Let us take at face value the nominal, stated reasons as why various office-holders claim the have for taking their various actions.

So, President George W. Bush vetoes the recent renewal/expansion of the S-CHIP bill because he is concerned that it is “creeping socialism” that would ultimately result in publicly funded healthcare, which goes against the libertarian philosophy of self-sufficiency and avoiding governmental interference.

Yet, he promises also to veto any bill regarding the FISA courts and wiretapping statutes that limits the ability of the executive branch to monitor communications that the government claims are important to preventing “terrorists” from attacking.

In other words, do not trust the government to be involved at all in health care, but do trust the government to know when to and when to not monitor the activities, statements, communications, and other matters routinely regarded as private in order to “prevent terrorism”.

Do not trust the government when it comes to protecting collective heritages, such as the environment in the form of clean air, clean water in the rivers, and land preserved in its natural state, do not interfere with property rights, but it is OK to search citizens in the most personal way when they want to fly or have any other kind of interaction with the government such as attend court sessions.

Unfortunately, those in nominal opposition to George W. Bush are no better, promoting agendas that interfere with the rights of individuals when it comes to the “collective good” while decrying the individual invasions of quasi-impersonal searches using millimeter wave radar, which reveals in images far more than a pat down search without the indignity of having someone actually touch you in a far more invasive manner.

In the end, both the right and the left are hypocrites.

What we, the people, need to decide is what exactly is the role of government in our lives.

It has been publicly proclaimed by President George W. Bush that he feels that one of the primary goals of the United States’ government is to “protect the people from terrorists.”

Does that come under the fundamental right of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” in the preamble? That assertion would be debatable at best if the “protection” involved the invasion of “liberty” explicitly stated because of a self-proclaimed power of the Presidency to declare any US citizen as an “enemy combatant” who can be imprisoned indefinitely with no appeal, no access to legal counsel, and subject to treatment that by any reasonable definition would be called torture.

By contrast, one of the largest goals of the Democrats has been to establish a nationally financed system of health care. This is invasive upon liberties because it would force those who have large incomes to pay for the medical care of those who do not have have the same level of income.

Is that fair?

It depends upon what factors one chooses to consider in your personal calculus.

Both the left and the right are now on paths that lead to creeping authoritarianism, where the government knows what is best for you, The only difference lies in whether the government monitors your activities to make sure you are not a “terrorist” who threatens the authority of the state and its protection of the collective good against “terrorism” or whether the government monitors your activities to make sure you are not engaged in any behaviors that are a threat to your own good or the collective good as defined in fuzzy terms such as health and societally good or bad behaviors ensuring conformance to the notion that it is good for you.

Many like to label themselves as “small ‘L’ libertarians” yet they continue to participate in the kabuki play that we call our representative democracy, assuming they choose to vote at all.

Is that sufficient?

I say it is not.

Thomas Jefferson warned against the very situation in which we find ourselves, and he stated flatly, in no uncertain terms, “The tree of liberty occasionally needs to be refreshed with the blood of patriots.”

Where are our patriots, who are not beholden to parties, but to ideals?

Ideals are worth dying for, parties and ideologies are not.

Are the ideas and ideals of 1776 and 1790 still too radical for the majority to fully understand?

I fear they are…

—

Related links that you can parse for yourself:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21205942/

http://www.courierpostonline.com/specialreports/statesecrets/m062403b.htm

http://www.slate.com/id/2142155

http://www.fas.org/sgp/news/secrecy/2004/01/012604.html

http://www.privacydigest.com/2007/09/20/state+secret+overreach+editorial+barry+siegel

http://www.wired.com/politics/security/news/2006/05/70785?currentPage=2

http://www.newsvine.com/_news/2007/10/09/1013076-supreme-court-refuses-torture-case

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/09/16/3876/

http://supreme.justia.com/us/345/1/case.html

http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=us&vol=345&invol=1

The Wall Street Journal (posted online at OpinionJournal.com) betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of the concept of the rule of law in an editorial on the recent ruling by the Supreme Court on the applicability of part of the Geneva Conventions to the prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay by the United States.

In the editorial Osama in Genevaland (subtitled Terrorists are now getting lawful-combatant legitimacy) they write:

The Geneva Conventions of 1949 govern the treatment of lawful combatants and civilians during wartime. But now a new Pentagon memorandum concludes that Common Article 3 of the Conventions also governs the treatment of unlawful combatants: pirates, drug mafias and especially terrorists. So, five years after 9/11, the U.S. is about to give to people who ram commercial jets into buildings many of the same legal privileges and immunities as the average GI.

This hyperbole makes the unstated assumption that everyone held by the United States as an “unlawful combatant” is indeed merting of that designation, despite the fact that there has been no process put in place to establish that status for prisoners. Through what means was it decided these people are “unlawful combatants” and who made that determination? Was it fair? Was it based on evidence, or merely hearsay?

This does not even address the basic flaw in the subtitle regarding giving legitimacy to terrorists, because we have already done so in our reaction to the murders of September 11, creating an inflated “War on Terror” from our fear and anger thereby giving the terrorists their victory and elevating them from a bunch of thugs to an “enemy of the homeland.”

We claim we are fighting against uncivilized opponents, yet we are throwing away the basis of our civilization when we ignore the principle of the rule of law when dealing with those we declare are our enemy.

Is each and every person at Guantanamo a terrorist? No, the release of some of the prisoners held there show that as in every human endeavor, mistakes were made. Once it was said, “better to let 1,000 of the guilty go free than condemn one who is innocent.” If this is no longer one of our fundamental beliefs, what level of collateral damage in the form of condeming those not guilty is acceptable? Remember, though, when you make this grim calculation, with every innocent punished for no reason we create not one but many enemies.

The end of our Pledge of Allegience states that we are a nation with “liberty and justice for all.” Depriving people of their liberty is one of the most feared powers of a government, and the arbitrary use of that power has sparked more revolutions than can be easily counted. This confers a grave responsibility to use that power through a system of justice that is understandable and fair, and if we feel the principles upon which our Constiution is based are fundamental in applying to all humanity, what does it say when we choose to ignore those principles when dealing with non-citizens?

The editorial is partially redeemed by this statement:

What the world needs is a new legal framework for distinguishing between legal and illegal combatants, but instead we are now heading toward the European model where terrorism is seen as just another fact of life and not a unique evil or grave threat. In Germany, the High Court earlier this year released from custody Mounir El Motassedeq, an accomplice of 9/11 ringleader Mohamed Atta, on a technicality. Germany may be able to afford such legal exquisiteness; as the main terror target, the U.S. and its citizens cannot.

Yet the call for a new legal framework is weakened by the complaint about “legal exquisiteness” for it is precisely that attention to the law that is what makes us civilized as compared to those who say they can do whatever they want to their enemies.

Fundamentally, the rule of law is not about selectively applying the law only to the lawful; it is about applying the law to the unlawful, preventing their unlawful nature and despicable acts from degrading our society and our civilization.

If we ignore the law or only apply it when it is convenient, what exactly differentiates our system from arbitrary rule?

In response to some simple-minded assertions, here is a long list of links, most related, some not:

If You’re Not Doing Something Wrong, You Still Have Something To Worry About

Rumsfeld Reveals Split Over Interrogations

Just War

Talking Points Memo on Senator Pat Roberts (R-Kansas) remarks at the Hayden confirmation hearings

Social Security for Illegal Aliens?

America’s Future…isn’t in America

Illegal Alien!

AT&T Whistle-Blower’s Evidence

Another battlefront

In the hunt for golden buckyballs

Almost Enough to Make me Buy a Mac

Interactive graphic of the flooding of New Orleans because of Katrina

New Presidential Memorandum Permits Intelligence Director To Authorize Telcos To Lie Without Violating Securities Law

The Eternal Value of Privacy from which comes:

Two proverbs say it best: Quis custodiet custodes ipsos? (”Who watches the watchers?”) and “Absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

Cardinal Richelieu understood the value of surveillance when he famously said, “If one would give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest man, I would find something in them to have him hanged.” Watch someone long enough, and you’ll find something to arrest — or just blackmail — with. Privacy is important because without it, surveillance information will be abused: to peep, to sell to marketers and to spy on political enemies — whoever they happen to be at the time.

Privacy protects us from abuses by those in power, even if we’re doing nothing wrong at the time of surveillance.

So, given what has happened in the last six years, what do you think, and what do you want for the future?

Joe Gandelman at The Moderate Voice has posted on the conviction in Austria of British “historian” (in quotes because I think he does not deserve that appellation) David Irving for the crime of denying the Holocaust occurred. The outcome of the court case caught my eye earlier today because of the implications of a person being jailed because of something he wrote.

Think about those implications for a moment.

Yes, denying that the Holocaust occurred is criminal, but should it be a crime in a society that treasures liberty and wishes to avoid the very mindset that permitted something as horrible as the Holocaust to occur?

Note that criminal is defined “having the nature of a crime” while crime is “a violation of the law”, a subtle but distinct difference.

In other words, where does the line between true political speech the freedom of which does indeed protect a democracy from descent into the tyranny of creeping expansion of government power versus the equivalent of “crying fire in a crowded theater” lie?

Millions died in the Holocaust, a systematic extermination of a people based upon their religion that was perpetrated in a society where dissent was punished by at the least exclusion from society and legal protection if not by the very same extermination.

Where does the line lie between the “internment” advocated by some versus the concentration camps that the Nazis created with such efficiency?

Ponder that for the time it deserves: Dissent was punished in Germany in the 1930s; in other words, the lack of freedom of political speech helped make the Holocaust possible.

Yet some democracies now make denying the Holocaust a crime. What is to prevent those same democracies from making other “undesirable” speech a crime, and more importantly, who chooses what is “undesirable” speech?

If we allow those in power to make the choice, what is to prevent them from choosing speech that is in opposition to their policies or even to their remaining in power?

Respect for the law? It appears that the law can be over-ridden by simple legal opinions written by lawyers in the pay of those in power if recent events in the United States are taken as a guide, or to put it simply, the interpretation of the law is rather too fungible to rely upon it to prevent the choices by those in power to preserve that power for the sake of keeping power rather than protecting freedoms.

I have recently been writing posts that reference the fundamentals that form the foundations of our Constitution, allusions that have been misinterpreted by some as calls to a “strict constructionist” interpretation of the Constitution. I do not follow the constructionist interpretation, I prefer to review the fundamental freedoms as laid out in the writings of the founders in the light of the understanding and culture of today.

What exactly are the fundamentals that apply to freedom of speech?

Do those fundamentals include the suppression of photos taken by American troops at the US-run prison at Abu Ghraib, where acts that were taken, regardless of whether they were sanctioned “officially” or not, have lost for the US the trust of the Arab Muslim world?

Do those fundamentals include cooperating with a repressive regime in finding dissenters when we condemn those who cooperated 70 years ago with a different repressive regime?

What exactly do we believe in now, and what do we believe is worth sacrificing to preserve?

More importantly, what sacrifices are we willing to make?

Technorati Tags: commentary, freedom of speech, opinion, patterns in the white noise

Let’s start with a brief synopsis for those who are not to speed on the imbroglio of some cartoons published in a Danish newspaper:

Anger grows over Muhammad cartoon

Protests have spread across the Muslim world over the publication in Europe of cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.

The drawings, first printed in Denmark, sparked a fresh row when they were re-run in several newspapers, leading to the sacking of a French editor.

—

The row intensified on Wednesday when France Soir, alongside the 12 original cartoons, printed a new drawing on its front page showing Buddhist, Jewish, Muslim and Christian holy figures sitting on a cloud, with the caption “Don’t worry Muhammad, we’ve all been caricatured here.”

Publications in Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Spain also re-ran the Danish cartoons to show support for free speech.

Islamic tradition bans depictions of the Prophet or Allah.

It should be noted that these were not normal political cartoons published in a day-to-day context but were the products of a “dare” that no paper would be willing to publish cartoons of Allah and Mohammed, especially in an unflattering light.

This context is important, because there was an element of deliberate provocation involved.

Next, a troubling development:

Danish plea for calm on cartoons

Danish PM Anders Fogh Rasmussen has appeared on Arabic television to try to defuse a worsening row over cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in European media.

Mr Rasmussen again apologised for any offence but insisted his government was not responsible for newspaper articles.

Since I don’t know the wording of the “apology” I do not know if it was a true expression of sorrow for the publication of something that many Muslims found offensive, or an expression of regret for the reaction to the expression of free speech.

There is an subtle but important difference between the two.

If the Danish Prime Minister expressed regret for the reaction of the Muslims while not apologizing for the free speech which allowed the offensive cartoons to be published, although that is not a response I would prefer, it is far better than a confession that the act of publishing the cartoons was wrong. (NOTE: The response I would like to see is a statement similar to this - “We regret that Muslims were offended by the depiction of Allah and Mohammed as terrorists, especially when any images of these two important figures in Islam are forbidden to those following that faith, but perhaps those same followers should consider why Allah was depicted with a bomb for a turban before they choose to take umbrage.”)

We should not apologize to anyone who chooses to take offense at something that, while offensive, is indeed political speech and therefore protected under OUR traditions, just as making images of Allah and Mohammed are forbidden under the traditions of Islam.

However, it is important that we not stop here, but look deeper, especially into ourselves.

Over at Bloggledygook, the proprietor of that weblog (I need to ask one day if he minds if I use his real name since he has no author listed for his posts) brings up a comparison that I noticed immediately between a cartoon about wounded US troops and offense taken by the Joint Chiefs of Staff versus the imbroglio with the cartoons of Allah and Mohammed (I subscribe to a service that emails me political cartoons, and a different service that had the Joint Chiefs of Staff letter in their news, the parallel was obvious to the most casual observer). I suggest you go read what he has to say and examine the cartoons in question.

I want to comment specifically upon this:

What is instructive is how the lines are being drawn around these two cartoons and what they say about those offended by them and from those defending them.

In the case of the first cartoon, the Joint Chiefs of Staff were so offended that they sent of a stiffly worded letter to the Washington Post.

In the second, threats of bombings and boycotts were the reaction.

Hmmm. Letters versus physical threats.

Make no mistake, I am not accusing the author of this post of anything other than a common fallacy, one of blanket labeling.

Yes, threats from people who call themselves Islam have arisen from the publication of these cartoons.

Should we use these threats to label all of Islam?

Let us first discout the indignant over-reaction to “Piss Christ” that some have referred to (scroll to the bottom of the post) and instead choose to look at broader trends.

Refer to the recent remarks of Ann Coulter, “jokingly” calling for the assassination (well, more exactly the poisoning) of a Supreme Court Associate Justice, which I commented upon here at Random Fate.

So, should we label all right-wingers as nut-jobs who believe in killing political opponents who hold high office?

The predictable response is that her remarks were intended as a joke. In remarkably poor taste, but not serious like those Islamist crazies.

Well, then, let’s look deeper.

I’m sure most recall the groups self-named with unintentional but biting irony “pro-life” who published the names of doctors who performed abortions and labeled them as murderers. Groups who also preached that killing a murderer was not a sin. At least one murder of a doctor was encouraged by this behavior of “pro-life” groups.

So, should we label all devout Christians who are truly pro-life as hypocritical nut-jobs?

Let’s look even deeper.

Christianity has a history longer than that of Islam, a history that is arguably more bloody and far more fratricidal even when recent internecine wars between Islamic sects are accounted for, the Crusades and the Inquisition are included, and we should not forget the remarkably intense internal to Christendom wars of the Protestant Reformation.

Again a predictable response, that was hundreds of years ago, but Islamists are murdering people in the modern world.

People who call themselves Christian are not?

Take this example, from not so long ago:

Sabra and Shatila massacre

The Sabra and Shatila massacre (or Sabra and Chatila massacre) was carried out in September 1982 by Lebanese Maronite Christian militias in then-Israeli-occupied Beirut, Lebanon, when Palestinian refugees were killed in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps. The Maronite forces stood under the direct command of Elie Hobeika, who would later become a longtime Lebanese parliament member and in the 1990s also a cabinet minister.

To put it simply for those who prefer the math done for them, people calling themselves Christian massacred non-combatants in refugee camps.

Do we now label all Christians as supporting the murder of women and children?

But that was over 20 years ago is the raised defense.

So, what is the time-frame we use to stop our blanket labeling?

Six months, a year, five years…

Perhaps ten?

Or just possibly the wholesale condemnation of groups based upon the acts of the nut-jobs is too simple-minded for our 21st century world, wars, and combats, as some members of the right-wing have labeled the world, these wars, and the combats.

Apparently, then, we should consider expanding our minds to encompass all the facts before we jerk our knees and label all members of a group based upon the words and actions of the lunatic fringe.

Do the math.

—

Technorati Tags: commentary, opinion, some thoughts

It is odd how blogworld works.

You make friends you might never have met, and you gain enemies you would otherwise never have made.

Is this a gain, or a loss?

It remains to be seen.

Technorati Tags: blogging, blogs, weblogs

As recently noted at Bloggledygook, I’ve been trying to pull together a number of different things I see, such as attitudes expressed in blog posts, statements made by public figures, actions taken by the US government, and many other things. It has been tough slogging, until today when I read a blog post that had a title and a message that was essentially, “the only good Muslim is a dead Muslim.”

History is rife with statements like that.

“The only good injun is a dead injun.”

“The only good Jew is a dead Jew.”

“The only good Kraut is a dead Kraut.”

“The only good nip is a dead nip.”

“The only good gook is a dead gook.”

“The only good nigger is a dead nigger.”

The list goes on. Some statements prompted by wars, others by racism, yet others by simple, unreasoning hatred.

Making it impersonal, using offensive names to make it abstract merely hides the fundamental hatred. A hatred which is more tragic because it is hollow, because it originates out of fear.

The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him but because he loves what is behind him.
   -G.K. Chesterton

Are we fighting for hatred?

It begins to sound more and more that we are fighting not simply for self-defense, but in the name of hate.

Is this truly the best we can do?

I think it is not our best.

If we fight out of hate, we will lose because we will have become the same as our enemy.

This is not hyperbole. You have to only look at our own history for what hate can prompt “right-thinking men” to do.

Just this summer a murderer was finally convicted of a crime that 40 years ago when he committed it a jury of “right-thinking men” would have refused to reach a verdict of guilt.

Never underestimate the power of hate in how it twists and distorts right-thinking into something its practitioners would reject if they were not in thrall to the hate.

I am choosing not to link to the post that prompted the crystallization of my thoughts (along with many others) because I am not interested in getting into a blogwar, nor do I desire to give the despicable sentiment expressed in the post that was the catalyst any additional readership beyond the large volume it already has.

There is more to life and blogging than trackbacks to gain momentary traffic consisting of people who will doubtlessly disagree and leave frequently idiotic and always hate-filled comments.

There is more to life than blogging.

We each have to make our own decisions, we each must choose between unreasoning hatred and reasoning doubt.

The unreasoning hatred is far more comfortable, but the reasoning doubt has more probability for long-term success, despite what those who chose hate may spew in their absolutist screeds.

What are the fundamentals? What are we truly defending when the President stands up and says, “The terrorists hate everything we stand for.”?

I ask you to read what is written on the right and the left sides of the political spectrum, and then ask that question of them both.

I suspect the answers you might get if they choose to reply will be unsatisfying.

Neither side truly represents the fundamental principles.

As I am sure has been articulated before, but not recently that I have seen as well as that by Josh Neuhouser at The Descent of Wonder:

Ideas are dangerous, and not because of the reasons people usually cite. It’s not because they have the chance of making people think and question their assumptions about the world, but because the more an idea gets propagated throughout society, the simpler it becomes, eventually losing all nuance and possibly (usually?) have nothing to do with the original intent/meaning.

Our founding principles have lost all nuance and possibility, and now have nothing to do with the original intent and meaning, not as currently interpreted by our courts, our legislative branch, nor our executive branch, not even if those supposed advocates of “originalism” get their way, for their thinking is not in alignment with the spirit of the ideas.

I recently posted a quote that might have perhaps made some uncomfortable and others react in derision:

If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stomping on a human face — forever.
   -George Orwell

As Michael Reynolds wrote at The Mighty Middle in tribute to Rosa Parks:

George Orwell wrote 1984 as a warning against the power he thought government had to obliterate freedom and even to erase the fundamental yearning for freedom and justice. The counterpoint to Orwell’s pessimism was Rosa Parks. She was the proof that humans will never entirely submit, will never be entirely cowed, will never finally forget freedom and accept tyranny. After two hundred years of slavery and a hundred years of Jim Crow, after a million lashings and lynchings, there, at the very epicenter of American racism, was a tiny little black woman, outnumbered and overpowered, who still knew right from wrong, still burned for justice, still had the courage to say, no, I won’t submit.

Yet, despite the counterpoint of the individual that Reynolds celebrates, in the 50 years since Rosa Parks and her simple defiance, in the five decades since George Orwell’s warnings, the power of government has expanded both through the advance of technology and in an increase of scope of power through fear in the wake of terrorist attacks.

Most of the choices I have seen in the past four years have been made out of fear, or made when using fear to manipulate, to spin.

What was true 54 years ago has not changed, what we have to fear most is fear itself, along with the hate engendered that is so easy to manipulate.

Technorati Tags: amber and cruelty, anti-torture amendment, left wing, left wing politics, left wing weblogs, left-wing, left-wing politics, left-wing weblogs, politics, right wing, right wing politics, right wing weblogs, right-wing, right-wing politics, right-wing weblogs, some thoughts

Perhaps this is appropriate for Halloween, but instead I find it very sad. In my post the other day from when I chose to visit the municipal graveyard in Grenoble, I took this photo:

There was a plot against one of the exterior walls of the graveyard that had no marble headstones, but instead had metal nameplates scattered around on the ground:

Why were the nameplates scattered on the ground?

The likely answer is that they had lost their larger plot some time earlier, and had only recently been able to purchase another “freed space” that some other family had lost through neglect or whatever reason.

So, they spread on the ground the nameplates coming from the former plot in memorial to those who had passed long ago but who were not entirely forgotten, even if the actual remains were no longer present.

An effort to recognize those who had come before, yet sad none the less.

One thing I did not write about of my visit to the graveyard, it is large enough so that on can be in the center of it and not hear the noises of the city surrounding it.

A refreshing silence, but also a melancholy one.

I have a few photos of the graveyard taken from the height of the Bastille that ruled over the city for so long showing the expanse of the land of the dead.

Often, far too often, we forget the familiar yet - perhaps unconsciously but also deliberately - repressed refrain, “ashes to ashes, dust to dust,” the ultimate fate of us all.

Technorati Tags: some thoughts

As you can see in my updates on the health status of my father, I have been a bit too distracted to post this weekend.

That is not the sole reason I have written very little. I was so disgusted by the reactions of both the right-wing and the left-wing to the indictments against Lewis Libby arising from the CIA agent leak investigation that I needed a break.

I wonder, what is the point? Why blog?

An article at Forbes.com entitled “Attack of the Blogs” encapsulates what I see entirely, even though the article is written from a business point of view, with the attacks of the title directed against products and companies rather than political parties and their supporters.

From the article:

“Bloggers are more of a threat than people realize, and they are only going to get more toxic. This is the new reality,” says Peter Blackshaw, chief marketing officer at Intelliseek, a Cincinnati firm that sifts through millions of blogs to provide watch-your-back service to 75 clients, including Procter & Gamble and Ford. “The potential for brand damage is really high,”says Frank Shaw, executive vice president at Microsoft’s main public relations firm, Waggener Edstrom. “There is bad information out there in the blog space, and you have only hours to get ahead of it and cut it off, especially if it’s juicy.”

Remove the word “brand” from the Blackshaw quote, and it covers the political side of blogging quite well, especially the remark about bad information that never gets corrected because there will always be some blogger out there that will repeat it, no matter how often it has been refuted.

Dave Taylor at his blog Intuitive Systems agrees with the thesis of the Forbes.com article and summarizes some reactions he has observed in blogworld that in a show of ironic non-self-awareness illustrate exactly the tendencies in the article that the quoted bloggers are reacting against. Taylor then summarizes the points from the article with his own take on them (again from a business perspective, but it is easy to substitute “politics” for “business” when reading it to see the trends are the same):

1. You Don’t Know Who Is Blogging and Why

This is a point that even bloggers admit is true when we talk about “fake blogs” or “character blogs” and criticize typically miserable attempts by corporations to plug into the blogosphere with the “Lincoln Fry Blog” (from McDonalds, since shut down) and Wrigley’s Juicy Fruit Gum Blog (a Flash-based site that has nothing to do with blogging other than the word appears on the site).

Sure, these are poorly executed and obviously fake, but there’s a somewhat naive assumption in the blogosphere that everyone is genuine, everything is built around “credibility” and that if anyone were to dare even fake their motivation for writing a weblog entry (get paid to blog), well, that’d be terrible.

Consider the fate of Marqui, who dared to offer cash to bloggers who would write about their clients. The bloggers could opt whether to admit they were sponsored or not, but Marqui was roundly vilified nonetheless.

I mean, for all you know, dear reader, Daniel Lyons is my pseudonym or my best pal from our business school days. He’s not, but do you trust me 100% given that you don’t know me?

2. Misinformation and Lies are Quickly Disseminated

You need merely to look at the breathless analysis of as-yet-unreleased services and products in the blogosphere to see just how much whispers and innuendo can affect business. Google’s right in the cross-hairs with that one, and people were busy disassembling their still unreleased Google Base product without any more information than a single screenshot that might have been faked.

Or ask Apple Computer, where they have had to change their method of disseminating information to the media due to incessant leaks and misinformation about new products. The Motorola ROKR phone suffered from this prejudged-by-bloggers fate, as did the Video iPod, which has had to “prove itself” in a way that previous products have never had to worry about.

3. Bloggers are not Subject to Libel Laws

While I really want to say that this is patently false, it is surprisingly difficult to find any legal cases that have been successfully prosecuted where the defendant was a blogger or was publishing their libelous material on a weblog. There are cases like Aaron Wall versus Traffic Power (see my writeup on the case for background), but the case isn’t about what Aaron wrote as much as what other people wrote as comments on his site.

The combination of being able to go back and edit weblog entries, the relative anonymity of most weblogs, and the lack of precedent suggests that Lyons does have a good point here, one that we should be thinking about quite seriously. It has profound implications for the legitimacy of blogging that every blogger seeks.

4. Bloggers are not Journalists

I’ve wrestled with this point myself, having been on panels about blogging sponsored by the Society for Professional Journalists and similar. It’s fashionable to be skeptical of journalists, especially after con men like Jayson Blair sully the reputation of even the most revered bastion of professional journalism, but it is nonetheless true that the vast majority of journalists check their facts and ensure they have at least two sources to corroborate information.

Bloggers, on the other hand, are happy to cite other bloggers as the source of information, a tortuous chain that often ends at a single person opining something controversial and interesting about a company or product. Bloggers also don’t respect moratoriums on publishing information from companies, arrogantly believing that the blogosphere is more important than any sort of announcement schedule by the organization. As a result, few companies pre-release information to even the most serious and professional of bloggers.

To be fair, there are bloggers who take the responsibilities of their bully pulpit more seriously and try to avoid gossip and innuendo in favor of facts and direct sources, but they really are in the minority.

And so, enough…

There are more points that I think can be culled from Daniel Lyons’ “Attack of the Blogs” article in Forbes, but let’s stop here as I think I’ve made my point.

Like any other medium, blogs are just tools that will be used thoughtfully and artfully for communication by some and viciously and vindictively to propagate lies and misinformation by others.

The important thing is to step back from the overt bias in the Forbes article and read through it a second time, asking yourself whether anything said is really false, or simply just a bit breathless and one-sided.

I am tired of the thoughtlessly, relentlessly predictable reactions I see. Few are interested in what is right for the nation, they are too busy “scoring points” against the “other side.”

We are all on the same side, but we have forgotten this simple fact.

Rome fell after centuries of success not because of external forces, but because of internal rot.

Before the invasion of Iraq, from the outside the United States appeared at its strongest, invincible.

Now?