See if this helps you understand the difference between you & me.
"Is characterizing opinion as fact.... and engaging in
ad hominim attacks.... the way to make political dialogue
more constructive?"
Legal Fundamentalism
By Marc Schulman
AMERICAN FUTURE
In his latest post, Glenn Greenwald congratulates Captain Ed for admitting to a mistake and goes on to say that
If more people were willing to simply acknowledge
analytical and factual mistakes that way, political
dialogue would be much more constructive.
Agreed.
But earlier in the same post, Greenwald, commenting on an article in the New York Times on what, in his words, is "a substantive conflict" between the White House and Senator Pat Roberts, opines the following:
<<< . . . the 9/11 attacks created a war climate in this country which the Bush Administration deftly and cynically exploited in order to install theories of unchecked Executive power which long pre-dated 9/11. >>>
and
<<< Even the most obsequious mice among us, such as Pat Roberts, at some point want to at least appear to have some minimal amounts of personal autonomy. >>>
Is characterizing opinion as fact (some of us, after all, believe that Bush's motivation was and is to protect our lives) and engaging in ad hominim attacks ("obsequious mice") the way to make political dialogue more constructive?
Not in my book.
In response to a reader's inquiry, Greenwald spills his beans:
<<< . . . I don't think motives really matter. When someone breaks the law, the first issue is to convict them of violating the law. Motives come into play, if at all, only at the punishment stage . . . they [the Administration] broke the law. The question of why they did so may be interesting to speculate about, but ultimately, it's irrelevant. We are a nation of laws and our political officials don't have any greater right to break those laws than any other citizen, no matter how justified they think they are in doing so. >>>
So motives don't matter—even if the motive is the physical security of our people. I suspect that Greenwald would have called for the impeachment of Lincoln, and would disagree with the Supreme Court judge (I can't recall which one) who said that the Constitution is not a death warrant.
To the list of fundamentalisms, we can add the legal variety.
americanfuture.net
glenngreenwald.blogspot.com
captainsquartersblog.com
nytimes.com
glenngreenwald.blogspot.com |
