The Zaller Proviso

The Zaller proviso--that "governments" are denied the right of free speech--is idiotic purism. It turns our overcrowded global theatre of ideology over to its most demented voices. I despise the demented Petraeus template of an unwinnable war, but praise him for trying to protect his troops from the Taliban's untimely use of IED's. Only a professor in the safehouse of a university can believe in such absolutist silence.

Ditto, Hilary Clinton's diplomatic words, in the context of several generations of American cultural imperialism. As the vicious myth of American Exceptionalism (our common delusion since our greedily wresting "our land" from the Indians) finally reveals its selfish motives, our government needs all the more to apologize to the world, as Obama has started to do.

Perhaps too little, too late. The World's Last Best Hype.