Foreign Policy: blogs 'an elaborate network with agenda-setting power'
Henry Copeland links to an article in Foreign Policy, reminding us you just can't overuse the first amendment. Thomas Paine would be proud. While we're at it, let's remember the text:

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances."

I find myself particularly grateful these days for the Bill of Rights.

Beware the leader who...
My friend Phil shared with me this quote, sent to him by his daughter:

"Beware the leader who bangs the drums of war in order to whip the citizenry into a patriotic fervor, for patriotism is indeed a double-edged sword. It both emboldens the blood, just as it narrows the mind...

"And when the drums of war have reached a fever pitch and the blood boils with hate and the mind has closed, the leader will have no need in seizing the rights of the citizenry.

"Rather, the citizenry, infused with fear and blinded with patriotism, will offer up all of their rights unto the leader, and gladly so.

"How do I know?

"For all this I have done. And I am Caesar."

--William Shakespeare

Blues
Here's a wonderful essay by Hendrik Hertzberg in this week's New Yorker. An exerpt:

"The early analyses credited Bush’s victory to religious conservatives, particularly those in the evangelical movement. In voting for Bush, as eighty per cent of them did, many of these formerly nonvoting white evangelicals are remaining true to their unworldliness. In voting for a party that wants to tax work rather than wealth, that scorns thrift, that sees the natural world not as a common inheritance but as an object of exploitation, and that equates economic inequality with economic vitality, they have voted against their own material (and, some might imagine, spiritual) well-being. The moral values that stirred them seem not to encompass botched wars or economic injustices or environmental depredations; rather, moral values are about sexual behavior and its various manifestations and outcomes, about family structures, and about a particularly demonstrative brand of religious piety. What was important to these voters, it appears, was not Bush’s public record but what they conceived to be his private soul. He is a good Christian, so his policy failures are forgivable. He is a saved sinner, so the dissipations of his early and middle years are not tokens of a weak character but testaments to the transformative power of his faith. He relies on God for guidance, so his intellectual laziness is not a danger."

Correcting the blue/red balance
Even when you know the election maps skew the red/blue balance in favor of area, not population, it's still hard to shake the impression that we're a red country. For a more accurate graphical view of how we voted, take a look at these
Election result maps from the University of Michigan. Am I crazy or does the cartographic map with purple show very little pure red but quite a bit of pure blue?

The Whole World Is Watching



My friend Willa said this cover makes her want to take back the tea from Boston Harbor. I agree -- a vote for George W is akin to a vote in 1773 for George III.

Shock and Awful
The Times writer must have written this post-election editorial before the election. After, the depression wouldn't have allowed this level of reason.

The Revolution Will Be Posted
Imagine... on the Times' op-ed page... bloggers!