One Response to “NEW HAMPSHIRE: Bill Richardson Makes a Fool of Himself”

1. CFB says:

   January 11, 2009 at 2:17 pm

   I remember reading Nietzsche’s Birth of Tragedy as an undergraduate and marveling at his deep knowledge of not only Greek language and culture but those of Germany and France as well. I was studying Greek at the time and I understood my knowledge would never approach a fraction of his. Nietzsche’s background as a classical philologist permeates and illuminates all of his work. I’m told there are errors in his scholarship, but few scholars these days would be able to point them out. And yet Nietzsche couldn’t get a job at a European university to save his life, quite literally. His inability to penetrate that world can be attributed largely to the revolutionary (and often repulsive) nature of his ideas. But another reason is that the men who did hold those distinguished chairs were also extremely learned fellows, sometimes even more learned than he.

   This is not to say that they were morally upright — just that their intelligence and learning cannot be denied. Indeed, the German professoriate in those days was a cesspool of anti-semitism, racism, eugenics, imperialism, sexism — pretty much any ism you could name, eventually culminating in the biggest ism of them all. Hitler never could have accomplished what he did without the support of many highly educated people.

   The lesson for me is that very smart people are just as apt to believe wicked lies as their intellectual inferiors are wont to do. The key ingredient is the will to believe exactly what they want to believe, regardless of fact. Another key ingredient is the cooperation of those of us who stand by and allow these frauds to spew their vile nonsense without challenge.

   These days I frequently find myself thinking about this, and also about several fairy tales. The Emperor Has No Clothes. The Pied Piper. And Humpty Dumpty. We’ve sustained a number of big falls lately. I wonder if we’ve hit the ground yet.
2. From Inwood says:

   January 11, 2009 at 4:30 pm

   Eric

   Your problem is that, in my unimagined imagination or my imagined unimagination, England, you know, um, aided by the U. S., waged, you know, a war of genocide against, you know, the German Nation & its lovely blond-haired blue eyed babies so, you know, out of all required, you know, proportion, with all the, you know, advantages it had, especially in the air, & against the you know, kids & the kittens & the art treasures & the beautiful churches which suffered the most (what, no Synagogues left standing for the Allies to accidentally bomb? Nevermind!), which, you know, no one really knows about except a few of us in the know.

   Well, naturally, I can only, you know, cover these things roughly from memory, but if I’ve left anything out, why you just, um, ask me specific questions and, you know, I’ll tackle them one by one , but, you know, I believe I’ve hit the main points….

   Click, click go the steel balls….
3. Rob says:

   January 11, 2009 at 8:27 pm

   Walt apparently doesn’t consider the bombing and rocketing of Britain by Germany during WWII worth mentioning.

   Though I really enjoy Foreign Policy as a magazine, their blog is really pretty poor, it holds none of the deep analysis that marks the best work in their magazine.

   After a week of Walt’s spew, it’s best to treat him like Andrew Sullivan and ignore him.
4. Barry Meislin says:

   January 12, 2009 at 6:03 am

   Gosh, for Walt, Israel is the Nazis and Hamas leaders are all Churchills.

   “Thought” experiment, indeed. (And I bet he’s pleased he’s hitting all the right buttons.)

   But it will certainly earn this pathetic Patrick-Buchanan-wannabe a lot of brownie points (with all the usual suspects).
5. lester says:

   January 12, 2009 at 11:43 am

   does anyone know where geographically that schoolhuse is located in gaza? because the outskirts are where alot of the fighting is known to take place so the school may very well be empty.

   5- well churchill is no hero to realists. he started ww1 and ww2 essentially for his own amusement