perfidy

J,
Yeah, that's all that was- a bone to the GOP core. The context was a speech at some Republican function or other.

But he did say it, and it was awfully creepy.

As for the extremists in our midst- maybe it'll all even out once Christian sects in the Arab world start some terrorizing of their own.

I would argue that this message is not honey for a lot of conservatives. Its vinegar. And what we'd expect from a Massachusetts republican. Even if he doesn't express statist views in teh same way as, say, Kerry - he does have them.

Mitt doesn't have much chance in '08, I think.

Other than that, right on. I think the '08 election will be veddy, veddy interesting. If Cheney doesn't run it will be the first wide-open presidential contest in I don't know how long. At least back to '68, and maybe further. I'll have to check.

Hey... we're not all statists up here. Really!

The bitter pill for us here is that Mitt goes places like South Carolina and openly mocks the faggot-loving liberal dupes who put him in office up here. Bad form!

He seems to forget to have much of a shot in ought-eight, he needs to have a job in ought-six.

I've (d)evolved to the point where I seriously question any assertion that there's a majority of upright Muslims we can live with, at least among those who actually practice what the faith says.

Notwithstanding, I had a discussion with the spousal unit this morning, as we were driving to the hospital through Houston's wondrously fetid morning traffic stench, and NPR was reporting the UN agreement on restricting "incitement", as opposed to "advocacy of terrorism". I opined to her the two are almost indistinguishable, and that we, as a free people, sadly have to tolerate and react to both, until that time when we can point at their proponents and giggle, along with everyone else.

You can't crush stupid and dangerous ideas by forbidding them - you must expose them to the light and provide better ideas.

Mitt must surely know that, down deep. Otherwise, he's just another fucking inept statist.

Ooh. Ooh. Ooh.

From a commentary over at Jeff">http://www.proteinwisdom.com]Jeff Goldstein's presently-broken place, a quote from Salman Rushdie (in the August/September print edition of Reason, no link) that summarizes what I was trying to say above far better than I did:

I think we live in a bad age for the free speech argument. Many of us have internalized the censorship argument, which is that it is better to shut people up than to let them say things that we don't like. This is a dangerous slippery slope, because people of good intentions and high principles can see censorship as a way of advancing their cause and not as a terrible mistake. Yet bad ideas don't cease to exist by not being expressed. They fester and become more powerful.

Shutting them up, tapping their mosques, or expelling them, as in Britain, is not the answer.

On a side note, however, preventing their entry is a whole 'nother thing, and George Galloway, ferinstance, ought to have been forced to get a visa for his present tour of the States, if such a thing were feasible, which it weren't. Because he's a rabble-rousing guttersnipe? No, because he's an illiterate maundering asshole who will neither say anything coherent nor just shut up.

I'd ask for a pardon of my seeming inconsistency on the matter.

I'm thrilled - seriously - that Galloway comes up in a discussion of Romney. Dude's a sleaze, and I'm pleased to see his name end up next to bad associations.

Well, the original juxtaposition of the two is coincidental, as they're both attacking a problem, each from an unacceptable extreme.

To close the loop, I'd state my hope that, like those of the jihadists and their apologists, Mitt's silly-ass ideas are held up to the scorn and ridicule they so richly deserve.

We can't, as a soceity, tell them to shut up. The government can't tell them to shut up. Them being any group of people spouting hateful, uh, spew. The only way is to somehow make whatever it is seem stupid and pathetic. Embarrass and humiliate in a way that doesn't turn them into martyrs.

Look at the KKK now. Once, they were a frightening group, capable of savage acts of terror intended to keep the blacks down, and frighten any white who opposed them. Now, they are goofy rednecks in sheets, and no one takes them seriously.

Perhaps that is the answer for Al Qaida and other terrorist groups. If we could convince the world (especially certain parts of the west) that suicide bombings aren't the canny efforts of repressed minorities to overthrow colonialist rule, or brave freedom fighters, or speaking truth to power, or phase three of a seven step plan to reestablish the caliphate - that rather they are pathetic dupes of hateful medieval losers, well I think the market for splodeydopes might dry up a little.

And as for Mitt Romney and other statist losers, when will we in this country finally give up this idea that government action is a panacea for all our ills? Almost everyone except for libertarians and a few conservatives buys into this myth, at least for something. Use state power to enforce whatever it is you want enforced, be it abortion, anti-abortion, tolerance (ha), rude speech by foriegners ad infinitum.

Government can be a solution, and in certain circumstances is the only one. But in most cases it should be the very last option. If for no other reason than government solutions last long after the problem is solved, gone, or moot.

And Galloway is a fuck, and he should be permanently banned from this country by executive order or legislative action or both.