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Tuesday June 14, 2005

Intolerance, Monomania and Zealotry

It's funny. I'm a person of strongly held beliefs -- but I'm often characterized by my conservative friends as a liberal, and by my liberal friends as a conservative, and am no doubt suspected, by some, of intolerance, monomania and zealotry. Foo on them. I hope I don't fit in so neat a box, or rather, so ugly a box. At the same time, I can say with conviction that Newsweek columnist Anna Quindlen is waaay too liberal for my tastes. George Will is too conservative. Fareed Zakaria is just right. (And I miss Meg Greenfield!)

Nonetheless, to be fair, Quindlen speaks for me in her May 30 column, Life of the Closed Mind:

The young men and women who began their college years in the shadow of September 11 graduate in its shadow as well. The intolerant, the monomaniacal, the zealots driven by religious certainty engineered the worst attack on American soil, and the result has been intolerance, monomania and zealotry driven by religious certainty.

Read the whole thing; it's well worth your time.

[READ IT ALL]

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P.S. I have been a Newsweek reader for many years, and have faith in their editorial integrity and standards. Despite her rant against conspiracy theorists, I suspect that as regards the retracted story on the desecration of the Qur'an by military interrogators in Guantanamo Bay, "the magazine was set up by the Pentagon to mask the administration's own malfeasance" (emphasis mine). Or at least hung out to dry. So, does that make me more liberal than Anna?

(2005-06-14 19:22:19.0) Permalink Comments [2]

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