[Vision2020] Pre-Response to Phil Nisbet

[Nick Gier]

This is just a pre-posting in response to Phil Nisbet's critique of my post 
"The Deceptions of War."  A full response will follow tomorrow.

Dear Phil,

You are the smartest and best informed Republican that I know. I don't call 
you a conservative because I know that libertarians don't like that, but 
I'm more than ever convinced, after your defense of nation building, that 
you are not a libertarian either.  (More on this in my next post.)  So the 
only label I have left is "Republican" and "Bush apologist," but those two 
are no longer necessarily synonymous.  Given Bush's lack of fiscal 
discipline and fondness for new entitlement programs, the gap between Bush 
apologists and true libertarians is now even greater.

Phil, it baffles me that you want to distract your readers with occasional 
gratuitous insertions of a sarcastic "Dr. Gier" in your critique of my 
"Deceptions of War." This is as rude as Dale Courtney's sophomoric 
translation of my Ph.D. as "Piled Higher and Deeper."  I'm not amused, and 
I don't think our fellow visionaries are either.

Phil, I'm also flabbergasted that you, after posting intelligently on 
almost any issue, then have the audacity to say that I should not put 
together my own views on Iraq from a file of material that I'm sure is 
larger than yours.  (I've been forced to archive over half of it in my 
garage.)  I could just as well tell you to "zip it" with regard to Judaism 
because you have a traditional, rather than a scholarly, view of your own 
religion.  But to do that would be outrageous on my part.

I've learned a lot about Judaism from your postings, and I just want a 
little more respect for how Ralph and I deal with the Hebrew Bible and 
religion in the American Academy of Religion and Society for Biblical 
Literature.  Your response to my "Katrina and the Wrath of God" was really 
off cue.

By the way, I'm working on a very long piece entitled "The Wonder That 
Was--and still is--India," and it will posted next week.  But I will not be 
cowed by your insinuations that I cannot use my critical and scholarly 
skills to write about any topic that I choose.  That is absurd.

I need to get back to your apologies for Bush's disaster in Iraq.

Nick Gier