Posted by
Walter Grandberry on Saturday, April 19, 2008 1:10:34 AM
The first order of business is to
apologize for my extended absence from this page. As some of you may
have gathered from a previous post,
I have been otherwise occupied as of late. To be completely frank, it
is as if I am being held captive in a PON (Prisoner of Newborn) camp,
the disturbed sleep and constant wailing during the nights serving to
enhance the effect.
As befits time spent away from an assortment
of once-important matters that are now reduced to trivialities, I have
delighted in a respite from following the presidential campaigns. I
enjoyed my reprieve until - wholly accidentally, as I was flipping
channels between feedings and diaper changes - I stumbled across the
most recent ABC News debate
between the Romulus and Remus of Democratic politics. (This is a
fitting enough description, as both Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack
Obama are starting to look as if they have fed from the teat of a
she-wolf.)
The crux of the various debate critiques seemed to be that, as the New York Times put it, "[Charles]
Gibson and [George] Stephanopoulos had front-loaded the debate with
questions that many viewers said they considered irrelevant when
measured against the faltering economy or the Iraq war." From
my vantage, the questions evidenced little that was out of the
ordinary. For example, while I do not personally question Rev. Jeremiah
Wright's patriotism,
I was curious as to what Sen. Obama would have to say on the matter.
Likewise, I was glad to see Ms. Clinton made to explain once again her
credulity-straining account of landing under sniper fire in Bosnia.
It
wasn't until Sen. Clinton began her reply to one of Mr. Stephanopoulos'
queries with, "Well George..." To my ears, it rang with a tone that
went beyond simple familiarity with a (lesser) light of the
journalistic firmament. Indeed, her "Well George..." bespoke an
longstanding intimacy, and that's when I got it. It occurs to me know
that those who squeal loudest about the conduct of the debate (mostly
Obama supporters, as Hillary partisans are used to low-ball politics)
are not offended in the least that a former Clintonista would now presume to be an impartial moderator in a debate involving the wife of his former boss and political mentor.
And
to be sure, these plaintiffs would be nonplussed over similar streams
of inanity directed at Republicans. (One need only recall the YouTube debate
from earlier in the campaign as an example.) What grates on the nerves
of the whiners' chorus is that such irrelevancies were asked of Democrats
by a usually compliant media. Simply put, the outraged are upset
because the MSM's usual default settings (i.e., treating Obama as a
child would treat a pet rabbit) were rejected by Stephanopoulos, et al.
Doubtless
many on the Right have their own defaults; as much explains the
hysterical resistance on the part of some conservatives to same-sex
civil unions. But intellectual shortcuts have taken over the Left like
ivy in Cambridge. Modern liberalism sustains itself on a diet of what
James Burnham would call "unexamined prejudices and conjoined
sentiments." Sadly, this bolus of "prethoughts" is never fully digested
and converted into anything useful for the development of a logically
consistent framework of belief.
Progressives seem to discourage
dispassionate examination of their own beliefs, lest the pillars that
undergird liberalism collapse of their own weight. My sense is that the
deranged panic surrounding global warming would evaporate if the costs
and benefits of dealing with climate change were weighed against the
benefits that would accrue from dealing with the world-wide scourges of
malaria, HIV/AIDS, war and famine (as they were by Bjorn Lomborg at his 2004 Copenhagen Consensus.)
The troubling thing about defaults is that they so easily replace
serious thought, even as carbon monoxide displaces life-sustaining
oxygen in the bloodstream until one is poisoned by CO. As it is, our
social and political bloodstreams are poisoned by the catechisms of
liberal faith.
Again, consider the pleas of those aggrieved by
the last debate. They do not take offense at the fact that George
Stephanopoulos did not recuse himself from moderating the event, nor
are they bothered by equally insipid lines of questioning directed to
Republicans. They are sorely vexed entirely by the fact that "thought
spam" got through their cognitive firewall. For if Democrats were
obliged to give strict scrutiny to either Obama or Clinton, they would
call off the remaining primaries and fold up their tent until 2012.
Four More Years!