Dinesh D’Souza provides mandatory 4th of July reading for all of us:
In America, by contrast, you get to write the script of your own life. What to be, where to live, whom to love, whom to marry, what to believe, what religion to practice – these are all decisions that, in America, we make for ourselves. Here we are the architects of our own destiny.
Read the rest!
Via Outside the Beltway.
Dave Johnson, Seeing the Forest, has a solution to counter the right’s massive propaganda machine: stop funding specific programs. Instead:
Moderate and progressive philanthropists and foundations must step up to the plate and begin providing general operating funding to advocacy organizations…
He has a point, but he probably needs to come up with a way to double the effort given the 30 year head start that must be overcome. And, while I agree with Dave that it is not the politicians who will change public opinion they can, indeed, influence the philanthropists to make sound long term investments.
Say Uncle discusses the nature (and futility?) of political debate and that:
If you wish to have a productive debate, you
Maxspeak provides links to 3 different decks of 2003 Regime playing cards. Head on over there to play some 52 pickup.
Tim Dunlop mulls over Rumsfeld’s views on Iraq’s post war political structure and Jane Finch at The Daily Rant likes Tim’s ‘faith based initiative’ line. In the comments to the latter post Nathan tells us:
From what I understand, we would like to establish a robust constitution with strong guarantees for civil rights. Democracy has demonstrated that it is an excellent vehicle for preserving such rights. Islamic govts have not, and tend to overthrow such guarantees as soon as possible.
For democracy to work, a party has to win power, lose power, and then be able to regain power again.
Jane responds:
Nathan, how about the Iraqis establish their own constitution?
Read more at The Daily Rant (link above).
Perhaps they can just copy Qatar’s pending new constitution (which I discussed here a few days ago). It likely won’t fit Nathan’s expectations (which I tend to agree with) but it just might do for a faith based initiative.