Why are conservatives having such a hard time with the Iraq question that pretty blond Fox host skewered Jeb with? Surely it's not so hard to opine that knowing what we know now failure to plan properly for a post hostilities world will surely squander whatever good those hostilities won you - we can't know for sure whether or not the invasion made sense because the occupation was so badly mishandled by both Bush and Obama - who knows what Iraq would look like right now had those mistakes not been made.  Sure, given how it appears now that Sunni and Shia cannot rise above their hatred and distrust of each other one can make an educated guess that maybe the invasion was not the best way to go about trying to fix the problems that roil that part of the world - but that's still just a guess.

I suppose conservatives are being tripped up by, if you reason through things as above, you end up having to admit that WMDs were just a pretext for the invasion - not that Bush lied, as liberals like to go on about - pretty much everyone believed Saddam had a WMD program - but that was just a pretext for a much more grandiose [and poorly thought out] plan to significantly alter the Islamist math that brought us to those two towers turning to dust. And the fact remains: if mistakes had not been made, it might have worked - we can't know - certainly, in the direct aftermath of 9/11, it seemed to make a lot more sense than 20/20 hindsight would now suggest.

Well - with Obama's recent attack on Fox News for being apparently a polluted fount of lies because Fox does not share [bow down before] his worldview he is basically making an argument in favor of government control of the press. Wow - the guy isn't even trying to hide it anymore - he wishes he was a dictator, he longs to be one, and apparently feels nothing but contempt for those too unenlightened to understand how deserving he is of our love and servitude. Is this just the expression of an ego and arrogance spinning out of control? Or is this just a cynical politician willing to say anything no matter how false and twisted it is just so long as it pushes an agenda forward? Other than extremely dangerous and misguided I'm not exactly sure what that agenda would be, but better pray it's the latter and not the former because if this is his ego slipping the bounds of sanity then I gotta believe that wouldn't be a good thing.  

The pattern is clear - modern liberalism is increasingly hostile to democracy - liberals are all for some vague, highly idealized and ultimately unworkable notion of 'cultural diversity' but when it comes to diversity of beliefs or ideas and the debate that comes with it they have no use for that - indeed, they see such a thing as offensive and threatening [microaggression! The bad man's ideas are hurting me!].

But of course they're right regardless of how wrong they are - for an absolutist belief system, which modern liberalism is, there's nothing more dangerous than a fact or truth that does not fit the narrative so assiduously being constructed - therefore free speech and debate are things to be feared. The idealist begins with what they want to believe is true and then sets about making up the 'proofs' to demonstrate it; the empiricist starts with what is and then sets about acquiring the facts to understand and explain it.

Clearly, modern liberalism is increasingly absolutist and driven by a need to believe certain things regardless of whether or not those things are true according to some reasonable and objective norm - reasonable objectivity is of no use to the mindset and agenda of progressives - and thus their increasingly irrational and intolerant behaviour.

Look at recently unearthed letter from former EU officials urging the current EU foreign minister and Kerry to ignore the results of the election in Israel and force a resolution on Netanyahu and to hell with what the Israeli voter thinks - apparently a democracy is only a true democracy if it agrees with what liberals want to believe - otherwise, liberals reserve the right to impose their will on it - these people simply cannot abide the notion that their worldview may be wrong, misguided, ill conceived - they cannot tolerate the thought that they may be wrong about something which is why they're so quick to embrace an intolerance masquerading as enlightenment in order to get their way.

What is the problem with Jeb saying that knowing what we know now he would still have invaded Iraq? Sure, he probably didn't mean it the way he said it - but if you believe that the invasion was the right move then what he said is accurate - knowing what we know now, ie that the post invasion stabilization plan or lack thereof would be key, then Jeb is speaking truth to people who believe that the problem wasn't the invasion but rather the botched occupation. Which means Jeb is right and Christie who has jumped in to criticise him is wrong - assuming of course that Jeb meant it the way I'm suggesting - which I don't think is the case - so there ya go.

The Halperin interview of Cruz yet further evidence of how completely the liberal hive mind has been taken over by identity politics - their ideology is no longer about debating ideas [if it ever was] and indeed it's the exact opposite of that: it's about shutting down debate by shaming and demonizing those who dare hold opinions that do not fit the progressive worldview - identity politics is a perfect tool for overcoming the limits of democracy if your goal is to impose your will on people who do not agree with you. And so it makes perfect sense to people like Halperin to believe that you're not really Latino if you're against open borders, you're not really a woman if you're not pro choice, you're not really a black man if you don't blame everything bad in the world on rich white guys, you cannot even be a true young person if you have a problem with gay marriage or don't unquestioningly believe in global warming. Look at Baltimore - it's a perfect manifestation of the insane tyrannical animus of identity politics - the place is controlled by blacks and far left thinking and yet they're blaming their problems on racism. Why? Because it's a perfect way to shut down debate on what's really the problem with Baltimore - a real conversation about what's wrong with Baltimore would threaten the central tenets of the progressive worldview and we can't have that. Or look at Michelle Obama's recent speech on how hard it's been being the first black family in the White House - on the surface of it you think that's just idiotic whining - but then you realize she's setting up the narrative that will excuse her husband's failed presidency: it's all about racism - Barack tried to save the world but those evil white guys kept getting in the way.

What to say about the the cartoon Muhammed controversy? Ahhh... that it's absolutely astounding that there's even a debate about who's the bad guy here? I mean it almost seems unreal that there's a debate going on about this. Modern liberalism has completely taken leave of its senses - and where it's leading us, I dunno, but it can't be someplace good. The American left painting Geller as being the problem here and not Islamist thinking, which is essentially antithetical to the founding principles of Western civilization, amounts to the left saying to Islamists everywhere that if you think the West needs to be brought down we agree with you so have at it boys. I swear, if the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor because of an 'offensive' cartoon depiction of Hirohito modern liberalism would have met such a challenge by saying "oh, that's okay, we deserve it - if we put the cartoonist up against a wall and shoot her will you forgive us?"

Is it that liberals don't understand that implied by the idea of free speech is the potentiality to offend and therefore speech that is not allowed to offend is not actually free - or is it that the modern liberal no longer believes in free speech because it no longer serves their agenda? Since the former is a pretty easy concept to understand it must be the latter - which is why the modern progressive is truly a dangerous animal. If moderate, saner liberals do not start pushing back in a determined way against these zealots it will break the country apart because separation will be the only way for conservative states to protect themselves against the predations of a progressively addled executive. The beginning of the end will be when liberals try to truncate religious freedoms by forcing those who do not believe in gay marriage to perform gay marriages in their church - then conservative states will have to respond, probably by taking government out of the marriage business altogether - indeed, I've been arguing for awhile that the coming of gay marriage pushes the redefinition of marriage begun by the pill and women entering the workforce en masse to such a degree away from a family paradigm based on procreation that it no longer makes sense for government to involve itself in marriage - if marriage is now primarily about 'love' and not the making of babies, then what business is it to the government whom I choose to love and how I choose to express that love? 

Great little mild mannered 'rant' by Mead re media bias and the stagnant ideological bubble world the press inhabit that has disabled their critical faculties - these people have spent so long hemmed in by a leftist worldview that they are simply at this point incapable of objective reasoning - and in some cases this incapacity is deliberate as ideologues as a matter of course misreport and twist 'facts' - for ideological purists, facts are only those things that seem to fit with a 'truth' predetermined by them - anything that doesn't fit that agenda is by definition wrong and therefore not worthy of consideration and so can legitimately then be suppressed or excluded, and thus the growing intolerant homogeneity and group think that characterises much of the progressives' bubble world.

Mead still thinks there's free speech in America, it's just been rendered inept and misguided by an entrenched bias. I dunno - free speech is about disagreement and argument and debate - its very nature is adversarial and full of conflict - and therefore it cannot exist in a world where the only disagreement permitted is that between like minded people - that is a sham free speech - that is allowed speech and therefore inherently dictatorial - and therefore it's not at all surprising that American campuses and the left in general are increasingly manifesting a fondness for autocracy - in their ideologically fevered minds they are absolutely convinced that if you don't agree with them there must be something wrong with you.

I agree with Mead and have been saying such for a long time: the deleterious effects of this entrenched bias enables bad thinking which leads to bad and deeply flawed policies and strategic postures which produces bad and very dangerous outcomes - proof of this is popping up all over the place, overseas and at home. And I don't see how you fix it - liberals act as if it doesn't matter that Obama is an awful president, they act as if the bad outcomes are beside the point - they act as if the only outcome that matters is the country being pushed left. How can you fix something like that? As the saying goes, you can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into - and the progressives' mindset is not governed by reason, it's governed by a blinding ideological zeal that the media and press seem incapable of or unwilling to push back against. And thus we stumble towards the abyss.

I don't understand why people aren't pointing to the obvious here with the cops in Baltimore being charged - there was another prisoner in that van - if a 'murder' took place by means of a 'rough ride', then this other prisoner is a material witness to that 'murder' - which means that either he has denied the rough ride scenario and these charges are a grotesque miscarriage of justice and a disturbing capitulation to mob rule - or he has confirmed the rough ride scenario and the most important question now becomes is he lying to save his ass or telling the truth? Yes, the other prisoner wasn't in the van for the entire trip - but he's already said he heard Gray banging against the wall of the van, which means Gray's spine had not yet been damaged, which means if it was damaged by a rough ride the other prisoner would have been a witness to that - so it all comes down to what he has already said in statements to whomever and whether or not what he has said is true - and if it isn't true, is there any way to prove that.

The other thing to consider is: on and off the record comments by Baltimore cops suggest they feel they're being screwed over and the charges are political - and that's either an alternative narrative they're trying to establish in order to protect themselves - or it's true - and if true and statements made by that other prisoner corroborate that, then watch for those statements to be leaked.