Gene Lyons on how the liberal/conservative experiment falls shortt

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Now as political commentary this strikes me as plausible. Last time I checked, the Bush administration had floated eight or nine contradictory rationales for invading and occupying Iraq, starting with make-believe nuclear weapons, bestowing the gift of democracy on our grateful Middle Eastern brethren, standing up until they sit down (or whatever it was ), all trending toward the inevitable destination of “exterminate all the brutes.” Few loyalists appear to have noticed.

But presented as science in a periodical otherwise devoted to articles titled “Activation of EGFR and ERK by rhomboid signaling regulates the consolidation and maintenance of sleep in Drosophila” ? (Fruit flies sleep ? Who knew ?) Give me a break. To begin with, “liberal” and “conservative” are subjective terms with no fixed meaning. Asking NYU and UCLA students to self-identify, then assigning specious objectivity to those declarations, resembles the learned “projectors” in the third voyage of Jonathan Swift’s “Gulliver’s Travels,” gravely distilling sunbeams out of cucumbers.

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http://moose-and-squirrel.com/gene/gene.html

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