Kossed

John at Freespeech.com notices an admirable trait in the Daily Kos:

"Kos writes an excellent post about the fact that people change their mind over time.

"And so on. The problem with those quotes is that they don't allow for context. They don't allow for humor. They don't allow for opinions to evolve. I've changed my mind on any number of issues over the past ten years. Do we want someone whose beliefs are completely static over time? I don't. I want people who reevaluate their beliefs on the basis of new evidence. Yet any opinion shift is met with cries of 'waffler!'

"
I, for one, am delighted. Clearly, recognizing the and acknowledging the complexity of human relationships and the ways opinions evolve, Kos will stop dredging up old quotes from conservatives in an effort to demonstrate their hypocrisy..
Right?"

I'll be monitoring Kos for evidence of this change of behavior.

For those who refuse to read Kos, here's the story; Kos, and the coterie of bloggers that lap the jam from between his toes, now say that Clark's waffling on Iraq is a matter of "context".

The correct response, of course, is that the motivations for any action can be completely altered if you are creative enough in presenting the "context" in which the action occurred. Any good can be rendered evil, any evil can be rendered acceptable. Thomas Jefferson's achievements are rendered (to some) moot by the context of slavery (if you effectively-enough manage the parts of the context that are considered, and how). I've heard intellectuals pardon Lenin, given the "context" of the times (according to them - and that context never seems to encompass the Gulag).

Manipulating "context" enough makes meaningful communication impossible. Which is why the likes of Kos are trying to drown out criticism of Clark's flip-flop with carefully-managed "context".