Scooter and Me, and exceptional read by a liberal friend of Libby's

[Hamlette]

the essay covers the gamit of the questions we struggle with. It's a tad on the long side (3 pages I'd guess) but it says everything I believe and explains how we are different and why we can never be like them. The link and a couple of quotes:
http://www.theamericanscholar.org/wi07/scooterandme-bromell.html

the author starts with this quote:
When I say that the conservative lacks principles, I do not mean to suggest that
he lacks moral conviction. The typical conservative is indeed usually a man of
very strong moral convictions. What I mean is that he has no political principles
which enable him to work with people whose moral values differ from his
own for a political order in which both can obey their convictions.

—F. A. Hayek, Why I Am Not a Conservative

I went away to boarding schools in the early 1960s, and at one of these my best friend was a boy named Scooter...

So, for six years I’ve been obsessed with Scooter. Every time I read a newspaper, I see Scooter and me hunched over a game of Stratego (which he usually won), or I see him faking right before hooking left so I can hit him with a pass in the end zone. Walking my dog through the woods around our house, I chant the mantra of questions I literally ache to ask him: How could you work for an administration that denies global warming and supports tax breaks for large SUVs? How could you work for an administration that cuts funding for birth control to the poorest people in our country and the world? How could you so brazenly exaggerate the threat of Saddam Hussein having weapons of mass destruction, and how could you so foolishly imagine that American troops would be welcomed in Baghdad with cheers and flowers?
...
This difference came into sharp focus when I happened to read an article by Lynne Cheney, the wife of his boss. As an English professor, I couldn’t resist its title: “The Roots of Today’s Lying Epidemic: The English Department Virus.” In it, Cheney claims that lowly English departments are “a primary source of the epidemic of lying currently upon us.”...

A liberal, as I use the term, is someone who never gives up trying to see the other person’s point of view. A liberal never stops doubting himself, for self-doubt is precisely what allows us to make room in our minds for someone else’s views and to keep the possibility of communication between us alive. A fundamentalist, on the other hand, is someone to whom the very idea of point of view is immaterial, or worse—the foundation of relativism. A warrior who pledges fealty to the god of one Truth, a fundamentalist searches for personal conviction, not mutual understanding. So she regards skepticisms as apostasy, hesitations as heresy, and doubts as moral turpitude.
....

I've often asked, as many here have, Why don't the dems fight back as dirty as the do? This article explores that and many other issues. I loved it.

[Nabia2004]

1. Thanks, interesting - nt

[bleever]

2. This is an extraordinary piece,

both highly personal and philosophical, while pondering how the two are inseparable.

His thoughts on liberalism and fundamentalism are profound. For example:

...the best way for the United States to combat the religious fundamentalism that underwrites terrorism is to remain a liberal state guided by liberal principles. The worst thing we can do is precisely what the Bush administration has promoted: become a fundamentalist nation that mirrors bin Laden’s fantasies back to him and thus confirms them.

The challenge we liberals face today is to match the fundamentalists’ passionate intensity while still remaining true to our deepest convictions: a preference for tolerance over righteousness, fairness over success, and communication over certitude. Indeed, our deepest value might be selfdoubt. It tortures us, but it keeps us open-minded. It makes us laugh at ourselves. And it reminds us to wince whenever we hear someone proclaim, as the vice president is wont to do, that simply stated, there is no doubt.

One of the more fascinating and moving things I've real in a long time. Highly recommended.

[Robbien]

3. All this "we liberals" is very grating

It was interesting to see that the CIA has told BushCo

the Arab world regarded us as “ruthless, aggressive, conceited, easily provoked and biased.” The CIA also warned that as long as “the forces fueling hatred of the U.S. and fueling al Qaeda recruiting are not being addressed, . . . the underlying causes that drive terrorists will persist.”

So they know and this whole "why do they hate us" campaign is just that a campaign.

[Hoping4Change]

4. This is an extraordinary peice. It is so insightful and so beautifully

written. Thank you so much for posting it. It has been such a pleasure to read. Bookmarked.
K & R.


:kick:

[Hoping4Change]

5. "A leader was just a boy with an unusual talent for submission. "

:wow:

[rumpel]

6. Many notable thoughts and paragraphs

And Cheney would be right. We liberals do want to hold onto the word true because we know that behind our policy proposals lurks a deep sense of right and wrong, a deep instinct about what makes life valuable and meaningful. But we do not fully articulate these beliefs, and we seldom even admit that we have them. Because they rest at bottom on conviction, not reason, and therefore cannot be justified without circularity, we hesitate to bring them into the open. We are nervous about admitting that in this sense our politics are as faith-based as those of any fundamentalist.

This is a failure of nerve, and it has two consequences: to people like Cheney we appear hypocritical, and to many others we appear uncommitted and indecisive. This is why the liberal temperament is challenged as never before. Everywhere in the world we are confronted by the fundamentalism that deposits bombs in commuter trains and that crafts Strangelovian strategies for global preeminence. In the face of these provocations, we are called upon to be firm but not inflexible, tough but not stubborn, determined but not dogmatic. We need something like faith, but it has to be a faith that makes room for the faith of others. Our deepest quarrel with fundamentalists in this country, then, is not about Iraq, health care, abortion, or gay rights. It’s about the very possibility of trying to be true without needing the truth. It’s about being able to commit to a truth while always remembering that this truth could be partial, incomplete, and provisional—a steppingstone forward, not an edifice of certitude.

thanks for posting