AnalPhilosopher

My academic department—Philosophy and Humanities—recently added a course to its curriculum: Social and Political Philosophy. Most universities have such a course, but UTA never did (at least since I've been here). I've enjoyed teaching it this fall and look forward to teaching it again in two years. My upper-level rotation consists of Philosophy of Religion, Philosophy of Law, Social and Political Philosophy, and Seminar in Research Methods and Philosophical Writing. I used to teach Biomedical Ethics on a regular basis, but now it's being taught by Miriam Byrd. My lower-level courses are Logic, which I teach every fall, and Ethics, which I teach every spring. When I realize that I get paid to discuss all of these topics, which I love, I have to pinch myself. What a wonderful life! Here, in case you're wondering what sorts of things we discussed in Social and Political Philosophy, are the study questions for the final examination. There are 21 students enrolled in the course.

Sophie is 13 years old today. We've been together since she was two months old. The main difference between having a child and taking a puppy into one's home is that you don't expect to see your child die. To Sophie, I've barely aged. I was 35 years old when she came to live with me and I'm 48 now. I don't think I look or act any different now than I did 13 years ago. But Sophie has gone through every stage of doghood during our time together. She's been a rambunctious puppy, a vigorous adolescent, a mature dog, and now a slow-moving old girl. She sleeps a lot. She stopped going on walks with Shelbie and me several months ago, probably because it was too painful. But she's still mentally alert; she has a good appetite; and every now and then she and Shelbie play like puppies. Here is Sophie in late August, shortly after I shaved her (click to enlarge):

I cherish every day we have together.

To the Editor:

"Kids Gone Wild" correctly describes a systemic problem in our culture's social and educational fabric. But what is missing from the discussion of why children are ill mannered and have little respect for adult authority is the fact that children spend as much as five hours a day on average watching television.

Both regular shows and advertisements are replete with rude and antisocial children.

One advertisement, portraying a substitute teacher overcome by an out-of-control class, teaches children that being out of control is expected and acceptable.

Seen often enough, these behaviors become natural and appropriate to imitate. If the children are wild now, how will they behave as adults?

We have long been concerned about the effect of television on attitudes toward sex. We should be just as concerned about other pathological content that our children are seeing.

Switching off the TV is too radical for most people. But we should at least ban advertising to children under age 12, as some Scandinavian countries have done. This is a constructive solution that would help ameliorate the problem.

Annamarie Pluhar
Executive Director
The Television Project
Brattleboro, Vt., Nov. 29, 2005

Here.

What would we do without the nutty Left? Life sure would be boring.

Monkey, n. An arboreal animal which makes itself at home in genealogical trees.

(Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, c. 1911)

Bias is effective only if, and only to the extent that, it is undetected. If you tell me that you're a liberal, for example, or that you oppose the war in Iraq, I will pay close attention to what you say. I won't dismiss it out of hand, but I'll be alert for signs of distortion, falsehood, and exaggeration in your factual claims. One way to hide one's bias is to use loaded terms. Read this news report from today's New York Times. Do you see the expression "extricating American forces [from Iraq]"? How does extrication differ, if at all, from withdrawal or redeployment? To extricate is to "free or disentangle from a constraint or difficulty" (The Oxford American Dictionary and Language Guide, 1999). To withdraw is to "remove or take away" (ibid.). The meaning differs, doesn't it? Saying that the president plans to extricate troops from Iraq implies that they are stuck there, or that they are having difficulties there. Saying that the president plans to withdraw or redeploy troops has no such implication. "Withdraw" is neutral. "Redeploy" is neutral. "Extricate" is loaded. Which term should appear in a news report? By the way, other people have pointed out that the mainstream media are stuck on Vietnam. The metaphor of a quagmire—with or without the word "quagmire"—is used repeatedly. A quagmire is a kind of difficulty from which one must be extricated. See the connection? The Times is trying to hoodwink its readers into viewing the war in Iraq as a quagmire. It wants its readers to think the war is a failure and to blame the Bush administration for prosecuting it. It's one thing to say such a thing on the editorial page; it's quite another to say or imply such a thing in a news report.

If there was a single, overarching theme to Nisbet's teaching, it was his steadfast evenhandedness and sense of balance: whatever his own views on a subject, all sides or positions were noted, and received fair-minded exposition. For instance, the lectures on Rousseau and Marx, whose political views were plainly anathematic to Nisbet, abounded with examples of their keen insights into society and the human condition generally. The extent to which Nisbet paid everyone his due was truly extraordinary. This intellectual habit flowed naturally from his personal civility.

(Robert G. Perrin, “Robert Alexander Nisbet,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 143 [December 1999]: 695-710, at 708 [italics in original])

How many of you like to travel? How many of those of you who like to travel have the time for it? How many of those of you who like to travel and have the time for it have the money for it?

Travel, as I pointed out in this blog some time back, requires three things: desire, time, and money. The irony of my life is that I’ve always had two of these things but never three. From the time I started working until about ten years ago, I had a desire to travel—to “see the world.” Two places in particular I wanted to visit are Scotland and Australia. The problem is that I lacked either time or money. When I was in college, law school, and graduate school, my work kept me too busy to travel. (Unlike some of my fellow students, I was unwilling to “blow classes off” for something as frivolous as having fun. I turned down many invitations to go to Florida for spring break, for example.) I often had money during the school year, since I lived on student loans, scholarships, awards, gifts, and the income from part-time jobs.

During the summer, between semesters, I still wanted to travel, and I had time in which to do it, but I lacked money. If I worked during the summer, as I often did, I lacked both time and money. I didn’t despair, however, for I knew that one day I would have both time and money. I was right. About seven years ago, I repaid my student loans (it took 10 years) and got out from under my credit-card debt. I now have plenty of money. I also have plenty of time. Every summer, I’m off for 14 or 15 weeks. Every winter, between mid-December and mid-January, I’m off for five weeks. I even have four-day weekends during the fall and spring semesters, since I teach on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

You guessed it. I no longer desire to travel. I love nothing more than staying home with my girls, reading, writing, running, riding, and tinkering. I haven’t seen my blessed mother—or two of my three brothers—in almost 12 years. The last time I left Texas was in 1997, when I attended a philosophical conference in Berkeley, California. I’m glad I traveled a lot in my youth. I’ve been to most of the states and to two foreign countries: Canada and Mexico. I’ve explored—afoot, by bicycle, by kayak, and by motor vehicle—much of my beloved West. I now travel vicariously, by reading and by talking to those who travel. In that regard, I’m like Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) and Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826). Maybe one day I’ll desire to travel (again); but I wouldn’t bet on it, and neither should you.

Rank, n. Relative elevation in the scale of human worth.

He held at court a rank so high
That other noblemen asked why.
"Because," 'twas answered, "others lack
His skill to scratch the royal back."
Aramis Jukes.

(Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, c. 1911)

To the Editor:

Your "Black Friday" front-page article and photos ("Dawn Rush Hints at Strong Start to Holiday Sales," Nov. 26), like media accounts all over, took the day's events at face value, almost in a celebratory tone: people planning for days and waking up in the dark of night to wait in line in freezing weather, fiercely determined to obtain their prized goods.

And for what? To buy things, to save a few dollars.

Do we wait in the cold and dark for things that truly matter? Do we stand in line to protest the persistence of poverty amid wealth? To demand an end to the millions of deaths each year due to malaria and malnutrition?

I, too, like to save money, but I would suggest that we ought to get our priorities straight and think about what we value in our lives and in this world. And our media ought to report such events with some critical distance.

Alan Krinsky
Pawtucket, R.I., Nov. 26, 2005

The paradox of politics is the reconciliation of liberty and obligation. . . .

(J. D. Mabbott, The State and the Citizen: An Introduction to Political Philosophy, 2d ed. [London: Hutchinson University Library, 1967 (1st ed. 1948)], 14)

Here.

See here for Bill Vallicella's defense of William Bennett. The reason leftists hate Bill Bennett is that he's smarter than they are. They can't refute him, so they smear him.

Obsession, n. 1. The act of obsessing or the state of being obsessed. 2. A persistent idea or thought dominating a person's mind. 3. Treating Brian Leiter the way he treats others. 4. Holding Brian Leiter responsible for his thuggish behavior.

Here.

Someone wrote to me to say that I'm "obsessed" with Brian Leiter. It made me laugh. I'm no more obsessed with him than he is with me. He abused me publicly on his blog. I'm returning the favor. Where's the obsession? Leiter has been abusing people for years, and now he wants to abuse me without paying a price for it. It's time someone gave him his comeuppance. Stay tuned.

You've read all 921 pages of The Chicago Manual of Style, 14th edition, and plan to read all 956 pages of the 15th edition.

Roger Pilon argues that Judge Samuel Alito has the (moral) right to remain silent on Roe v. Wade during his confirmation hearings. See here.

Because the true meaning, value, and significance of marriage are fairly easily grasped (even if people sometimes have difficulty living up to its moral demands) where a culture—including, critically, a legal culture—promotes and supports a sound understanding of marriage, both formally and informally, and because ideologies and practices which are hostile to a sound understanding and practice of marriage in a culture tend to undermine the institution of marriage in that culture, thus making it difficult for large numbers of people to grasp the true meaning, value, and significance of marriage, it is extremely important that government eschew attempts to be “neutral” with regard to competing conceptions of marriage and try hard to embody in its law and policy the soundest, most nearly correct conception. Moreover, any effort to achieve neutrality will inevitably prove to be self-defeating. For the law is a teacher. And it will teach either that marriage is a reality that people can choose to participate in, but whose contours people cannot make and remake at will (e.g., a one-flesh communion of persons consummated and actualized by acts which are reproductive in type and perfected, where all goes well, in the generation, education, and nurturing of children in a context—the family—which is uniquely suitable to their well-being), or the law will teach that marriage is a mere convention which is malleable in such a way that individuals, couples, or, indeed, groups, can choose to make it whatever suits their desires, interests, subjective goals, etc. The result, given the biases of human sexual psychology, will be the development of practices and ideologies which truly do tend to undermine the sound understanding and practice of marriage, together with the pathologies that tend to reinforce the very practices and ideologies that cause them.

(Robert P. George, The Clash of Orthodoxies: Law, Religion, and Morality in Crisis [Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, 2001], 86-7 [italics in original])

Here.

Here is a New York Times column about disrespectful, disobedient children. I've certainly noticed a change in the past couple of decades. My brothers and I were taught to be respectful of adults. All adults, even strangers. Kids today (in my experience) make no distinction between adults and other kids. They're disrespectful toward everyone. How did this happen? When and why did parents stop laying down the law to their children, including teaching them manners? Is it Bart Simpson's fault? But parents are supposed to counteract bad cultural influences, not let them go unanswered. Perhaps parents want to be liked rather than respected by their children, so they refuse to discipline them. ("Discipline" means teach; a disciple is a student.) But why all of a sudden do parents want to be liked rather than respected? Are we seeing the upshot of 1960s-era "free love" and "anti-authoritarianism"?

Here is Paul Krugman's* column of this date. Krugman, like liberals generally, is obsessed with security. He can't stand it that things like health care are not guaranteed to every individual, no questions asked. As an economist, Krugman should know that security is costly. I purchased job security (academic tenure) by giving up income. Lots of income, for I could have been practicing law for the past 23 years. If factory workers want job security, they must be willing to pay the cost. There ain't no such thing as a free lunch. Krugman wants to make everyone pay for everyone else's security. Isn't that special? Why not leave it to individuals to strike their own deals? Why do liberals always prefer coercion to liberty? Perhaps we should call them "totalitarians" or "illiberals" rather than liberals.

Addendum: Krugman's column is the 23d Most E-Mailed Article. See here. It's pretty bad when you're behind Frank Rich, who is little more than a comedian.

* "Op-Ed columnist Paul Krugman has the disturbing habit of shaping, slicing and selectively citing numbers in a fashion that pleases his acolytes but leaves him open to substantive assaults" (Daniel Okrent, "13 Things I Meant to Write About but Never Did," The New York Times, 22 May 2005).

Animal Ethics is celebrating its second birthday. See here.

To the Editor:

Re "Bad for the Country," by Paul Krugman (column, Nov. 25):

I'd add that what's bad from General Motors is bad for the country. While Honda and Toyota have developed hybrid technology that is so much in demand that buyers wait months for delivery of new vehicles, G.M. continues to grind out more of the same: monster S.U.V.'s that inhale gas, spew out fumes and clog our highways.

G.M.'s manufacturing practices haven't evolved, only its advertising. Now it's trying to convince us that its S.U.V.'s and trucks conserve gas!

For years G.M. has pushed the macho truck-owner image instead of demonstrating the kind of leadership that General Electric, BP Amoco and, yes, Ford have begun to show by transforming themselves into responsible environmental citizens.

Robert F. Sommer
Overland Park, Kan., Nov. 25, 2005

Affianced, pp. Fitted with an ankle-ring for the ball-and-chain.

(Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, c. 1911)

Here.

Here is Judge Richard Posner's post on avian flu.

Brian Leiter, take note: Academic thugs sometimes lose their jobs. See here.

The following item appeared in the business section of today's Dallas Morning News:

What's a half-million years' worth of work time among friends?

Advertising Age recently crunched some numbers to calculate how much company time American employees spend reading blogs.

It concluded that:

■ 35 million Americans read blogs at work.
■ In 2005, those workers "will waste the equivalent of 551,000 years reading blogs."
■ Reading of nonwork blogs is equal to 2.3 million jobs.
■ Or, put another way, that time is equivalent to "a daily, 40-minute blog break" for every American worker.

That's not a precise figure, of course. Ad Age called its analysis a "best-guess extrapolation," based on blog-related surveys and data.

But the numbers do help gauge an activity that everyone knows is occurring at work, even if the phenomenon hasn't been documented. (Ad Age tried to filter out actual job-related blog reading.)

Blog readers have plenty to choose from. Ad Age cites a blog search engine's estimate that the number of blogs is doubling about every five months. At that rate, it says, there will be one blog for each man, woman and child on Earth—all 6.7 billion of them—by April 2009.

Edward Dufner

Get back to work!

This post by Donald Luskin shows how liberal media bias works—and why The New York Times can't be trusted to deliver facts.

Sylph, n. An immaterial but visible being that inhabited the air when the air was an element and before it was fatally polluted by factory smoke, sewer gas and similar products of civilization. Sylphs were allied to gnomes, nymphs and salamanders, which dwelt, respectively, in earth, water and fire, all now insalubrious. Sylphs, like fowls of the air, were male and female, to no purpose, apparently, for if they had progeny they must have nested in inaccessible places, none of the chicks having ever been seen.

(Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, c. 1911)

Here.

To the Editor:

The lawsuit brought by Mississippi's attorney general, Jim Hood ("A Policy of Deceit," Op-Ed, Nov. 19), attempts to retroactively rewrite insurance policies to force companies to pay for flood losses that have been expressly excluded from standard insurance policies for decades. If successful, Mr. Hood will not only destroy the viability of the state's insurance market, but he will also undermine the integrity of every legal contract in the nation.

Mr. Hood's lawsuit is about politics, not fairness or justice. Rewriting insurance policies to cover flood losses after the fact is unfair to the companies that did not collect one dollar of premium to cover such claims and to the responsible consumers who paid flood insurance premiums to the National Flood Insurance Program to protect their homes and businesses.

Insurers will take all appropriate steps under the law to defend the sanctity of their contracts. At the same time, we will continue to pay every covered claim as quickly as possible to help hurricane victims get back on their feet after the disaster.

Ernst Csiszar
President and Chief Executive
Property Casualty Insurers Association of America
Chicago, Nov. 21, 2005

I said I’d come back to Brian Leiter from time to time. Someone needs to expose his intellectual dishonesty and moral thuggishness, although, by now, largely because of the blogosphere, both of these vicious traits of his are well known. Today I’d like to discuss a textbook case of the genetic fallacy that can be found in Leiter’s writings. See here and here. You will note that I made PDF files of both pages, so that Leiter cannot revise or delete them. I intend to use Leiter as an example in the next edition of my logic textbook.

Leiter is upset (or at least puzzled) that not everyone shares his view that “marriage” should be redefined so as to include any two adults, of whatever sex. (It’s not clear whether he thinks limiting marriage to two people is justified, and, if so, why.) The arguments against redefining “marriage” are many and sophisticated, but you wouldn’t know it by reading Leiter’s blog. He says there are only three grounds for opposing homosexual “marriage”—religion, tradition, and definition—and dismisses all of them in three short paragraphs. This alone should alert the reader that something is amiss.

Having “disposed” of the arguments against homosexual “marriage,” Leiter proceeds to speculate—from his armchair—about the motives of those who oppose it. He says that much or all opposition to homosexual rights, and to a right to homosexual “marriage” in particular, is rooted in latent homosexual desire. (Does Leiter think there’s something wrong with homosexual desire? Does he himself have homosexual desire? If not, does he secretly desire to have homosexual desire?) Supposedly, those who think of themselves (and present themselves) as heterosexuals, but who in fact have homosexual desires, lash out at their homosexual “selves” by taking positions that are hostile to homosexuals as such.

This explanation is risible, but let’s keep a straight face (Freudian slip?) and ask what, if anything, follows from it. Does it have any effect on the arguments of those who oppose homosexual “marriage”? The answer is no. Leiter is committing the genetic fallacy, which consists in confusing the context of discovery with the context of justification. Where an idea comes from is a separate question from whether the idea is a good one. As Wesley C. Salmon explains in his logic textbook, the Indian mathematical genius Ramanujan (1887-1920) “claimed that the goddess of Namakkal visited him in his dreams and gave him mathematical formulas.” As soon as Ramanujan awakened, he wrote the formulas down and verified them. How Ramanujan formed his beliefs has nothing to do with whether they were (are) true. Good ideas can have suspicious origins, just as bad ideas (such as egalitarianism) can have reputable origins.

Suppose, for the sake of argument, that everyone who opposes homosexual “marriage” (including some of Leiter’s philosophical colleagues) is a latent homosexual, and that that psychological fact about them causes (and thereby explains) their opposition to homosexual “marriage.” Nothing follows about either the truth of the premises they appeal to in their arguments or the validity of the inferences they draw from those premises. The premises can be true even if belief in them by the arguer was caused by hostility toward homosexuals (or self-loathing, or whatever). If someone were to dismiss the argument on the ground that the person making it came up with it in an odd way, or is badly motivated, or is trying to “punish” homosexuals, he or she would be committing the genetic fallacy. The origin of a thing, as we saw in the case of Ramanujan, is irrelevant to its value, worth, or merit.

Leiter might reply that he’s not dismissing anyone’s argument—and if he’s not dismissing anyone’s argument, then he can’t be committing the genetic fallacy, which consists in dismissing an argument on improper grounds. He might say that he’s trying to explain something, namely, why people argue against homosexual “marriage.” There are two explanations: first, that they believe they have good grounds (even if they don’t) for opposing it; and second, that they’re manifesting latent homosexual desire (or hostility, or self-loathing, or whatever). Leiter is convinced that there are no good grounds for opposing homosexual “marriage,” so he opts for the second explanation.

The problem is that Leiter hasn’t taken seriously the actual arguments made by opponents, much less tried to improve them. As I said, he gives them only perfunctory (indeed, sneering) treatment. He seems so convinced that no rational case can be made against homosexual “marriage” that he seeks a psychological explanation of the pervasiveness of arguments against it. Leiter’s “explanation” therefore wins by default. How convenient! All this shows is a lack of imagination and charity on his part. (This is a common Leiterian technique, by the way. His dogmatism prevents him from taking alternatives to his views seriously; then, in an effort to explain why not everyone shares his views, he imputes bad motives to those who disagree with him. This is not argumentation; it’s thuggery.)

I should point out that it’s not within the province of either law or philosophy (Leiter’s academic fields) to speculate about the psychologies of arguers. Leiter has no psychological credentials and cites only one empirical study to confirm his bizarre theory of latent homosexuality. He mentions Freud, but Freud isn’t taken seriously by social scientists. (If Leiter disagrees with this, he should cite studies—if he can find any—that rigorously test and confirm Freud’s theories. Freudianism is a cult, not a respectable research program.) It’s interesting that Leiter’s idol, Friedrich Nietzsche, also engaged in armchair psychologizing; but at least Nietzsche’s psychologizing concerned peoples and cultures rather than individuals. Leiter’s explanations float free of evidence, argumentation, and reason. If you get the sense while reading Leiter’s blog that he lives in a fantasy world, this is why.

To see the absurdity of Leiter’s method, let’s apply it to some familiar cases. We could dismiss the doctrines of Plato on the ground that he suffered from an unresolved oedipal conflict. We could dismiss Nietzsche’s work on the ground that he was mentally imbalanced. We could dismiss John Rawls’s theory of justice on the ground that his difference principle reflects Rawls’s timidity (risk-aversiveness) and guilt (at having been given so much when others were given so little). We could dismiss Leiter’s and Chomsky’s criticisms of capitalism on the ground that they envy those with wealth and status. We could explain Leiter’s hostility to religion as either a manifestation of latent religiosity (in Freudspeak, a desire for a supernatural father) or rebelliousness against his human father. We could explain Leiter’s obsession with rankings and reputation as a recognition of his own inferiority, or as a manifestation of low self-esteem, perhaps brought on by having been bullied as a child. We could explain Leiter’s abusiveness as a reaction to having been abused as a child. And on and on.

Do you see why philosophers shy away from trying to explain why people hold the views they hold? We’re interested in reasons, not causes. We teach our students to focus on arguments and theories, not persons or motives. Arguments and theories are good or bad independently of who makes them, how they were discovered, or why they’re adduced. Leiter needs to take (or retake) a critical-thinking course.

Here.

As you can see by the odometer in the sidebar, I passed the 400,000-visitor mark today. My readership is gradually increasing, which is gratifying. I've been averaging over 1,000 visitors a day for a couple of weeks. What I pay attention to is the difference between any given month and the same month a year earlier. I started this blog on 5 November 2003, just over two years ago. Starting with November 2004, every month has had significantly more visitors than the same month a year earlier. As long as that continues, I'll be pleased. Thanks for visiting—and thanks to everyone (including Brian Leiter, the academic thug) who has linked to me or added me to a blogroll. As I've said many times, I enjoy writing in this blog every day. It is my generic literary outlet. I hope you find some of what I write educational or entertaining. If you came here looking for depictions, descriptions, or accounts of anal sex, get lost. This site has nothing to do with sex, much less with anal sex.

Public intellectuals are read for information but also for entertainment—educated people enjoy reading the writings of lively minds on current affairs even if they realize that the writers are opinionated, incompletely informed, and basically unreliable—and for buttressing the reader’s predispositions, that is, for solidarity, for what in the last chapter I called “rallying.” As Charles Sanders Peirce pointed out long ago, people are uncomfortable being in a state of doubt and therefore dislike having their beliefs challenged. Unless compelled by the norms of their calling (the norms of scientific inquiry, for example) to submit their views to challenge, people will seek confirmation and support, including solidarity with like-minded thinkers. Two psychological tendencies related to Peirce’s point are confirmation bias and herd instinct, the latter meaning that most people want to feel themselves part of a community of like-minded thinkers because it gives them greater confidence that they are right or at least are not likely to be thought daft for holding the beliefs they do. Dislike of dubiety (Peirce’s point) and herd instinct drive people to seek evidence that will confirm rather than disconfirm their priors (confirmation bias), even though searching for disconfirming evidence would be the epistemically more robust procedure, as Mill and later philosophers of science stressed; Mill especially emphasized the danger that conformism poses to intellectual progress. Notwithstanding Mill, nothing is more reassuring, so far as the felt soundness of one’s beliefs is concerned, than to find an intelligent, articulate person who shares them and is able to make arguments and marshal evidence for them better than you yourself could do and thus arm you to defend them better if challenged, as well as to still your own doubts.

(Richard A. Posner, Public Intellectuals: A Study of Decline [Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 2001], 147-8 [footnotes omitted])

Predilection, n. The preparatory stage of disillusion.

(Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, c. 1911)

I was born in April 1957, so I was too young to watch the original airing of The Twilight Zone. The series ran for five seasons: from 1959 to 1963 (inclusive). But I remember watching it on a weekly basis, so it must have been in the form of reruns. All told, there were 156 episodes: 36 the first season, 29 the second, 37 the third, 18 the fourth, and 36 the fifth. I believe the episodes in the fourth season were 60 minutes long instead of the usual 30, which explains why there were only half as many.

I vividly remember some of the episodes. My favorite has always been “The 7th Is Made up of Phantoms,” which is about modern-day soldiers in tanks being shot at by Indian arrows while conducting training exercises in the American West. I remember bits and pieces of other episodes. Some of the episodes scared me, which I now find humorous. It makes sense, though. The series was meant for adults, not children. Many of the episodes had philosophical themes. They were designed to promote reflection on various aspects of the human condition. (Hmm. I foresee a course entitled “The Philosophy of The Twilight Zone” in my future. If I can teach a course on the virtues and vices of Lewis and Clark, I can teach a course on the philosophical implications of The Twilight Zone. Denny?)

A few months ago, I realized that I can purchase DVDs of The Twilight Zone. I did some research on Amazon.com and talked to people like Ray Patnaude of Tech Central Station and my friend Joe Culotta. Apparently, there are different DVD releases. The one I like best is called “The Definitive Edition,” for it contains the episodes in their original order. So far, I’ve purchased Seasons 1, 2, and 3. I believe Season 4 is about to be released. My favorite episode (about the soldiers) is in Season 5 (episode 130), so I’ll have to wait a while for it. But it would be a long time before I watched it anyway, since I’m watching the episodes in the original order and am taking my time with it. Last night, for example, I watched the fifth episode, “Walking Distance.” It was fabulous! The acting by Gig Young and the others (including the ubiquitous Ron Howard) was superb; the cinematography was excellent; and the plot was simply magical. Stop reading if you don’t want me to spoil the plot.

Gig Young plays 36-year-old Martin Sloan, who is a harried business executive. He decides to go to his hometown (Homewood) for a few days to clear his head. Near the outskirts of town, he stops for gasoline and ends up getting an oil change. While the oil is being changed, he decides to walk the mile and a half into town. At first, he doesn’t notice anything unusual; but gradually it dawns on him that he has gone back in time. He finds his childhood home and meets his parents. Then, shockingly, he meets himself. Needless to say, his parents are skeptical of his claim to be their son, but when his father examines the man’s wallet, he realizes that the man is telling the truth. Their conversation is touching. At the end of it, the father insists that the son leave—so that the “real” son can have the summer to himself.

I omitted a lot of detail, but you get the idea. I loved the scenes from this episode, for they reminded me of my own childhood in rural Michigan. I had a wonderful childhood. My parents gave me just the right amount of structure and freedom; I had many loving relatives; I got to spend summers on farms with my cousins; and I had three brothers with whom to compete, cooperate, and share experiences. According to the booklet that came with Season 1, Rod Serling came up with the plot for this episode during a visit to his hometown in upstate New York. I suppose everyone who had a pleasant childhood has wanted to go back to it from time to time. I certainly have. This is not necessarily a sign that one is unhappy as an adult. It can signify nothing more than a desire to be young and innocent again, or to be among family and friends, or to experience certain feelings again.

I’d be interested in hearing from people who saw the original Twilight Zone in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Please use the comment function so that others can read what you write. How unusual was the series? I get the feeling from reading the booklet that it was confusing—even unsettling—to many people. Science fiction had never been presented on television. Even the executives who gave Serling authority to produce the series were perplexed. When “Walking Distance” was described to network executive William Dozier, he exclaimed, “Bullshit! This doesn’t work. Who the fuck’s going to believe this, Rod?” Earlier, when Serling described an episode in which a man falls in love with a mechanical woman, Dozier snorted, “Oh shit, you’re kidding. Is this what this is all going to be about?” Had Serling not been famous, The Twilight Zone would never have gotten off the ground.

Here.

To the Editor:

As Frank Rich ("One War Lost, Another to Go," column, Nov. 20) correctly asserts, there are no good ways to undo the damage done in Iraq and refocus our resources on the real terrorist threats to America.

Similarly, it serves little purpose to lament the lack of a few more votes for Vice President Al Gore in 2000 or Senator John Kerry in 2004, or how those few more votes would have made the world a different place. We are where we are: We have President George W. Bush!

We can, however, pledge, from this day forward, to choose only leaders who are competent, experienced and battle tested.

We best honor the fallen by keeping such a pledge; we best prevent the reoccurrence of disasters like Iraq by keeping such a pledge.

Voters must accept responsibility and change course: Mr. Bush is only being Mr. Bush, the same Mr. Bush on display in 2000 and 2004 to all who paid attention.

John E. Colbert
Chicago, Nov. 20, 2005

Billingsgate, n. The invective of an opponent.

(Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, c. 1911)

Here.

Paul Krugman's* columns are available online. Here is today's column. Krugman wants a national entitlement to health care. Translation: He wants to transfer wealth from the healthy to the sick, from the responsible to the nonresponsible (or irresponsible), and from the productive to the unproductive (or lazy). Notice that he doesn't mention the massive federal bureaucracy that such an entitlement would create—or, just as importantly, the power its bureaucrats would wield. The following claim jumped out at me: "[M]ost Americans believe that their fellow citizens are entitled to health care." No evidence is given in support of this claim. It strikes me as obviously false. Suppose for the sake of argument that it's true. What follows? Surely Krugman doesn't think that from the mere fact that most Americans want something, they're entitled to get it! Most Americans want to retain the traditional definition of "marriage." Does Krugman believe that that ends the debate? Krugman is all in favor of creating new rights, but what about the rights of individuals to retain their wealth? He says nothing—nothing—about desert or responsibility, about whether those who receive free health care deserve it or whether they're responsible for their own bad health. Instead of putting his economic expertise to use by analyzing the costs and benefits of various health-care policies (including leaving health care to the private sector), Krugman plays the advocate. The problem is, he has no evaluative expertise. That he values this or that means nothing to me. I have different values. What he has to do to persuade me to support national health insurance is show that my values commit me to it, not that his values commit him to it.

Addendum: Bush-hatin' Paul's column is the 15th Most E-Mailed Article. See here. Could it be that people are tiring of his manipulative, hateful rhetoric?

* "Op-Ed columnist Paul Krugman has the disturbing habit of shaping, slicing and selectively citing numbers in a fashion that pleases his acolytes but leaves him open to substantive assaults" (Daniel Okrent, "13 Things I Meant to Write About but Never Did," The New York Times, 22 May 2005).

To the Editor:

As an author, I certainly want my copyrights honored. Yet I hope Google finds some way to proceed with and even add to its Book Search program, and work out its differences with the world of hard-copy print media ("Googling Literature: The Debate Goes Public," Arts pages, Nov. 18).

I think it's to everyone's advantage for copyrighted literature, too, to be available on the Internet. A book could be downloaded, for example, for a small fee, once the search engine has pointed to that work as a research tool.

I love libraries, but if the hard or paperback book as we know it is destined to disappear or become a collector's item because a simpler method of information storage and retrieval has evolved, there are really no losers except our hidebound old habits.

And I can think of winners: for example, the earth's forests.

Max Reif
Walnut Creek, Calif., Nov. 19, 2005

I've been watching the college football game between Nebraska and Colorado (in Boulder) on my Dell 42-inch high-definition plasma television. Nebraska is far ahead, which means that, if Iowa State wins tomorrow, Colorado will not win the Big 12 North Division title and will not play in the conference championship game (against Texas). Officials had to stop the game and clear an entire section of the stadium after fans threw objects onto the field. Think about this for a moment. These students are among the most highly educated in the country. Many of them are children of privilege. Many of them will be leaders of government, law, education, medicine, science, technology, and commerce. Whence the thuggishness? Then again, look at Brian Leiter's blog. He has three college degrees, but he's been acting like a thug for years. His university not only doesn't punish him for it; it rewards him.

Here is a column about Hillary Clinton's position on the war in Iraq. I think she'd make a good commander in chief.

Lewis and Clark reached the Pacific Ocean several days ago. The party was pinned against the north side of the Columbia River by high winds and torrential rains, which prevented it from moving. When the weather cleared, the party moved to a safe location to explore the coastline and mark their names on trees. Having accomplished this, it was time to decide what to do. One option was to go upriver and form a winter encampment. Another was to build a fort on the south side of the Columbia—provided there was enough game in the area to sustain the party for several months. Although it was a military expedition, Lewis and Clark solicited the opinions of the party, including Sacagawea and York. (York was Clark's slave.) Clark duly recorded the "votes." He wrote that "Janey" (Sacagawea) was in favor of any place that had "potas," which I assume means potatoes. Here are the journal entries for this date. It's not known whether Lewis solicited the opinion of his dog, Seaman. I like to think that he did and that Seaman replied with an enthusiastic wag of the tail, which, in dogspeak, means, "I'll do whatever you do, Big Ape."

Innate, adj. Natural, inherent—as innate ideas, that is to say, ideas that we are born with, having had them previously imparted to us. The doctrine of innate ideas is one of the most admirable faiths of philosophy, being itself an innate idea and therefore inaccessible to disproof, though Locke foolishly supposed himself to have given it "a black eye." Among innate ideas may be mentioned the belief in one's ability to conduct a newspaper, in the greatness of one's country, in the superiority of one's civilization, in the importance of one's personal affairs and in the interesting nature of one's diseases.

(Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, c. 1911)

I'd like to wish my American readers a happy Thanksgiving. I hope you're enjoying your Tofurky. Me? I had homemade pizza with fake pepperoni and fake mozzarella cheese. It was delicious.

Here.

To the Editor:

Thomas L. Friedman ("George Bush's Third Term," column, Nov. 23) writes that President Bush "still has time to be a bridge to the future," adding:

"If he doesn't, the resources he will have squandered and the size of the problems he will have ignored will put him in the running for one of our worst presidents ever."

The catastrophic developments that Mr. Friedman identifies as having taken place under President Bush—a stupefying national debt, an insane war of choice against the wrong enemy, preposterous tax cuts for the rich paid for by the suffering of the needy—have already proved him to be the worst president in our nation's history.

William D. Wolff
Los Angeles, Nov. 23, 2005

To the Editor:

We now have 50 million people in Iraq and Afghanistan with a chance for freedom; democracy inching forward in the Middle East; hope in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; 5 percent unemployment; a 3.8 percent rise in the gross domestic product; several million jobs created; minority achievement gap narrowing; two Supreme Court justices and counting. A great president!

Florence Schmieg
Wilmington, Del., Nov. 23, 2005

Somebody explain the point of this editorial opinion. I can't discern it.

The fair and balanced observer will hear in the hysterical complaint and angry foot-stamping of FOX's liberal critics baffled frustration over the loss of the liberal monoculture, which, I've argued here, long protected the Left from debate—and further, from the realization that its unexamined ideas are sadly threadbare. What the illiberal liberals really object to is any conservative presence, however fair-minded, in public debate.

(Brian C. Anderson, South Park Conservatives: The Revolt Against Liberal Media Bias [Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing, 2005], 67 [italics in original])

My beloved Ginger died five years ago today at the age of seven years, 10 months. Here she is in May 1998, shortly after receiving her semiannual shave (click to enlarge):

I think about Ginger every day. Sophie and I miss her very much.

Ronald Bailey interviews Peter Singer here.

Retribution, n. A rain of fire-and-brimstone that falls alike upon the just and such of the unjust as have not procured shelter by evicting them.

In the lines following, addressed to an Emperor in exile by Father Gassalasca Jape, the reverend poet appears to hint his sense of the imprudence of turning about to face Retribution when it is taking exercise:

What, what! Dom Pedro, you desire to go
Back to Brazil to end your days in quiet?
Why, what assurance have you 'twould be so?
'Tis not so long since you were in a riot,
And your dear subjects showed a will to fly at
Your throat and shake you like a rat. You know
That empires are ungrateful; are you certain
Republics are less handy to get hurt in?

(Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, c. 1911)

Here.

To the Editor:

Re "Cheney Sees 'Shameless' Revisionism on War" (front page, Nov. 22):

Is it not the vice president himself, and the president and other administration figures, who have shamelessly revised this country's justification for going to war in Iraq?

The first rationale was to eliminate weapons of mass destruction. When they could not be found, the second rationale was to link Saddam Hussein to Al Qaeda.

When that rationale proved elusive, a third rationale was formulated: to bring democracy to the region. This goal is now in jeopardy, due in large measure to a lack of planning to ensure security and a blossoming terrorist movement.

Vice President Dick Cheney would do well to turn his attention to the larger issue of resolving the mess he has helped create, rather than practicing active amnesia.

Thomas V. Czarnowski
New York, Nov. 22, 2005

Note from AnalPhilosopher: Czarnowski is an idiot. There can be more than one rationale for a given action, such as a war. There were, in fact, many rationales for the war in Iraq, as the administration has acknowledged repeatedly. That the administration chose to assert or emphasize one rationale at the outset of the war, and others later, doesn't mean that the others were inoperative or nonexistent. Suppose I believe (as I do) that it's wrong to kill and eat animals. I will make it my goal to persuade people, rationally, to abstain from meat. Since different people have different values, I will have to make multiple arguments, one from utilitarianism (for the utilitarians in my audience), one from Christianity (for the Christians in my audience), one from environmentalism (for the environmentalists in my audience), one from Kantianism (for the Kantians in my audience), one from feminism (for the feminists in my audience), one from egoism (for the egoists in my audience), and so forth. Is there something wrong with this? Only if there's something wrong with rational argumentation!

Here.

I just received my bimonthly long-distance telephone bill from Working Assets, the slogans of which are "Making Your Voice Heard" and "Making It Easy to Make a Difference." Here is one of the "Citizen Actions" being recommended:

Confirming the Worst: Fight Alito Nomination

President Bush has nominated Judge Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court. If confirmed, Alito, who has ruled that women should get permission from their husbands for an abortion, would replace the moderate swing vote Sandra Day O'Connor. Unfortunately, Judge Alito's 15-year record of written opinions demonstrates extreme hostility to civil rights, environmental protection and reproductive rights. The religious right is ecstatic—Pat Robertson called the pick a "home run"—but the rest of us should demand that the Senate defend our hard-earned rights.

Urge Sen. John Cornyn at 202/224-2934 to oppose the nomination of Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court. Or check the box below to send a CitizenLetter.

There is so much dishonesty in this blurb that I don't know where to begin. Let me focus on the ruling about abortion. It's made to seem as though Judge Alito imposed his personal values in this ruling. What he did, of course, is compare a state statute with the United States Constitution (as interpreted by the United States Supreme Court) and decide that they're not incompatible. In other words, he thought the state was constitutionally entitled to legislate as it did. Note that he could have come to this conclusion even if he, personally, would not have voted for the legislation. The author of the Working Assets blurb isn't interested in (1) being fair to Judge Alito, (2) educating his or her readers about the law, or (3) being honest. The goal is to prevent Judge Alito from being confirmed. The end justifies the means.

Are we on the road to serfdom? Ed Feser thinks so (see here), and I'm inclined to agree. But we're not doomed to go down this road. We can reverse, or at least stall, the leftist machine that's carrying us.

Lie, n. 1. An intentionally false statement. 2. A statement with which liberals disagree.

Here is Richard Cohen's column entitled "Did Bush Lie?" You would think that Cohen would discuss the concept of a lie somewhere in his column, but he doesn't. His column reads like a Bush-hating rant. I have never—to this day—seen a convincing case that President Bush lied about anything, including the war in Iraq. If you believe President Bush lied and hope to persuade others (rationally) to believe the same thing, you must provide evidence that:

1. President Bush uttered a declarative sentence at a particular time; and
2. At the time he uttered the sentence, President Bush believed it to be false; and
3. President Bush uttered the sentence with the intention to deceive.

If you can't do this, stop saying he lied.

Addendum: Cohen concludes his column by suggesting that President Bush was "repeating the lies of others." Strictly speaking, one cannot repeat a lie, for lying requires a particular (complex) mental state. The most one can do is repeat a falsehood. But unless the person who repeats the falsehood both believes it to be false and utters it with the intention to deceive, he or she isn't lying. Cohen wants his readers to think that repeating a lie is lying. It's not. In fact, it's an incoherent concept.

Addendum 2: I've been reading Cohen's columns for many years, and I've never been impressed by his intelligence. Some of his columns appear to be written by a retard. It's ironic, therefore, that Cohen thinks President Bush is a dunce.

Mouse, n. An animal which strews its path with fainting women. As in Rome Christians were thrown to the lions, so centuries earlier in Otumwee, the most ancient and famous city of the world, female heretics were thrown to the mice. Jakak-Zotp, the historian, the only Otumwump whose writings have descended to us, says that these martyrs met their death with little dignity and much exertion. He even attempts to exculpate the mice (such is the malice of bigotry) by declaring that the unfortunate women perished, some from exhaustion, some of broken necks from falling over their own feet, and some from lack of restoratives. The mice, he avers, enjoyed the pleasures of the chase with composure. But if "Roman history is nine-tenths lying," we can hardly expect a smaller proportion of that rhetorical figure in the annals of a people capable of so incredible cruelty to lovely woman; for a hard heart has a false tongue.

(Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, c. 1911)

Here.

Here is Brendan Miniter's column on the squabble set off by Pennsylvania Representative John Murtha.

Here.

To the Editor:

Re "Computing the Cost of 'Acting White,'" by John Tierney (column, Nov. 19):

An important aspect of the difficulties for those who try to achieve beyond the accepted group stereotypic norm is coping with the envy of the group.

As we know from psychoanalytic theory, envy is a painful emotion that arouses destructive impulses, causing one to wish to get rid of the object of envy, to avoid painful feelings. This is a simplified version of a difficult phenomenon when it takes hold in a large group.

An individual willing to break out of accepted group roles must be quite brave, ambitious and willing to feel alone. This is not true for most people, who value membership in their group.

Until we can find a way to give those who feel left out more hope to improve their own lot, and to change the goals of the peer group, we will not truly tackle this problem.

Deena Harris, M.D.
New York, Nov. 19, 2005
The writer is a psychoanalyst.

I saw an interesting sign in Arlington, Texas, this afternoon as I drove to Whole Foods Market to buy a Tofurky:

It wasn't a church. It was an advertising agency.

Is there a better album than Led Zeppelin's Physical Graffiti (1975), or a better song than "Ten Years Gone"? How could 30 years have passed so quickly? I'll always be 18, whatever the calendar says.

Addendum: In case you're wondering, yes, I saw Led Zeppelin in concert. It was in the Pontiac (Michigan) Silverdome in 1976. I won a ticket in a radio-station contest and rode down on a bus with other winners. The band members looked like ants from our seats, but the sound was good. There was no warm-up band. Led Zeppelin played for about three hours. At one point during the concert, the music stopped and the stage lights went out. I thought it was an intermission. All of a sudden, a spotlight came on. There on the stage was Jimmy Page (see here as well), wearing his electric guitar and holding a violin bow in the air. He proceeded to play his electric guitar like a violin. It was unbelievable, one of the highlights of my life.

Paul Krugman's* column of this date ranks 17th in the list of Most E-Mailed Articles. See here. I can't believe he's pleased with the new arrangement whereby people have to pay to read his columns; but maybe he's money hungry and doesn't mind. Maybe he'd rather be rich than read. Speaking of which, I wonder how much Krugman donates to charity. He wants to take money from the wealthy and give it to the poor. If wealthy liberals such as Krugman put their money where their mouths are, there would be no need to coerce anyone, which makes you wonder whether they're motivated by concern for the poor or envy and hatred of the rich. Can you say "hypocrisy"?

* "Op-Ed columnist Paul Krugman has the disturbing habit of shaping, slicing and selectively citing numbers in a fashion that pleases his acolytes but leaves him open to substantive assaults" (Daniel Okrent, "13 Things I Meant to Write About but Never Did," The New York Times, 22 May 2005).

Here.

The duty of public civility goes with the idea that the political discussion of constitutional essentials should aim at free agreement reached on the basis of shared political values, and that the same holds for other questions bordering on those essentials, especially when they become divisive. In the way that a just war aims at a just peace, and thus restricts the use of those means of warfare that make achieving a just peace more difficult, so, when we aim for free agreement in political discussion, we are to use arguments and appeal to reasons that others are able to accept. But much political debate betrays the marks of warfare. It consists in rallying the troops and intimidating the other side, which must now increase its efforts or back down. In all this one may find the thought that to have character is to have firm convictions and be ready to proclaim them defiantly to others. To be is to confront.

(John Rawls, Justice as Fairness: A Restatement, ed. Erin Kelly [Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, Belknap Press, 2001], 117-8)

The 2005 bicycling season has drawn to a close. This past Saturday, in Denton, Texas, I did my 27th bike rally of the year and 371st overall. That makes 2005 my second-best year in terms of number of rallies completed. Here’s a summary:

1989 = 06 (006)
1990 = 31 (037)
1991 = 27 (064)
1992 = 25 (089)
1993 = 22 (111)
1994 = 21 (132)
1995 = 22 (154)
1996 = 22 (176)
1997 = 22 (198)
1998 = 21 (219)
1999 = 22 (241)
2000 = 16 (257)
2001 = 23 (280)
2002 = 22 (302)
2003 = 22 (324)
2004 = 20 (344)
2005 = 27 (371)

The average distance of this year’s 27 rallies was 62.8 miles—just over 100 kilometers. As hard as it may be to believe, I had no accidents and no flat tires. Twice, however, I had a flat tire when I got home. I must have punctured as I was rolling to my car at the finish. How’s that for good luck?

The weather at this time of year is iffy, to say the least. The brochure for this rally—called the Turkey Roll—says it’s for “tuff turkeys only.” I’ve done the Turkey Roll 13 times in the past 17 years. (Twice I did a 30K footrace instead; the other two times I wimped out.) I’ve ridden in cold, wet weather and in warm, sunny weather. I’ve ridden in howling winds and in calm air. Half the fun is not knowing what you’ll get. Saturday’s weather, I’m happy to report, was near-perfect. The temperature was in the low fifties at the start and increased gradually as we pedaled. The sky was initially overcast, but the clouds blew off, leaving a glorious sun overhead. By the time we finished, it had clouded up again. I enjoyed the sun while it was out. The wind, however, was stiff all morning. Here is a map of the course (click to enlarge):

I love traditions, and this rally is traditional. I almost always see my friends Joe Culotta, Mike Sweeney, and Julius Bejsovec there. It has less of a race atmosphere than other rallies, so nobody feels pressure to hammer. We rode side by side for much of the way, talking, laughing, and commiserating. Julius’s stepson (to be) Scott recently took up bicycling. I was surprised by how well he rode. I hope to see him at the rallies next year. For some reason, I felt good Saturday. I hurt my back on 10 October while doing a long (13.2-mile) training run for the White Rock Marathon. The pain has been quite bad for the past couple of weeks. I have to walk bent over and haven’t been able to do any running. But bicycling doesn’t bother me. It was great to get some aerobic exercise after 13 days of inactivity (other than walking). I felt like a dog that had been caged. My average speed for the 58.70 miles was 17.16 miles per hour. That makes it my 10th-fastest rally of the year.

The highlight of the Turkey Roll is the rest stop about 40 miles in. It’s a motor home belonging to Terrill King and his wife. They park their motor home alongside the road, in the middle of nowhere, and set up tables and chairs for the bicyclists. The tables are covered with food (including beef brisket) and drink. Bicyclists go into the motor home to use the toilet. The Kings are enthusiastic Aggies. I always tell them that I taught for a year at Texas A&M before coming to UTA, and before I leave, I express hope that the Aggies beat the hated Texas Longhorns in their game the day after Thanksgiving. It would be a special victory this year, for it would knock the Longhorns out of the national title game. All in all, my friends and I had a great time in the beautiful Denton countryside. I can’t think of a better ending to another year of bicycling.

Addendum: Somebody has posted images of the rally. See here. I’m visible in image 030. I’m the rider in red on the far right, talking to my friends as we await the start.

To the Editor:

Dan Savage's argument for a constitutional amendment is premised on the false assumption, shared by the right, that there is no constitutional right to privacy. Our Constitution establishes a government with limited powers and is predicated on a conception of natural (pre-political) rights.

The Ninth Amendment says, "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."

So if there is no explicit power to violate privacy given to the government, which there isn't, then we retain our natural right to privacy.

Aeon James Skoble
Bridgewater, Mass., Nov. 16, 2005
The writer is an associate professor of philosophy at Bridgewater State College.

Note from AnalPhilosopher: The natural right to privacy doesn't include a right to murder people in my house.

Existence, n.

A transient, horrible fantastic dream,
Wherein is nothing yet all do seem:
From which we're wakened by a friendly nudge
Of our bedfellow Death, and cry: "O fudge!"

(Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, c. 1911)

You know you're anal retentive.

Here.

Here is Judge Richard A. Posner's post about orphan drugs.

Here is an interview with French "philosopher" Jean Baudrillard, whose book America has a neat cover. (Then again, you can't judge a book by its cover.)

Incredibly, we have still not had a national discussion of the morality of the war in Iraq. The discussion has focused, and continues to focus, on what President Bush believed, intended, expected, and sought. These issues are tangential. The war can be right even if President Bush's beliefs were false, his intentions bad, his expectations groundless, and his motives impure.