You have my sympathy. Thank you for making my point for me! You eschew the conservative-leaning news sources, don't you? And perhaps the centrist news sources as well? That is why you haven't heard that the'Wuhan lab' theory has gone mainstream and is now widely accepted. A sample headline from CBS News, June 30, 2021: COVID-19 Wuhan lab-leak hypotheses are "absolutely legitimate" and "plausible," expert says "Former State Department officials tell CBS News significant information about the Wuhan lab's activities in 2019 was buried in government databases and didn't reach their desks for nearly a year." "Dr. Anthony Fauci, who supports the infected animal to human pathway, recently told CBS News an accidental lab leak is worth investigating." "CBS News has also learned that one of the U.S. government's top labs, Lawrence Livermore, issued a classified report last year that found the lab-leak theory was plausible." A headline from BBC, May 27 of this year: Covid origin: Why the Wuhan lab-leak theory is being taken seriously From NBC News, May 24: U.S. intel report identified 3 Wuhan lab researchers who fell ill in November 2019
There are of course two ways of expounding the lab theory: That it was a deliberate and purposeful strategy done deliberately That there was a breach in biosecurity in the Wuhan Lab, and a subsequent significant effort to not disclose that. The idea of 1 is completely unimaginable, and if that is what transpired that it was true, then I think the chances are we will never know, and if it became known then the relationship between China and the rest of the world would change, and not for the better. Given the importance in the Asian mindset of 'not loosing face' this may have some credibility, even though such a response would indeed seem second best. It does seem, that China, Xi Jinping, and the Chinese Communist Party, do not seem to have given the study of the source the same importance as many ion the West have done, including my Prime Minister and your President. It did seem that the WHO fact finding mission seemed to have failed in terms of gaining any real and material information of the source. The real difficulty that the lab theory has is the level of complicity and collusion that would be required in order to carry it off. China may be better at keeping secrets that the USA and Australia, however they may not be that much better. However the absence of evidence is not evidence in itself.
I have no problem with your assessment. I agree, moreover, that if it came from the lab it was most likely an accidental failure of containment. (To my mind the evidence for the wet market theory was skimpy and less likely, but opinions may vary.) One of the interesting things about the lab theory, though, is that there is some evidence that appears to link both US funding and Fauci to gain-of-function research and the Wuhan lab. Normally one would expect an open-minded, truly investigative press to vigorously pursue a story like that. In past years they would have reporters running down leads, asking questions, and publishing what is both known and suspected. Instead we saw the press pooh-pooh the very possibility of a Wuhan lab leak, say nothing about the money trail, and label anyone who tried to talk about the lab theory as a "conspiracy theorist." It has been quite uncharacteristic in terms of historic patterns of our press, but it seems to be the 'new normal.'
I would agree with this, I blame it on the hyper-commercialisation and gradual decimation of print media. There is far less bandwidth for genuine, expensive, and comprehensive investigative teams, and a lot more pressure to be inoffensive. The last thing a corporate owner is going to risk is being cancelled or losing advertisers because it leaks they're giving credence to some radical, probably racially motivated, covid conspiracy theory. The obvious problem there is that no one ever questions about whether it is absurd, because everyone with the means to look into it is too terrified to give the idea any air time. Play it safe, talk about which celebrity is shacking up with who, why the US President did something to make you mad and 30 pictures of the cutest puppies this week.
2Ti 2:15 Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth. Truth is God-biased!
When you say "liberal," do you mean modern social liberalism or older traditional liberalism? Huge difference.
I actually see more continuity than discontinuity there. The fundamental premise of liberalism is that restrictions on liberty of thought, expression, and action have to be justified. In the 18th century, the biggest barrier was government trade policy, so 18th century liberals like Adam Smith favored free trade. In the nineteenth century, you had Victorian liberals like John Stuart Mill opposing various forms of social oppression, while industrial workers turned to unionization. In the twentieth century, the focus turned to big business, monopolization, and cartelization, and the result was the Progressive Era and then the New Deal. All these iterations of liberalism were trying to defend the same ideal of individual liberty, yet look slightly different in each era because the opponents were different. (The the sake of clarity, I don't consider "woke" social justice activism to be representative of liberalism at all.) So to answer your question, as a self-described liberal, I embrace both alternatives you mentioned (though I do not actually see them as genuine alternatives).
In that case, as a liberal do you oppose the tremendous growth of the administrative state with its burgeoning regulatory system, since the high burden of regulations inhibits individual entrepreneurship, liberty, and action?
To a certain extent, yes, but I’m no libertarian. There are some things that are better left to the (regulated) private sector while other things are better handled by the (accountable) public sector. What’s interesting is that many federal agencies are actually quite popular. It’s Congress that’s reviled pretty much universally.
When I was growing up there was thing called 'the civil service' As time went by it seemed that it had stopped being civil. So for a time we had a thing called 'the public service' As time went by we realised that it had stopped being service. So for a time we had a thing called 'the public sector' As time went by we realised that it was cheaper to outsource it into private hands. So we have now ended up where we publicly fund the private sector to avoid responsibility.
Case in point about immigration. We should be taking in any and every Cuban who is trying to flee Cuba right now. We shoudl tell them we are stepping up patrols in the water. If we find you come on in. Those people are facing true repression right now.
Didn't the current administration run on a platform of compassion toward immigrants? Makes one wonder why they seem to be sitting on their hands.
Surely you're not suggesting that the previous administration would've moved faster to welcome these people...
They did run on something like that. They also have been dumbly incompetent on teh southern boarder but oddly harsh on the Cubans. Maybe because they tend to vote red.
Nope, I wasn't suggesting that. What might have happened is useless speculation. What is (not) happening is what I question. Although, I do note with some skepticism CBS News' reporting on July 12 that Cuba's woes are Trump's fault.