February 2008 Archives
"Reality control," they called it; in Newspeak, "doublethink."[...]
His mind slid away into the labyrinthine world of doublethink. To know or not to know, to be conscious of complete untruthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was possible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy, to forget whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again, and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself—that was the ultimate subtlety: consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed. Even to understand the word "doublethink" involved the use of doublethink.
(1984, George Orwell, p 35)
From TimesOnline.co.uk: Al-Qaeda leaders admit: 'We are in crisis. There is panic and fear'
Al-Qaeda in Iraq faces an “extraordinary crisis”. Last year's mass defection of ordinary Sunnis from al-Qaeda to the US military “created panic, fear and the unwillingness to fight”. The terrorist group's security structure suffered “total collapse”.
These are the words not of al-Qaeda's enemies but of one of its own leaders in Anbar province — once the group's stronghold. They were set down last summer in a 39-page letter seized during a US raid on an al-Qaeda base near Samarra in November.
The presidential election is not a test of whether or not America can elect a woman or a black man. Of course we can. The presidency is an actual job, it's not a symbol.
From Reagan and McCain (The American Spectator, Peter J. Wallison)
Apparently dissatisfied with their presidential choices, Republicans are asking, "Why don't we have another Ronald Reagan?" But if we think seriously about what made Ronald Reagan a great leader and a great president, we may find that there's a reasonable facsimile hiding in plain sight. John McCain, although he has failed to toe the line of conservative orthodoxy, has many of the characteristics that the American people admired in Ronald Reagan, including the key elements that made him a successful president. In fact, given his electability, McCain offers a rare chance for conservatives to recapture the essence of the Reagan revolution.Worth reading if you didn't already catch it.
The similarities between Reagan and McCain begin with their extraordinary attachment to principle.