Good afternoon! For those of you who were interested, I think I did rather well on my in-class written response to My Antonia yesterday. Today's update will be short, as I have to get my stuff together for this weekend in Hamilton, but here's what I've seen so far today:

• Al Gore pulls a Howard Dean. True he's not running for anything this year (like Dean was), but he is an important figure in the Democrats' organization. This is not going to go over well for them.
  
  The Boston Herald was especially upset with him:
  

  He never mentioned Nicholas Berg. Or Daniel Pearl. Or a single person killed in the World Trade Center. Nor did former Vice President Al Gore talk of any soldier by name who has given his life in Iraq. And he has the audacity to condemn the Bush administration for having ``twisted values?''
  
  ..............
  
  Gore even had the audacity to defend the perpetrators of the prison abuse - by name - while denouncing President Bush for ``humiliating'' our nation.
  
  How dare he...
  
  How dare Gore say that Americans have an ``innate vulnerability to temptation... to use power to abuse others.'' And that our own ``internal system of checks and balances cannot be relied upon'' to curb such abuse.
  
  And this man - who apparently has so much disdain for the nature of the American people - wanted to be elected to lead it?
  
  It is Gore who has brought dishonor to his party and to his party's nominee...

  Ouch!


• On a tangent, Robert Alt at the Ashbrook Center has The Liberals' Creed up for your perusal.


• Jason Van Steenwyk points out that Big Media has indeed reported the Saddam-al Qaeda connection, as well as implicitly admitting the truthfulness of the whole Chemical Weapons angle (WMD anyone?)...in the third-to-last paragraph of their article.


• Yesterday, the New York Times ran a story on those insane bloggers. Jeff Jarvis was quoted in the story. But, as is becoming the norm with the NYTimes, he was mis-represented:
  

  [To The New York Times Reporter/Intern] You are way, way safe saying there are more than 2.5 million. There are actually many more than that but they are tracked with ongoing content. If you need anything more at all, don't hestitate to ask.

  The Times made it sound as if it's 2.5 million and dropping. They also found the lowest numbers they could find (Pew has bigger numbers than Jupiter, which they quote, but Pew didn't fit in with their agenda.)
  
  Smells like this deserves an Official Times Correction.
  
  When I first got called on the story -- by the intern not the reporter -- they were on the track of the bloggers-are-nuts-in-bathrobes and I lectured him, saying that's wrong and insulting and blind to the real story. They did at least include a quote of mine defending bloggers against the instastereotype. But They were setting out to make fun of and belittle the medium.
  
  Scoff at your own risk, Times.

  Ed Driscoll has more.


• Over at NRO, Peter Robinson takes note of deceptive inflation in the numbers of civilian casualties reported by Iraq Body Count (no link from me, go Google it yourself).


• Speaking of Iraq, apparently there's a lot of good news that's getting swept under the rug of late. Arthur over at Chrenkoff has quite the summary. For a more personal perspective (say, from a man who is an Iraqi himself?) go read what Omar has to say.


• Daniel Drezner, over at The New Republic, apparently agrees with the necessity of the Iraq 'reformation project.' This is interesting, given that magazine's normal stance on the war.


• While we're at The Volokh Conspiracy, take a look at several posts on Slate's screwup, Kerry's screwup, and the problem with Amnesty International's approach.


• On the 'strange news' front, those of us in Canada who lament the ballooning budget of the unneccessary gun registry should remember to count our blessings. We could be subject to a Chewing Gum Registry.


• As far as 'formerly strange news' goes, how is the bodybuilder/actor/Governor doing? Apparently very well indeed. Imagine that!

Of course, there is a philosophy called liberalism. Actually there are several. One of them -- the classical variety -- is one that most conservatives adhere to or at least admire. There is also a philosophy of the modern, or "progressive" sort, which includes Rawls and Dworkin and all those cats. I was not trying to say that there's no such thing as liberal philosophy so much as that "liberals" -- i.e. the folks who pound the pavement and write regularly in favor of "social change" or other treacle -- don't have much use for it. Moreover, I've found, they don't have much use for their own history as a philosophical tradition. And by use I mean use. They do not invoke their thinkers to justify their policy positions with much regularity or conviction. They invoke men and women of action. I still stand by that and nothing I've seen has really persuaded me otherwise.

A lot of smart liberal bloggers, however, have gone to their metaphorical book shelves to quote a bunch of Rawls to prove they know their stuff -- and many do. But, in all likelihood, they won't be mentioning him again for quite some time because -- again -- that's not how liberals debate today. The conspicuousness of the name-dropping, I think, helps demonstrate that point.