart from what Mr. Prosecutor has already been quoted as quoting, there is a little bit of miscellaneous self-wunnerfulness worthy of notice:

... Greenwald thinks I'm guilty of applying a double standard -- concern for the treatment of uniformed hostages and ambivalence toward the treatment of terrorist detainees. Well, guilty as charged. I really don't care about the rough treatment to which men like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed were subjected even for the chance of gleaning valuable information. Gilad Shalit, on the other hand, is a uniformed combatant entitled to all the rights and protections afforded by the Geneva Conventions.

Obviously Mr. Greenwald thought and said nothing of the sort. After that ringin’ declaration of self-superiority in its headline, the neocoward chickens out rather remarkably by pretendin’ that the WUNNERFUL US on behalf of whom it self-superioritises is really nothin’ more excitin’ or controversial than WAUC, the World Association of Uniformed Combatants. Sure. Of course. Right!

The señorito elaborates its irrelevant alibi at considerable length:

The United States, Israel, and the rest of the civilized world do not target civilians, do not hide weapons in mosques, do not use our own children as human shields, do not send our own children to their deaths as suicide bombers, do not seek the extermination of an entire race of people. Terrorist groups like Hamas and Hezbollah, and the regimes that sponsor them, do. That is why we are morally superior to them, and they are morally inferior to us. And that is also why I'm confident that Gilad Shalit would give anything to have spent the last three years at Gitmo -- playing soccer, watching TV, getting three squares a day -- instead of being a prisoner of Hamas. Because even though they don't deserve it, we still treat our detainees better than terrorists treat theirs.

Everybody must decide for himself, Dr. Bones, but personally I do not feel my pulse rate much stirred by honoris causâ promotion to membership in what a Neocomrade M. Goldfarb is pleased to define as the civilised world. ’Tis a pity, though, that the irrelevant WE into which customers of The Weekly Standard get dragooned on this occasion should be called "the civilised world" and not rather "Western Civilisation." If China and Peru cannot be reliably counted on to care far less for human life than WE do, well, times have certainly changed at Wingnut City! Probably it was just an accident, though: the señorito was, after all, hastily changin’ its standard from a uniformed combatant Wunnerful Us to a civilisation-based Wunnerful US. If suitably cross-questioned, I daresay it would be willin’ enough to include a few Huntin’tonian Clashist™ refinements omitted in the scramble.

’Twas probably a technical misjudgment to stick in "do not target civilians": the Tel Avîv government’s political assassinations are no secret. If this señorito were in a different mood, or in a different polemical pass, very likely it would positively boast thereof. ’That nifty plan is ever so much more cost-effective than bumpin’ off a whole lot of lovely native ladies and cute local kiddies under the rubric of "Damage, Collateral", don’t you know? Anyway, that’s the theory of it at Tel Avîv. And Father Zeus knows best how it works out in practice....

Omitting what the novoseñorito has to say against Jimmy Crater, I arrive at its bottom line:

I wrote that Israeli public opinion was Obama's "best leverage" over Netanyahu. Greenwald may not support Israel, but most Americans still do, which means that withholding or threatening to withhold aid, weapons, or diplomatic support from Israel is lousy politics for an American president, even if it would be a dream come true for Greenwald.

Though it is scarcely a secret that weekly standardisers and commonterrorisers think such threats in private, they do not often actually emit them. Miguelico really ought to have looked at a mirror to make sure it was properly attired to address the Naked Public Square™!

What the specimen actually does in that sentence is rather hard on public opinion in the Tel Avîv statelet, nicht wahr? In what I skipped, it spoke of JC as a ‘dupe’ and "an annoyance to presidents of both parties for decades." A large number of run-of-the-mill Jewish Statists are evidently a Carter-like annoyance to the weekly standardisers: Barák Husáyn Obáma is only too likely to trick them into attitudes and behaviours that must prove counterproductive from the alone true jewishstatist perspective.as promulgated de haut en bas from Castle Podhóretz.

Mr. Greenwald’s "Group X" analysis is admirable as far as it goes, yet when it restricts itself with "into which I was born and was instructed from childhood" it runs off the rails to some extent. Nobody was ever born a militant extremist vanguardite of the Commonterror magazine type. As to instruction, there is no need to assume that Pipes Minor and Kramer Minor and Podhóretz Minor and Kristol Minor and all the rest of the novoseñorito element were deliberately brought up to be what they are like a whole gaggle of John Stuart Mills. No real aristocracy ever worked that way; to suppose it of this sham neoteric crew is perfectly gratuitous.

Indeed, if one were to take "into which I was born and was instructed from childhood" in earnest, the entire Hate-’68 Movement would become unaccountable. The neogentry’s favourite prefix, after all, proclaims that they arrived at their present illiberal and antidemocratic faith precisely by breakin’ with all that sad palæorubbish that they were born into and instructed about. To be sure, now that Hate-’68-ism is into its second or even third degeneration, this is not literally the case with its novoseñorito element. Specimens like M. Goldfarb were presumably born into their self-wunnerful neotericity, but surely they had no need to be specially instructed in it. They will have seen how the servants and the peons defer to their Daddy and drawn the obvious conclusions quite informally and maybe even quite unconsciously, just as (say) a certain Louis de Bourbon had supposedly managed to do by the age of five in 1643. [1]

Happy days.



___
[1]

When young Louis was four, his father fell gravely ill with tuberculosis. Knowing that he was about to die, the king ordered that his eldest son be baptised (which normally would have taken place when the prince was seven). At the ceremony the boy was given the name Louis Dieudonné, or "Gift of God," because his birth had seemed so miraculous. Afterward he was brought to his father's deathbed. "What is your name?" Louis XIII asked. "Louis XIV," the little boy replied. "Not yet, not yet," said the king."

The Apotheosis of Princess Neoterica

Thus we still live in an era in which you have to have been wrong to be respectable. You’re not considered serious about national security unless you were for invading Iraq; you’re not considered a serious political analyst unless you spent the last three years of the Bush administration predicting a Republican comeback; you’re not considered a serious economic analyst unless you dismissed the idea that the Bush Boom, such as it was, rested on a housing bubble.

Thus we still live in an era in which Professor Krugman's principal column for the New York Times Company is very weak whenever it lifts its nose from Lord Mammon’ grindstone. The scribble that quotation comes from is admirable, and admirable as political analysis, but its is squirreled away in mere blogghiatura where not many Homelanders™ will see it, even amongst NYTC customers.

Notice that PK is effectively accusing his dimwit respectables of agreeing to solemnly pretend that they dwell in some holy Homeland™ of militant extremism rather than in the humdrum United States of America. His account of HOW the dimwits behave is excellent, but when it comes to WHY they behave that way, he disappoints:

[M]any people in the news media, especially at the managerial level, decided a long time ago that movement conservatism was The Future — and that the sensible thing, whether or not you yourself were a conservative, was to go with the wave. That meant treating right-wing politicians and media figures with great respect, while ridiculing the opposition as the Incredible Shrinking Democrats or the Incredibly Shrinking Democrats, or whatever. And anyone who didn’t treat the right with great respect, who didn’t get with the program, was a flake, a moonbat.

"The sensible thing [is] to go with the wave" is an impeccably polite way of describing selfish ambition and crude lust for Ehre, Macht, Reichtum, Ruhm und die Liebe der Frauen[1], but if Prof. Krugman does not intend us to make that equation that I just made, then what he did intend is hidden in obscurity. Doubtless he did not care to say very much about motivations when it comes to people he has to live with and market his scribbles to.

More worrisome for me is that one cannot make out Dr. Krugman’s estimate of his dimwits’ sincerity. Can the accused really have believed "that movement conservatism was The Future"? I am not sure what the ‘right’ answer to that question would be, whether the dimwits look dimmer as (1) incompetent, but honest, prognosticators, or as (2) shameless cynics and liars. To the extent, though, that PK has them behaving the same dimwit way even after 4 November 2008, one must suppose that notions like shamelessness and mendacity and cynicism have probably occurred to the private Paul Krugman, whether he writes such fugitive thoughts up for publication or not.


_____

[1] Perhaps it is crude of me to say ‘crude’, though, for Dr. Freud of Vienna attributed these objects of ambition to der Kunstler, not to every Tom, Dick and Harriet that comes down the pike.

The One-Fifth Column Hypothesis

Exhibit A.

Only ONE IN FIVE Israeli Jews believes a nuclear-armed Iran would try to destroy Israel and most see life continuing as normal should the Islamic Republic get the bomb, an opinion poll published on Sunday found. The survey, commissioned by a Tel Aviv University think-tank, appeared to challenge the argument of successive Israeli governments that Iran must be denied the means to make atomic weapons lest it threaten Israel's existence. Asked how a nuclear-armed Iran would affect their lives, 80 percent of respondents said they expected no change. Eleven percent said they would consider emigrating and 9 percent said they would consider relocating inside Israel.

Exhibit B.

Mir Hosain Mousavi was a plausible candidate for the reformists. They were electing people like him with 70 and 80 percent margins just a few years ago. We have not been had by the business families of north Tehran. We've much more likely been had by A HARD LINE CONSTITUENCY OF AT MOST 20% OF THE COUNTRY, who claim to be the only true heirs of the Iranian revolution, and who control which ballots see the light of day.

Exhibit C.

[C1] Barack Obama Democratic Illinois 69,456,897 52.92% John McCain Republican Arizona 59,934,814 45.66% [C2] The voter turnout for this election was broadly predicted to be very high by American standards, and a record number of votes were cast. The final tally of total votes counted was 131.2 million ... [which] ... could reflect a turnout as high as 63.0% of eligible voters, which would be the highest since 1960. This 63.0% turnout rate is based on an estimated eligible voter population of 208,323,000. Another estimate puts the eligible voter population at 212,720,027, resulting in a turnout rate of 61.7%, which would be the highest turnout rate since 1968. [C3 (Analysis)] 0.4566 * 0.617 = 0.2817

It is reasonable to assume--is it not, Dr. Bones?--that only twenty McCain voters in every twenty-eight supported the Fabulous Flyboy primarily because of his Party's militant extremism. Some of J. Sidney’s voters lived in Maine, for instance, and there are lots of other reasons to discount that 28% a little.

The alternative would be to decide that militant extremism flourishes here in the holy Homeland™ more than amongst the lesser breeds without -- a conclusion even my own cosmopolitan deracination would not be pleased to have to draw.

Anyhow, sir, there is the conjecture, all set for Popperian refutation:

Let observation with extensive view,
Survey mankind, from China to Peru:
How everywhere doth Wingnut City thrive,
Yet not beyond one faith-crazed part in five.

This Is Why One Laughs At Them

(B) On religious tolerance, [the President] gently referenced the Christians of Lebanon and Egypt, then lamented that the "divisions between Sunni and Shia have led to tragic violence" (note the use of the passive voice).

No Noah Webster is Neocomrade Ch. Krauthammer! Still, he does let me recycle today's cartoon, because

"Obama Hovers From on High" is how the Washin'ton NeoPost titled the scribble.

Small world!

Happy days.

Gleichschaltung im Morgenland

I find it impossible, Dr. Bones, to think of the Beirut statelet without recalling Patwell's First Social Law™, "The smaller the teacup, the fiercer the tempest."

That is a teacup insider viewpoint, naturally. Miss Alice and the dormouse and the mad hatter and everybody else at the spread are more like to yawn than to rave when some reveler mentions Lebanon: de minimis non curat grex, don’t you know? [1]

Teacup outsiders are far from models of good judgment, however. The infinitely remote superterrestrials at Planet Justworld have recommended the election analysis by M. Qifâ de Nabkí, which we will get to in a moment. Meanwhile, the superaliens and the local boy who went to H*rv*rd, between them, mention various noteworthy dottinesses from further-outsiders, like (1) Obama made them do it; (2) Joe Biden ("who?") made them do it; (3) "Christian animosity towards Hizbullah [&] Saudi money [&] the Maronite patriarch" made them do it; (4) The God Party not really wanting to win accounts for it . . . . And so on.

You can roll your own, Mr. Bones! Something about sunspots might do? Or how about Cedar Flu?

For its own part, Infinite Remoteness LLC appears to have been sadly disappointed in M. le général de ‘Ayoun:

Hizbullah's allies in the Free Patriotic Movement (FPM) apparently lost in a major way to supporters of March 14 who are also members of extremely well-entrenched political "families" and ardent supporters of the present system of Christian political privilege.

Come to think of it, though, that is scarcely an explanation. Did the free patriots lose because of insufficient ardour, or merely because of insufficient entrenchment and not enough relatives and clients and retainers? Out at St. Helena galaxy in the immense inane, bias is freely admitted:

The FPM and its leader, General Michel Aoun, had offered a clear alternative to that system, as well as a strong political platform for this election. For those reasons, despite some other other misgivings I have about Aoun (and about Hizbullah), I wanted their alliance to win. Hizbullah, by the way, also supports a "de-confessionalized", one-person-one-vote system in Lebanon.

But thee know how those superterrestrial folks are, Dr. Bones: the Justworldings doubtless suppose that the only ‘bias’ they suffer from is disinterested zeal for good government, for un état libanais laïque [2] that the Vermont League of Women Voters would be proud to have caused.

Before we call on M. Q. de N., we might try an equal-but-opposite dottiness approach: how if the locals and natives took exactly the VLWV and Planet Justworld view of what was at state, but then arose in horror and protest, resolved as 54% of one man person that the very last thing in all the world that they want is "a 'de-confessionalized', one-person-one-vote system"?

Thee heard it here first, sir!

Was it worthy hearing? Probably not, if thee take it for Pol. Sci. and Comp. Gov., but taken as mere humble political criticism and philosophy, I think there is a little bit to it. The superterrestrials are, in a perhaps subliminal and slightly backhanded way, taking The Master's

side here: far out in the St. Helena Galaxy Cluster they pretend, conciously or unconsciously, to care about the Form of neo-Levantine politics. They accuse their opponents, implicitly, of not givin’ a hoot about forms, but of wallowin’ in mere matters.[3]

In the "One man? It depends which man!" mire do the forces of M-14 wallow like swine! And all because the existin’ LB racket gives them more votes per capita than it gives the God Party and their fellow-travelers! [4] Easy to see how that show might look displeasing at a distance of thirteen godzillion kilometers!

The "back-handed" part that I alluded to is this: infinitely remote supraterrestrials have a tendency to believe that their own pet natives and locals object to such disproportionalities entirely because they constitute injustice in the abstract, quite without reference to the fact that it just happens to be themselves who are getting shafted. A little of that brand of backhandedness goes a long way with the Muses and thee and me, Dr. Bones. After all, what could be in more flagrant violation of

travaillons donc à bien penser? But bear in mind, sir, that although this badly thought attitude makes the native plaintiffs and their alien patrons insufferable, it does not make them wrong about either facts or law. It does not oblige us to decide the case in somebody else's favor.






___
[1] I only say "more likely." The next statelet south along the coast is not much bigger or much less peculiar, yet down there nobody's Social Rules apply, nobody from Emily Post to Mr. Huntin’ton of H*rv*rd legislates socially for that mob!


[2] Ars longa, vita brevis: Who can spare the time to work out the French for ‘deconfessionalised’? (And then only to talk about LB after one finds it!)


[3] Though I should not care to insist on the point, it occurs to me that precisely because the Beirut statelet is such a tiny and contemptible teacup, considered materially, it may be a very suitable jumping-off point for those who aspire to lift their minds to questions of Form. BGKB.


[4] It cannot be that St. Helena, patron saint of the extraterrestrial justworldly, does not admire her own high-mindedness, but I doubt that she conceives of it as an Aristotelian high-mindedness. The Master smacks too much of lowly Terra for that palate, I fear. Yet pretty clearly she wants to be praised for the tenderness of her sentiments rather than for the solidity of her arguments, which means that the Plato and Parmenides crowd cannot wish to be affiliated with her much more than we do.

Nevertheless suum cuique tribuere, Dr. Bones! Give credit where credit is deserved, even when the credit cannot be comprehended, much less reciprocated.

The Only Real Question (!?)

Q. [R. Fisk] The only real question, perhaps, is whether Obama has asked himself the most important question: does the "Muslim world" actually exist? A. Easy to see what answer this guy wants! And of course he has to be given it: "NO, there is no publicly known reason to suppose that BHO disbelieves in "the Muslim world."

One must gloss and distinguish a little, though: at the moment, Barák Husáyn XLIV Obáma, Chief Executive Officer of Heimatland Gottes GMBH, mistakenly believes in "the Muslim world." But maybe he will learn the sad Fiskean wisdom of disbelief? Maybe he will even learn it reasonably quickly? After all, the Cook County pol may actually be, say, one-tenth as clever as his campaign contributors and his journalists and his publicists and all the miscellaneous groupies and bottlewashers and hangers-on and hopeful parasites make him out, so it would be foolish to write him off as invincibly ignorant and incorrigible.

But we must start from where we are, and that is, as I say, Cook County. A long, long way from salt water. And we must be moderate in our hopes for amelioration, because one would have to be a writer of trashy rightist thrillers to come up with a scenario in which foreign affairs of any sort (let alone affairs of the neo-Levant or the Palestine Puzzle specifically) become more important to this President than (1) domestic economics and (2) domestic race relations. Give or take (1a) domestic health care and (1b) global greenery. Even if the pupil should eventually get to where he can pass Prof. Fisk's examination with distinction, he would still not consider the nonexistence of "the Muslim world" anything like as important as Prof. Fisk considers it. That must remain at best a third-rank sort of wisdom forever. Or even fifth-rank.

Should Muslims and neo-Muslims and their fellow travelers and their area students become bitter that the nonexistence of IslamWorld never does become hot potato #1 for Barák Husáyn, well, what is a rational animal to do but sigh and remark that Cook County is not the only stronghold of provinciality and parochialism and selfocentricity still going strong? [1]

But I get ahead of myself, because there do exist factors that might prevent BHO from ever mastering the Fiskean curriculum at all. Above all, it would be awfully convenient for BHO if IslamWorld did exist, so convenient that it is not difficult to imagine him spending eight years refusing to see through a mistake that ought to be transparent to the perspicuity of a former editor of H*rv*rd Law Review once he has been compelled to attend to the old neo-Levantine mess and the newer Crusade-Against-Terror mess in detail.

I can even invent a (not very thrilling) leftist scenario about it: "After two and a half years of appealing to IslamWorld in vain, Obama spent five years blaming IslamWorld for the unsatisfactory state of his foreign policy maneuvers, when plainly he would have done far better to blame himself and certain other interested parties." Thus (as I conjecture) might a historian of 2094 scribble if she is uncommited as to the existential status of IslamWorld. [2] Mr. Fisk will be one hundred and fifty years old in 2094; I daresay arthritis and rheumatism and another eighty-five years of the same old same-old will have made him far more judgmental than my Dr. Undecided.

Anyhow, that's the scenario, and it will be no great loss to anybody if it remains only a scenario forever.

Happy days.

__
[1] ’Tis a mystery (Mr. Moralist pretended) why anybody sane would want the holy-Homelandic CEO job. Possession of Sole Remainin’ Hyperpower™ is absolutely guaranteed to bring zillions of "Drop everything else and attend to ME this instant!" fruits and nuts and cranks and shafts running. As wasps to honey, so they to Barák Husáyn XLIV.

(( Rather a suitable coincidence that "Middle East" abbreviates to the pronoun of the first person singular in the Chicagolandese dialect. Might some superintending [P]rovidence really be in charge of the Casino of Human Events despite almost all appearances? ))


[2] I take for granted, possibly mistakenly, that it will never become flatly impossible to believe in the existence of IslamWorld. "Where there is a will, there is a way" -- a way to Santa Claus’ workshop at the North Pole, for example. And though this is no place to discuss it, the attachment of Muslims and neo-Muslims to the fable of IslamWorld is not simply a matter of ‘convenient’ as it is for BHO and the rest of us denizens of Káfirestán and Dhimmístán.

Even the briefest allusion should stress that IslamWorld is not a formal article of Islamic religionism. Certain neo-Muslims may be trying to make it one, perhaps. More certainly, a number of jihád careerists in the former Christojudaeandom are trying to make it one -- for purposes entirely their own and nothin’ to do with the real McCoy whatsoever. But God knows best about jihád careerism!

Traffic Unbearable

And now! ... Princess Neoterica of Outer Pajamastán will introduce [1] this morning’s principal orator:

Robert Kagan on the new Obama Middle East strategy: “[B]y insisting that the Israeli government not only put a freeze on new settlements but also halt ‘natural growth’ in existing settlements, the administration has set up an unavoidable and possibly unpleasant confrontation with Israel, precisely at the moment it is importuning a truculent Iran. This sets up quite an image: Unclench the fist at a government that daily calls us the Great Satan, while balling up a fist at a longtime ally.” Is is almost incomprehensible, no?

(( Thunderous applause and brachial salutations from the Right ))

The Obama administration is either very courageous or very foolish -- possibly both. I had assumed that in a year in which the administration intended to take a soft approach to Iran, seeking talks, holding out inducements and never discussing penalties, bending over backwards to make accommodations, that it would not simultaneously pursue a confrontational policy with Israel. Such a policy would seem to be more than the political traffic at home could bear. I was wrong. Instead, by insisting that the Israeli government not only put a freeze on new settlements but also halt “natural growth” in existing settlements, the administration has set up an unavoidable and possibly unpleasant confrontation with Israel, precisely at the moment it is importuning a truculent Iran. This sets up quite an image: unclench the fist at a government that daily calls us the Great Satan, while balling up a fist at a longtime ally. There must be a brilliant strategy in here somewhere. But from the outside, it isn’t obvious where the confrontation with Israel is supposed to lead. While Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu can conceivably put a freeze on new settlements, it is unlikely that he can stop “natural growth” of existing settlements and still hold his government together. Indeed, it is questionable whether any Israeli government could. Perhaps the Obama administration is trying to bring the Netanyahu government down. Regime change! Clearly, this is an effort to shape Arab opinion and show that the Obama administration is more even-handed than its predecessor. But if Israel can’t or won’t deliver, what does the Obama administration do next? If it backs away from its demand, then it proves itself impotent in the face of Israeli intransigence, thus presumably weakening its standing with the Arabs. But if it doesn’t back down, what forms of punishment does it intend to carry out to force Israel’s hand? Will the administration place sanctions on Israel at a time when it is offering to lift sanctions on Iran?

___
[1] There have been some shady doin's up the slippery slope at

Castle Podhóretz, Mr. Bones! For reasons inscrutable, Her Neocomradely and Imperial Highness has decided to withdraw Neocomrade R. Kagan's flot or jet from the public gaze.

Imagine me aghast when I went back to get the URL and found that the gem itself had been stolen!

Horizon of Hyperzion

Mr. Obama’s dilemma is that no speech, however eloquent, can disentangle U.S.-Muslim relations from the treacherous terrain of current events in places such as Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran and the Middle East.

As you see, Mr. Bones, former USA Secretary of War M. K. Albright has excluded Iraq and Iran and Afghanistan and Pakistan from her private mental Middle East, although admitting them to be part of some large unchristened zone inside which human events are currently treacherous.

That hunk of mystery meat and terror terrain would probably correspond pretty well to the vulgar or dhimmí notion of the M.E. (minus the Palestine Puzzle).

Meanwhile, back in the holy Homeland™, this far-fetched long-time fellow-traveler with the militant extremist Republican Party may be about ready to become a card-carryin’ neocomradess:

Democracy’s advantage is that it contains the means for its own correction through public accountability and discussion. It also offers a non-violent alternative for the forces of change, whether those forces are progressive OR CONSERVATIVE

That sounds enough like ordinary meanin’less boilerplate that it may actually be ordinary meanin’less boilerplate, but on the other hand, what has ‘progressive’ ever done for Her Excellency?

And Father Zeus knows best about SECWAR M. K. Albright!

Happy days.