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Manichaeanswas a favorite derogatory way to describe GOP President George. W. Bush and his Iraq war supporters in the mid-2000s. The term referred to the followers of Mani, a third-century Persian prophet who founded a highly successful religious movement that rivaled Christianity. Mani was a dualist who believed that the world was divided between the forces of light and good, and the forces of darkness and evil, both locked in a never-ending conflict. Christians, who believe that despite the existence of evil, God and his creation are good, deemed Manichaeism heresy.

On Jan. 30, 2002, not long after 9/11, Bush gave a speech in which he described the war on terror and the looming Iraq war as a conflict between good and evil. There is no middle ground like none. The people we fight are evil people. The day before, in his State of the Union address, Bush had designated Iraq, together with Iran and North Korea, the Axis of Evil.

With the speed of a wildfire, the word Manichaean spread through the liberal punditry to characterize Bushs supposedly simplistic and intellectually challenged analysis. Princeton bioethicist Peter Singer promptly ground out a 2004 book about Bush, The President of Good and Evil. On a book-tour stop at UCLA, Singer accused the president of engaging in a childish reading of moral rules. Singer traced that notion to Bushs evangelical Christian beliefs, arguing that evangelicals had never managed to eradicate the Manichaean heresy from their primitive mind-sets.

Vox founder Ezra Klein, then a Washington Post columnist, published an online essay in the American Prospect titled The Manichean War. President Carters formernational security advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, used the phrase Manichaean paranoia in 2007 with reference to Bush when he was interviewed by Jon Stewarton The Daily Show. Veteran journalist Glenn Greenwald capped it all off with a 2008 book, A Tragic Legacy: How a Good vs. Evil Mentality Destroyed the Bush Presidency. The book was all about Bushs simplistic Manichaean world view.

The idea was that truly sophisticated thinkers which is the way liberal pundits like to viewthemselves have a far more nuanced view, seeing the world not in terms of darkness and light but in terms of infinite shades of gray. The words complexity and ambiguity were said to be more intelligent than good and evil to describe moral questions and assess moral character moreGame of Thrones rather than Lord of the Rings. Never mind that, for all the fact that the Iraq war turned out to be a huge mistake, there might actually be some forces out there that could be accurately described as genuine forces of evil such as, say, Islamic State.

Then 2016 arrived, and with it, Donald Trumps winning run for the White House. Suddenly the words complexity and ambiguity not to mention nuanced disappeared from the vocabularies of the so-called sophisticates, washed away in the swirling high tide of the return of that simplistic word: evil.

Here is Brian Beutler, writing for the New Republic on Nov. 10, two days after the election: The depth of potential horrors in Donald Trumps presidency is nearly bottomless. The headline on Beutlers essay reads: Donald Trump and the Evil of Banality.

A couple of weeks earlier, the Washington Posts Jennifer Rubin had written: It matters not at all whether there is some diagnosable problem with Trump or whether he is simply evil. Theres that e-word again.

At Politico, Joe Keohane wrote in April 2016 about the sad mind and evil media genius behind @realDonaldTrump. Steve King sputtered this in an article titled Donald Trumps Undeniable Evil for Death and Taxes magazine: He is a cancerous tumor devoid of any redeemable quality, slowly infecting and corrupting everyone and everything around him. Billionaire entertainment mogul Barry Diller told CNBC that Trumps candidacy was an evil miracle. No nuance there.

Since the inauguration, the sinister president theme is only metastasizing: Narcissist or evil genius? asked the National Catholic Reporter.Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin: The plutocratic evil twins opined the headline on a Paul Rosenberg piece in Salon.

Strange, isnt it, that when the tables are turned, the liberal pushers of moral ambiguity are as absolutist as any fundamentalist preacher associated with George W. Bush? Theres a lesson or two to be learned here. With all due respect toBrzezinski, the right doesnt have a lock on paranoia. And dualism our side good, your side evil is actually baked into human nature and doesnt really have much to do with how smart you are or how many shades of moral gray you think you can discern.Whenever you let loose your moral indignation at high decibel, someone somewhere will be laughing.

So who are the Manichaeans now?

Washington-based Charlotte Allen writes about social and cultural issues.

Follow the Opinion section on Twitter@latimesopinionandFacebook

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When it comes to Trump, liberals can't see shades of gray - Los Angeles Times

The Liberal government plans to enact a new lawto limit cash-for-access fundraising, a senior Liberal source confirmed to CBC News.

Newlegislation will aim to make cash-for-access fundraising more transparent and reportable to Canadians by requiring the events to be held in publicly accessible spaces rather than private homes or clubs.

The events will also have to be publicly advertised in advance and followed up with a timely public report detailing how many people attended and how much money was raised.

The story was first reported in the Globe and Mail Friday.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has come under fire for attending $1,500-a-head fundraising events, often held in the homes of wealthy Canadians. News of the planned legislation comes as the prime minister facesmore heat from the opposition Conservatives and NDP when Parliament re-opens Monday after a six-week break.

Ethics Commissioner Mary Dawson has raised concerns about events Trudeau attended involving business leaders with ties to China.

She said information to date was not sufficient to warrant an investigation, but she said she planned to "follow up" with the prime minister about his involvement in the events.

Ethics Commissioner Mary Dawson has raised concerns about the prime minister's involvement in cash-for-access fundraising events. (Adrian Wyld/Canadian Press)

Interim Conservative leader Rona Ambrose called the Liberal plan a "smokescreen" for unscrupulous practices and urged Trudeau to simply stop holding the cash-for-access fundraisers.

"It's not about where you hold the event as much as who you are selling influence," she said during a Conservative caucus meeting in Quebec City.

"He is the most powerful person in Canada. He cannot charge people to come to an event$1,500and talk about government business."

The new rules are expected to apply to party leaders and leadership candidates, but critics say the real issue is about those holding power in office selling influence.

Conservative ethics critic Blaine Calkinssaid Trudeau is merely enshrining into law the current"unsavoury" practices.

"The cash for access is still there. He's just changing the rules and moving it to a bigger room," he said.

"He can still invite the same people. He can still conduct the same government business that he was doing. He can still be lobbied the same way."

MPs on the Liberals' proposed fundraising rules revamp10:59

NDP Leader Tom Mulcairissued a statement Friday asking if this development is an admission the events were inappropriate, and if the Liberals will return the money that was raised.

"Or is this just what it looks like, a cynical game to distract from Liberals helping themselves?" his statement asks. "Let's also be clear, there is nothing here that actually bans selling access to ministers, which is the overarching problem."

Trudeau has defended his participation at the events, insisting attendees hold no special sway on government policy.

Answering questions on the so-called "cash-for-access" controversy, Trudeau insisted he will answer questions or listen to anyone who wants to speak with him about issues that are important to them.

"The fact is, my approach continues to be to listen broadly through every possible opportunityI get and make the right decisions based on what's best for Canada," he said during a year-end news conference in Ottawa last month.

"I can say that in various Liberal Party events, I listen to people as I will in any given situation, but the decisions I make in government are ones based on what is right for Canadians, not on what an individual at a fundraiser might say."

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Federal Liberals to tighten rules around cash-for-access fundraisers - CBC.ca

Like whitecaps on the surf, thousands of homemade signs bobbed above the sea of protesters who surged through downtown streets in last weekends womens march against President Trump in Los Angeles.

The messages were blunt (Trump is a racist), earnest (Kindness is everything), witty (Bad Hombre Raised by Nasty Woman), and punctuated by variations on the theme that even the Secret Service couldnt protect the new president if he tried to grab the sign-holder the way he described in his Access Hollywood video.

The End of the American Century

But the most politically relevant message may have been written on a hand-lettered, four-word sign that inverted a famous catchphrase from Star Trek. Resistance Is Not Futile, it read.

Its easy to understand why Democrats would feel otherwise. In last Novembers election, Hillary Clinton won more than 65.8 million votes. That was more than any candidate in American history except Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012 (and he just barely beat her haul the second time). Clinton beat Trump in the popular vote by nearly 2.9 million votes. With that she marked the sixth time in the past seven presidential elections that Democrats have won the popular votea record unmatched since the formation of the modern party system in 1828.

And yet, Democrats emerged from Trumps inaugural completely excluded from federal power, with Republicans simultaneously controlling the White House, House, and Senate. In state governments, Democrats began the Trump era at a low ebb, too.

So for many of those I spoke with, the marchs first purpose was to find reassurance that they were not isolated in their undiminished opposition to Trump. More than anything we want to feel that were not alone, said Mina Olivera from West Los Angeles, who marched with her husband and two children. We just cannot be quiet and let it happen.

Oliveras simple declaration captured what is likely to be the marchs most important political impact. The unprecedented turnoutwhich by the best estimates drew about one in every 100 Americans into the streetssent the message that even after Trumps upset victory there is a still a huge mass of Americans viscerally opposed to him. Were trying to show we have a voice and were not scared, Roger Palencia, a marcher from Whittier, California, told me.

For many marchers, that messages principal audience wasnt Trump, or even congressional Republicans. Instead, the target was congressional Democrats, who protesters expected to do whatever they could to hold the line against Trump, as Erica Mayorga of Whittier put it.

That sentiment is where a comparison to the Tea Party movement may be most aptly applied. The Tea Party eruption in summer 2009 had no discernible impact on then-President Obamas decisions, and relatively little on congressional Democrats either. But the uprising sharpened congressional Republicans resistance to Obama. The effect was particularly evident on health-care reform, when the Tea Partys emergence doomed Obamas hopes of reaching a bipartisan Senate agreement.

Its true, as skeptics have noted, that even if the womens marches inspire sustained activism, that wouldnt answer the key long-term challenges Democrats face. Based predominantly, though not exclusively, in urban areas, the marches reflected the excessive concentration of Democratic support in big cities and coastal statesa concentration that largely explains why the party holds so little power despite consistently amassing a bigger national coalition than the GOP since the 1990s.

But movements usually matter more in generating opposition than in formulating alternatives; they typically function more as a red light than green. Its difficult, for instance, to see Trumps rise as a policy victory for the Tea Party movement. Trumps agenda on several fronts, like infrastructure and health-care spending, could even revive the big-government conservatism of George W. Bush that infuriated Tea Partiers. Still, by creating demand for a more militant party, the movement reconfigured the GOP and helped pave Trumps bellicose run to its nomination.

If it becomes a sustained movement, the womens march might similarly reorient Democrats. Democratic elected officials remain divided over the right balance between confronting and cooperating with Trump. Privately, some leading Democratic strategists worry that Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, despite some forceful criticism, will lean too much toward making deals with Trump, rather than working to systematically mobilize resistance and limit his supportas Senate Republicans, under Tea Party pressure, did against Obama.

Some deal-making may be unavoidable since Schumer must worry about protecting 10 Democratic senators facing 2018 reelection races in states Trump carried. But Saturdays marcheslike the Tea Party uprisingsignaled that the passion in the party tilts decidedly toward resistance. Post-inaugural polls reinforce that conclusion. In the Gallup Poll this week, Trump became the first newly inaugurated president to enter office with a positive job rating from less than half of Americans. And just 14 percent of Democrats said they approved of his performance, while 81 percent disapproved. That was by far the lowest initial approval rating for a new president from voters in the opposite party. Bush, at 32 percent, marked the previous low.

Trumps tumultuous first week made clear that even after his narrow victory he is determined to pursue the sweeping policy changes, at home and abroad, that typically follow a landslide. The massive crowds that braved winter weather in most places to march last weekend testified to how many Americans are equally determined to resist him at every step. Its the liberal side of the Tea Party, said Joyce Holiday of Granada Hills, as the Los Angeles crowd swirled around her. Were going to fight. The lines are quickly hardening in a presidency that may divide America like no other.

Originally posted here:
Are Liberals Launching Their Own Tea Party? - The Atlantic

Sometimes its really easy for news stories to fit into the liberal narrative, and they gel like Michael Moore and the Womens March. Other times, like when science and technology get in the way of, say, aborting babies guilt-free, its a bit tougher.

Still, you have to applaud this article in The Atlantic for trying. In a bizarre attempt at persuasion, the author contends that ultrasounds are a political tool because they revealwait for ita heartbeat. In case youre wondering why this is a problem since a heartbeat is proof of life, heres why. It throws a wrench in the liberals favorite love story: science meets abortion.

Ultrasounds have been used for imaging developing babies in utero since the mid-1950s and become routine in maternity clinics throughout the developed world in the 1970s, according to a book on this topic. Most women have ultrasounds around the 20-week mark, and may have more throughout pregnancy depending on risk factors and medical advice.

Ultrasounds are used to confirm a pregnancy, to identify the sex and number of fetuses and to detect fetal abnormalities such as microcephaly (an abnormally small head), absence of kidneys, and spinal problems. Often the only thing detected at first via vaginal ultrasound is the whomp-whomp-whomp-whomp of the tiny babys heartbeat. Its quick, its muffled, and for many moms-to-be, its glorious.

Apparently this was news to The Atlantic. Author Moira Weigel decries not just the mere existence of heartbeat bills like one conservative lawmakers attempted to pass in Ohio (which would have banned abortion near the gestational moment when a heartbeat can be detected) but the ultrasounds which enable said detection.

These measures raise even more elementary questions: What is a fetal heartbeat? And why does it matter? she asks. Those two questions alone cast doubt on her credibility and any real scientific or political point she is bumbling around trying to make. Imagine if, upon analyzing right-to-die issues, a pundit examined the hypothetical patient suffering from severe brain injuries following a car accident, and said, What are brain waves and why do they matter?

Weigel pushes her point further, Doctors do not even call this rapidly dividing cell mass a fetus until nine weeks into pregnancy.* Yet, the current debate shows how effectively politicians have used visual technology to redefine what counts as life. Why, then, did my doctor inform me during my second pregnancy that my body was miscarrying around that same timeframe, if a fetus is simply a cell mass? Seems like that was a wasted phone call, as was the bloody death and grief that ensued.

Ill give Weigel some credit: Although much of her piece was a messy, riddled-with-errors conglomerate of progressive complaints (corrected as the day progressed yesterday) cloaked in a cheesecloth-thin thesis of science, she does admit its not the ultrasounds that bother her but how conservatives use them, successfully, as a weapon against abortion.

Weigel spends several paragraphs describing an older documentary about abortion called The Silent Scream. She implies that although a doctor in the documentary stresses how ultrasounds have convinced doctors beyond question that the unborn child is simply another human being, another member of the human community indistinguishable from you or me and legislation follows the effects of ultrasounds, this is somehow unscientific and even unfair.

Their sponsors act as if ultrasound images prove that a fetus is equivalent to a baby, and that pregnant women only have to be shown ultrasound images in order to draw the same conclusion, she says. But the heartbeat made visible via ultrasound does not actually demonstrate any decisive change of state in the cell mass that might become a fetus.

She writes that legislation like the heartbeat bills are based on two assumptions: First, that an ultrasound image has an obvious meaning. Second, that any pregnant woman who sees an ultrasound will recognize this meaning. Science does not bear either assumption out.

Indeed, abortion would be so much more morally acceptable without pesky ultrasounds detecting heartbeats that make moms think they arent carrying a fetus but a baby. That aside, this thesis is also not supported by science. Doctors, like other regular people, are imperfect and biased, but many unequivocally state when life begins. Ashley Montague, a geneticist and professor at Harvard and Rutgers universities, isnt pro-life, but he still affirms, The basic fact is simple: life begins not at birth, but conception.

Doctors also know the value of ultrasounds. Although Dr. Stuart Campbell performed abortions for years, after he saw vivid 3-D ultrasound images, that was it for him: Even a fetus lying there dead doesnt convey the horror that one experiences seeing a baby moving its arms and legs, opening its mouth, sucking its thumb, and then thinking, gosh, somebody wants to, you know It looks so vital. It has changed my view. I dont think theres any doubt about that.

Dr. Joseph Randall, another former abortion provider, testified at a conference: The greatest thing that got to us was the ultrasound. At that time, the ultrasound, or soundwave picture which was moving, called a real-time ultrasound, showed the baby on TV. The baby really came alive on TV and was moving. And that picture, that picture of the baby on ultrasound bothered me more than anything else[.] We lost two nurses. They couldnt take looking[.] Women get those pictures even if they are still pictures, and boy, its their baby and they put it up on walls, they bring it in to show it to me, and they dont even know whats there, but they see head, arm, leg all typed out for them so they know what it is, but they know its a baby.

If ultrasounds werent an effective method in identifying a fetus with a heartbeat who now proves more like a baby than ever before, would The Atlantic have bothered with such a sloppy but fervent hit piece? Nevertheless, Weigel concludes that a slowdown in the abortion rate has little to do with ultrasounds changing womens minds and more to do with the low birth rate in general.

Im sure the incremental closings of abortion clinics nationwide, the increase in clinics that care for moms and babies, and the explosion of 3D and 4D ultrasound machines in said clinics are unrelated to the drop in abortion. Surely clinics that address moms health-care concerns and the safety of her unborn baby, as well as legislation that does the same, are just more conservative ploys tosave babies and protect moms from emotional duress?

In that case, if the ultrasound machine is a weapon, may we draw that sword more often.

Nicole Russell is a senior contributor to The Federalist. She lives in northern Virginia with her husband and four kids. Follow her on Twitter, @nmrussell2.

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Liberals Refuse To Believe Ultrasounds Show A Baby's Heartbeat - The Federalist

The only people injured by this week's insufferable war of words between the Ontario Liberal cabinet and federal Conservative leadership candidate Kevin O'Leary were devout news consumers who witnessed the excruciating performance.

O'Leary has long been a fan of the sanctimonious exercise, which is less about communication than it is about theatre. For years, he's written open letters to Alberta Premier Rachel Notley and Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne, urging them to reconsider various political initiatives using 1,000-word diatribes that loosely translate to "Look at me!"

Kevin O'Leary undoubtedly loves this stuff. (Jonathan Hayward/Canadian Press)

This week, Wynne responded in kind, penning a letter to O'Leary chastising him for "inaccurate" comments he made to the media about Ontario's auto sector. O'Leary responded with his own open letter, daring Wynne to call a provincial election. Then Economic Development Minister Brad Duguid and Energy Minister Glenn Thibeault joined the production, which catalyzed another response from O'Leary, then another response from Duguid.

This entire episode feels vaguely like watching a couple anemic cats fight over chicken bones in an alley, where you close the window after a while so you don't have to hear the dying sounds.

O'Leary undoubtedly loves this stuff; the attention helps to solidify his position as the front-runner in the "overhyped" category of the Conservative leadership race. And Wynne's abysmal approval rating is just an added benefit for O'Leary if the adage "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" is indeed proven true.

But the tactic is also a familiar and historically fruitful one for the Ontario Liberals: find a menacing conservative threat real or perceived, it doesn't matter and attack. In Liberal-red Ontario, voters have proven time and time again they are willing to overlook just about anything (remember when Kathleen Wynne won a majority in an election where the Ontario Provincial Police were investigating her government?) when faced with an unpalatable conservative alternative.

Last election, Wynne chose Stephen Harper as her campaign bogeyman, attributing the province's dire financial situation to nickel-and-diming on the part of the federal government. She lumped her actual election rival, PC Leader Tim Hudak, in with Harper, asking, "How can Ontarians trust Tim Hudak to confront Stephen Harper when he shares so many of his values, ideals and policies?"

Hudak was a pretty good bogeyman in his own right the election before that, when he was cast by the Liberals (and their union allies) as a homophobic Bay Street puppet who was unfit to govern in progressive Ontario. And the election before that, the bogeyman was less a person than it was the creeping Islamization of Ontario , which the McGuinty Liberals framed more politely as a rejection of rival candidate John Tory's proposal to publicly fund religious schools in the province.

This is the Liberals' way of trying to change the subject from their record in office. (Stacey Janzer/CBC)

With Wynne's approval rating now as bad as it's ever been, and another byelection on the horizon, the Ontario Liberals can't exactly proceed with campaigning on theirrecord. But they can attempt to reframe the conversation around something more disastrous than decades-long energy contracts and Election Act charges: a loudmouth Conservative shill who doesn't understand the needs and wants of everyday Ontarians. This is the Liberals' way of saying: I know we're on the outs, Ontario, but remember: we can protect you from these guys.

Unfortunately, that message is conveyed through what is possibly the most irritating exercise in contemporary political discourse the open letter which has ignited a seemingly never-ending cycle of back and forth. We should really leave the last word to the Beaverton, which published its own open letter to both Wynne and O'Leary: "Will the two of you please shut up?"

This column is part of CBC'sOpinion section.For more information about this section, please read thiseditor'sblogandourFAQ.

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Ontario Liberals find a useful enemy in Kevin O'Leary: Robyn Urback - CBC.ca