NP: John Cage, 4'33"

Okay, after just reading his blog for two days, I'm intellectually smitten with Scott Adams. Today he offers up an example of taking a position you don't believe in, and defending it, sort of like high school debate club, I guess. And that position is the war in Iraq.

His imagined defense of the war isn't really the issue here. What I find fascinating -- and it will be very interesting to see if and how this propagates through the blogosphere -- is that he provides a pretty rational argument for the actions taken and the possible benefits. Unfortunately, this stands out so much because it bears little or no relation to the past or present arguments from anyone who actually defends the war.

I sort of took a crack at this back before the invasion -- the premise being that you could make a comprehensive case for attacking based on the cumulative effect of a whole bunch of different factors, more as an explanation than a defense -- but I don't have the reach of Adams, so again, it will be interesting to see how this plays. This almost speaks directly to what Andrew Sullivan writes in his Atlantic Monthly piece on Barack Obama, at least on the point where he touches on the loudest voices in the media.