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Blogs are a familiar feature on the internet - where users post content in an accumulating manner, with comments, and search options, etc. They facilitate expression and exploration, and via attached comments, also debate and synthesis.


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Blogs

5243

Brian Dominick's Blog

Web Address: http://www.zcommunications.org/zspace/briandominick
Bio: . Brian has taught a variety of courses at ZMI in the years since. (More)

All Dominick Blogs

Inconsistency gaining new consistency for Kerry?

By Brian Dominick at Aug 13, 2004


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Our good friend Rahul Mahajan recently concluded that candidate Kerry is being "illogical" vis-a-vis his stance on presidential powers with regard to warmaking. To me, it appears that for a would-be president, Kerry's stance is remarkably logical, if also dispicable... Regarding Kerry's insistence that he'd still vote to give the president a blank check for warmaking, as he did in 2002, given the choice again, Kerry said, "I believe it's the right authority for a president to have." Rahul comments:
This can only mean that he believes the president should have the authority to go to war on his own say-so, without needing Congressional approval. Of course, it's equally likely that Kerry is simply continuing the stunning illogic that marks his campaign statements.
As I see it, Kerry's stance serves his interests remarkably well. First, he's dropped any notion of being the antiwar candidate. That was really just for the first phase of the Democratic primaries, until it was down to himself and Edwards (and the two "fringe", authentically antiwar candidates). Second, no candidate wants to admit that legislation they helped pass was bogus. That can't really be spun so well. But, third, the real zinger -- it sets him up to request the very same powers a year down the road! He craves those powers -- that's the fun part of being president, remember. A year from now, when he is salivating over the annihiliation of this or that impoverished third world people, he doesn't want his campaign statements to haunt him. Kerry doesn't have to worry about confronting Congress -- be it Democrat- or Republican-dominated --a Democratic president can stroll into wars with his eyes closed (see the 1990s). But he does have to worry about confronting ghosts from the campaign. And now he's insolated -- if he loses the election, he can still say Bush does NOT deserve that authority, because he misused it. (Kerry thinks a president should have that kind of power, but not Bush.) But if he wins, he gets to plead for a chance to have the authority to bomb some poor country back to the stone age, as liberals like to put it. Uncanny, if you ask me.
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Re: Inconsistency gaining new consistency for Kerry?

By Mahajan, Rahul at Aug 17, 2004 20:15 PM

Brian, Thanks for the link. There is a deplorable tendency in the common parlance to conflate "logical" with "pragmatic." When I call Kerry's statements on Iraq illogical, I am simply saying that, taken together, they contain, or seem to me to contain, logical inconsistencies, self-contradictions, and gaps in logic. I don't necessarily mean that, from the point of view of Kerry's self-interest, saying whatever he thinks he needs to in order to win while not challenging the status quo is a bad idea. Personally, I think the left has ceded too much ground in issues like truth and logic, both rhetorically and in terms of deeper analysis.

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By Ted_heistman, Truthseeker at Aug 17, 2004 09:23 AM

Also I think one has to remember that the Value system of both Kerry and Bush were formed in their formative years in the Skull and Bones. From what I understand it is a kind of finishing school for tomorrows leaders of the Plutocratic oligarchy. I never expected Kerry to deviate too much from Bush. On the kind of issues I am concerned about there is no difference really, I think perhaps Kerry may be even more damaging to democracy because once elected the country may fall back asleep, wheras Bush by his brazen abuses of power seems to inspire political activism

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