Sunday, August 14, 2005
Op-Ed review: - David Brooks - Two Steps Toward a Sensible Immigration Policy
He mentions, and supports- Guest worker programs
- Tougher border control
But fails to mention a third - and most likely effective - step, employer penalties. But that's off limits for Republicans, and Brooks.
- David Broder - The Divide In Education
749 words on education. NCLB act, standards, teachers, disadvantaged students - the works, without a single mention of the debate over evolution. Congratulations, David! You've done it again - remained mute while conservatives do damage to the United States.
- George Will - Sense From the Hall of Framers
Don't waste your time on this one. Will constructs an absurd liberal straw-man and then knocks him down. How absurd? Here is the framework, with fill-ins so you can tailor it for your polemical ends:Judging by the river of rhetoric that has flowed in response to the court vacancy, contemporary [political group]'s narrative of American constitutional history goes something like this:
"On the night of April 18, 1775, Paul Revere galloped through the Massachusetts countryside, and to every Middlesex village and farm went his famous cry of alarm, 'The British are coming! The British are coming to menace the ancient British right to [activity]!' The next morning, by the rude bridge that arched the flood, their flag to April's breeze unfurled, the embattled farmers stood and fired the shot heard round the world in defense of the right to [activity]. The Articles of Confederation, ratified near the end of the Revolutionary War to Defend [activity], proved unsatisfactory, so in the summer of 1787, 55 framers gathered here to draft a Constitution. Even though this city was sweltering, the framers kept the windows of Independence Hall closed. Some say that was to keep out the horseflies. Actually, it was to preserve secrecy conducive to calm deliberations about how to craft a more perfect [activity] right. The Constitution was ratified after the state conventions vigorously debated the right to [activity]. But 74 years later, a great Civil War had to be fought to defend the Constitution against states that would secede from the Union rather than acknowledge that a ... right to [activity] is an emanation loitering in the penumbra of other rights. And so on." By elevating a particular activity or right to the highest level of a political framework (i.e. Constitution), it makes it look silly. Will is not making a reasoned argument. He's trivializing the issue and portraying advocates as fools, which anybody can to for any topic.
Of minor interest is the fact that Will speaks glowingly about the National Constitutional Center in Philadelphia. It looks pretty mainstream (despite Will's suggestion that it is a haven for property rights fanatics). However, on their Distinguished Scholars Advisory Panel page, we find torture-advocate and the-president-can-do-anything-he-wants-theorist John Yoo
posted by Quiddity at 8/14/2005 07:13:00 AM
1 comments
If we substitute the word "privacy" for "abortion", wouldn't a lot of Americans agree with Will's fanciful narrative?
And since the right to a medically safe abortion is a part of the right to privacy, Will's own argument simply falls apart.
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