Cassandra's Voice

Sometimes I read an essay that's so good that I think, "Wow, that's great, I couldn't have said it better myself." I've developed a subconscious protocol for handling such material.

My neurotransmitters immediately route the essay to my brain's "Cool Idea Storage Unit" (CISU). On its way, my Rhetorical Processing Unit (RPU) filters the essay through my cerebral delamination filters, where it is stripped of its author's name, place of origin, and, indeed, any internal suggestion that the essay has already been written and published. The delaminated essay next passes through a brain stem neuro-centrifuge, where the connective tissues binding the ideas and the phrases contained in the original essay are dissolved. They are then stocked in Immediate Access Storage (IAS) in random form, like a stack of so much lumber. The neuro-centrifuge's solvent is designed to leave clever analogies, stirring phrases and bons mots in general untouched and fully intact for appropriate re-use.

All these ideas and phrases, thus stocked in Immediate Access Storage (IAS), are by that time totally removed from their original context, and available for my "innocent" use in my own writing. The next time I feel inclined to write on the same or similar subject, they pop into my consciousness, one by one, as though handed to me by my Muse, while I write. I naively believe that, thus inspired, I am engaged in "creativity." We call this process "unconscious plagiarism."

Occasionally, however, an essay or editorial is so true and so clearly written that I'm moved to overrule this unconscious process, and republish it as it was written, with full attribution to its author. That is how I felt today, after reading a column in the Seattle Times, written by Times editorial columnist Bruce Ramsey. The column discusses the wisdom of Rep. Ron Paul, the predictable fact that the Republicans will ignore his wisdom, and the fate, as a consequence, of the Republican Party in 2008. I quote the conclusion of the column:

It is fairly clear now that America will leave Iraq, and not in triumph. It will be tempting for the Republicans to blame the result on the Democrats, because that would mean that the Republicans were "right" in some theoretical way. But they were not right. They did not understand Iraq, or the history of imperialism or much of anything beyond knocking over Saddam Hussein.

In foreign affairs, the Republicans are our nationalist party, and there is a role for that. But they need to question the idea of a "global war on terror." The 9/11 attacks were acts of desperation by 19 men with box cutters. What these men did looked and felt like acts of war, but really it was an audacious crime, planned and executed by a political gang financed with private money.

Fighting such gangs is the job of cops, security workers, customs agents, G-men, diplomats and alert citizens. It is an important task, but we are not at war. America hasn't been attacked in nearly six years.

Republicans need to settle on a foreign policy that asserts American interests in a realistic and humane way. Whether they go as far as the noninterventionism of Ron Paul is another question, but they have to jettison the Bush policy of preemptive war. That the leading Republican contenders refuse to question that policy is a sign that they have not learned and, 17 months from now, will not win.