by John Holbo on October 3, 2013
Erick Erickson:
Democrats keep talking about our refusal to compromise. They don’t realize our compromise is defunding Obamacare. We actually want to repeal it.
I guess the next stage is to seek compromise on what ‘compromise’ means. Conservatives want ‘compromise’ to mean: we get almost everything. You get nothing. Erickson’s planning to threaten the dictionary people, maybe? (‘Dat’s a nice language you got ‘der. Be a shame if somethin’ wuz teh happin to it.’)
A kidnapper who asks for $1 million or he shoots the kid is seeking compromise, so long as he would prefer $10 million?
UPDATE: Here’s another use of the new word from Grover Norquist:
The administration asking us to raise taxes is not an offer; that’s not a compromise. That’s just losing. I’m in favor of compromise. When we did the $2.5 trillion spending restraint in the BCA, we wanted $6 trillion. I considered myself very compromised. Overly reasonable.
‘Compromise’ means conservatives getting a lot for nothing, just not absolutely everything you might ever want, for nothing. But bottom line: if you have to give to get, that’s just losing, not compromise.
by Maria on October 2, 2013
To distract attention from having fired one fifth of the army, the Conservative defence secretary Phil Hammond needed something positive, whizzy and modern to tell his party members (average age: 68) at their conference last weekend. What better than to announce how go-ahead Britain is in all things cyber and defence? Well, he went one better, and announced that the UK will soon have the power that dare not speak its name; cyber strike capability.
You see, just as ‘everyone knew’ that the NSA was eavesdropping on all manner of phone and Internet traffic, including that of the US’s supposed allies, everyone also knows that the US, Russia, China, Israel, Iran– and probably North Korea if they can string together some cast-off Lenovo servers with galvanised wire – everyone is developing and has in some manner already deployed the ability to attack other countries’ critical networked infrastructure. It’s just that no one wants to admit to it.
[click to continue…]
by Harry on October 2, 2013
ought to be cut down to size.
Pulped and reduced to a nauseous juice,
and dried out at flattened ’til ready for use,
Then covered in newsprint and lies.
And whoever edits it could do with the same treatment.
If, contrary to the truth, Ralph Miliband had had any sympathy with Britain’s enemies during WWII, of course, the Daily Mail would no doubt have offered him a column!
by Corey Robin on October 1, 2013
With this post, I’d like to kick off a five-part series on the intellectual history of fear.
Long before I was writing or thinking about conservatism and the right, I was writing and thinking about politics and fear. I began working on this topic with a dissertation in the early 1990s. I concluded that work with my first book Fear: The History of a Political Idea, which was published in 2004.
When I embarked upon the project, not many people in the academy were interested in fear. By the time I concluded it, everyone, it seemed, was. What had happened in the intervening years, of course, was 9/11.
To some degree, I think 9/11 has short-circuited our thinking about fear. Not in the obvious ways—frightened people are not in much of a position to think about anything, or so the argument goes—but in a more subtle way. [click to continue…]