Monday, December 22, 2008

Cheney's version of the Divine Right of Kings

That is what we're talking about, right? Dick Cheney, the Vice President of the United States, believes that if the president does something to protect the American people, it cannot be illegal. One cannot help but remember Richard Nixon's related aphorism that if the president does it, it is not illegal. I suppose that paranoid right-wingers have made some progress in the past quarter century: instead of unbounded lawlessness from the "law and order" party, we now have easily evaded bounds on lawlessness. Not much, but with these folks you have to take what you can get.

What ever happened to, "my life before my liberty?" Or, as the New Hampshire state motto goes, "Live free or die"? If we aren't willing to shoulder a little risk to protect those things that we have always held dear then all is truly lost. The terrorists live by instilling fear into others. This is how they operate. I can't think of a better way of playing into their hands than basically by acting as Cheney would have us act.

The Man, The Myth, The Bio

East Bay, California, United States
Problem: I have lots of opinions on politics and culture that I need to vent. If I do not do this I will wind up muttering to myself, and that's only like one or two steps away from being a hobo. Solution: I write two blogs. A political blog that has some evident sympathies (pro-Obama, mostly liberal though I dissent on some issues, like guns and trade) and a culture blog that does, well, cultural essays in a more long-form manner. My particular thing is taking overrated things (movies, mostly, but other things too) down a peg and putting underrated things up a peg. I'm sort of the court of last resort, and I tend to focus on more obscure cultural phenomena.