Bush and Ahmadenijad
Matthew Yglesias notes that we should keep Islamist nuts in perspective, since our own president is pretty religious:
[N]oting that millenarian Islam is an important strain in Iranian politics ought to be put in the context of a United States of America that features millenarian Christianity as an important political strain. I don’t see any reason to believe that George W. Bush is actually trying to bring about the apocalypse, but all the evidence you could bring to bear in applying this argument to Ahmadenijad applies mutadis mutandis to Bush.
Dave Shuler has an excellent response which begins, “I think you need to mutatis a lot more than the mutandis to get there. ”
Indeed.
Thanks, for the link, James. As I noted in a comment on the post I’ve figured out what nettled me about Matthew’s post: he makes a series of genuinely obnoxious claims and tries to innoculate himself from criticism for them with a facade of reasonableness.
he makes a series of genuinely obnoxious claims and tries to innoculate himself from criticism for them with a facade of reasonableness.
Uh, Dave? Welcome to the blogosphere 🙂