Blue meanies have Klein seeing Red
Bloggers have been mean to Time’s Joe Klein. Awfully, awfully mean; read all about it in his alliteratively titled “Beware the Bloggers’ Bile.”
Beware, indeed. The blogosphere is noted for the ooze of its free-flowing slime. Although I try to keep a higher and more magnanimous tone in this blog, I can feel Klein’s pain. In fact, back when I was just starting to blog and had about three readers a day (and two of them were me), the very first mention of “neo-neocon” I saw on Technorati and Google were from other bloggers who were writing about me in rather nasty terms, offended by some minutiae or other about my posts.
One learns to shake it off. No doubt Klein—no stranger to the perils of celebrity—will, as well.
Klein seems to be especially surprised that he’s been the target of rage from the bluish Left of the blogosphere, since he’s a liberal and all:
…the smart stuff is being drowned out by a fierce, bullying, often witless tone of intolerance that has overtaken the left-wing sector of the blogosphere. Anyone who doesn’t move in lockstep with the most extreme voices is savaged and ridiculed””especially people like me who often agree with the liberal position but sometimes disagree and are therefore considered traitorously unreliable.
Agreed—-I couldn’t have said it better myself, and I might have said it a lot worse. And of course the Right, ruby-red (see, I can do some alliteration too) section of the blogosphere is far from immune; I’ve seen it happen there as well when a blogger doesn’t toe the party line sharply enough.
But then Klein goes on to say an extraordinary thing. In an attempt to explain why this is happening on the Left, whom does he blame? Why, the Right, naturalment! Most specifically, Rush Limbaugh, who is now apparently responsible, according to Klein, not only for Limbaugh’s own utterances, but for expressions of anger from those on the Left.
Talk about making excuses and not taking responsibility! Klein writes that his attackers on the Left:
…are merely aping the odious, disdainful””and politically successful””tone that right-wing radio talk-show hosts like Rush Limbaugh pioneered.
Seems to me Joe, that this sort of thing predates Rush; the Left has always been doctrinaire enough to eat its own for breakfast if they dissent too vigorously.
And even if you accept Klein’s basic premise that the Left is merely following the Right—well, as my mother would say, two wrongs don’t make a right (or a Right doesn’t make a Left, or something like that).
And then again, if a nasty tone were all that it took to be successful on radio, why is left-wing talk radio doing relatively poorly? Certainly it’s not for want of enough bile.
Neo, I’m more and more convinced of the infantilism of the Left; the “it’s always someone else’s fault” mentality. Radical Islamists couldn’t hate America because of their flawed religion, it’s all Bush’s fault! Leftist blog commenters couldn’t possibly be overbearing and rude on their own, it’s Rush’s fault! The poverty-stricken couldn’t possibly be in that state because they’ve made poor choices regarding education and drug and alcohol abuse, it’s all capitalism’s fault!
To be sure (and I must admit I’ve succumbed to the disease myself) those on the Right can be as awful as anyone–Ann Coulter is not my favorite person, for instance–but I find that discussion on the Right is mostly civil and intelligent, unless pushed by a “progressive” into an unreasonable response.
Your posts and “Shrinkwrapped’s” on the narcissism of the Left go a long way to explaining this phenomenon.
Good grief! Does no one know any history? Vituperative attacks by partisan journalists on political enemies aren’t anything new in this country. Here’s some discussion about the Hearst newspapers, for example. People need to get a thicker skin. Actually, posting comments here is good training for that, having myself been variously called traitorous, lazy, and probably not paraplegic. 🙂
“Two ‘wrongs’ don’t make a ‘right’, but three’lefts’ do.”
That was a favorite quote from a “substitute” talk-show host around here named Mark Alan, who was actually my favorite. Unlike most of the lefties, on radio or off, he actually had a sense of humor(being a stand-up comedian helped). I think this is why most left-wing radio fails miserably. Rush has always said for humor to be funny, it has to have a modicum of truth behind it. Here, the left fails miserably. Just tune in to Air America. Nothing but hand-wringing, doom-and-gloom and Bush bashing insults trying to hide in a joke, but it doesn’t come off because they can’t hide their sheer hatred and envy. you would thing Al Franken could figure this out, being a “comedian” himself. But, I guess when you live off subsidies and donations, you don’t need ratings. And when unsuccessful yourself, you look outside for “blame”, rather than within yourself.
Even around here, I’ve noticed very few if any lefties comment on your “lighter” articles(I think Alphie came around for your “Twilight Zone doorbell”, but that’s it).
And Hyman, I’d have thought you would have been more insulted by Unknown Baby’s insinuation that you “could be” paraplegic, as opposed to my assumption that you are “probably not”.
Ironic, Hyman, that after telling people to get “a thicker skin” you then cry and whine about the “crap” you’ve had to “endure” around here.
BAAAA…HA…HA…HA…HA..
Klein had to blame Rush Limbaugh — and if not him, then maybe Ann Coulter, or Dick Cheney, or possibly outrage over the Hayes-Tilden election. Anything to avoid confronting the elephant (or rather donkey) in the room: the modern American Left consists of nothing but fanatical hatred. They no longer want to build an ideal society, they no longer have goals, they no longer even want to do good for humanity. That’s all over — Kennedy-era stuff which only Neocons believe in nowadays. For the modern Left, hatred is the only thing. Hatred of America, hatred of Christianity, hatred of the human species. They are, quite simply, insane.
dr neo, being a professional I supose you’re familiar with the recent study by Westen, D., Blagov, P.S., Harenski, K., Kilts, C., & Hamann, S. “An fMRI study of motivated reasoning: Partisan political reasoning in the U.S. Presidential election.” not published yet, but availaqble on line, I think.
***
I think a good case can be made that Rush, as a “pioneer” of that “odious and disdainful tone,” does bear some responsibility for upping the entertainment value of raucous political discourse, at the expense of civility, on both sides of the political spectrum.
As our handy wiki tells it:
“The repeal of the Fairness Doctrine–which had required that stations provide free air time for responses to any controversial opinions that were broadcast–by the FCC in 1987 meant stations could broadcast editorial commentary without having to present opposing views.
Daniel Henninger wrote, in a Wall Street Journal editorial, “Ronald Reagan tore down this wall (the Fairness Doctrine) in 1987…and Rush Limbaugh was the first man to proclaim himself liberated from the East Germany of liberal media domination.”
OK, so maybe it was Reagan’s fault. 🙂
For every right-winger who sees the “MSM” as a leftist tool, there’s a left-winger who sees it as a right-wing mouthpiece.
But only one side has staked their existence on their perceived bias.
My initial reaction to reading the post was that I was going to wonder exactly how many seconds it would take for someone to stake out, what is essentially, Klein’s position: “My guys do it, but it’s really the other side that really gets out of hand, and in any case, when our folks do it, it’s simply a reaction to the bad guys.”
I have to say that I’ve only been moderately disappointed in the comments thus far, which is a bit of surprise.
The one thing, however, that wasn’t the least bit surprising is that Alphie trotted up like a inordinately happy dog with a dead squirrel in it’s mouth with something irrelevant and distasteful. In this case a tenet connected to nothing in the post, and at best only by a rope of drool to the edge of a comment left by another.
So, all in all, I guess it was only a moderately surprising set of comments.
Don’t turn into a nasty cliche, BRD.
Alphie,
I think you beat me to it a long, long time ago _(I can still remember…)_
I doff my hat to you, as I will never be more than a Sanchez next to your imitable Don off to slay the giants.
It’s not that hard to pop the bubbles of mythology even without a lance, BRD.
Klein got called a wanker for getting his facts wrong..not because he expressed his support for our endless war in Iraq….then tried to hide his error behind a cloud of “everybody is nasty on the internets.”
A wanker, indeed.
The only problem with the press is is that the top spots have become lifetime appointments.
I their their celebrity-besotted brains will be retired soon.
Alphie,
In terms of not turning into a nasty cliché your comment sparked a memory of something you had written earlier, in which you basically assigned me a whole raft of characteristics and positions I do not hold in any way shape or form. Or, in other words, you’ve already decided quite some time ago that I am that nasty cliché.
I would have thought the automatic assignation of opinions you disagree with to those with whom you debate is rather the tactic of someone who is, in fact, a nasty cliché.
But, by all means don’t let me stop you from your noble cause if you think that the giants are merely creatures of myths to be slain to woo Dulcinea. At least when you’re more honestly delusional, you were taking risks in your brave charges, even if the risks were imagined. If you want to turn it all so cynical that your Quixote knows they’re not giants but charges anyway, by all means, leach the hero of his romantic resolve and nobility.
But, really, this is all between you and your smug sophistry.
You’re still after windmills, after all. You still quest after the some sort of obscure mythical Dulcinea, probably best represented by your dog’s breakfast of talking points and bumperstickers. And it’s the Sachos on the field in Iraq and here at home who are trying to at least you from not getting your self killed, whether or not you’re tilting at myths, myths of giants, or massive blades of a windmill who care nothing for your noble and romantic pursuits as a self-styled hildago on a quest.
BRD
If America were the only country on earth, BRD, there would be no problem with ruling with primitive superstitions, mythology and sound bites.
But, if you haven’t noticed, a few of the less gullible countries are about to lap us.
Then we’ll see the true cost of the dreamworld we’ve constructed for ourselves.
Alphie,
I think your the profundity of your supposed insights comes from staring into the looking glass far, far too long.
The upside-down and topsy-turvy have come to represent the upright and straightforward through your exploration of the looking glass. I fear that you’ve not caught on to who the person on the other side of the mirror is.
In any case, I’d have to say that I’m not working off of any mythology, but rather the long and storied history of humanity and the rich cloth of human nature.
Although, I couldn’t honestly say that I think you’re not doing that – rather I can’t precisely tell what informs your commentary, since you have yet to make a declarative statement that was neither snark nor sophistry, something that stands free on its own, and isn’t the reflexive twitching of a headless corpus of stale and discredited ideas.
But, nonetheless, hope always abounds.
BRD
Well, BRD,
From what I’ve read of your posts, you rely on a rather creative and selective interpretation of “the long and storied history of humanity” to support your moral causes.
As Chuang Tzu said:
“To know to stop where they cannot arrive by means of knowledge is the highest attainment. Those who cannot do this will be destroyed on the lathe of Heaven.”
The pro war crowd is already being turned into a table leg.
From Merriam-Webster:
ASSERT implies stating confidently without need for proof or regard for evidence
Pretty well sums it up, I think.
Oops, getting lapped by Luxembourg again….
Very funny Bravo.
So, to disprove BRD’s “selective and creative” interpretation of history, you offer an out-of-context quote from a single, long-dead Taoist philosopher.
What brilliant wit. Those fools in the debate club were just jealous of your superior talents.
I wonder if Alphie realizes he shot himself in the foot with ol’ Chuang Tzu’s quote, there?
The repeal of the Fairness Doctrine–which had required that stations provide free air time for responses to any controversial opinions that were broadcast–by the FCC in 1987 meant stations could broadcast editorial commentary without having to present opposing views.
What is this obsession with supporting Hugo Chavez and his league of petty tyrants these days?
Alphie,
You noted Chuang Tzu’s quote:
Knowing where knowledge won’t take you is a valuable thing indeed: Gödel’s Impossibility Theorem, Arrow’s Paradox (and the things that follow from this like the Gibbard—Satterthwaite Theorem and Holmstrom’s Theorem), Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, Chaitin’s Omega Numbers, let alone the broader fields of complexity, solvability problems, entropic information theory and chaos theory are all incredible intellectual endeavors. But, if I may, I’d like to out on a limb here and suggest that none of these has the slightest thing to do with what you’re driving at, as I’m pretty certain you weren’t speaking of anything so base as pure reductionist determinism.
I might, however, submit that you’ve become a bit overeager to seek the attainment Tzu mentions above and seem to have fallen into the habit of stopping before knowledge alone won’t serve. Usually long before.
But I also found this an interesting selection for you to appeal to in defending your implied assertion that you’re a person who sees through all that you assert is myth while simultaneously asserting that the information that others cite is incomplete and, if you’ll forgive me, lacking in knowledge.
So, this appeal to decision not based on knowledge combined with your claim that you your better apprehension of knowledge strikes me as being somewhere between strange and contradictory.
Not to mention that your source argument predates the Age of Enlightenment by about two millenia.
BRD
Alphie,
PS I do have to admit the table leg comment is pretty funny.
Glad you liked it, BRD.
My position, however, doesn’t rely on semi-dead cats.
Pulling our troops out of Iraq will…pull our troops out of Iraq.
100% certainty.
It’s the people who want to keep our troops in Iraq that have to rely on the more esoteric forms of rationalizations to bolster their position.
Alphie,
This is a classic instance of you stopping prematurely in in your aspiration to reach Chuang Tzu’s ‘highest achievement’.
I think that it’s entirely possible that one can go further than such a reductionist position. Perhaps by noting that removing troops from Iraq might… I dunno… result in something?
Or, to put another way, I can say that not removing the troops from Iraq will… not remove our troops from Iraq. 100% certainty.
It’s the people who want us to lose by withdrawing from a contested battlefield under duress and force of arms that have to rely on the more esoteric forms of rationalizations to bolster their position.
BRD
People who like this sort of thing will find it the sort of thing they like. 100% certainty.
BRD,
It should be obvious even to the true believers that Bush is settin’ the Iraqis up to “ask” us to leave soon.
I think “Alphie” has demonstrated what I said earlier better than anything I could produce as evidence. Nothing but hatred. Apparently he can’t even believe anyone else is capable of other emotions, either, so he tries desperately to shoehorn those who disagree with him into some kind of standard racist/sexist/”christianist” strawman.
Neo, why not get out the banning stick? There’s no “exchange of ideas” here. Just spewing the poison in his soul over the rest of us. Nothing anybody says here will change Alphie or Swamp.
I will say, however, that exposure to people like A and S has changed my view of liberals. I once thought they were well-meaning but misguided. Now I think they’re consciously evil.
What an odd formulation, Trim.
We’re killing people in Iraq.
A lot of them.
The reasons given for doing this vanish almost as soon as they appear.
So to do the goals all this killing is supposed to achieve so we can stop killing.
You want to change my mind?
State a clear goal for the Iraq War and come up with an objective means to measure whether we’re achieving it or not.
So what? People die all the time; we all will-perhaps that’s escaped your notice. in Iraq, depends on who’s doing it and how they do their killing. Hostage-taking ski-maskers who behead their captives earn what we give them.
Nice post! I’m still learning to shake it off as well.
In any case, I also commented on Klein’s commentary. He’s actually weathered this type of stuff in journalism for awhile, so there’s some good old hypocrisy coming through in his post:
http://burkeanreflections.blogspot.com/2007/06/bile-of-blogosphere.html
So Alphie, would you mind explaining to me how spewing insults on web logs has anything to do with deaths in Iraq? Neo isn’t part of the Sekrit Jewish Neoconservative Cabal — maybe you were misled by her pseudonym. Insulting her and her readers won’t affect events in Iraq. Maybe you didn’t know that.
Trim,
Might I suggest a bit of self-reflection?
You wrote:
“the modern American Left consists of nothing but fanatical hatred.”
I asked you what our goal is in Iraq and an objective measure of success or failure.
You reply by accusing me of being an anti-Semite.
Who is hate-filled?
I think Tolstoy summed it up best:
All anti war people oppose the Iraq war for the same reason, pro war people support the Iraq war for their own individual reasons.
Trimegestus wrote thoughtfully:
“[T]he modern American Left consists of nothing but fanatical hatred.” I can see how with careful intellectual allies like this people like Neo are trying to invigorate the exchange of ideas.
Neo, you were a Liberal until 9/11 after which you discovered that everything you used to believe was wrong: the Viet Nam war was good, Nixon was a great and honest leader, even pretending we want peace, or as you would say, “Peace” is an evil avoidance of those high jacked airplanes, but I have two critiques even within that airtight analysis which could be fairly characterized as the George Costanza ethos: just think what you used to think and believe in the opposite.
First, you have suggested That President George W. Bush the right things but the media wouldn’t allow Americans to hear him. What about the way the War was welcomed and celebrated in the MSM long after the images of President Bush in a Flight Suit walking in front of cheering men in uniform under a banner marked “Mission Accomplished”? The critics, who are more like me than like you (I am someone who has views and votes but try to accept the point of view of people whom I do not understand), turned on President Bush because the rhetorical structure HE put in place by his direct words (“The end of major combat operations”) and by his VP’s direct words (“The last throes, if you will”) do not support the unfolding situation.
And secondly, I am way, way older than you. People did hate Nixon. Some members of the Democratic Party (or if you prefer democ/rat party, a la St. Rush) did hate Bush for the way he acts, for the way his team of lawyers acted in Florida, and just because. But after 9/11, President Bush had an 80% popularity. To say that his popularity fell because of “Bush-haters” is ludicrous.
I will not live long enough to see what happens in your life, but I wonder if you will have another change of mind sometime in the future and change your name to Neo-neo whatever and wonder why you did not think reality is not binary.
For every decision we make to go to war and divide our country into those who are patriotic and those who are traitors, part of our national soul dies.
btw Trimegistus, declaring your enemies full of hate is the first step in making then non-persons.
tomj: For every decision we make to go to war and divide our country into those who are patriotic and those who are traitors, part of our national soul dies.
I don’t think so, tom, but in any case, for every attempt to avoid, dodge, hide, or run away from war with those who are trying to slaughter us, not only does a part of our nation die, but a much bigger part of our national soul dies as well.
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dear Sally
I think we should go to war when we are attacked. And if President George W. Bush had asked for and received a Declaration of War against The Nation of Iraq, a declaration that a state of war existed between our amazing and wonderful country, The United (UNITED!!!) States of America, and Iraq, then whether I favored the decision or not, I would have fully embraced it.
But we go to war casually and half-heartedly without a Constitutionally-mandated Declaration that a state of war exists between us and whatever nation we are opposing.
At first, people watch the war on television as if it were the Olympics and the US is winning every event. However, after that initial euphoria of winning and being number 1 fades, the reality of a long and sustained fight sets in and Americans lose interest.
Wars are used by our leaders to position one group against another and to “control the message” and to “triangulate, divide, conquer, etc.” THAT division kills a part of our soul.
I teach. My students have NO idea what my political views are because I think politics is too divisive. Politics are a way to define each other out of existence. One group is the good guys and one group is the bad guys.
That is destructive of our soul whether the good guys are supposedly “peace loving” and the bad guys are “war mongerors”. That is also divisive and part of our soul dies if the good guys are supposedly “hard nosed patriots” who reluctantly send others to fight in an undeclared war and the bad guys are “leftist haters and traitors”.
We define our common bonds as being unimportant and our differences as being paramount. That is why I say we lose part of our soul.
After the attacks of September 11, 2001, I wished I could have gone to the Mountains of Afghanistan myself and tried to strike back against the people who attacked my country. I flew my Flag, as my family has always done. Then I discovered that the argument had been positioned such that only Republicans were “patriotic”.
As this war drags on, my college students could not care less. Those who are Republican claim to love this war and all the Republican wars we fight (as opposed to Kosovo and Democratic–in Young Republican parlance Democ/rat–wars), and those who are Democratic Party members claim to hate this war (but want us to intervene in Darfur).
Those in the apolitical and uninformed middle are happy to be able to pursue their careers and the ubiquitous College Lifestyle (party, hook-up, party). They don’t know who Cindy Sheehan is, they don’t know who Joseph Lieberman is. Once we stopped winning and there were no more statues pulled down and presidents flying jet planes onto aircraft carriers, they lost interest.
That is why I say that a war fought without an actual Declaration and as close to a total commitment on the part of the nation as a democratic Republic can muster, without a shared sacrifice, must be won quickly and completely or ultimately part of our soul dies.
Thank you Sally! Your point was well taken and I appreciate the opportunity to talk with you and to clear up what I meant. I agree that we cannot walk away from a fight; I disagree on the nature, definition, and conduct of this undeclared war.
tom,
First, I was a teacher as well, and it is amazing how little people are interested. At the same time, we have so many conflicting experts, and each side denies the worth of the other side’s experts, so it can be incredibly frustrating figuring out which information is good and which isn’t. That takes a lot of time, and there are no clear guides; if you don’t start with a position (and so inherit a group of experts to believe in), how can you develop an intelligent position? I think that causes many people to just give up.
My answer has been looking at original sources and first-hand accounts as much as possible, but the amount of information is overwhelming, and even then, people write their sources and tell their stories with a bias. I have been quite disappointed with the media coverage; for some reason they seem to take a ‘get one person who says X and one who says not-X’ view towards reporting instead of actually doing research to figure out which view is supported by the facts (or, as is more often the case, which facts support which view, and which view seems more coherent).
Anyway, on to my argument.
In my experience (and we all see different media, read different articles, etc.), it has been the peace movement that has been most divisive. We can all quote some of their slogans:
NO BLOOD FOR OIL
Bush = Hitler
Bush Lied, People Died
Those demonizations have become well-recognized memes over the last six years, and they started well before the invasion of Iraq.
Other signs in peace rallies, and other things I’ve been called in discussions, include ‘imperialist,’ ‘fascist,’ and just simply ‘murderer.’
There are no similarly well-known, often-seen memes from the pro-liberation side. Yes, accusations of treason have been leveled, but not with anything like the regularity or mass of the anti-war slogans above.
What is more, the anti-war slogans change to include any characteristic the pro-liberation side pins to the foreign enemy.
Islamofascist became Christofascist. The Taliban are derided as a theocratic regime, and suddenly the anti-war side claims Bush and the right want to establish theocracy here.
And it goes on.
In the end, my own conclusion, again from my own experience, is that the anti-war side won’t even give the benefit of the doubt for sincerity. It can’t possibly be that Bush and the neo-cons were sincerely trying to do what they thought was best. No, it’s ‘Bush lied, people died.’ The anti-war side has consistently devised the most divisive, demonizing rhetoric they could come up with, and they bear the main portion of responsibility for dividing the American people.
dear Guy in Pajamas
1. I appreciate your argument. I condemn anyone who opposes the war, or any policy or event who calls the other side names or creates slogans, even in the case of the jailing of Paris Hilton, where I shudder every time she is called a “skank”).
As you say, we probably read different sources, but Ann Coulter’s “Treason” was a best selling book that indicted Liberals, so I disagree that name-calling is confined to one side or the other. I know The Moderate Voice and several other websites have chastised people for name-calling on their discussion boards regardless of whether the excoriator was a leftie or rightie or independent. But a great deal of our discourse is an attempt to define your opponent out of existence. On this page, and Neo is a literate and moderate woman, one of her frequent commentators, Trimegestus, said in this thread
“[T]he modern American Left consists of nothing but fanatical hatred.”
2. I would accept the argument that the anti-war side has done the most to devise a rhetoric that is “divisive and demonizing” if the anti-war side was in power. By definition I think the President and his allies have the power, the platform, and the responsibility for this particular undeclared war and how we talk about it. If the President who ordered this war were a Democratic President, I would say the same thing.
It is actually extremely difficult for anti-war voices to be heard and harder still to be listened to when war is being planned, imminent, or is in its first few months. If a war drags on, people start to ask questions about why we went to war in the first place.
3. I agree with you that people on my side should admit the possibility that the people who planned and executed this war did so for noble and good reasons.
4. I agree with you that we are in a struggle with a virulent branch of Islam. We may disagree on how we can wage that struggle, but that disagreement should bring us closer and would if we had a few beers and admitted we are all amatures in the root sense of the word (amo as you know means I love) and are motivated by a great love of this even greater land that an awesomely impossible to limit God gave us to care for and love while we tended to each other and valued every single individual and the idea of individualism itself.
Thank you for speaking with me and giving me something to think about; it is my fervent belief that I have responded in kind.
If you will forgive a joke, I hope you aren’t in pajamas because you have insomnia, but isn’t the internet the one place we can waste athousand lifetimes?
” I would accept the argument that the anti-war side has done the most to devise a rhetoric that is “divisive and demonizing” if the anti-war side was in power.”
Why? Do we really need to hand them the reins of power before we can recognize their self-destructive backbiting and suicidalist nature? It’s like refusing to recognize a child molester as such because, while he’s been proven to have molested other peoples’ children, he hasn’t been given a chance to molest yours.
Judgemental? Well, someone has to show some judgement.
dear Tatterdemalion
The point I am making is that those in power drive the rhetoric. I do not think that it is an accurate characterization of the anti-war side to say that they possess a “self-destructive backbiting and suicidalist nature” (don’t you love copy and paste?).
There is nothing self destructive about avoiding a war that one does not have to fight. I do not think that despite its “explosive possibility as a denouncement that saying those of us who opposed the war are “suicidalist” any more than it would be to say those that went to war did so to commit suicide. Alas, whenever we commit as a nation to a war, the people who oppose the war are going to be critical. I like your use of language since it does emotionally charge every objection you have to your enemies, but my enemy is not you, unless you are an Islamist or other enemy of this great land, and I guarantee you none of us in the anti-war side consider those who favor the war enemies.
I mention Afghanistan in an earlier post because I can show you IN PRINT AT THE TIME a plethora of the anti-war voices who opposed invading Iraq supporting that war.
Analogies are the sign of great intelligence, but to compare anti-war Americans to child molesters seems to me needlessly inflammatory and disappears under the weight of examination, unless you are saying that Americans who oppose the war are unfit to live in the community at large.
There is nothing inherently wrong with peace, and nothing inherently wonderful about wars, especially undeclared wars that are declared over (“The major combat operations in Iraq have ended and the United States and her allies have prevailed”) on May 1, 2003, only to still be raging with more deaths, more civilians killed and wounded, more refugees, and a greater overall likelihood of an Islamic “Democracy” like Iran to be the ultimate government than anything you or I would recognize as a Democracy.
President Bush controls the way we talk about Iraq, not the anti-war factions.
I think a generous response to your last assertion that “someone has to show some judgment” is that it is a non-sequitur. The voices who opposed the war showed judgment, just as President Bush and the self-proclaimed neo-cons did. We disagree with each other on substance.
wow! I am happy I am an old lifelong Liberal Democrat. Does becoming a supporter of the post 9/11 world mean everything that is true is now false?
There are people in these discussion boards who see antisemitism everywhere, and usually where it doesn’t exist. But Nixon was a true anti-semite. Yes, he was a deeply-flawed man who did tremendous good things even as he either ordered or countenanced criminal acts like burgleries.
Here is a sample of the man Nixon really was, available on tape for anyone of you who think the so-called left invented hatred:
They show Nixon talking about selling ambassadorships, railing against Jews and other minorities, complaining about the drinking habits of leading members of Congress, and exchanging conspiracy theories with Kissinger and other top aides.
In many cases, Nixon’s tirades were touched off by news leaks and political setbacks, such as the occasion at the beginning of July 1971 when the Bureau of Labor Statistics released figures showing that unemployment was on the upswing. Concerned that news of the joblessness was hurting him in the polls, Nixon demanded the ouster of the director of the bureau, Julius Shiskin, and asked his hatchet man, Charles Colson, to investigate the ethnic background of officials in the agency.
“They are all Jews?” Nixon exclaimed when Colson listed the names.
“Every one of them,” Colson replied. “Well, with a couple of exceptions. . . . You just have to go down the goddamn list and you know they are out to kill us.”
In a later conversation the same day–July 3–Nixon and Haldeman discussed Jewish penetration of the National Security Council staff. “Is Tony Lake Jewish?” Nixon demands, referring to a young Kissinger aide who went on to become national security adviser under President Clinton.
“I’ve always wondered about that,” Haldeman replies.
“He looked it,” says Nixon, without reaching a firm conclusion. [Lake is not Jewish].
When The Washington Post gave front-page coverage in April 1971 to a survey showing 60 percent support for antiwar demonstrations among residents of affluent District neighborhoods, Nixon complained that the results were loaded.
“Bob,” he explained to a receptive Haldeman, “there’s a hell of a lot of Jews in the District, see . . . The gentiles have moved out.”
The blowhards are universally Left. And, as today’s postings show, blowing back at them is an exercise in futility.
“The point I am making is that those in power drive the rhetoric.”
And the point I’m making is that you are wrong. Who is in power is far less relevant to what people choose to declare, than the personalities of those issuing the rhetoric. I would go so far as to say that it is the attitudes of those who are facing adversity that are a far truer measure of their personalities, than the attitudes displayed when they are in a comfortable position of power.
Okay, Tom: Nixon was a closet anti-Semite. And this is relevant because…?