George Bush heard my rant from the other day and hammered home my point with this speech.
“Not only will our country be better, but we will show the world that values — universal values — must be respected and must be adhered to” — or else, presumably, we’ll bomb the dickens out of anyone who doesn’t respect the universal values that W stipulates.
Now, if you have to threaten people in order to make them adhere to values that you’re claiming are universal, how does that work out? It sounds to me as though they’re not exactly universal values under those circumstances. “Universal values, except for the people we disagree violently with.” Now there’s some good clear thinking.