I’m hitting the road today. Trying to get back home. No blogging until late tonight or very early in the morning. I toured the 9th ward and the lower 9th ward. Man, you have to see it to believe it. I’ll post some pics later on the week.
Update: Flying any airlines these days simply bites! I’m home. And I’m grateful.
Here is a description of the mindset of the 18th-century British loyalist —or Tory— in America on the eve of the American Revolution. This excerpt comes from Vernon Parrington’s Pulitzer Prize winning The Colonial Mind 1620-1800.
See how what Parrington describes matches political types we see in America today—
” We must first take into account….Tory philosophy. Compressed into a sentence, it was an expression of the will-to-power of the wealthy. It’s motive was economic class interest, and it’s object the exploitation of society through the instrumentality of the state. Stated thus….it lays itself open to …criticism….In consequence, much ingenuity in tailoring was necessary to provide it with garments to cover its nakedness.
Embroidered with patriotism, loyalty, law and order, it made a very respectable appearance; and when it put on the stately robe of the British Constitution, it was enormously impressive.
It seems that the conservative mind and the conservative approach to politics does not change much with time. (Hence, I suppose, despite the radical nature of some on the right today, the term “conservative”)
As a low-minded bonus to readers, please note the illustration of the man being tarred-and-feathered in Colonial Boston.
In this case, British tax collector John Malcolm is being tarred-and-feathered and forced to drink hot tea as reprisal for the tea tax that spurred the Boston Tea Party.
The image is a British propaganda piece. Though, that said, the noose is an awful image at any time in history.
Tarring-and-feathering was vigilante justice. I’d like to think that even a friend of Samuel Adams such as myself would not have taken part in the practice.
I think that both myself and Errington would have been , like Thomas Paine back then, or a many bloggers today, propagandists for the Revolutionary side.
There is almost an endless number of people who have pointed out our mistakes in Iraq. There is an equal number that note the atmosphere that we created after the fall of Sadam has led to many of the problems that we have today. We embraced the Shiites over the Sunnis. We allowed the Kurds to do almost anything that they wished in the northern territories. Now, we wonder why they can’t get along.
Just last month, General Petraeus was telling us that the Surge is working. Without a political solution, the Surge can’t work. There is no doubt that our troops can bring order to a region. That’s not the problem. The problem is what happens when our troops leave?
David Schuster is sitting in for Keith Olbermann on Countdown. He talks with Middle East reporter from the Washington Post, Rajiv Chandrasekaran.
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From WaPo:
For much of this year, the U.S. military strategy in Iraq has sought to reduce violence so that politicians could bring about national reconciliation, but several top Iraqi leaders say they have lost faith in that broad goal.
Iraqi leaders argue that sectarian animosity is entrenched in the structure of their government. Instead of reconciliation, they now stress alternative and perhaps more attainable goals: streamlining the government bureaucracy, placing experienced technocrats in positions of authority and improving the dismal record of providing basic services. (more…)
More and more congressman have stood up and stated that the Bush Administration didn’t really brief them. Rockefeller, Chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, was the first who said he wasn’t adequately briefed. Nancy Pelosi was the latest to join the chorus.
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From WaPo:
How the United States became associated with torture is not just a matter of historical interest. And that’s all the more clear today, with the publication of a major New York Times story describing the Bush administration’s ongoing circumvention of national and international prohibitions against barbaric interrogation practices.
Finding out what our government has been doing in our name, and openly debating our interrogation policies, should have been high on the national agenda since the disclosure of the shockingly inhumane treatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib. Few other issues speak so clearly to how we see ourselves as a people — and how others see us. (more…)
Errington C. Thompson, MD, is a surgeon, scholar, fulltime sports fan and part-time political activist. He is active in a number of community projects and initiatives. Through medicine, he strives to improve the physical health of all he treats...
