Gee, the MSM still isn’t covering the Brett Kimberlin story. I’m shocked, shocked I tell you!
But on occasion they do invite liberty-loving pundits like the divine Ms. Malkin. Then there’s the pretense of a rational discussion.
Play a thought game with me. Suppose Michelle asked lefty panelists, “What would it take for you to change your mind and become conservative?” How would they respond?
Incredulously, laughingly, defensively. They couldn’t answer because the possibility has never crossed their minds. And eventually one would ask (with a “gotcha” smirk) “What would it take for you to become liberal?”
And Michelle could reply, “For starters, I’d need an example of government socialism ever working. What convinced you? Soviet Russia, East Germany, Maoist China, Castro’s Cuba, the EU…which?”
No doubt Michelle already knows those folks are hopeless. I’m sure she’s trying to reach undecideds in the audience, not the leftist mouthpieces. But it would be so easy for our media defenders to show the utter closemindedness of the Left.
Leftists don’t reason, they rationalize. They procede from conclusions, not toward them.
So if you’re going to mess with them, don’t challenge their arguments. Challenge them at the beginning: their conclusions. We use axioms and reason to procede to decisions. Their decisions ARE their axioms. Pointed questions will easily reveal reasoning that is entirely, “Because I said so!”
You still won’t reach them, but their stupidity and ego will become much more obvious to any onlookers.
And of course the media will immediately quit inviting you to pow-wows. So if that’s how you make your living, I guess it’s a lot to ask.
World's Only Rational Man 
I have a couple of issues with her actually.
Her defense of the internment of Japanese-Americans, for example. Her argumentation for it is utterly ridiculous, if not totally retarded, defying historic facts and the virtues and principles she claims to fight for. The internment hasn’t prevented espionage or anything else. It rather robbed the US of thousands of willing soldiers. Those Japanese-Americans, who served, served with great distinction and courage. Many more would have served if they had gotten their civil rights back. But since the country they moved to (and even more often were born in) treated them like sh*t they saw no reason to do so, understandably.
Funny how this was a Democrat policy……
And she has this weird habit of calling Democrat and left wing BS “kabuki”. Why not call it a farce or similar? No, she tends to call it “kabuki” instead, so, honestly, I think she has some issues with Japanese things.
I agree; not Michelle’s finest hour.
(Speculation: could the Japanese issues may have to do with her Phillipine heritage and the WWII legacy?)
“Kabuki” to me is fairly reasonable and I think non-pejorative . Political kabuki means something like “complicated, protracted, highly stylized political performance.” It works for me because I can’t think of a replacement word that would convey the same thing.
By the way, I always wanted the chance to use this joke, but it never comes up:
A noh performer was full of praise for his trade. He exclaimed, “There’s no business like noh business!”
Heh.
I didn’t even know Michelle defended internment. But considering what Japan did to the Phillipines, she had pretty good emotional reasons for such a lousy judgement. In fact she’d be right…if Japanese-Americans and Japanese-Japanese were the same thing.
And as usual emotional reasons are BS. I could have pretty good emotional reasons for hating Russians and Americans based on the same idea. US planes bombed my hometown and Russian forces looted it. Same for Japanese and Americans and Australians on the receiving end. Especially Japanese women, based on this, should hate Americans and Australians.The behavior of soldiers from both during the occupation was simply outrageous. The myth that one of the reasons the Japanese fought so hard was that they feared the Allies would rape the women and girls isn’t really a myth. It’s a hard fact, proven by thousands of police reports, files from court martials in the Australian military and eyewitness reports from military police. And no, I’m not kidding about the thousands of reports. In the opening days of the occupation there are almost 1,400 reported rapes in Kanagawa alone. “Rape raids” happened in many cities, with whole groups of soldiers assaulting houses where women lived. And the Japanese government helped by even forcing women into prostitution (there’s the case of a group of young women who had worked in a factory outside of Hiroshima, after the war they were pressed into prostitution by the Japanese government.) Australian historians have confirmed it. American historians… are silent.
Now mind you, this isn’t about apologies, those are irrelevant. This is about simply accepting the fact as what it is: fact. An apology by Obama for this would just as ridiculously stupid as an apology for the bombs. Okay, maybe less stupid, because the bombs were dropped in a time of war on an enemy who didn’t want to give up. Truman had the weapon, it worked, the enemy wasn’t giving up, he was the CIC and did his job, but I digress. Still, such apologies are irrelevant and don’t change anything. No American today bears responsibility. Most of the criminals are either extremely old or already dead. There is no point in holding an entire nation with her citizens as hostage over something that happened almost 70 years ago.
There were thousands of J-Americans who openly stated during questioning that they would join at once, if the US would give them the citizens’ rights back. Thousands more would have joined, but the democrat government under FDR dismissed them as “yellow peril”. As for their performance in combat: 442nd Regimental Combat Team. Nuff said. And let’s not forget the Nisei interpreters who saved lives on Okinawa and who were instrumental for the US espionage effort on fascist Japan.
Anyway
I see “kabuki” more as an “avant garde”, which it really was. Not so much today anymore, but back then, when Okuni and her girls had the crowds flock to their performances, or later, when the big names Ichikawa, Nakamura, etc, -big even today- made the crowd cry out in orgasmic pleasure with their performances, yes, back then it was avant garde, it was something new, maybe even bizarre. It was the rock’n roll compared to noh’s classic. One could even describe it as “out of the ordinary”. There’s nothing “avant garde” or out of the ordinary when it comes to Democrat shenanigans. The opposite is the truth: their neo-fascist/socialist approach and hating freedom and liberty putting everything under Big Daddy State is their normal approach.
Lacking a better term we could name it the “democrat Kampf”. Cause this is what it essentially is. Ayers, Obama and Pelosi can write a book and call it “Unser Kampf” (our struggle.)
“I’d need an example of government socialism ever working.”
[Very diffidently raises hand to about shoulder level while cringing in seat]
…uh, the United States of America post WWII? Say, 1950 through 1975?
Lots of government regulation in place. Growing entitlement, such as farm aid, Soc Sec. and various forms of welfare and non-profit subsidy.
I’m less than half serious, here. I think most of that was explosive capitalism and innovation, barely kept in check by socialism. And it’s clear to me that as socialism has grown, particularly the entitlements, political correctness, and educational elements, the economy and the national character has catastrophically crashed.
But if I were a socialist, I’d claim America’s power arose from socialism, not capitalism, and I bet more detailed economic history than I’m currently able to summon could be edited and patched to make a pretty strong case.
You know how I’d put it? I’d say that intelligent socialism harnessed the capitalist wild horses and made them work for the people.