Daniel Hannan: I Hope They Fail (UPDATE: Wolverines?)
Oh dear, it looks like Daniel Hannan, MEP and newest conservative heartthrob, just got himself disinvited from all the cool conservative parties. Here’s the title of his latest blog post:
G20 summit: here’s hoping that Gordon Brown and Barack Obama fail
Not only will he find himself persona non grata at the tony gatherings of the great conservative minds but he’ll also find himself the subject of a myriad of blog posts and news articles explaining why he’s simply not nuanced enough to be a conservative leader. Poor guy. No one really deserves that.
I suspect that this won’t fash Hannan much at all since, as a conservative in Britain, he’s used to being tut-tutted by conservatives who surrendered their language to the left a long time ago.
It’s worth noting here that Hannan is an actual policymaker and, if he keeps going, could well be the leader of the conservatives in Britain. Perhaps our mavens of pleasant speaking can have a few moments instructing him as to what he may and may not say so as not to confuse the imperceptive brutes in the general electorate.
UPDATE: Meanwhile, in the world of the Islamists…
Like the man says, if we don’t defend the right to be clearly understood, someone will buy it right out from under us.
Related pugnacious thoughts from Donald Douglas, Dan Riehl, and Pundit & Pundette. Some history about the confounding of our language, Obama-style, from Jim Treacher and Clarice Feldman.
UPDATE 2: Not to sound all “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” here, but both stories are related. The dishonest misreading of Rush Limbaugh’s comments and the massive left-wing astroturfing campaigns both have the same goal – to muddy the waters so badly that we can’t trust our own words anymore. Stacy McCain has plenty more on the subject, including a clarification from Breitbart himself and a living, breathing illustration of how the old strategies become new again. Moe Lane has insightful thoughts as well.
Related posts:
- Why MEP Daniel Hannan is Being Heard in America
- The Delivery Presents – Fail, Fail, More Fail, and King Cake!
- Will Sarkozy Lead an Olympic Boycott? Let's Hope!
- He’s Starting to Make Joe Biden Sound Like Daniel Webster
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His blog post seems quite clear to me. I would never criticize him for it. No reasonable person could read it as hoping for economic failure, whether short or long-term.
This makes it different from the Limbaugh comments I criticized, which could be read (and have been read by many reasonable conservatives) as hoping for short-term economic failure for long-term economic good.
Well, we did catch him before he was taken out of context, didn't we?
"Well, we did catch him before he was taken out of context, didn’t we?"
Jimmie,
I have argued for weeks now that we should concern ourselves with possible reasonable and good faith misinterpretations of our words — but NOT with unreasonable, bad faith interpretations that rip the words from their context.
For example, in this post I said: "Speakers have no responsibility to self-censor to prevent unreasonable and bad faith misinterpretations of their words."
Somehow, my argument has been taken to mean that I am defending speaking carefully to prevent being taken out of context. But to read my words that way, one must take them out of context.
Which (again) is not something I defend.
I'm not really sure what you defend, to be honest. To go back to the Limbaugh argument, you seemed awfully keen to focus on four words and ignored the two sentences before those words, which seems to me a very bad faith interpretation. Of course, you could say that you addressed the four words as they were given you from media reports, which is an understandable position but still defends the bad faith interpretation of the actual words he said.
I read your quote and wonder what the heck you've been arguing for a month, since what happened to Limbaugh was a specific bad faith interpretation of his words.
,i>I’m not really sure what you defend, to be honest. To go back to the Limbaugh argument, you seemed awfully keen to focus on four words and ignored the two sentences before those words, which seems to me a very bad faith interpretation. Of course, you could say that you addressed the four words as they were given you from media reports, which is an understandable position but still defends the bad faith interpretation of the actual words he said.
I read your quote and wonder what the heck you’ve been arguing for a month, since what happened to Limbaugh was a specific bad faith interpretation of his words.
I don't think it was, but I'm happy to discuss it. It might be more productive over e-mail.
Or let's say this: "what happened to Limbaugh was a specific bad faith interpretation of his words." I think some people interpreted his words in bad faith and some did not. That would be clearer.
Feel free to e-mail me at patterico AT gmail DOT com.
I think that's fair.
My objection is that, it seems to me, your criticism began exactly where the left (using deliberate bad faith) wanted you to begin – with the four words. I don't think you acted in bad faith, but you began with poisoned fruit and there wasn't any way for your reasoning not to contain some of that poison.
We can talk more about it via e-mail if you're not tired of it by now (though I suspect you might be and I don't want to grind you down even more!).
I'm tired of it, but I'm more tired of having people misunderstand my position. So let's talk.
In defense of Daniel Hannan, I have this to offer. The United States was not alone in plunging the financial world, and ultimately Main street, into the squalls by itself. But, it played a huge role, as identified by McKitrick & McCullough in this: http://www.fraserinstitute.org/commerce.web/produ…
So, what is to be done to deal with the evaporation of the phantom money? Those who second guess Hannan went the route of stimuli packages. Frankly the better route is this: http://pajamasmedia.com/instapundit/89526/