Czech politics—at a disgruntled dentists’ conference:

Norm Geras links to an extraordinary talk by Jim Nolan, an Australian barrister, at the Fabian Society in Sydney, Australia.

In weaving his defense, Nolan mentions all the people of conscience who continue to make the case against totalitarianism—from Tony Blair to Paul Berman to Kanan Makiya to Christopher Hitchens (all of whom I have mentioned on this blog, by the way, some of them frequently). And he gets to the nub of the problem:

Both JFK and FDR were Democrats, of course, and the party has always been associated with internationalism. Somehow, though, that moralism — that urge to do good abroad — has drifted over to the GOP. It is Republicans, particularly neocons, who talk the language of moralism in foreign policy and who, weapons of mass destruction aside, wanted to take out Saddam Hussein because he was a beast. It mattered to them that he killed and tortured his own people. It says something about the Democratic left that it cheered Michael Moore’s infantile “Fahrenheit 9/11″ even though the film made no mention of Hussein’s depredations, not even his gassing of Kurdish villages.

Most devastatingly, he quotes the Iraqi ambassador to Canada, Howar Ziad [emphasis mine]:

“The contrast between democracy and dictatorship explains much of what is happening in Iraq. Diehard fascists, the remnants of Saddam Hussein’s regime and al-Qaeda fanatics, have waged a relentless campaign against the Iraqi people. They have allowed Iraqi citizens almost no rest, no opportunity to heal the wounds of 35 years of Baathist totalitarianism. This faction, which subscribes to the dark days of state brutality in Iraqi history, has viciously attacked schoolchildren, mosques, churches, funerals and hospitals. They provoke murderous sectarianism in attempt to undo every weave of the country’s social fabric. Outrageously, foreign apologists dress up their ruthless acts of murder as a so-called “national resistance.”

Despite the violent challenges that we face from fanatics in our attempt to establish a secure and stable democratic state, our aim is to go further than mere democracy and to build an Iraqi national consensus. The majority of Iraqis has insisted on a principle of inclusiveness over one of narrow majoritarianism. We have already built a government that represents over 80 per cent of Iraqis, and now we are trying to accommodate the remainder. Most members of the Sunni Arab community of Iraq reject terrorism; it is only a violent minority that wishes to wreck a peaceful and democratic future.”

…is in its early stages, but it has begun.

By all reports, gloom was the theme of BooksExpo America, the big annual trade show, which took place this past weekend. The stories are here and here.

Kevin Kelly’s New York Times Magazine piece ($$) was mentioned—dismissed, that is—by literary lion John Updike as the spawn of the devil.

Updike went on at some length, heaping scorn on Kelly’s notion that authors who no longer got paid for copies of their work could profit from it by selling “performances” or “access to the creator.” (”Now as I read it, this is a pretty grisly scenario.”)

Unlike the commingled, unedited, frequently inaccurate mass of “information” on the Web, he said, “books traditionally have edges.” But “the book revolution, which from the Renaissance on taught men and women to cherish and cultivate their individuality, threatens to end in a sparkling pod of snippets.

“So, booksellers,” he concluded, “defend your lonely forts. Keep your edges dry. Your edges are our edges. For some of us, books are intrinsic to our human identity.”

Is it impolite to ask Mr. Updike what he has done to hold up the crumbling financial edifice that is the book business? what he proposes be done to save the business so that his precious human identity not suffer more grievous wounds from technology?

I allied myself with “philistine” Jeff Jarvis over on his blog, where I said:

If you love books, set them free.

I’ll be coming back to this topic. There’s a lot to say.

War has broken out at the Huffington Post over John McCain’s speech at the  New School, where he specifically sought to unite:

Let us exercise our responsibilities as free people. But let us remember, we are not enemies. We are compatriots defending ourselves from a real enemy. We have nothing to fear from each other. We are arguing over the means to better secure our freedom, promote the general welfare and defend our ideals. It should remain an argument among friends; each of us struggling to hear our conscience, and heed its demands; each of us, despite our differences, united in our great cause, and respectful of the goodness in each other.

He was heckled (and then he was trashed in print by the self-congragulatory chief heckler, who became very popular over at the Huff Post.

Only, Mark Salter, who is McCain’s speechwriter and close friend, roasted her alive in the comments.

She then attacked him some more.

I’ll let you know how it turns out.

Paling in comparison is the infotainment blip of the day: Arthur Sulzberger, Jr., publisher of the New York Times, apologizes to graduates for not leaving them a perfect world:

“It wasn’t supposed to be this way,” Sulzberger said. “You weren’t supposed to be graduating in an America fighting a misbegotten war in a foreign land. You weren’t supposed to be graduating into a world where we are still fighting for fundamental human rights, be it the rights of immigrants to start a new life, the right of gays to marry or the rights of women to choose.”

Sulzberger added the graduates weren’t supposed to be let into a world “where oil still drives policy and environmentalists have to relentlessly fight for every gain.

“You weren’t. But you are and I am sorry for that,” Sulzberger said.