The Depth of the Blogosphere

I'm falling behind on things, and tomorrow looks to be busy. So, herewith, a swooping effort to catch up.

First, a question. How profoundly unsuperficial is blogosphere discussion? Reader Ben Bateman thought it worth the effort to make a comment that certainly merited promotion to a post. Now, Marc Comtois has picked up the thread, replete with some historical perspective:

This idea of Truth = Power reminded me of something. The historian Bernard Bailyn based much of his theory on the origins of the American Revolution (eloquently stated in his Ideological Origins of the American Revolution) as a war between Power and Liberty. The founders believed that these two entities were naturally opposed to each other. They believed that the more power granted to anything; the President, Congress, the police, the military, the less liberty that will be enjoyed by all. The old cliche "The Truth will set you Free" leads me to believe that Truth = Freedom. Since Freedom is essentially liberty, could we then conclude that the old problem defined by the founders, Liberty vs. Power could be restated as Truth vs. Power? If Bateman is correct, and liberals equate Truth with Power, we now have a Truth vs. Truth battle.

(N.B., of course, that "cliché" is also Gospel truth.)

This level of discussion, in turn, shines the bright light of contrast on a phenomenon that Joanne Jacobs observes:

Jennifer was an English teacher who knew too much. She got in trouble for explaining that a line in Merchant of Venice was referring to a Bible verse.

Somehow a "persecution complex" doesn't seem quite as much of an extremist ploy. Dennis Prager certainly doesn't think so; regarding the removal of the cross from the L.A. county seal:

What we have here is an American version of the Taliban. The ACLU and the supervisors are leftist versions of the Taliban -- attempting to erase the Christian history of America just as the Muslim Taliban tried to erase the Buddhist history of Afghanistan when they blew up ancient Buddhist sculptures in their country.

Los Angeles County is the largest county in America. If it allows its past to be expunged by a vote of three to two, America's past is sure to follow. If you want to know what happens after that, ask any student of the Soviet Union.

That might go a bit far. Removing a seal through litigious intimidation is substantially different than blowing up statues. Terrorists don't sue and petition. They do stuff like this:

A bomb exploded evening in the central Italian city of Bologna during a European election rally attended by Deputy Prime Minister Gianfranco Fini, wounding six people, the Ansa news agency reported.

The crude device was placed under an electoral campaign vehicle just a few metres from the platform where Fini, leader of the National Alliance, a member of Italy's ruling coalition led by Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, was making a speech, according to Ansa.

I wonder how many Europeans are privately linking this attack to Spain's capitulation.

Speaking of links, I can't think of a segue, but Tuesday's cartoon from Chris Muir is very much worth a look, if you haven't already seen it.