Rule Of Law, Part II
By Mitch Berg
It’s been almost four years since I codified the various “Berg’s Laws” in one convenient place.
It’s high time I updated things.
Berg’s First Law of Liberal Iraq Commentary – “No liberal commentator is capable of addressing more than one of the President’s justifications for the War in Iraq at a time; to do so would introduce a context in which their argument can not survive”
Berg’s Corollary to Bissonnette’s Law – (Whenever someone introduces an “Old West” analogy into a discussion on civilian firearms ownership, the person can be presumed to be covering for absolute ignorance on the subject). Corollary: Whenever anyone says “people who favor guns are compensating for something, ifyaknowwhatImean”, know what they mean only in the most academic possible sense.
Berg’s Third Law of Human Resilience – After any disaster, whenever government and the media declare “there can not be any more survivors, and this is now a recovery operation”, they will be wrong.
Berg’s Fourth Law of Media/Sports Inversion – The Vikings will be contenders until the moment the local media actually believes they will be contenders. At that moment – be it pre-season or Week 12 – the season will fall irredeemably apart.
Berg’s Fifth Law of Historical Illteracy – 99% of the invocations of Godwin’s Law are done by 1% of the online population. Corollary: That 1% understands .000001% of the history required for a literate invocation of Godwin’s Law.
Berg’s Sixth Law of writing a Blog in a city full of people with dubious senses of Humor – To every joke, there is an equal and opposite inappropriately petulant reaction.
Berg’s Seventh Law of Liberal Blogging – When a Liberal issues a group defamation or assault on conservatives’ ethics, character or respect for liberty, they are projecting.
April 13th, 2009 at 10:50 pm
Right on the money on the last two. In the Twin Cities today, the only jokes that don’t get immediately tut-tutted or otherwise censured are those bold and witty “Bush is Stupid” jokes. Way to speak truth to power, people; he’s been gone for four months.
As for the last one, read Paul Krugman’s column about the GOP. Talk about projection! And I read the comments, too. There were a few impassioned “Hey! Wait a minute!” responses, but many Manhattanites trying to outsnark each other about the crazy Nazi fools who call themselves Republicans.
I hope Krugman loves that Nobel prize. It’s intrinsic worth is about as much as my Roth IRA.
April 14th, 2009 at 8:59 am
Yep
April 14th, 2009 at 9:20 pm
Berg’s First Law of Liberal Iraq Commentary – “No liberal commentator is capable of addressing more than one of the President’s justifications for the War in Iraq at a time; to do so would introduce a context in which their argument can not survive”
BS – in fact I’ve addressed several of them several times, and each time, found Bush’s justifications wanting, and your explanations weak at best.
Let me tee it up for you – or rather, as you tee’d it up, I’ll gladly hit em’ around.
First – Iraq is the central front on the ‘war on terr’.
No, Iraq was NOTHING of the sort, it was a secular nation.
Second, Wilsonian Democracy will catch fire.
No, it won’t Bush said he in fact didn’t care about whether Iraq was democratic as long as we won (which neither he nor you would define for years), and it hasn’t, at ALL happened.
Iraq will bring the terr’rists there, and we’ll kill em’ -yeah, they look like they’re running flat out of em – moreover, the CIA said Iraq was a ‘Cause de’ Celeb’ for recruitment for AQ.
But YOU always leave out THIS context – which Bush failed to address and failed to bring up.
First – that the ‘war’ such as it was, was NOT about AQI, it was about a Sunni minority, and a Shiaa majority, both of which, for their own reasons wanted us out at various times. Beating AQI should have been relatively easy, but the myopic, ethnocentric arrogance of the far right made even that task MUCH more difficult.
Second, that our actions in Iraq did ANYTHING but check Iran, in fact, they emboldened Iran.
I see your context and raise you truth.