Blog or Not?



A statistically improbable polymath's views on politics and culture.

Monday, May 12, 2003
 
"Give thy thoughts no tongue,
Nor any unproportioned thought his act."

I'm assuming that you, if "you" are a political/activist group, have at least ten members, a message, and have committed yourselves to non-violent social change. If this doesn't describe your group, then you may want to start again.

All right. First entry: The Importance of Intelligent Spokespersons

Last summer P.J. O'Rourke wrote a column in The Atlantic on "Postmodern Protest in the Age of the Neo-Demo". Here are some embarrasing quotes from the piece, which was apparently a demonstration about everything. I'll be using this piece as an example of Demonstrations Gone Wrong in the future:

Max found campus feminists to interview. One admitted that the Taliban's treatment of women was terrible and said the United States should have done something earlier, "in the name of women."
"Wouldn't that involve war?" Max asked.
"Yeah, it's a tricky one," the feminist said. "There might be some nonviolent approach such as micro-lending."


Please roll that around in your mind for a minute. Then ask yourself: Would a government that didn't allow mothers to teach their daughters how to read permit, say, the Grameen Bank going in and giving the women of Kabul start-up loans for tea shops and cell phone rental businesses?






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