Party like a blogger at Spring BlogFest East!

Fausta and Parkway Rest Stop are hosting Blogfest East 2008.


This isn't a picture from last year's Blogfest East, but you will have this much fun!
If you live anywhere within traveling distance of New Jersey, New York City or Pennsylvania, the party is too close to miss.

The party is Saturday April 5, 2008 (starting at 6pm and going to... whenever, loser) at Triumph Brewing Company in Princeton, NJ. Space in the Sky Suite is limited, so get to stepping!

HYSTERICAL LIBERAL CALLS TO BAN COULTER SOMEWHAT INCONSISTENT WITH THEIR "FREE SPEECH" CELEBRATIONS OF AHMADINEJAD'S COLUMBIA APPEARANCE

As JR said, this Coulter dustup has very little to do with hate speech (although the comparison between evangelicalism and haredi Judaism probably doesn't line up all that well theologically). That said - what if Coulter had really said that she wanted Jews wiped off the planet? She didn't, but what if she had? From Hunter at DKos, unblinking - albeit richly amusing - irony:

So if you can look at that record of bile and bigotry, and still invite her on your show, here's the rule: you own what she says. You don't have to invite her on. Just because she's plugging another book, a thin rewrite of the last four or five similar books about liberals-something-something-traitor-something-something, doesn't mean you're obligated to prop her up in a chair and help her promote it. You choose to put her on the air. You choose to give an audience to her crap.

If you invite David Duke or a Stormfront spokesman on your network to talk about the inferiority of blacks or Jews or Latinos, you have made the choice to give those hatemongers a mountaintop from which to promote their bigotry... Don't give us this crap about pretending to be offended by her bigotry. If you were truly offended by her bigotry, you wouldn't have returned her damn phone calls, much less hitched a microphone to her and placed her in front of a camera. In giving her an audience knowing full well what sorts of things she would say, you own her bigotry.

Done and done. But this nuanced understanding seemed a little lacking during Ahmadinejad's Columbia appearance. Even when they weren't explicitly defending Ahmadinejad himself (money line: "he spoke a lot about his spiritual view and hope for the world... he ain't such a bad man"), they were still defending the visit on free speech grounds. So letting American citizen and best selling author Ann Coulter explain her views - that makes you complicit in bigotry. But letting a genocidal Holocaust denying dictator try to justify himself in the heart of American academia in the greatest city in the US - the freest of free speech.

As it happens, Ahmadinejad actually is a hateful bigot and Coulter is very much not. But even if that wasn't true, wouldn't the hysteria surrounding Ann's remarks prove that "free speech works"? There's something a little familiar - and a lot disturbing - about the left's thuggish stampede to get anything they don't like off the airwaves.

[Read an extended version of this post at Mere Rhetoric]

WAPO SOPHISTICATION - CONSERVATIVES TOO STUPID TO KNOW THAT EUROPE IS DOING REALLY SUPER

Oh grow up:

5 Myths About Sick Old Europe... Not so long ago, American pundits and economic analysts were snidely touting U.S. economic superiority to the "sick old man" of Europe. What a difference a few months can make... But what about Europe? You may be surprised to learn how our estranged transatlantic partner has been faring during these roller-coaster times - and how successfully it has been knocking down the Europessimist myths about it... Beware of stereotypes based on ideological assumptions. As Europe's economy has surged, it has maintained fairness and equality. Unlike in the United States, with its rampant inequality and lack of universal access to affordable health care and higher education, Europeans have harnessed their economic engine to create wealth that is broadly distributed.

Super. Except that the US could do a lot more about those inequalities if they put a little less blood and treasure into European defense. It's really easy to harness your economic engine when you don't have to have a military because the US is treaty-bound to come to your defense in case of an attack.

Even if that wasn't true, this would still be a text-book example of what we teach our undergrads to call a "straw argument" and what we prefer to call "breathtaking, probably intentional obtuseness." The conservative critique of the European welfare state is only partly - and not mainly - based on its economic consequences. Even if they were economically sustainable, cradle-to-grave, make-more-on-unemployment-than-you-do-working welfare policies would still be a bad idea. They estrange different segments of society from each other, hinder public mingling and assimilation, and foster a seething culture of entitlement. This is a more pointed critique of Europe's socioeconomic policies than any economic concerns.

The WaPo published an article purporting to debunk conservative criticisms of the European welfare state without mentioning either immigration or demographics. Sophistication.

[Cross-posted to Mere Rhetoric]

BILL RICHARDSON: AHMADINEJAD IS NOTHING TO WORRY ABOUT, WE SHOULD ENGAGE IRAN

Perhaps putting his faith in Jimmy Carter's well-known abilities to analyze and deal with Iran, Democratic foreign policy expert and former UN Ambassador Bill Richardson wants you to know that Ahmadinejad is nothing to worry about:

Richardson, a former U.N. ambassador, said that as president he would use his diplomatic experience to engage Muslim clerics, students, university professors and business leaders in Iran. He would leave Iranian President Ahmadinejad out of the loop, calling him "a minor player" in that nation's politics. "Forty percent of the vote in Iran in that last presidential election went to a moderate candidate," he said. "And I do believe that it makes sense to engage in a dialogue with Iran, knowing that it's going to be very difficult."

Forty percent? That's more than halfway to being more than half of the population! Sweet. Almost half of the Iranian population don't support the guy trying to start an apocalyptic war and thereby bring about the end of the world. If that's not a population ripe for engagement, we simply don't know what is. As war looms over the entire Middle East, it's worth revisiting this diplomatic gem from a few months ago:

Dismissing claims that Hizbullah has returned to its former strength in southern Lebanon, UNIFIL commander Maj.-Gen. Claudio Graziano told The Jerusalem Post in an exclusive interview on Thursday that the guerrilla group was practically non-existent south of the Litani River and that if the peacekeeping mission continued, the threat of war would be completely removed within three years.

There's never a threat that justifies American or Israeli concerns. Hezbollah? Israeli concerns about how they've rearmed are just excuses to criticize UNIFIL - except for those Katyushas that hit Israel two days later. Opps. Hamas? Israeli concerns about their growing strength are just excuses not to give Abbas security concessions - except for how Hamas rolled over the Gaza Strip right afterwards.

Ahmadinejad? He's powerless. And if he's not powerless, then he's being mistranslated by evil neocons. It's like the Simpsons joke about USA Today: nothing to worry about, everything is OK. And if diplomats are wrong and a concession really does end up costing thousands of Israeli lives - eh, at least they meant well. That's the great thing about being a left of center foreign policy expert - no one remembers how often you're wildly wrong.

[Cross-posted to Mere Rhetoric]

CRITIQUING THE WASHINGTON POST'S "SOPHISTICATED" DEBUNKING OF TERRORISM

If we conservatives sign something that says "we admit that liberals are better-er and smarter-er than conservatives", will they promise to stop trying to insipidly prove to everyone that their understanding of the world is more sophisticated than everyone else's?

Because of the two kinds of fundamental errors - covering over genuine distinctions vs. pointing to differences that don't make any kind of real difference - the second one is definitely more annoying.

There is nothing easier than pointing out an irrelevant difference - it's the basis of an entire cottage industry in the academy, and the way that toddlers first tell the difference between red and green and hard and soft.

But the reference to the irrelevant becomes particularly annoying when it forms the basis of our international diplomacy.

Or when it's done smugly in the cause of denying the overwhelming threat of terrorism:

Six years after 9/11, all too many Americans still have only a vague idea of what does -- and doesn't -- motivate terrorists. It doesn't help that many politicians exploit the anxiety that terrorism evokes to promote their own agendas. Here are five key urban legends:

(1) Terrorism is a random act carried out by irrational people who hate our way of life.
(2) Terrorists are no different than ordinary criminals.
(3) Terrorists are likely to cross into the United States from Mexico.
(4) Terrorism is mainly perpetrated by Muslims.
(5) Terrorism never succeeds.

In the interests of space, we'll with just the first one. To deny that jihadists don't hate the Western tradition or way of life strains credibility. We'll gladly agree that terrorists time their attacks - the Palestinians have taken to launching rockets while Sderot schoolchildren are walking to school, to make sure that the 5 and 6 year olds don't have time to reach bomb shelters. So their terrorism isn't random, but it is certainly opportunistic.

They openly state their desire to establish a global caliphate subject to sharia law. They pathologically and viscerally loath the rights that the West gives to religious minorities, women, and gays. Virtually nothing of the twenty-five thousand year Western tradition would be left over if these genocidal lunatics managed to implement half of what they openly declare they want to implement. And yet this glib little list does its work. Any leftists looking for something sophisticated to bring up their next cocktail party will still be able to walk away from the article with the assurance that terrorists do not hate our way of life and can, presumably, be reasoned with.

[Read an extended version of this post at Mere Rhetoric]