Unthinking Tank -- Heritage Edition:
If you are a conservative or libertarian who criticizes the Bush Administration, Andrew Sullivan reports (and Ryan Sager confirms) you are not welcome at the Heritage Foundation, even for dinner. (LvIP)
UPDATE: The Heritage Foundation's Tim Chapman comments here. His post includes Heritage's "official response":
Failure to invite a non-member to a members-only event is not an exercise in blackballing. Declining to host an event when an alternative venue is available is not blackballing.That's not exactly a denial of the allegations. Meanwhile, Bruce Bartlett writes:
The Heritage event to which I was uninvited due to my criticism of Bush’s policies was not some ordinary one of the type Heritage hosts every day. It was specifically to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the 1981 tax cut. As far as I am aware, every major living figure involved in the enactment of this legislation was invited except me. I seriously doubt that any are paying contributors to the Heritage Foundation. The organization knows full well about my involvement in the 1981 tax cut because I was a senior fellow at Heritage for three years back in the 1980s before leaving to work for Ronald Reagan in the White House. I was, in fact, the staff person on Jack Kemp’s congressional staff who drafted the original Kemp-Roth tax cut, upon which the Reagan bill was based, back in 1977. Many others also contributed. Some of those invited to the Heritage event did not. People can draw their own conclusions about these facts.Heritage is free to invite whom they choose to their events and offer or decline the use of their facilities by outside groups for whatever reason they please -- but there is nothing "un-libertarian" about criticizing the exercise of that choice.
Related Posts (on one page):
- Banned at Heritage?:
- Unthinking Tank -- Heritage Edition:
Yeah, seriously. The post could have at least linked to someone confirming Sullivan's account.
UPDATE: A Heritage response: "Failure to invite a non-member to a members-only event is not an exercise in blackballing. Declining to host an event when an alternative venue is available is not blackballing."
Heritage: Declining to host an event when an alternative venue is available is not blackballing.
Why change the subject? Is it, or isn't it, true that they found out Sager was speaking, and *then* said "not on our turf"?
The contemptuous remarks above, incidentally, bolster Sullivan's point. If you're a Bush critic, then everything you say must be false.
true, but it is damned silly behavior.
I mean come on: "alternative venues" are always available for everything. What the hell is that supposed to mean? Did they demand that the event be moved after finding out who was speaking or not?
If blacks can't be members of all-white golf clubs, then I guess technically, they aren't being discriminated against when they aren't invited to members-only events, right?
I for one am tired of Sullivan's self-righteous whining.
But if we are to classify Andrew Sullivan, we're going to need to add a category for money-sniffing drama queens who play conservative when it will boost their hit count.
Right. Because only a "drama queen" would be upset that the U.S. tortures people as a matter of official, secret policy.
(Silly queers, trying to impose their perverted values on right-thinking heterosexual pro-torture Americans!)
The problem is not that he's a drama queen, but that he fails to define his terms while baying about how morally and ethically superior he is and how evil and immoral his opponents are.
Oh wait, I guess the problem is that he IS a drama queen, after all...
To the contrary: Andrew has been fairly consistent about calling things by their right names, even when the President won't: He (rightly) insists that waterboarding is torture and that other "alternative" Administration techniques, such as stress positions, "Long Time Standing," "Cold Cell," prolonged sleep deprivation, and threats of violence against a detainee and his children, are either torture as such, or at the very least "cruel treatment" also made unlawful under the Geneva Conventions and the Convention Against Torture.
I know there are folks here who think these techniques ought to be legal. But at least for the time being, they're not, and Andrew has been perfectly clear in arguing that we should obey the law.
That's a nice strawman. Too bad he never said he was a drama queen simply because of that issue. He's a drama queen because he routinely wraps himself up in a blanket of victimhood anytime someone disagrees with him, all the while condemnding them for such nonsense points as "not showing enough doubt". Meanwhile, he's the master of doing one thing and condemning it in others. He complains that his detractors don't have enough "doubt", and then asserts without shame that the laws of Andrew Sullivan are irrefutable, because Andrew Sullivan said so, and anyone who disagrees is an evil homophobic christianist.
As for the original topic of this thread, perhaps it is not Bartlett and Sager's criticisms of the Bush administration, but their criticisms of Heritage itself, that have gotten them disinvited.
Nick
Yeah, and besides the burning people at the stake, the Spanish Inquisition was really no big deal, despite what those liberal drama queens would like us to believe.
As for the Spanish Inquisition a big deal it was, though a great deal less big than is typically imagined and portrayed. One example only, during its entirety a few thousand were killed and at no time were they killed en masse. Compare that to the millions killed, and often en masse, during Uncle Ho's, Stalin's, Pol Pot's, Mao's, etc. various reigns.
Wow--an impressively thorough refutation of Marty Lederman's extensive work on the subject. I guess he can just pack up his bags and go home. Sheesh, even John Yoo thinks he needs to argue that the Geneva Conventions are inapplicable or unconstitutional when dealing with terrorism suspects, not just that they actually allow the "techniques" in question. I think I stand safe in asserting that many informed people who read this blog actually do think the techniques violate the law, regardless of what they would like the law to be. And some number of us believe it unwise or unnecessary to change the law to accomodate the whims of an administration that has yet to demonstrate (at least publicly) substantial successes in preventing terrorism or bringing actual terrorists to justice. Wannabes such as Mossoaui don't count.
If Sullivan has a pet dog, and in fact refers to it as a dog rather than a cat or a wallaby or some other label, are we to applaud Sullivan for "defining his terms" and being consistent? Ostensibly and for some type of rhetorical and argumentative effect we might do so - but I hardly think it would be very meaningful to do so.
Simple fact is, M. Lederman makes statements in this vein without supporting them with quotes or links from Sullivan or the Administration. Perhaps the allusion was intended for some other aspect of the debate, regardless, it's not at all apparent
Lederman is mischaracterizing other people's positions and engaging in sophistry by pretending that it is essentially universally accepted that these techniques violate the Geneva Convention. It doesn't take a full-length law review article in a blog post to call him on his mischaracterization - and pointing to John Yoo's arguments doesn't bind anyone but John Yoo. Lederman is not a federal judge whose opinion actually binds anyone. Neither am I. Of course, you may be, since you're anonymous, but unless you are and you write an opinion ruling them unlawful, your opinion doesn't matter beyond anyone else you convince. I'm not the one pretending that this isn't a hotly disputed legal issue.
Anderson - how many people were waterboarded? I can think of far greater and more widespread abuses of government power to get worked up about. And I don't want to give terrorism suspects the Comfy Chair.
Nick