Incoherent Babbling

Fun, fun, fun reading in the Houston Chronicle today. George Will used the fervor over Harvard President Larry Summers statements concerning the possible cognitive differences between men and women to push the idea that George Bush's inaugural address was a " manifesto about human nature" and to slam the left for its desire to " maximize the stakes of politics and the grandeur of government's role". And here I laugh maniacally, hahahahahaha, because the presumption is just so hysterically funny.

First let me state for the record that I believe there may very well be cognitive learning differences between men and women, and I also believe that the academic setting is an appropriate place to "encourage uncircumscribed intellectual exploration". The United States has become so repressed by political correctness that we are no longer free to express new ideas.

So for Will to use this example to put forth the notion that W is some great Socratic thinker, a champion of the Founding Father's notion of natural right and a defender of Lincoln's " 'proposition' that all men are created equal" is about a ludicrous as Asscroft covering up the nekkid lady at the Justice Dept. It just don't make no sense! And to claim the left wishes to create a "properly governed society" so it can "write what it wants on the blank slate of humanity" and that the ultimate horror of the left is "the thought that nature sets limits to the malleability of human material" WTF.

George Bush hates discussion, hates dissension. He fills his cabinet with yes men (and women) so that no one will disagree with anything Cheney says. He refuses to hold open press conferences or briefings because he doesn't want information leaking out to the wrong sort of people (that would be you and me). W brought us the Patriot Act and secret tribunals. All men are created equal, so long as they don't want to marry other men, have an abortion or question the legitimacy of an unprovoked attack on another country.

Talk about your blank slate, isn't that what the elections in Iraq resembles, trying to write Western sensibilities over the culture of another and calling it democracy building. The right has already don't a darn good job of creating a horrifying uniformity of thought here in the good old US of A. I suppose while we are exporting all of our jobs overseas, we should be willing to share our xenophobia as well. And as for the limits to the malleabitity of human material, please, don't get me started. Can you say cultural elitism.

Possibly George Will lives in the utopia of many traditional conservatives from the bygone era when the right seemingly stood for limited government intervention and the left for pork and protectionism. That was how my daddy taught me to look at the world. But times have changed, our country has changed. To paraphrase the Great Cthulhu, cognitive dissonance beats check and balances anyday.