Okay, so it’s actually Wednesday. I’ve been busy – sue me. Along those lines, I’ve got some big stuff I want to talk about, but I’ll leave it for next week and just hit a couple things quickly that irked me recently.
Stickshifts and Safetybelts – Cake
First, from people that routinely drive me nuts, how about this quote from Cato (emphasis added):
Once we’ve accepted a definition of “public health” expansive enough for government to dictate what we can and can’t put into our bodies, it’s a short leap to seat belt laws, motorcycle helmet laws, assisted suicide bans, and prohibitions and restrictions on all sorts of other risky behavior.
I’m not even going to get into the argument about whether we ought to have seatbelt laws (we obviously should) – I just want to point out that Cato presents it first as if it were obvious that such a spillover would be devastating. Imagine the consequences if suddenly the state could create seat belt laws! Living as I do in the ONE state in the Union that does not already have seat belt laws, let me just say that our message to the seat-belt terrorists is “bring it on.”
Also, in case you were wondering, seat belt laws are overwhelmingly popular, with over 60 percent of the population supporting primary enforcement (i.e. – laws that let the cops pull you over for a seatbelt violation alone).
The second thing that annoyed me was this, from digby, who I normally love reading. It’s nothing important – just a small example of the echo chamber effect of liberal blogs that sometimes drives me nuts.
The thesis of the post (and of every single comment) is that those wacky conservatives are so silly, based on this quote from (the, to be fair, certifiably nuts) Charles Krauthammer
To cut off Petraeus’s plan just as it is beginning — the last surge troops arrived only last month — on the assumption that we cannot succeed is to declare Petraeus either deluded or dishonorable. Deluded in that, as the best-positioned American in Baghdad, he still believes we can succeed. Or dishonorable in pretending to believe in victory and sending soldiers to die in what he really knows is an already failed strategy.
Digby suggests that the point of this comment is to say that “we should stay in Iraq because it would insult General Petreus if we didn’t” and she quotes another blog as saying “if we pulled out troops it would say bad things about General Petraeus and that’s totally not fair. No, seriously.” And the commenters trip over themselves to make fun of such a ludicrous premise.
As far as I can tell, no one makes the (pretty obvious, to me) point that this is not at all what Krauthammer was saying. He is implying that if people want to cut off the surge, they must prove that a respected general is, in fact, deluded or dishonorable. They can’t just say he is wrong – they have to go out on a limb and call him incompetent or a traitor. It has nothing to do with not criticizing him because it would be mean. He is using the credibility of Petraeus to demonstrate why people ought to doubt those who criticize him.
Now, his point is still absurd for a number of reasons, which is all the more reason why people should just answer him instead of making up some stupid story.