Quick Roundup 347

David Allen Speaks to Google

I'm posting this here in part to remind myself to finish watching this video of personal productivity guru David Allen speaking to some Google employees. It is about 45 minutes long.

From what I have seen of it so far, it is certainly going to live up to Craig Ceely's assessment as a "great talk".

Medved Going Full Circle?

When I was in college back in the late eighties, the conservative movement was just beginning to break the left's stranglehold on politics and academia. One thing I recall was how common it used to be for leftists to attempt to marginalize conservatives by various smears, including implying that, like John Birchers, they were all nutty conspiracy theorists.

Now conservatism is somewhat entrenched and, amusingly in a way, many leftists will shamelessly spout conspiracy theories. And now -- if I read this Michael Medved column correctly -- some conservatives are attempting to marginalize their ideological opponents by painting them as conspiracy theorists!

I am not a libertarian, but I am often confused with one by people like Medved. Note that he lumps Green Party candidate Cynthia McKinney and Libertarian Bob Barr together, and places them in a long line of "fringe parties and paranoia", "usually blam[ing] their own lack of power or influence on the diabolical plots of some secretive group or another." He then discusses a real example of such, the anti-Masonic Party, at great length.

Not to defend libertarianism or to deny that Barr and McKinney don't have some important similarities, but....

There are quite a few good reasons for people interested in political change not to form political parties (among them being that doing so is a sure path to political self-marginalization), and those are compounded for libertarians by their own foolhardy "big tent" approach. But Medved isn't addressing any of this, nor does he address whatever issue he might have with "libertarians". He just smears them (and people like me) and hides the dishonesty behind an interesting bit of American history.

What he is also hiding, like the leftists before him, is an inability to effectively answer some difference of opinion he has with his opponents.

He should know. He served the drinks.

Myrhaf thought the same thing I did upon hearing that Bush recently said "Wall Street got drunk," but he blogged it first!

So if Wall Street got drunk, it's because the Bush administration kept serving drinks on the house -- long after closing time.

Very good post. Read it all. I am especially envious of the following zinger: "[Bush] just speaks, like his favorite political philosopher, in woozy metaphors that can mean anything."

Jesus!

A Must-Read at Amazon!

Rational Jenn posted about it a few days ago, but if you haven't read the review she mentioned then, go there post haste and read it. I laughed out loud at the end.

-- CAV