Political Philosophy

Let’s do a grab-bag of news issues and a philosophical question. . . oooohm. What is the sound of no hands clapping for Obama? Would it sound like panic? Are they really rights if nobody uses them? Can something that never died come back to life? What is gray? All this and not a word more. . .

1. It’s (Still) Alive!!: Dick Lugar went down in flames last night in the Indiana Republican Primary. For 36 years, this moderate Republican has been a pillar of the Republican Party in Washington and in Indiana. Last night, Tea Party upstart Indiana State Treasurer Richard Mourdock took him down. That has the MSM wondering if the Tea Party has come back to life, especially with Tea Party-backed Senate candidates Jeff Flake (AZ), Josh Mandel (Ohio), and Ted Cruz (TX) likely to join him. But how can something which never died come back to life?

2. Waive It Goodbye: Zimmerman waived his speedy trial rights yesterday in the Trayvon Martin shooting. Some have asked if this is normal. The answer is yes, almost everyone waives their speedy trial rights because nobody wants to rush into a trial because it’s too risky. So are they really rights if no one gets to use them?

3. The Sound of Panic: I mentioned the other day that Obama is having a hard time. Even the MSM is taking note. Jeff Greenfield just wrote an interesting column in which he laments “Obama’s bad week.” He notes, with a good deal of panic, that the empty stadium business has been a disaster for Obama because it has dominated the news. And that’s true. Even Politico just wrote an article whining about how unfair it was for everyone to keep harping on it. Greenfield also adds that the bigger worry should be that this is proof that college kids have abandoned Obama. He then pointed out that Saturday Night Live pulling a skit about Obama politicizing the bin Laden killing was proof that Obama did politicize the killing and that the left is really worried about it. He also mentioned that Obama’s political ads have been underwhelming.

James Carville likewise is panicking. He yelled at his stupid Democratic-voter friends to “wake the f**k up!” Heck, we’ve been telling them that for years, but for a different reason. His reason is that Obama is in danger of losing and yet the Democrats are showing no signs of enthusiasm or urgency. That’ll happen when your administration is a walking advertisement for “FAIL by Obama.”

Obama also is imploding all over the place on the gay marriage thing. Not only did North Carolina toss a lot of cold water on the dream that gay marriage would spread beyond the liberal enclaves (they banned gay marriage AND civil unions 69% to 31% last night), but Obama is being called a hypocrite on the issue by the left. Indeed, after Biden said this weekend that he’s totally thrilled with gay marriage and would have one himself if he could find the right woman, Obama continued to try to be for it and against it at the same time. This has the MSM fuming:

● CNN’s Jessica Yellin asked if Obama was trying to “have it both ways before an election” and whether he should “stop dancing around the issue.”

● ABC’s Jake Tapper: “It seems cynical to hide this prior to the election” and then attack Obama’s people for hiding behind talking points.

● NBC’s Chuck Todd: “So help me out here. He opposes bans on gay marriage, but he doesn’t yet support gay marriage?”

Sounds like they want to out Mr. Obama, doesn’t it? So what is the sound of sycophancy fading?

4. Let’s Get Philosophical: Finally, I want to bring up something we discussed yesterday in the Politics of Trek comments. For as far back as I can remember, conservatives have been accused by liberals of “seeing everything in black and white” and being unable to see shades of gray. But in my experience, the opposite is actually true. Conservatives tend to be very good at grasping how much gray there is in the world and accepting it as gray. It’s liberals who are incapable of accepting gray. Indeed, they seem to have a nearly obsessive need to define everything as black or white and to demand that all the blacks be banned or prohibited while everyone be forced to partake in all the whites, i.e. no grays will be tolerated.

The reason liberals attack conservatives as being incapable of seeing “shades of gray” is because liberals lack consistency and conservatives don’t. In other words, liberals define everything as black or white, but these extreme positions can change at a moment’s notice. Thus, liberals are simultaneously extremists, because everything must be a black or white, and unprincipled, because black and white can change at any time. However, they wrongly see their ability to flop around as a positive, which they define as being able to see shades of gray, i.e. having nuanced minds, even though they really aren’t seeing any gray at all -- just lots of blacks and whites flopping around. It would be like loving or hating everyone on the planet but then claiming you are actually indifferent about people because you can move people from the love to the hate column and vice versa.

And since conservatives rarely tend to change their minds about what they consider black and white, liberals wrongly accuse conservatives of not being able to see gray even though it isn’t really gray the liberals are talking about. . . it’s really “lack” of inconsistency which liberals are calling “incapable of seeing gray.”

Thoughts?