The strategic vs a-strategic opposition derives from “The US Needs to Re-Discover the Concept of Strategy,” a post by “seydlitz89,” though the figure “a/strategy” does – obviously, possibly somewhat serendipitously, possibly according to some inner necessity – happen to fit…
For now on, when you return to a comment thread, all comments that have been added since your last visit should be background-highlighted.
Simply to assert, as Hart very much seems to, that the truth of a religious tradition is utterly severable from every particular element of that tradition, that it is essentially irrelevant to the inquiry into religion what the mass of believers believe or say they believe or are asked to believe, is, for the atheist, bad faith: a mere changing of the subject if not a deception.
In some instances, to be a Republican conservative may even include regret that, as a practical political matter, a valid critique of government programs supposedly intended to aid the poor or “underprivileged” is unnecessarily obscured or diverted by disparate impacts on racially or ethnically or, one might even say, historically and naturally defined sectors. Beutler and possibly Chait, as true left-liberal believers, will be reluctant to believe that anyone could possibly think such a thing.
If Larison does not acknowledge or if we do not have a vital or overriding interest in supporting Israel, then neither Larison should find nor do we have any vital or overriding interest in criticizing Israel either.
A piece of political concept art may not be God’s frustration of Mephistopheles – the evil one condemned to achieve good despite himself – but neither is it exactly entirely not-that.
Because Jonathan Chait tweeted out a link to my post on his complete insanity, we experienced a bit of a hiccup in these here parts on Thursday. Normally this blog is easily a low enough traffic place not to require…
To root_e, agreeing to argue on the basis of a mutually agreed upon, or equal or fair, observation of the taboo against expression of a white racist or racial interest amounts to unilateral disarmament. He might say that racists do not deserve fairness, but to act on that basis consistently would mean to pursue an “unfair” political discourse or a discourse without presumption of good faith – an illiberal discourse whose uses were entirely subordinate to the successful prosecution of a power struggle against a designated enemy that must be destroyed, with whom no public space truly worthy of preservation can be sustained.
