Dr. Sanity has a fine rant up about how the defense mechanism of denial can serve to keep a person’s belief system intact and help avoid the difficult and threatening task of changing one’s mind in the face of evidence … Continue reading →
Cathy Young responded to yesterday’s post of mine about Iraq with a post of her own, from which I’ve excerpted the following: Now, there is another argument being made: that critics of the war, should they succeed, will be responsible … Continue reading →
The Anchoress has written this wonderful post, so I don’t have to. Read the whole thing, please, but most particularly this: Right now, the insurgents are being vastly encouraged by what they read coming out of the mouths of Democrats … Continue reading →
Yes, indeed, I am that old–old enough to remember when Veterans’ Day was Armistice Day. The change occurred in 1954, when I was very small, in order to accommodate World War II. Since then the original name has largely fallen … Continue reading →
Remember those nuclear bumper busters from the Kerry-Bush debates of ’04? They reminded me a bit of Quemoy and Matsu in the Nixon-Kennedy debates of 1960: a big fuss made at the time, but then virtually forgotten. Well, it’s a … Continue reading →
Even though Vietnam and Iraq are far from the same, there are certainly similarities–although they’re not necessarily the ones the “quagmire” crowd would cite. We are now engaged in a very intense part of the “Iraqization” phase of the current … Continue reading →
[See previous posts in the series: Part I (Gandhi); and Part IIA (Quaker history).] For some reason, this post was much harder to write—and far longer!—than I ever expected it to be. So I apologize, especially for the length. I … Continue reading →
A while back, commenter Richard Aubrey wrote here: The neat thing about our current situation is that we don’t have to make stuff up about what our enemies want. They tell us. The problem is in believing them. But you … Continue reading →
[This is the second segment of my multi-part series on pacifism. The first, which dealt with Gandhi, can be found here. This second part discusses the Quaker approach. It also will be divided into two smaller sections, of which this … Continue reading →
Let’s see if I’ve got this straight: US District Court Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein has ordered the release of more Abu Ghraib photos to help the ACLU prove that prisoners have been abused, and it’s OK because the terrorists don’t … Continue reading →
After reading Martha Gellhorn’s remarkably prescient 1961 Atlantic Monthly article about the Palestinians, I wanted to read more of her work. I recently and serendipitously happened upon a copy of her Travels with Myself and Another (the “other” being short-term … Continue reading →
While researching this post on the phrase “speaking truth to power,” I discovered that it originated among Quakers, and I promised that I’d write something soon about Quaker pacifism. I had planned that this post would be that “something.” But … Continue reading →