Deliberate misinterpretation?

Technorati Tags: Weekly Standard,Jonathan V Last,Mr Obama,Steve Jobs,Journalistic Integrity

Jonathan V. Last, writing in a newsletter for The Weekly Standard, makes a strange case for the false claim that Mr. Obama is somehow against American entrepreneurs. (I reproduce much of the emailed newsletter below.)

Last includes a paragraph from Mr. Obama’s speech, and then goes on to, what?, deliberately misinterpret his words?

In essence, Mr. Obama states that successful people’s success depends in some measure on help others have given, or infrastructure which has been provided by the body politic. How can his words, taken in context be misconstrued?

Yet Last does misconstrue.  He writes that there is a “…mountain of people who do succeed on their own merits.” And he goes on to laud Steve Jobs as one of those persons.

I wonder if Mr. Jobs would agree with the President or with Mr. Last. Did Jobs invent the internet? Did Jobs acquire the skills needed to produce his first working computer through auto-didactic means? Did he build the garage in which he worked? Did he string the wiring for the electricity he used?

One could go on. Doubtless Last doesn’t care; if he did he wouldn’t have posted this piece in the first place.

Not your finest moment of intellectual integrity, Mr. Last.

Trust, but verify, Dear Gentle Reader(s).

The capture:

July 25, 2012

By Jonathan V. Last

COLD OPEN

It's been over a week, so I want to remind you of President Obama's amazing riff on entrepreneurialism at an event in Roanoke, Virginia. Relive the glory:

There are a lot of wealthy, successful Americans who agree with me—because they want to give something back. They know they didn't—look, if you’ve been successful, you didn't get there on your own. You didn't get there on your own. I'm always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was just so smart. There are a lot of smart people out there. It must be because I worked harder than everybody else. Let me tell you something—there are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there.
If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you've got a business—you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn't get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet.

It's astonishing, isn't it? I'm on record for being an enormous squish on the question of capitalism, but when I heard this rant, I snapped my head back and thought, Jeez, he doesn’t really believe this? Does he?
It's undeniably true that lots of successful people didn't get rich on their own or through good and valuable work. Plenty of people are born to money, prestige, and power—through no efforts of their own. Plenty of people get rich adding no value—moral or economic—to society. Think about all of the people who've gotten wealthy by trucking in "green energy" over the last few years. Or made killings in finance by working with the derivatives that brought our economy to the brink of collapse. In capitalism, the market is usually efficient and wise in the long term, but market failures happen all the time in the short term. And because of those market failures, plenty of people get rich by accident.
But here's the thing: Those outliers are dwarfed by the mountain of people who do succeed on their own merits. And their success in turn creates the opportunities for others to succeed, too.
Steve Jobs is a popular example of the genius entrepreneur—a guy who succeeded in a crowded space because he had particular talents that no one else did. But whenever I go into an Apple Store, what strikes me is how many opportunities Jobs created for other entrepreneurs. The iPhone and iPad created entire ecosystems where other companies stepped in and prospered along with Apple—cases and cords and apps.
President Obama looks at the Apple Store and sees companies that needed the help of others to succeed.
I look at the Apple Store and see companies whose success helps others succeed as well.

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Pish and Piffle

Technorati Tags: Andrew Sullivan,Daily Dish,Left,Language,Politics,Culture Wars

Sometimes Andrew Sullivan is exasperating.

Take this item in today’s Daily Dish: Bronski’s Beat.

It contains these lines:

It has always seemed chilling to me that gay leftists - when pushed to say what they really believe - want to keep gays in some sort of glorious, oppressed, marginalized position, until the majority agrees with the gay left's view of human nature, and revolutionizes straight society as well. This will never happen (and in my view, shouldn't).

Until then, the gay left focuses on demonizing those gays who argue for those who want to belong to their own families as equals, serve their country or commit to one another for life. In this, in my view, the gay left mirrors the Christianist right: they insist that otherness define the minority, even though most members of that minority are born and grow up in the heart of the American family, in all its variations, and of American culture, in all its permutations. No one should be marginalized for seeking otherness. But we are fighting for it to be a choice, not a fate.

All of that because some guy named Bronski wrote a book.

I don’t know Bronski; I don’t care about Bronski; I wish him well, as I would any stranger.

Sullivan, on the other hand (whom I also don’t know except through his writing) is part of my support system—OK, he doesn’t know that nor would he care much. And I find it galling that he would take the words of one, or two or even a hundred of such writers as Bronski and call him/them “the gay left.”

No one in my cohort of friends and acquaintances fits the description of Sullivan’s “the gay left,” but virtually every one of them is gay and/or a politically left person.

Sullivan trips up on his own style when in the first paragraph he uses “gay leftist.” Usually he reserves the suffix “-ist” for such as the odious Christian extremist (Christianist) or the odious Moslem extremist (Islamist).

By the second para he has forgotten that he’s writing about extremists and has omitted the suffix. Which brings me and my friends and acquaintances into the mix. We don’t belong there.

Significant writing error, that omission.

Do you suppose he’ll apologize, Dear Gentle Reader(s)?

Even when reading Sullivan (he will go over the top on occasion), the admonition applies:

Trust, but verify.

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Frum-a-dumb-dumb

Technorati Tags: David Frum,Newt Gingrich,Paul Ryan,The Dish,Medicare

There isn’t much from David Frum with which I agree; this quote, lifted from Andrew Sullivan’s The Dish, is one.

Writing about the Gingrich-vs-Ryan-Medicare-suggestion kerfuffle, Frum pens:

[T]he American public will not accept this kind of reform and will smash any politician who tries to force it upon them. There are ways to reduce the fiscal burden of Medicare, but telling seniors to buy their own damn healthcare is not going to be one of them. I wish it were somebody other than the Kenyan-anticolonialism-sharia law candidate making that argument, but it’s an important argument from any source.

Of course this proposal of Ryan’s is right wing social engineering. How can anyone not see that?

For once in his strange little life, Gingrich gets it right and has to apologize. Where’s the justice?

And I’m loving it.

Trust, but verify.

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Buckley v Vidal: The last word?

Of course, Dear Gentle Reader(s), it was to be expected that Gore Vidal would eventually find a conduit for his own "obituary" of William F Buckley, Jr., and it is via Truthdig, an award-winning blog edited by Robert Scheer. It's an amusing column, as are nearly all of Vidal's efforts.

Admired quote: Buckley was a world-class American liar on the far right who would tell any lie he thought he could get away with. Years of ass-kissing famous people in the press and elsewhere had given him, he felt, a sort of license to libelously slander those hated liberals who, from time to time, smoked him out as I did in Chicago, when I defended the young people in Grant Park by denying that they were Nazis and that the only “pro- or crypto-Nazi” I could think of was himself.

How could one, DGR(s), not admire such audacity? It is to be hoped that someone will send Andrew Sullivan, an admirer of Buckley's who should know better, a link to this post.

Buckley admirers, trust, but verify.
"Andrew Sullivan"
Buckley
Gore Vidal
Andrew Sullivan

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Same Argument--Same Lack of Substance

Over at The New York Times, a couple of adversaries from the Vietnam War Argument era are having none of the possible benefits of a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq.

PETER W. RODMAN and WILLIAM SHAWCROSS are arguing that the American departure from Vietnam was "disastrous, both in human and geopolitical terms, for the United States and the region." They go on to write, "Today we agree equally strongly that the consequences of defeat in Iraq would be even more serious and lasting."

Well, maybe. Not, though, according to the evidence they offer. There are too many conditional words, too many what-ifs, and, most importantly, a strange view of Vietnam in the immediacy of 1976, but not at all in 2007.

Sorry, guys. It doesn't sound like anything other than more of the 1970's "light at the end of the tunnel." Back to the drawing board. You might be correct, but not with this argument. This one doesn't pass the smell test.

For the rest of us: Trust, but Verify.

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Blankety Blankley

Tony Blankley, just today on Hardball, once again warning of dire consequences should there be an uninformed re-deployment out of Iraq, spouts the old how-we-got-there-doesn't-matter because what is important is what we do from here.

While it is easy to agree with Mr. Blankley about the former, his reiteration of the latter begs the question: What in the behavior of the Administration has changed so that in 2007 we should trust their judgment when, in 2002 and subsequently, they have proven to be eminently not up to the job of running this ideological struggle, not to mention their reputation today of questionable trustworthiness?

Please, Mr. Blankley, share with us the basis for your continuing trust in the Administration's policies vis a vis Iraq and the struggle against Islamic extremism.

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Meanwhile...over at The Times...

Here's a great headline from today's The New York Times: "Plan B? Let’s Give Plan A Some Time First."

In the column, Frederick W. Kagan lists some advancements in Iraq as of May 6. He goes on to state that there should be no "Plan B" until Plan A has had some time of implementation. His major argument is that the vicissitudes of war argue against planning for failure at the beginning of a new strategy. (Although why contingency planning isn't part of Plan A one has to wonder.)

That makes sense. War is more of a becoming rather than a being. It never is--for more than a nanosecond.

It's good to see this somewhat hopeful scenario on the pages of The Times.

There is a sobering moment, though. Embedded in the opinion piece is this: "As one of the initial proponents of the surge..." And this: "Frederick W. Kagan is a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute..."

Ah, the two-part dilemma: 1) Do we trust a proponent of "the surge" to be as objectively honest as humanly possible; 2) Is a member of the conservative "think tank" American Enterprise Institute to be viewed with some skepticism?

1) I don't know; 2) Yes.

Perhaps the old TBV should be reversed in this instance: Verify, but trust.

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Petraeus = Truth?

General Petraeus has told Congress and reporters that we will have U.S. troops in Iraq for a very long time. The implication is that regardless of who occupies the White House on January 21, 2009, we will be there.

Petraeus is the first general who has the administration's support for a larger troop deployment in Iraq.

Would the White House had done sufficient planning before setting out on this adventure.

Would the Congress, regardless of the party in power in the administration, had done its Constitutional duty in oversight.

Trust, but verify.

Iraq
Republicans
Administration

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A Neo-Con's Admission...if half-hearted

Andrew Sullivan has a long quote in The Daily Dish today (You might have to to the archive for March 28, 2007) which comes from a neo-con. In it the writer admits to coming around to agree with many of the critical points which have been aimed at the Bush Administration vis-a-vis Iraq.

At the end of the piece, Sullivan writes, "This is almost exactly my view. It doesn't exculpate me from what I once supported; but it's honest. And honesty is a start."

That's nice. Honesty is a start. In the middle of the piece, though, one finds this:

"But conservatives and a lot of moderates rallied around Bush and Co. because of the unfair attacks from the left and the media, whose objectivity was never in evidence, and in doing so we ratified and enabled every bad decision Bush and Co. made in Iraq."

What that amounts to is "the devil [aka liberals and Main Stream Media] made me do it." Further, the question must arise that, at the time, the objectivity of the neo-cons was where? In evidence? Where was the skepticism of the right? Compromised by the skepticism of the left?

The left seems to have learned the lesson of Reagan, the right yet has learned to "Trust, but verify."

Andrew Sullivan
Neo-cons

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