Current Events — HabitableZone

Current Events » in reply to The war on terror

The war on thought
Robert — (archived)

The reason I was in no hurry to start this discussion isn't because I needed more time to think about the subject, but because I was grappling with how to introduce an intellectual question into this snakepit of partisanship. Tom, you've brilliantly demonstrated the power of mindless partisanship to abort debate, and thought itself. You wove a net by which any possible avenue of inquiry was caught and looped back to a Republican-versus-Democrat squabble. Brilliant work, Tom. Destructively brilliant.

I'll pass, until such time as it's possible to have a constructive discussion. Maybe this: Imagine that the HabitableZone is a thinktank, and that the Bush Administration itself has given us a contract to examine the fundamental questions of national security and foreign policy with fresh eyes, free of the need to assign blame for the past, free of political consideration (suppose our report will be kept secret for internal use only). The discussion that followed would be nothing like what Tom has started.

That would interest me. Yet another round of simplistic "what would Gore have done better?, huh?" blather bores me.

Sorry, Tom, I'll have to take a raincheck.

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