Tuesday, January 09, 2007

Edward Kennedy's Speech



You can read a transcript here. The speech is all about president Bush's manly surge concept and its impracticality in the framework of history.

I found the comments to the transcript (which is on a NYT blog) even more interesting. Though the readers of the blog are probably not a fair cross-section of Americans with different opinions it is still odd to find that those who disliked what Kennedy said tend not to have very many facts in their arguments. Instead, the arguments are emotional and have to do with winning, patriotism, unquestioning obedience to the presidency and the view that Democrats would never defend this country against anyone, though at the same time it's unclear if the individuals having these feelings actually know who the enemy is that we need to defend against.

Almost magical thinking. This is a concern, because I'm not sure how one would argue against magical thinking. Logic is pretty powerless there.