A Personal Blog
by Michael Froomkin
Laurie Silvers & Mitchell Rubenstein Distinguished Professor of Law
University of Miami School of Law
My Publications | e-mail
All opinions on this blog are those of the author(s) and not their employer(s) unelss otherwise specified.
Who Reads Discourse.net?
Readers describe themselves.
Please join in.Reader Map
Recent Comments
- Brooks Fudenberg on I Voted
- Jermaine Chad Ingram on Some Thoughts about the Downballot (Voters’ Guide Part II: Judicial Retention Elections)
- C.E. Petit on I Voted
- Jane Moscowitz on I Voted
- Ally Figueroa on Some Thoughts about the Downballot (Voters’ Guide Part II: Judicial Retention Elections)
Subscribe to Blog via Email
Join 52 other subscribers
Hold Them Accountable
This entry was posted in Politics: US: 2004 Election. Bookmark the permalink.
A good site, I’ll admit, but you have to consider your sources. According to the IRS, fightbackcampaign.org is the child of Eric Carbone, of Washington, D.C.. He’s also behind Zellout.com, which urges us to all flood Zell with emails, http://www.draftwesleyclark.com, very political guy. This was an MBA student at Northwestern who dropped out to start the real fans sports network with some others, sold it to AOL in 1997, and then retired at 32…he is, or at least was, the director of online communications for the Clark for President, Inc., group in Little Rock, as well…and evidently all he does is spend his money and time advancing his own political views…to me, this ad doesn’t bear the same weight once you know the real source of it, and that says something about a need for better 527 disclosure…
The D’s need to hammer Bush relentlessly on Iraq, because it is the ONLY issue that Der Shrubber has going for him. Not even the most delusional Republicans are supporting Bush because of his policies on the economy, the environment, healthcare, the job market…..
The notion that Bush is a tough guy who is standing up to the Islamofascists is the sole reason he still enjoys the support of 48% of our clueless electorate. Kerry must make the case that Bush is failing miserably in Iraq, and is breeding terrrorists faster than our brave military personnel can eliminate them.
I do not see what there is about that site to get so excited about. The substance of the message has been advanced for some time.
To me that site is an example of the lack of discourse (no pun intended) in the campaign today. Both sides make statements, the truth of which they believe to be self-evident. The claims made by the site for example, that Bush has made “mistakes” in Iraq, are not argued by the site, merely asserted. There are well reasoned arguments to be made that things are going poorly. There are well reasoned arguments that things are going well.
There is far too much preaching to the choirs in this campaign. And I do not mean to single out a fellow reader of this blog, but the attitude that we have a “clueless electorate” has historically been used to justify fascism and other autocratic regimes where an elite felt no need to justify or explain their actions to the “inferior” classes. Now I know this is far from what Mr. Jung meant to invoke, but the essense of the attitude is the same. It is a destructive attitude that discourages the types of discussions we must be having.
Most lacking has been the debate on the proper moral and value framework to evaluate events such as Iraq. Facts in and of themselves mean nothing. People have died, both Iraqis and Americans. But people have also been liberated. Terrorists have been created and bred as a result. Terrorists have been killed and disrupted as well. The real questions are how to put these disparate and contradictory facts into a framework that helps a man to decide what the best course of action in the long run shall be.
These are simple questions to state, but difficult to answer. I ask that website you point out, “OK, so we lost 1000 troops. How does one weigh that against the fall of Sadaam?” I say that the answers to this question, and others like it are not self-evident. I wonder who is really “clueless”–he who believes he knows the answer to such questions immediately without reflective thought, or he who finds that such questions are a moral struggle to resolve.
In this entire campaign, I can think of only 2 instances of a politico having done what I’m asking for. Regan’s speech at the DNC on stem cell research, for one. I don’t agree with his position, but he argued it well. And secondly the RNC’s use of various speakers to address the role the UN and foreign powers in general ought to play in our defense decisions. Again I am not in complete agreement, but felt the arguments presented were in a form to assist in decision making.
In short, I don’t see what the site you link to adds to the process.