This is the tail end of Richard ‘Clever Dick’ Cheney’s speech from last time.
They howl in outrage when others (in their view) consider themselves exceptional, and fit to disobey these supreme principles of a civilized polity; but they consider themselves, and themselves alone, the supreme exceptions, and the sole true arbiters of the true, the good and the beautiful.
Do not be fooled by the hollow, insincere and hypocritical rhetoric of those who preach ‘freedom’ day and night, but who have never once lifted a finger to practice what they preach. If you see those whose hands are swift to shed blood, do not listen to them. The paranoid, belligerent barracks mentality of these people is refutation enough!
Stanford postmodern aesthetics undergraduate Lenny Borraccio found this speech captivating.
I missed the first five minutes of the speech, but I’m glad I made it anyway. It’s nice to see this guy actually showing some humility at last! Better late than never.
However, Professor Milhouse Johannessen (former notorious arms lobbyist and current respected liberal internationalist scholar and philanthropist) was less pleased.
In all my decades of conducting serious empirical research and policy advice, I have never been more disappointed. Cheney did not mention, even once, what we are actually supposed to do about North Korea. I mean, we can’t just sit there! The speech was all style and no substance. Cheney should at least have the courage of his convictions. If there’s a problem, you want to sort the problem out, come hell or high water! Just do something! I mean, it really is as simple as that.
It is rumored that, in private, Cheney himself has concurred with Johannessen, and feels that his speech was rather too weak and conciliatory, if not outright ‘isolationist.’