Mind-numbing intellectually effete think site

Every once in a while I stumble on some internet site that reads like an exercise in an assigned debate program.

Usuallly this centers on some central issue or topic that some academic has started in order to plump his 'paper publishing credentials'.. like a Miami (OH) prof who was so obtuse I had to read the first page three times to understand what he was trying to establish as the ground issue. I should have saved the link to it as a retort to those that think I write bullshit but was so numbed by it, I forgot.

But I just found another.. http://balkin.blogspot.com/

While, at the moment, the thing seems reasonable - complaining of Dubya's rejection, in his signing statement, of usual and customary appointment qualitfications for federal department heads- directly below it is Slavery and humanitarian intervention

Which, again, isnt too badly focussed. What is mindnumbing is the comment posted to it:

You need to read that whole thing.... in it, the writer is indignant about the lack of action against Darfur atrocities, but totally ignores any global realpolitik in order to parrot the meme that the US is running roughshod over everyone else. For oil.

This will undoubtedly appeal to some here... but if we take one thing at a time.. let's say the comparison of Turk treatment of the kurds to Serbian genocide, it raises the eyebrows a little.
Yep... if you average everything out over a decade or so... A mass grave, here and there, dont look so bad.

And it's convenient to look back and say that the time to invade Iraq was 88, but not later.. because that was obviously for oil.
He uses the catchy slogan: "What if Iraq only grew Broccoli!".. to which I respond: "What if Kuwait grew carrots".

He doesnt mention Marsh Arabs (that's a tribe, not a crop, BTW) What did THEY grow?

I wont dispute that intervention in Darfur has been affected by other events and controversial positions.. but isnt that what the UN IS for?

Note he advocates letting Chavez into the Security Council as 'leavening' .. even he cant ignore the outrageous character of the man.. SOLELY because he balances out Bush influence.

Well... nice to ignore what is REALLY happening in Venezuela.
Nice to ignore that the Security Council never let in Third Worlders before (or maybe he thinks that is the problem)
Nice to ignore the UN's record of incompetence, AT THE LEAST under Annan.

But he seems to think that a UN intervention force would suddenly grow cojones, if only the US would act more humbly and accede to UN moral imperatives!

Before you react and say.. 'Hey that's just a COMMENTER!', go to the right sidebar and click on some of these tomes, by the site authors, and try to get through them.

You get the drift as soon as you read a bit on slavery/genocide and the Federal response, Re: the US Civil War.

For the enlightened academic to suggest.. or even consider... that the war started as a response to southern treatment of African Slaves boggles the mind.
Or does he feel the need to do that because the textbooks have changed since I was in High School?

I dont have the answers.. obviously we need Ivory Tower thinking for moral and philosophical reasons.. but the inculcation of liberal political mindthink into the post elementary curriculum has deadened the human common-senses that we all are born with.

This is exactly why conservatives adapted the phrase from reference to Jim Jones' Guyanan cult...
"Just drink the Kool-Aid."