The Cherry Orchard

I could not possibly care less about the fact that Prince Harry is not going to join his country’s combat troops in Iraq. The fact that this is getting serious news treatment on all the evening news shows really proves the banality of our public dialogue these days.

We do not like in a land of fairy tale castles, and Prince Harry means nothing to me. There’s a war going on, and global warming, and other real stories to talk about. Journalists: in 2007 there is no such thing as a “slow news day”, so please cut the crap.

As for Prince Harry himself, he can sit on his thumb and spin for all I care.

Probably the most dramatic moment during last night’s Fox News Republican debate: Rudy Giuliani criticizing outlier candidate Ron Paul for suggesting that the 1991 invasion of Iraq was a primary cause for the September 11 attacks. Here’s Fox’s record of the moment:

“That’s really an extraordinary statement,” Giuliani said, interrupting FOX News panelist Wendell Goler. “That’s really an extraordinary statement, as someone who lived through the attack of Sept. 11, that we invited the attack because we were attacking Iraq. I don’t think I have ever heard that before and I have heard some pretty absurd explanations for Sept. 11. I would ask the congressman withdraw that comment and tell us that he didn’t really mean that.”

All the other candidates then clamored for a chance to echo Giuliani’s strong condemnation of Ron Paul. Here’s the only problem: what Paul said is a simple historical fact. It’s not even a contested fact. Every serious history of the events leading up to the September 11 attacks agrees that Saudi rich kid Osama Bin Laden formed Al Qaeda as a direct response to the arrival of USA troops in Saudi Arabia to reverse Saddam Hussein’s occupation of Kuwait in 1991. This isn’t something only lefties and Democrats say — it’s something every credible historian is in agreement on. It’s also one of the main points of Lawrence Wright’s bestselling book The Looming Tower, widely considered the most authoritative (and non-partisan) history of Al Qaeda.

So, if Giuliani is standing there with a straight face saying “I don’t think I have ever heard that before and I have heard some pretty absurd explanations for Sept. 11″ we must conclude that he has not read Lawrence Wright’s book or any other history of Al Qaeda. And yet he believes he has the ability to lead our country’s absolutely critical battle against this enemy — from a position of ignorance about the history of this enemy, one can only assume.

Fighting an enemy from a position of ignorance about that enemy: I thought that was George Bush and Dick Cheney’s unique style, and I thought our country had at least learned the lesson that we need to understand our enemies better before we engage them in battle.

I guess not. The fact that John McCain and other candidates praised Giuliani’s dramatic criticism of truth-teller Ron Paul is pretty disturbing. My respect for a few of these candidates has just dropped a couple of notches. America cannot afford any more military leadership by politicians too haughty or proud to know the basic facts of their enemy’s history.

I’ve now had two good televised looks at Mitt Romney, who many consider the frontrunner for the Republican nomination: a televised debate on MSNBC several days ago, and a Mike Wallace profile on 60 Minutes last night.

My immediate reaction: slick, slick, slick. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Romney sure does look presidential, and his background as a successful venture capitalist and turnaround-artist for troubled companies is impressive. The 60 Minutes shots of his large family — five sons, ten grandchildren — was heartening. But the fact that he has now thrown away the old liberal-friendly views on abortion rights that got him elected as governor of Massachusetts in order to appeal to a pro-life national Republican voter base shows a lack of conviction on social issues. I also haven’t heard him say anything that’s not a safe, generic cliche about the Iraq war or the war against Al Queda or about foreign policy in general, so it seems pretty clear that he is a fix-the-economy, all-business type of politician. There could be worse, but we are at war and I am concerned that his convictions about foreign policy go no deeper than his convictions about abortion.

Why is Mitt Romney the frontrunner? John McCain’s strong convictions on the importance of victory in Iraq show strong principled consistency, but America is perceiving a fervid believer in need of a reality check. As for Rudy Giuliani — well, as a New Yorker I find his candidacy strange and surprising. For years, Rudy was our familiar “bad cop” mayor here in Fun City. He was undoubtedly an honest man and a hard worker, and he was also a familiar face. I’ve seen him on the streets or at events several times in New York City, and never for a minute (before September 11) did anybody think of this straight shooter as presidential material. When he was mayor, many of my friends just thought of him as the enforcer who put Gotti in jail and kept robberies down but also turned Times Square into DisneyWorld New York, and made it a lot scarier to smoke weed on the streets. That was his image, the sum total of it, and today six years after the September 11 attacks I still can’t imagine this rough player winning a national Republican nomination for anything.

So it looks like Mitt Romney is the frontrunner, and he seems smart enough to take whatever heat he gets in this difficult role. I’ll be watching closely and calling the shots right here.

In two recent posts, we discovered that the term “argument” cannot be logically defined at all (similarly to “game”, which Ludwig Wittgenstein once famously proved can not be defined by any single essential characteristic or meaning). An argument usually represents a state of conflict, but not always. An argument is usually rooted in a difference of belief, but not always. An argument is usually considered an undesirable thing, but not always. The term “argument” is basically a knot of interconnected meaning, and it’s probably pointless to try to define the word any further.

But that’s not where this inquiry will end; rather, that’s where this inquiry must begin. Here’s a surprising fact the previous case studies turn up: we all spend a hell of a lot of time arguing. We do it more than we’d like to admit. We do it at home, we do it at work, we do it in the car, and we do it in the supermarket, at the bowling alley, in restaurants, at parties … we do it with loved ones, with strangers, with imaginary adversaries, with people in books or on TV. We argue like we breathe. And since we do it so much, maybe we should try to understand it better.

Basically, what I’m planning is a new exploration into the discipline known as “ethics”, the branch of philosophy that tries to find meaning in intuitive human concepts like “morality”, “justice”, “good” and “evil”. This was Plato’s specialty, of course, and my other favorite ethical philosophers include Jean Jacques Rousseau, Friedrich Nietzsche, Soren Kierkegaard, William James and Jean-Paul Sartre. The field of psychology is closely linked to social philosophy, and Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung also addressed these topics with powerful insight.

Sometimes I talk “meta-argument” when I hear friends and family engage in arguments. I like to stop the motion in the middle of a heated controversy and ask everyone to examine what the hell it is we are doing. Usually, people just think I’m crazy and tell me to shut up so they can continue arguing. I don’t particularly want to know what we’re arguing about, but I want to know what we’re arguing for.

So, the inquiry will go on. I’m going to keep covering news and international issues here at the FruitStand, but I’m going to make a point of looking for the 10-mile view, the philosophical angle. The big picture, as they say. Because when I hear people argue … and even when I hear myself argue, I don’t get the feeling anybody’s getting to the heart of the matter anywhere. Let’s see if we can’t do better.

Last week I posted three case studies for our inquiry into the meaning and purpose of argument. Today I’m going to move quickly through five more, and then on Wednesday I’m going to try to reach a conclusion about how a vehicle as flawed and malleable as “argument” can possibly have validity beyond the problems found in these case studies. I’m still not sure where this inquiry will end, but here’s a few more examples to bring us closer.

4) Two drivers in a parking lot fender-bender

They stand there yelling at each other. Cuss words are exchanged, regardless of the presence of children nearby. Both drivers look kind of stupid to passers-by, who hope they’ll either shut up quickly or do something hilarious like get into a fist fight.

What are these two angry people doing? Mainly, they are venting. Each of them has been through a frightening crash, and each feels choked up, tense, confused, violated, helpless. So they yell, because that’s what people do when they’re freaking out. They insult each other in a way that civil people normally don’t, because they feel momentarily freed from social constraints due to their panic.

Their insults do have a pragmatic purpose, though. Each is instinctively trying to implant in the other’s mind (and in the mind of any observers) that the other one is at fault. By trying to convince others of this, they are probably trying to convince themselves of it as well. This is not a calculated posture, though, because neither has the presence of mind at this moment to calculate. So, the parking lot drivers are arguing to release tension, and their instinctual impulses to blame each other serve to help each one build their “narrative” of what happened, in which (naturally) each believe the other to be at fault.

5. A bicycle messenger who gets in a taxi driver’s face after a bad cut-off

This may seem similar to the fender-bender situation above, but it’s actually quite different. Both bicycle messengers and taxi drivers earn a living on the streets, and busy traffic intersections are a hotly contested territory. Bicycle messengers naturally feel vulnerable and endangered in their ongoing battle with taxi drivers, and so they are quick to snarl and kick, showing their ferocity. In this case study, the bicyclist is arguing to defend his or her territory against a known and familiar opponent.

6. A group of marketing executives making a difficult decision

An expensive and disappointing marketing project must be either renewed or canceled, and six executives sit in a room trying to make a recommendation which way to go. Two of them feel strongly that the project can succeed with a change of management, two of them represent the current management team and deeply hate the people who want to bring in new managers, and the remaining two think all four of the others are idiots and don’t particularly care what happens (note: this describes the decision-making process at most Fortune 500 companies in the USA).

The six of them engage in a mix of structured debate and emotional reflection. They feel closest to making a logical decision when one of them steps up to the whiteboard and tries to draw a matrix of possible decisions and likely outcomes. This kind of analysis helps, but the progressions break down frequently whenever each of the executives says something that offends another, or that insinuates blame or dredges up remnants of past incidents that highlight each others’ weaknesses. In the end, they hobble together some kind of recommendation to their manager, who may or may not even listen to their advice. What on earth are these six people doing?

To some extent, they are carrying out a process of dialectic, though the quality of the dialectic in these situations can be very low. Mostly, they are trying to buck up their interoffice alliances and ensure that the decision that is finally made is one that they can stand. For a middle manager in a modern corporation, argument is a tool for establishing and maintaining power, influence and job security.

7. A film critic gives a terrible review to a much-hyped new movie

On the face of it, there seems to be something cruel about the practice of dismissing or demolishing the hard work and great expense of countless moviemaking professionals with a few vicious paragraphs in a newspaper. And yet the critic feels completely driven by a sense of purpose and self-righteousness in doing so. What is the critic doing?

Let’s not settle on a cynical answer like “earning a living”, since the average film critic earns less money than any of the marketing executives above, and is probably motivated more by aesthetic than financial concerns. Let’s also assume that the critic does not know any of the filmmakers and is not motivated to trash the film by any interpersonal considerations. Most likely, the critic who writes a slashing review does so while infused in a state of idealistic exhilaration, temporarily allowing his or her self to believe that he or she is helping to discourage future filmmakers from making similar mistakes, and hopefully encouraging viewers to withhold their support from the current failed effort so as to help market forces correct the aesthetic or moral or creative failures that caused the current film to be so bad. The critic believes that he or she is doing something useful and important for the “art”, even if past patterns prove that bad movies will continue to be made even despite the existence of bad reviews.

8. A couple on a date see the same bad movie and then discuss it in a bar

Unlike the film critic above, these two people know that the world does not care what they think, and yet they still painstakingly dissect their reactions to the film and are disappointed to discover that they both dislike the film for different or even contradictory reasons. One of them says the comic scenes were the film’s only saving grace, whereas the other says the film could have been salvaged if it had restrained its attempts at comedy and better developed its tragic storyline. Furthermore, one liked the leading actor and hated the soundtrack, and the other had the opposite reaction. They sit over drinks and float their reactions towards each other, only to sadly find themselves unable to reach any connection at all. This is a “quiet argument”, because neither has anything at stake, and each would rather agree than disagree, but they find themselves unable to do so. They go at this for at least twenty minutes. What are these two people doing?

Of all the case studies presented here — and this is the last — this couple may be having the “purest” argument of all, because they both sincerely and completely wish they could agree, and they try over and over to find a basis for agreement. What they are doing is, simply, sharing the contents of their private thoughts, attempting as a couple to “think as one”. Perhaps they’d feel better if they applauded themselves for trying so hard to agree with each other, rather than letting themselves feel shabby and isolated for their failure to achieve this agreement.

The eight case studies are now finished, and I’m still not sure where this inquiry is heading. I’ll post the final piece in this series tomorrow, and we’ll hopefully figure it out then.

I’ve recently been observing people around me who are arguing, trying to discern behavorial clues as to what motivates a person engaged in an argument. What exactly are people doing when they argue? Let’s look at some case studies and find out.

1) A married couple who fight every night after they put the kids to bed

Mr. and Mrs. X love each other, and neither want their marriage to end. However, they bicker bitterly about everything. They can barely get through a dinner in a restaurant or a movie on TV without insulting, demeaning or pointedly ignoring each other. They put on happy faces for the children and for friends, but in private they are locked in an endless cycle of blame, disappointment and anger. Why are they doing this?

In one sense, for this couple arguing is a form of communication. It makes both of them feel vulnerable to express any kind of happiness or satisfaction with their lives together, as if doing so might reveal too much to the other. The “grouchy face” has become a permanent mask for both of them, and they have settled into bickering as a form of confortable equilibrium. In this sense, their fights are not actually arguments at all.

However, at least once or twice a week they move from snide bickering into full-blown, horrifying battling. One might conclude that they are cruel and love to inflict pain on each other, but this is not true. In fact, it might be that they are engaging in a form of territorial negotiation. There are a number of ongoing unresolved issues between them (say, she feels he doesn’t help enough with the kids, he feels she is irresponsible with money, they each want to be able to go out with their friends more than with the others’ friends, both fear the other will have an affair). Each is constantly afraid of losing the advantage on any of these issues — and so they argue constantly to let the other know that they will still not yield on anything. Despite the fact that their fights are emotionally devastating to both of them, these fights have become functionally necessary to this marriage. It is with these fights that they define the rules and boundaries of their everyday lives: argument is a form of both communication and negotiation.

2) Politicians in a televised debate

Debate season has opened early for 2008 Presidential candidates in America, and if you watch one of these broadcasts you’ll see that each participant is engaged in a performance for the benefit of an audience. They are not attempting to directly persuade each other, because to do so would be pointless (after all, Barack Obama knows there’s little chance he’ll get Hillary Clinton’s vote). Instead they are competing to impress viewers, and so in this case the so-called argument is merely a framing device for a roundtable of rehearsed performances.

But there are rare moments when politicians do challenge each other directly on meaningful issues in a televised debate. In these cases, what are the individual politicians actually doing? On an intellectual level, it seems they are attempting to establish an interpretation of reality, attempting to make a case for a particular position by presenting evidence, supplying metaphors or presenting logical conclusions. It’s during these moments that the debate will seem most substantial to viewers — though, ironically, it’s almost always against the rules of a televised debate for one candidate to directly challenge another, due to the sanitized format our bloodless modern politicians always insist on.

But when they do clash on an issue, what each politician is doing is attempting to create a complete picture of a reality for the audience to accept as “the” reality. A pro-choice politician says a fetus is not a human being, a pro-life politician says it is. Both want to “establish” this point in the mind of each viewer. Furthermore, the politician is attempting to prove his or her ability to continue to create persuasive realities that others will follow, and they do this by appearing forceful, confident and assertive. They are each trying to control the discussion, and they will use rhetorical touches such as raising their voice, interrupting each other and psyching each other out with veiled insults to do this. If they succeed, viewers will intuitively notice that they are controlling the conversation, and will think of them as having strong leadership skills. This final result is probably the most critical of all. In all the above senses, though, for a politician an argument is a form of performance.

3) A bunch of baseball fans in a bar

A bunch of loudmouth Mets fans are sitting around arguing about whether or not Willie Randolph just blew it by letting reliever Aaron Heilman pitch the middle innings in a close game (note: the answer to this question is often “yes”). There are some Heilman believers in the crowd, though, and the tone of the discussion gets a bit hostile. What are these people doing? Simple: they’re having fun. They are speaking loudly, calling each other names, bringing out all the insults they can think up, and despite the displays of ferocity it really all amounts to nothing more than a verbal hacky-sack circle. They are relishing their chance to exercise their knowledge of statistics and/or their comic skills (assuming they have either, which they often don’t) and they’re enjoying each other’s bon mots. For these guys, an argument is a form of entertainment.

I think I’m going to stop this sample here, and present a few more cases in my next post (hopefully tomorrow). And yes, I am building up to a point with all of this, though I can’t describe exactly at this moment what that point is going to be. That’s what an inquiry is for — if I knew the answers now, I wouldn’t need to inquire!

Stay tuned for installment #2, coming soon.

I started this blog last July, because I was disturbed by the wars raging in the Holy Lands, frustrated with the lack of useful debate in America over the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and disgusted by the news from Darfur. Despite the cozy weather, I remember last summer as a moral nadir, a season of hopelessness.

In the nine months since, I’m glad to say the cease-fire between Israel and Hezbollah and Hamas has mostly held up (though a cease-fire is a far cry from a peace settlement). I’m also glad that a majority of sensible politicians in both the Democratic and Republican parties have made the smart decision to stop backing the Bush/Cheney position on Iraq, and I have much more faith in our legislative branch since the November elections (though the season of hopelessness is far from over in Darfur, and we’ve got stuff like global warming and nuclear proliferation in North Korea and Iran to worry about).

I’m also glad that The Cherry Orchard is regularly finding more readers, and that I’m doing a better job of figuring out how to write about political topics (after years of writing about fiction and poetry on LitKicks I thought it’d be easy, but it’s not). A post I put up immediately after the Virginia Tech killings was cited in an article by Graeme Hamilton in Canada’s National Post, which is nice, even though it inspired an excitable fellow who writes for a blog called Weapons of Mass Discussion to call me an asshat and question my honesty when I say I would not sit quietly and pray for salvation if a crazy person entered a room I was in with guns and started shooting.

How does it feel to have somebody call you an “asshat” on their blog? Honestly, it feels just fine. I stand by my words, and I think it’s amusing that this person calls me “cowardly and idiotic”, and then goes on to say that I have a point. Yes, my name-calling friend, I certainly do.

I was also pleased to be cited in a post-Dems-debate roundup by Michael Weiss at Slate. I especially like it that Weiss refers to this site as a “nonpartisan political blog” because, despite the fact that I feel such deep rage at the Bush-Cheney administration that I sometimes want to call them “asshats”, I do tend to be a moderate on most issues, and I think the best political writing recognizes the validity of all sides of an argument. That’s why the blogroll on this site lists everything from Firedoglake to Little Green Footballs, from Sabbah’s blog to Solomania. I want all the viewpoints, because anybody who believes in a position strongly enough to argue it in public must have something valid to say.

What is an argument? Why do we argue, and more interestingly, what exactly do we do when we argue? I think I’d like to take a break from my news-oriented postings here at the Fruitstand, and begin another “inquiry” (yes, that’s right, it’s time for another multi-part series of postings on a single topic). The subject of this inquiry goes back to my days as a philosophy student studying Plato and Hume and Nietzsche and James, but I hope I’ll also show some wisdom from the years I’ve lived since then. The inquiry will begin shortly, and the topic is: “What Are People Doing When They Argue?”. Yeah, it sounds like the title of a Raymond Carver story, and maybe we can even argue about the title of the inquiry, if you want. You asshat.

First impressions of the Democratic party’s presidential candidates on parade: they’re all fine, and there is absolutely no reason to consider this a two-person or three-person race at this point.

John Edwards got the most votes in a well-attended Daily Kos poll, and I agree with this result. The blow-dried southerner appears serious, unflappable and appropriately angry about the current state of things. Another candidate who made a good impression on me is New Mexico’s Bill Richardson, more for his earnest body language and focused message than anything else.

Hillary Clinton did just fine, and I have no doubt that she’d be a hardworking, intensely practical President. I admire her very much for her courage and positive attitude. However, she has yet to prove that she can raise voters’ passions as well as she can raise funds, that she can appeal to outsiders as well as knowledgeable insiders, and it’s starting to seem clear that her stiff public persona remains a barrier to her electability.

As for Barack Obama, I’m sorry but I’m still not on this bandwagon at all. His performance last night was mechanical and safe, and I really, really, really don’t care that he has a Kennedy-esque mystique. In fact, I am more and more offended by the idea that anybody should consider this candidate a front-runner just based on his good looks and charisma. He did not particularly distinguish himself in last night’s debate, which adds to my impression that the buzz-to-substance ratio is too high here. Obama cerrtainly has a right to press his candidacy along with the rest of this pack, and there’s still plenty of time for him to win me over. But he’s not going to do it by standing there looking handsome, and I’m sorry to say that seemed to be his core strategy during the debate.

Of course I like Dennis Kucinich, and I’m glad to see him on this stage, just as I’m glad to see him working hard on various fronts in Congress. Kucinich would have been the evening’s designated oddball candidate if Alaska’s Mike Gravel were not there to play the angry clown. Gravel’s just fine, but he’s not going to be our next President.

Chris Dodd is running? I missed that press release. I don’t see him playing much of a role in this election, nor Joe Biden, but maybe I’ll turn out to be wrong.

One final thought: regardless of which of these politicians wins the nomination, they are all doing good work on behalf of significant causes. I’m glad they’re all around, from the staid Dodd to the blustering Gravel, and the only thing that would disappoint me now is if the party were to begin to converge on a front-runner too early. We’ve got a lot more debating to do.

Oh, finally: this stuff is pretty good.

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is all over the news this week, following his unconvincing Senate testimony last week (here’s one of the stories going around, and there was a lot of hilarity after President Bush claimed that Gonzales’s testimony helped his case). Still, I have a strange sense that most news outlets aren’t communicating exactly why this is such a high-stakes situation for the Bush administration and for the House/Senate leadership, and why the Bush administration is clinging so stubbornly to the hope that Gonzales will not be eventually forced to resign. There’s a hidden story here, and most Washington DC journalists know it and hint about it, but for some reason few journalists are coming right out and explaining what’s going on in this case.

The fact is, Gonzales is not just another high-ranking Bush appointee. He’s the Attorney General, which means he has the authority to investigate and prosecute anyone suspected of committing a federal crime, including top administration officials up to the level of the President’s top staff, thus encircling the President himself. As a longtime friend of George W. Bush and a key member of the Bush/Cheney team, Alberto Gonzales is not going to prosecute anybody close to the Bush administration for any number of wrongdoings. A different Attorney General, however, might.

Even though the Attorney General is a Presidential appointee, the appointee must be approved by the Senate, and our current Senate is not going to approve a candidate who does not demonstrate a basic willingness to investigate the Executive office independently of Presidential influence. So, if Gonzales were to resign, an extremely contentious nomination/approval process would begin for his replacement, and since this nation cannot survive long without leadership in the Department of Justice, some compromise candidate would have to eventually be approved. This new Attorney General could prove very hazardous for the Bush White House as our Congress and Senate continue to conduct aggressive investigations into the workings of the Executive office.

This is what’s at the core of the Alberto Gonzales showdown: our government is somewhere near a state of constituional crisis, similar to the constitutional crisis of 1973-74. Remember Nixon’s Saturday Night Massacre? This was one of the most critical turning points of the Watergate scandal, and it all revolved around the Attorney General’s office.

I’m not sure why so many journalists aren’t stating this clearly to the American people, but the Alberto Gonzales case is all about the viability of the Bush/Cheney administration. And I don’t believe it for a minute when Gonzales says he’s made his own choice not to resign. He’s not resigning because George W. Bush is begging him not to, and I bet he’d zoom out of Washington DC like a rocket if Bush let go of his arm. Gonzales has nothing to gain and nothing to lose at this point, but George W. Bush needs him sitting in that chair.

The news keeps coming so fast, it’s hard to keep up. Some thoughts for a Friday afternoon:

1. I wonder if it’s possible to stake out a moderate position on abortion rights. I guess the conventional wisdom will offer a resounding “No”, but in the light of recent news I’m going to continue to try.

I am personally opposed to abortion, but I believe abortion must remain legal within the United States because the practical consequences of state or federal laws against it would be disastrous. Look at these statistics: about 1.3 million Americans get an abortion every year. In case anybody wants to pretend that these 1.3 million Americans are all godless liberals from bad families, note this item:

Women identifying themselves as Protestants obtain 37.4% of all abortions in the U.S.; Catholic women account for 31.3%, Jewish women account for 1.3%, and women with no religious affiliation obtain 23.7% of all abortions. 18% of all abortions are performed on women who identify themselves as “Born-again/Evangelical”.

I’m sad to learn that my own state has the highest percentages of abortions in the country, but this state-by-state breakdown shows us that every state has significant abortion numbers. A pro-life friend with whom I engaged in a long debate about the subject last year told me that 35% of Republican families have a family member who’s had an abortion. Maybe this is supposed to demonstrate that Republican families show lower numbers than non-Republican families, but all I can say is “that’s a lot of Republican families”.

My conclusion from all this is that any attempt to make abortion illegal will simply result in the immediate emergence of black markets, inter-state “abortion railroads” and (most dangerously) illegal amateur operations. Why can’t the pro-life movement focus on practical and results-oriented approaches to reducing the incidence of abortion in the United States? Why is legality the sole rallying cry, when there is no reason to believe that allowing certain states to outlaw abortion will significantly reduce the amount of abortions that occur?

I’d love to see a moderate front make its presence felt in this debate. Hasn’t happened yet.

2. I don’t do a whole lot of agreeing with the National Review, but an article called The Culture of Passivity by Mark Steyn says everything I was trying to say here.

3. There was once a time when I respected John McCain. Maybe there will come a time again when I respect John McCain. But right now, he just needs to shut up, because he’s embarrassing himself and everybody else.

Diplomacy, McCain, not bombs. Diplomacy. It’s been known to work.