Joe, in your letter to the director of CPAC you mentioned that you had seen some transcripts of Ann Coulter's speech. Could you please provide a link or source for these transcripts?

Thanks

Given that Couter has long argued that Joseph McCarthy was a hero unfairly maligned by treasonous liberals (see her book Treason: Liberal Treachery from the Cold War to the War on Terrorism, plus numerous speeches and articles), I would assume she's 100% serious.

But I could be wrong.

Coulter is a demagogue.

What worries me about the not-so-distant future is that demagogues will be the only option on the ballot when voting for national leaders.

As it is, elections are already populated with candidates who appeal primarily to the prejudicial passions of the electorate. I draw few distinctions between Coulter, Stern, O'Reilly, Hannity, Combs, and the whole gaggle of bullhorns who have debased national dialogue into an irascible mud fight between two outmoded ideologies.

Ann Coulter is the Michael Moore of the right. The difference is that most righties know she is being outrageous for the fun of it and take her with a few grains of salt, and most lefties take MM seriously.

"most lefties take MM seriously"

really now.

Michael Moore is the Ann Coulter the left. The difference is that most lefties know that more MM is just one viewpoint and take MM with a few grains of salt, while righties take AC's rantings as Truth.

No need to make CPAC organizers boogeymen - they sold tapes of every talk on site - Robin sure could have picked one up.

So what are you suggesting Krempasky, that Joe and Robin decided to cook up a phony “controversy” over Ann Coulter's remarks in the hopes of scamming a free video?

;)

Ann Coulter frequently engages in what has been called (by R. A. Wilson, iirc) "ha-ha only serious" commentary. Things that sound funny or outrageous, but are meant to be insightful beyond the first gloss.

As a long-time observer of Coulter's sometimes cryptic ideology (which, in retrospect, makes me sound like I'm an intellectual stalker), I would construe her remarks as being: well, they're calling us McCarthyites for doing what we do normally (criticizing them successfully): so let's continue, despite their plaintive, stuck-pig cries. (CoulterWatch, for instance, called Ann Coulter's "Treason" the new McCarthyism).

I think Ann makes a persuasive case that McCarthy wasn't an inherently bad guy, that the history of McCarthy was manipulated into a boogieman to scare small (intellectual) children, and, more importantly, that Sen. McCarthy was right in a lot of his particulars.

Outside of this, I've become convinced that there is a toxic anti-American strain, call it neomarxist if you like, running through the academic elites, that results in an indoctrination of our youth into a post-modern, moral relative, materialist, power-dialectical atheism, which undercuts the possibility of successful participation in the Civic life of America, which is rooted in none of these things.

If declaring shennanigans when they do this makes us McCarthyesque, then, by all means, lets us be McCarthyesque.

But, and this is the key point and differentiator which insulates our efforts from the more serious charge of abuse of power: our "New McCarthyism" is limited to the ideological realm, rather than being backed up with the subpoena power of Congress or the Courts, or the powers of an Executive. In the ideological sphere, red-baiting is only effective when it's palpably, intuitively, true - which it is, a surprising amount of the time.

Frankly, I'd like to see the charge of intellectual treason against American ideals to be made, proven, and those who fail into the errors engendered by it, be chastised appropriately, and not lionized by a manipulative elite for their actions (c.f. the National Lawyers Guild's recently awarding M. Shahid Alam their "Free Speech" prize).

The war of ideas is not over with the majority of the sane, desperately clinging on to power with their fingertips. The war of ideas is won when all those who are insane, manipulated, and manipulative, are marginalized into utter impotence, and, instead arises a two-party system where the people running it are in merely rational disagreement. There's plenty of room for rational disagreement - we just don't have much currently.

In order to get there, we need to stick to the universal principals that got to where we are today - and promogulate those universal principals as good and just and right, and not allow an unelected marxist elite determine the course of the intellectual development of our young.

JRP,

While I share your dim assesment of the Academy, I find no need to rehabilitate McCarthy. Ultimately he failed and discredited his cause because he sank into demagoguery (if ever he rose above it).

Coulter shares this with her "hero": she is unserious. She's best understood as attending to her own cult of personality than any serious matter of culture or security. McCarthy does represent a kind of "boogyman", and so Coulter's flirtation with his legacy can be seen as a manifestation of the same juvenile "transgressive chic" that wearing a "Che" t-shirt entails. She should grow up and get real, at the very least.

If a commentator were to be truly funny, provocative, mocking, and an unapologetic proclamer of Western values and civil society, what would they sound like? I'd say closer to Mark Steyn than Ann Coulter.

JRP wrote:

As a long-time observer of Coulter's sometimes cryptic ideology (which, in retrospect, makes me sound like I'm an intellectual stalker), I would construe her remarks as being: well, they're calling us McCarthyites for doing what we do normally (criticizing them successfully): so let's continue, despite their plaintive, stuck-pig cries. (CoulterWatch, for instance, called Ann Coulter's "Treason" the new McCarthyism).

I think that’s pretty much on the mark. It’s sort of like the old CR button “A bigot is a conservative who is winning an argument with a liberal.” Coulter is a self-proclaimed polemicist and does play well amongst the younger conservative crowd where being a provocateur is half the fun. However unlike Michael Moore or Marcus Cicero, she also does some dynamite and thoughtful analysis, particularly when it comes to legal analysis and defending federalism. While I tend to think she sometimes paints with a bit too wide of a brush and some of her comments are clearly TIC, she’s generally more right than she’s wrong.

she’s generally more right than she’s wrong.

She engages in meanspirited divisivness for sport and profit. She does this not because it furthers the causes we might have in common, but in spite of the fact that it does not. After that I don't care if she discovers a new fundamental constitutional principle, elementary particle or ice cream flavor. She’s a boor and a crank and attracts same. This is good – why?

Check out this chilling video from Hindrocket of Powerline

This is very similar to what Anne Coulter was saying, and you can tell from the video, that Hindrocket is NOT kidding.

Two things -

1. An observation - powerline is considered by Time magazine "Blog of the Year" - quite the endorsement by the "liberal media", hmm?

2. A question - Joe, Robin, AL, etc. Do you ENDORSE or AGREE with the sentiments voiced by Hindrocket?

I really need to know if that type of thinking is considered acceptable by this particular online community.

But, and this is the key point and differentiator which insulates our efforts from the more serious charge of abuse of power: our "New McCarthyism" is limited to the ideological realm, rather than being backed up with the subpoena power of Congress or the Courts, or the powers of an Executive. In the ideological sphere, red-baiting is only effective when it's palpably, intuitively, true - which it is, a surprising amount of the time.

JRP: Correct me if I'm wrong, but Ann Coulter spoke at the same conference as Karl Rove, no? The same Karl Rove who's just been promoted to Deputy Chief of Staff? The promotion expands his official portfolio from politics and strategy to coordination of foreign and domestic policies.

And, didn't a guy named Dick Cheney speak at this conference, too? And Ken Mehlman? And a few Senators from the ruling party?

So when you tell your fellow-citizens not to worry their pretty little heads about this shiny "New McCarthyism," since it's only "in the ideological realm," and "not backed by the powers of an Executive," it rings a little hollow.

Ann Coulter is what passes for the modern voice of Big Government Conservatism in 2005. If she weren't, she wouldn't have been at the CPAC, and she wouldn't have been cheered like a rock star.

You'll be able to dispute Ann Coulter's centrality when the conservative movement in this country repudiates her noxious ravings. Is there even a scintilla of evidence that this is going to happen?

So when you tell your fellow-citizens not to worry their pretty little heads about this shiny "New McCarthyism," since it's only "in the ideological realm," and "not backed by the powers of an Executive," it rings a little hollow.

A-oooGA

You'll be able to dispute Ann Coulter's centrality

Did JRP assert such a thing ? tighten that metal dome some more, must be a leak.

I also, Like her shtick, the humor is so much better that its based on fact.

Even her footnotes (the part they hate the most, because she uses the historical record as backup) she does not drop out of character.

44.Tokyo Rose later quietly won a pardon from Gerald Ford after spending many years arguing that she had been visiting Japan before Pearl Harbor and, after having been stranded there, was forced by the Japanese government to issue the broadcasts. Her innocence was supported by the fact that she never became a liberal cause celebre.

Which of course is funny because we all have fresh memories of democrats defending the clearly guilty and the repugnantly indefensable. Behavior so dependable, that indeed, all you need to do is make sure your on the opposite side of the democrats to be on the side of objective truth.

Imagine what the left would say about Ashcroft if he was actually had a record like baby-burner-Janet-Reno with her civilian fighting bradley tanks or her machine guner comando cuban slave repatriation squads of love.

Course, Ashcrofts record compared to Reno is quite mundaine and tame, so they just make stuff up.

So I would task Annes detractors to cite the error, where is the untruth ?

Try to Invalidate her footnotes. and I reject the copout that you cant tell fact from shtick.

Its been clear at the first instant to me why she tosses out such bait, because it makes fools of those that adopt a fake obtuse act and feign outrage

Which of course, gives us another chance to laugh at them.

So I would task Annes detractors to cite the error, where is the untruth ?

Well, you could Google "coulter footnotes" and discover how bloggers and critics have shown her footnotes to be full of baloney.

On second thought, don't waste your time. You believe Ann Coulter dispenses the Truth, so you ignore facts which contradict her Truth.

Her innocence was supported by the fact that she never became a liberal cause celebre.

Argument based based solely on hatred of liberals. Yeah, great footnote.

Mike is correct - tapes were available but I didn't connect with that before I left. Joe, if you really are hot on this perhaps you want to have them FedEx you a copy of it.

For another data point or two, i thought i might refer to a human events article. "Revisionist Critics Misrepresent McCarthy's Legacy"

The link dont seem to work anymore,

For an unbiased account of McCarthy’s life, Arthur Herman’s Joseph McCarthy: Reexamining the Life and Legacy of America’s Most Hated Senator is indispensable.

McCarthy’s career as an anti-Communist began in February 1950 with his Wheeling speech and was effectively ended with his censure in December 1954. Why was Harry Truman chased out of Washington in 1952 with an approval rating of 23%? Why did Joe McCarthy enjoy a 50-29 favorable rating as late as January 1954?

Because McCarthy, almost alone, was exposing the treason and folly of those who had ceded half of Europe to Stalin and all of China to the murderous hordes of Mao Tse-tung. And with 200 American boys dying every week in Truman’s “no-win war” in Korea, Americans were demanding explanations.

The 1950s were good years. No one was terrified then, except the fools who had joined a Communist Party that turned out to be a lickspittle of the Comintern. Gallup polls of the era show not even 1% of Americans were concerned about “witch-hunting” or “anti-Communist hysteria” or “McCarthyism.” That is pure myth.

In 1954, when some snot at the 15th reunion of his class got up to toast Harvard College for never having produced an Alger Hiss or a Joe McCarthy, John F. Kennedy stood up and walked out, roaring, “How dare you couple the name of a great American patriot with that of a traitor.”

Which squares with what even my own parents and grandparents told me about him. He was wildly popular

Or perhaps your ready to say that John F Kennedy, who fully supported McCarthy before after and inbetween as just another deranged right wingnut.

I find it amazing how many of you have fallen for the leftist historical fraud. when there are so many repectable contemporaries who left behind a historical record you can check for yourself.

RNq

Amazing, right below my post you example the last 3 lines of it, and yes, I laughed.

And ive seen attempts to refute her, but they dont hold up, it seems to come from the same mentality that is now digging to see if Gannon is Roves lover. or the tinfoil hat mess about memeogate being a planned attack on the media by Rove.

JC

"Check out this chilling video from Hindrocket of Powerline"

I found nothing chilling in the video what so ever. What was made was an assertion of beliefs. Granted the short video didn't go into why he believes the way he does. Ann Coulter on the other hand provides substantiating evidence as to why she believes the way she does.

"This is very similar to what Anne Coulter was saying, and you can tell from the video, that Hindrocket is NOT kidding."

Not at all. Ann Coulter uses satire as well as shock and awe effects as attention grabbers. Is it tongue in cheek? At times yes. Is it serious? At times yes. I also believe she gives the reader / listener the benefit of the doubt when it comes to knowledge and / or comprehension of what she wants to portray. (Robert Borks' book certainly isn't written on a third grade level and it's debatable as to whether the minimum of a high school education would understand what he is trying to say. Same can be said for any insurance policy or regulations of government controlled programs.) Sorry got off subject there.

As for your questions about endorsing / agreeing with Hindrocket's assessment I can only speak for myself. What ever perceptions I have about the beliefs of the multitude is simply that; perception.

Where I don't agree with Hindrocket is his assessment that the left doesn't care about the issues. Personally I believe they do care, however; I also believe the left does not assign the same priority to these issues that I would assign to them. My perception of the left is the attitude of leave it alone it will take care of itself or that of let someone else take care of it because the left's social issues are so much more important. Maybe it is because they believe solving the social issues will solve these problems as well. As of yet I have little evidence which supports solving the social issues promotes an everlasting harmony. As far as Hindrocket's observations about the left being fixated on power the same can be said for either party. If one does not have the power it becomes difficult if not impossible to force change on the people. After years of forcing change down peoples throats the left is justifiably worried that the same will be done by the right. Are these fears unfounded? Only time will tell.

USMC

One could say the right is no longer content with the leftist ratchet, that winning office only means temporary holdings action inbetween more ratchet toward a communist socialist nanny state with speach codes and a centrally managed to death economy.

That dont cut it any more.

On the other hand, we dont act like them, they shot guns into our offices, we didnt, we are different creatures

We will do what we have been doing, make our case to the electorate, have the people themselves apply the pressure to congress.

The democrats are out of power partly because of their contempt for the common man, their force feeding created a resentment that turned support to us.

If we did what they did, we wont be in power for long.

Nope, to the people we will make our case, and it will be the people doing the forcing, forcing their representives, to be representative.

Raymond

"Nope, to the people we will make our case, and it will be the people doing the forcing, forcing their representives, to be representative."

That is what I believe the right is screaming for. Representation of core beliefs. It is also why I believe the losses by Democrats in both houses as well as their presidential bid failed. I only hope the right keeps true to my premise. Will they vote their own out when their core beliefs are challenged by their own if or when that time comes? Most know it is rare when two of the same party vie for the same spot at the same table.

How is it that if no one cared about McCarthy (other than those Communists), that Edward R. Murrow cemented his place in the journalists' pantheon by taking him down? And Raymond has elided that McCarthy's concern for the victims of Communism started, oddly, with his spirited defense of convicted SS war criminals whose perfervid anti-Communism had led them to slaughter American POWs who had surrendered. (Raymond appreciates such dedication, though, doesn't he?) I'll repeat: it wasn't an accident that McCarthy waved blank paper around in his political speeches and saved naming names for Senate speeches. It was because you can't sue Senators for slander for what they say on the floor.

Lewy14 is shredding Coulter better than I can, but in one respect he's quite mistaken. McCarthy (and Coulter) were beloved of the GOP establishment until they become embarrassments. In McCarthy's case, most of the GOP (not all) was willing to ride his slanderous attacks to victory in 1950 and 1952. Only after he got too big for his britches and took on the Army (and was warming up to accuse Eisenhower of commie sympathies) did they deep-six him. And Coulter and Hinderacker are good news for conservatives electorally right now, firing up braindead fools like Raymond, but more important throwing the liberals on constant defensive.

As for accuracy, you might look at Coulter's claim that the NYTimes didn't run an obituary for the race car driver Dale Earnhardt. (It ran front page.)

#9 from JRP on February 22, 2005 03:54 AM: "not allow an unelected marxist elite determine the course of the intellectual development of our young."

There is no "marxist elite" and there is no "liberal media." Both are propaganda from the Right.

#9 from JRP on February 22, 2005 03:54 AM: "I think Ann makes a persuasive case that McCarthy wasn't an inherently bad guy"

McCarthy was a vicious alcoholic punk. His attack on the loyalty of Gen. Marshall was reprehensible.

#9 from JRP on February 22, 2005 03:54 AM: "I've become convinced that there is a toxic anti-American strain, call it neomarxist if you like, running through the academic elites, that results in an indoctrination of our youth into a post-modern, moral relative, materialist, power-dialectical atheism, "

I've become convinced that you are profoundly ignorant and I say that as one who has been in the academic elite.

USMC

get a dictionary:

chil'-ing adj. that which causes a liberal to think or reconsider. c.f. cold war; chill the cold ing toc come in from

#15 from Raymond on February 22, 2005: "So I would task Annes detractors to cite the error, where is the untruth ?"

Well, we could start with her claim that the NY Times did not cover the Dale Earnhardt death until the next day and then it wasn't on the first page.

In fact, it was covered that day and it was on the first page.

Another point: Coulter attributed a quote as an opinion of the NYT Editors when in fact it was the opinion of an external book reviewer.

The Right is based on Lies, Smears, Bigotry and the Politics of Personal Destruction.

#18 from Raymond on February 22, 2005

HEHE. Raymond, HumanEvents is just another part of the Republican Noise Machine.

Steve J, I appreciate the company, but can you consolidate the posts?

Steve J,

I don't know what part of the academic elite you were in, but if you're talking about academic elites in sociology, political science, anthropology and/or humanities, RPJ was being kind. I was in academia for about 20 years, and in my experience, the professoriat tends to the loony left and the loonier the better.

She engages in meanspirited divisivness for sport and profit. She does this not because it furthers the causes we might have in common, but in spite of the fact that it does not. After that I don't care if she discovers a new fundamental constitutional principle, elementary particle or ice cream flavor. She’s a boor and a crank and attracts same. This is good – why?

I don’t necessarily agree that Ann Coulter hasn’t helped to advance the conservative cause. In the political arena you (a) don’t win by playing defense, (b) you can’t let an attack go unanswered, and © there’ s a double-standard in the MSM in which any conservative candidate who responds to an attack with an attack gets labeled “mean-spirited.”

Keeping these things in mind, it is necessary and good that we have people on the conservative side (although certainly fewer than are found on the Left) who aren’t candidates and who have the freedom to launch attacks (or respond in kind as most Coulter’s “negative” columns are more accurately labeled “counter-attacks”) that shred the other side – their arguments, their standard-bearers, and their premises – thereby freeing up others (e.g. President Bush) to play the role of “good cop” without having to get their hands dirty.

Moreover even (or especially) considering the whining from the other side that her (counter-)attacks have inspired, she’s pretty effective in a lot of respects. She’s a good writer, witty with a sharp sense of humor, highly successful in mocking and ridiculing the opposition, and capable of some dynamite analysis.

Keep in mind I said that I think she sometimes does paint with a bit too wide of a brush but basically she’s correct about most of the things she’s said about the opposition.

Interesting

Seems Ann has already responded to her detractors about flaws in her book.

It's interesting that the most devastating examples of my alleged "lies" keep changing. As soon as one is disproved, I'm asked to respond to another. This is behavior normally associated with conspiracy theorists in tinfoil hats. One crackpot argument after another is shot down but the conspiracy theorists just move on to the next crackpot argument without pause or reconsideration. Certainly without apology.

Well, she was at the center of the protests. so she has no doubt seen more of the debate than I Have, but what I saw gave a similar impression, the detractors ranged from wrong to fraudulent to just plain silly.

One of them I remember was about the size of the average political donation, where republicans average donation crossed north of 50 bucks around the 2000 election period.

Ann's references cited references to "below $50" in 1997 and "$55" in 2000.

In the final published figures for 2000, it came out to $57.07

The point she made was that the party gets most of its money from small contributions, something even the liberal media admits today, arising because of the democrat soft money problem with McCain Fiengold.

The idiot accused her of lieing because she didnt use the final figure of 57 dollars, but rather the earlier figures current when the chapter was written, for a difference of $7 Seven Dollars !!!!

Heh, the guy just seems to have lost the plot.

That difference he notes dont invalidate the point she made, it lacks 2 orders of magnatude.

Its also true that ave size contributions sizes are ramping up, as if thats anything new. a trend that goes back decades. you can plot it backwards in time down to 20 dollars.

This is the smoking gun ?

I have yet to see a contest hold up, she had done her homework,

Wanna see what a real fraud looks like ?

try Bellesiles resigns as fraud investigation ends

Professor of History Michael Bellesiles announced his resignation from the University Friday, bringing an eight-month investigation into his research to an end.

Bellesiles was under fire by fellow academics for alleged fraud in research conducted for his 2000 book Arming America: The Origins of a National Gun Culture.

A leftist fraud touted by antigun democraps as "proof" that the 2nd Amendment isnt about the enumerated right of the single individual to Keep(own) and Bear(Carry) a gun.

Professor fraudster attempted to help the antigun cause with fake history about how many regular Americans owned their own guns. asserting gun ownership was rare.

If anyone was actually able to find holes, fabrications etc of the kind that is provable fraud the whole leftist media would be doing the happy dance on Ann's grave, what a feeding frenzy that would be. no doubt they would like to actually find something.

But they cant.

Well, Thorley von Winston's honest. Ann Coulter is sufficiently effective politically, we'll forgive her the slanderous inaccuracies (say, Raymond, Steve and I gave an example a lot better than a $7 error, and lots more here and here). This is, after all, the brilliant polemicist who called for Osama to kill New York Times employees, and who described the potential all-NamVet ticket of Al Gore and Gray Davis as an excuse for friendly fire. Was that one of the correct things she said about the opposition?

Excuse me if I decline to denounce Fahrenheit 9/11 for you, just to wish we can make our propaganda as effective as yours.

Thorley, I reproduced the letter verbatim. "Transcripts" was the wrong word - "paraphrases" would be much more correct. But having made the mistake in the letter, I had to reproduce it here. Sorry.

JC... Saw the Powerline video. He says the Democrats don't particularly care about Islamofascism or terrorism (an opinion backed by polls of Democratic Party convention delegates, and similar to opinions held by Matt Yglesias, Heather Hurlburt, Peter Beinart and other Democrats), and notes that exceptions are relatively rare. He goes on to note that he believes this is way beyond a fringe movement, and that the Democratic party's efforts as a whole have significantly impeded the global war on terror. Given 20-30 point poll gaps on security issues that persist to this day, he doesn't seem to be alone in this belief.

He considers this sort of behaviour to be a betrayal, which is his opinion/value judgment of the above (as opposed to treason, which is a technical term and crime defined in the US Constitution and potentially punishable by death). "Betrayal" is a term used in politics all the time ("Betrayal of Social Security," anyone?)

First, this is exactly why I wanted a video of Coulter. People can see and judge for themselves, and there's a standard point of reference everyone can start from.

Second, I don't see what's chilling about this at all. This is normal political speech.

Third, and back to Coulter and McCarthyism for a moment... let's remember was cCarthy was all about. McCarthy's committee was an about ferreting out Communists who chose to conceal their identities and affiliations, using the force of law. It was thus inquisitorial in nature, and I'm using that term as a descriptive, not a value judgment.

At the time, the Soviet Union did indeed have a number of agents like this in America. We know that from KGB files made available after the Cold War. Algier Hiss was one of them.

But there are 2 kinds of errors one can make in this situation. One could miss the very real Soviet moles. Or, one's "false positives" could end up ruining by association people who were not in fact Soviet agents. That second kind of error, and the inquisitorial nature of the proceeding, is why McCarthy could be right on many particulars but still face a (deserved) turning point like "have you no decency..." The fact that "Tailgunner Joe" wasn't exactly a model of restraint and carefulness certainly contributed to the creation of that turning point.

To conflate that in any way with the Powerline video strengthens Coulter's point underneath any sarcasm... if any criticism is going to be interpreted and denounced as "McCarthyism," then the right has nothing to lose politically from implementing the real thing.

Now, here's why Coulter is still wrong.

First, when you're governing like a majority party, what liberal partisans say is irrelevant except to the extent you can marginalize them for it. Your target shifts toward that majority and those on the fence - and while liberal partisans can't tell the difference between criticism and McCarthyism, normal people can. So going there does have costs, and they're huge - very possibly one's governing majority.

This is because non-political people tend to have better senses of decency than partisan political types, in my personal experience (re: why, the answer is natural selection). And that's a criticism I'll extend across ALL affiliations.

Finally, calling for a "New McCarthyism" is also fundamentally flawed IMO because that's nothing like the challenge we face.

Ward Churchill is not a closet anything, and there are professors who are a lot like him on most campuses, not only in terms of their beliefs but in terms of hack credentials beyond having the "correct" ideology (Tim Burke had a mostly sharp article about this a while back). Michael Moore isn't exactly keeping his loyalties and beliefs to himself. Nor is Cynthia McKinney.

Hatred of America that is increasingly merging with other totalitarian ideologies is something that even Democrats like Fred Spiegel have noted - as has Winds - and there is genuine virtue in making that sort of behaviour more politically and even personally costly. Making these sorts of people as unacceptable as the Klan is a worthy social goal, and one I'd support. We've done it before with other social pathologies, and we can do it with this one, too.

But we don't need the methods or apparatus of Joe McCarthy to do that - in fact, they'd be a distraction and an impediment. Most of the tools of criticism, social action and improvement are in place right now. All that's required is their intelligent use.

My daughter's college English teacher has a poster of Marx on his office wall. Student understanding of McCarthy is based on twisted history taught by people who hang Marx posters in their offices.

Maybe we need a new McCarthy. Ann?

How is it that if no one cared about McCarthy (other than those Communists), that Edward R. Murrow cemented his place in the journalists' pantheon by taking him down?

Because he wasnt "taken down"

The Murrow clip is an edited fraud, cutting room glamor to make him look bad (showing the tactic goes back 60 years)

All you need to do is compare with the govt transcript to see how glaring and dishonest the edits are.

To Wit:

The single most telling aspect of the campaign against Senator McCarthy is the often shown exchange between him and attorney Joseph Welch at the Army-McCarthy hearings.

How often have we heard Welch’s words, “Let us not assassinate the lad further, Senator. You have done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last?” Followed by Senator McCarthy blabbering like a kid caught cold with his hand in the cookie jar. Surely this is documented film evidence of the evil Senator. Or was it?

It seems that some careful editing and omissions of context created this image. In fact the perplexed Senator immediately shot back that if, “I say anything that is not the truth, then I would like to know about.” Maybe not smooth speech but hardly babbling.

What is also omitted is the truly indecent way Welch had been baiting McCarthy with all that day, constantly demanding he name names and implying he couldn’t.

When McCarthy finally succumbed and mentioned a member of Mr. Welch’s own law firm, Fred Fisher, was a member of an organization termed by the Democrat Attorney General as, “the legal bulwark of the Communist Party,” Welch went into his aggrieved theatrics.

Okay, but was it bad for McCarthy to ‘out’ Fisher even if baited by Welch? Well, it might have been if untrue and if Welch had not confirmed to the New York Times two months previous that Fisher had been relieved as his second assistant because of his membership in an organization that was, “the legal mouthpiece of the Communist Party”!

So not only was Fischer ‘Red’, Welch knew that he was and publicly acknowledged that fact two months before.

The question remains, but not of Senator McCarthy but on his behalf, “where is the decency?” It would be good to report that the media has taken a long hard look at the subject and admitted the truth, they haven’t.

Whole Thing

Every time the leftist media take their gullable dupes for another propaganda ride, let us remember its hardly a new tradition, going all the way back to Walter Durranty in the 30's

The Russians had a Joke, based on the names for the govt newspaper and the govt news tv program.

The paper was called Pravda, a word meaning Truth

The TV News was called BREMA, meaning Information

The joke went something like this:
In Pravda, no Brema, and in Brema no Pravda.

Soviet expats I met told me that joke, and it always came up when they noticed that Our US leftist propaganda mill reminded them of the same crap they left behind.

Mrs. Davis

I do believe I quoted JC's statement exactly as it was written.

chilling

If JC would like to change the words he has written? I'll admit I'm not the brightest bulb in the package. I'll also admit I'm not adverse to learning or increasing my vocabulary. I'll also admit that there is a lot of slang out there that one can not make heads or tails of at times. To further my education could you please tell me exactly which dictionary you are looking at concerning your definition of what was written. My Webster's Encyclopedic Unabridged Dictionary of the English Language (second edition 1996) does not have chil'-ing documented.

Joe, USMC,

Hindrocket says -

"The left doesn't care about terrorism, doesn't care about islamofascism, doesn't care about the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people..."

"By "the left" I'm including almost the entire Democratic Party, you can count the exceptions on your fingers, you can name them, Zell Miller, Joe Lieberman...The whole mainstream of the party is engaged in an effort that is a betrayal of America, what they care about is not winning the war on terror...I don't think they care about the danger to us as Americans or the danger to people in other countries. They care about power."

So Democrats don't care about the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people - except for a few exceptions.

And, "betrayal of America" is different than "betrayal of Social Security". Don't conflate the two. (And the goal of the privatizers is to END Social Security - hence why it is a betrayal - so this is a bad analogy anyway, unless you you think that Democrats/the left want to End America.)

For myself, this seems to be an example of the "paranoid strain in american politics", similar to those idiots who argue that 9-11 was a conspircacy by Bush and company.

Not the subtle merging - the "left" that Hindrocket then turns into the Democratic party, then subtly turns into "betraying America".

Note that people like you, who I would normally respect, Joe, simply let this type of thing pass.

JC

Yes it does seem that the religion of the gulag and 174 Million skulls, didnt seem to care about the crimes against humanity we found in Iraq.

Even a mass grave of Kids, that we found "Still clutching their toys" seemed to have no affect on them.

Some say this is just mindles reactionary reflexive opposition, they are so drunk on bile and busHitler hatered that nothing else matters.

But if you look back on history, you can make a really solid case that anytime they pretend to care, its only a political calculation.

The mass grave of kids was not usefull as a political tool for them, so natually, what isnt usefull dont matter.

The "scandal" That Rumsfeld signed some letters with an autopen got 100,000times more time and ink,

And of course, even that was a fraud, it was to depict Bush and crew as uncaring and craven, aloof above the suffering of the families who are suffering loss.

Never mind all the personal meatings he has with so many of them, and unlike the photop poser lib biter fakery of clinton, Bush dont invite the new cameras to watch him shead tears with them.

Its the leftist media that is craven, and the fake reality they broadcast is provably dishonest, at best.

You see the same dishonesty, double standard with the UN scandals etc...

The leftist media, and the left, its all a political calculation, power is all that matters to them, keep that in mind next time they pretend to care about something.

I dont know about you all but I agree. I am a stong supporter of Freedom of Speech. Cuss out the pres come out with whatever crazy idea you want and trash what ever plan you want protest whatever BUT...when you purposley undermine and commit sedition of a active war effort by your country that is treason and WRONG our grandfathers and forefathers would never have accepted such they would have arrested deported hell even in some cases hung. During WW2 reporters didnt go out of thier way to show the other sides point of view "why did Japan attack us was it our Foriegn policy" "what does the german and japaneese street feel what about the hearts and minds?" We are at war and freedom of speech is great but when it cost our soldgiers lives and undermines our nations way of life thats not freedom thats Sedition at the least and Treason at the worst. I agree with Ann and say if you dont love this country and are willing to sacrifise and such for it or at least bite your toung during a time of war, then pack them up give them a one way pass to the country of thier choice and revoke thier citizenship pernamantly no return for anything buisness vacation nothing. Do them a favor help them get to the other side were the grass is greaner.

first flight is 80% of hollywood along with Moore, Kennedy, boxer, Gore, those senetors that before the war went to Iraq to understand the hardship we had brought to the Iraqi babies errr..that Churchill guy, and a whole bunch of others.

I got $50 that says in 1yr they will be begging to return to the "greatest country on earth"

JC
Sorry but I found nothing chilling about one mans opinion. I even stated where I disagree with him and would gladly engage his conversation to present my point of view. Just as much as there are some things I don't agree with in the Republican Party there are a lot of things I don't see eye to eye with concerning the Democratic Party.

Do I believe they have committed acts of treason? I don't think I would go that far. On the other hand placing a grenade in the enemies hands knowing full well it would mean the death of Americans now that's treason. Do I believe they are behind this administration 100%? No. But then again that is not an act of treason. Do I believe they have a better solution than the one on the table at the moment? No I don't. I wouldn't hang Boxer, Kennedy, Kerry, or any host of other Democrats for their beliefs. Vote them out of office if I could? You bet. Accuse them of treason no. I will say this though. There are some conversations better left in the bedroom. Heck even the boardroom knows when it is inappropriate to air dirty laundry.

USMC,

Sorry, that was supposed to be humor, but my aim was off.

Mrs. Davis
Thanks for the clarification. I thought I had lost my mind for a minute. (Sometimes I lose it for hours on end) No apology was necessary it is, however; graciously accepted.

JC

"(And the goal of the privatizers is to END Social Security - hence why it is a betrayal - so this is a bad analogy anyway, unless you you think that Democrats/the left want to End America.)"

And the goal of ending Social Security is unreasonable? Why? I realize it is off topic and we have talked about the issue of Social Security before. Perhaps one of our administrators would like to bring the subject up again.

I read a Boston crime novel once which mentioned an FBI agent fired by his supervising agent for being a dangerous "loose cannon". The supervisor was G. Gordon Liddy.

Ms. Coulter was fired by the National Review for the same reason. Lewy14 was dead on in saying:

"She's best understood as attending to her own cult of personality than any serious matter of culture or security."

Sure she is sometimes entertaining. She means to be entertaining - that's her profession. But she isn't in Rush Limbaugh's league as either an entertainer or a journalist.

Does anyone enjoy these discussions?

JC... RE: Hindrocket's video - again I say, normal political speech. One may agree or disagree, but "betrayal" is an oft-used political word and not at all the same thing as "treason" or sedition", which are serious crimes. That's why Coulter gets my hackles up when she refers to her political opponents as "traitors." Den Beste had a good piece shooting this idea down.

In contrast, "betrayal" implies only the crossing of a moral limit of proper loyalties, sympathies and allegiances. That distinction matters a lot - having someone label one's conduct as shameful isn't nearly the same thing as spending 25 years in Attica. Or being executed, which is a possible penalty for treason. So it's an entirely different kind and level of implied social sanction.

It is possible to legitimately use "betrayal" in the same sentence as "America" - and indeed, today's Democratic Party has been offering concrete and specific examples where that's a very arguable characterization. Whether it's fair to characterize the entire party that way is doubtful, because I would say there are counterexamples one could bring forth that go beyond a narrow fringe. I think it's more accurate to say that the party has a real and serious problem in this area, and seems to be sliding in the wrong direction to boot.

I'll argue further that the idea of loyalty to country is a worthy idea, one that demands certain standards of responsibility beyond empty invocations of "dissent is patriotism". That's especially true in times or war or armed conflict, which we currently face. The idea of loyalty understood by Republicans like Wendell Wilkie in the 1940s has indeed become dangerously weak, and needs to be strengthened as a virtue that transcends partisan affiliation.

In that sense, Coulter is on to something - and this is the wellspring of belief she's tapping into. The problem is, Coulter's approach strikes me as precisely the wrong way to get there. It's also likely to lead to the defeat of any such efforts, and thus further weakening of the standards. Which is a problem for all of us.

Weakening those standards weakens so many other things, not least of which is the central concept of citizenship itself upon which so many liberal premises and implied obligations rest. The effort to strengthen those standards does not have to be, and should not be, owned by one party in America... though circumstances and choices may force things that way, and barring a correction that's where things seem to be headed. And you can see evidence of that in the huge polled "security gap" (still very high), military voting patterns and trends, et. al.

But let's get to specifics.

(Hindrocket) "The left doesn't care about terrorism, doesn't care about islamofascism, doesn't care about the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people..."

It doesn't. With some exceptions, it sees terrorism as either a legitimate response to Western oppression, or as a fantasy cooked up by a (Jewish) cabal in Washington and Israel - and sometimes as both simultaneously, nothwithstanding the obvious logical contradictions. Islamofascism is not a significant moral or intellectual issue, and in Europe the left is in come cases being co-opted outright by Islamists. As for caring about the deaths of hundreds of thousands, please. That has never been more than an inconvenient statistic to the politicists of the Left. Not in the Cold War, and certainly not now. You can torture and kill as many people as you like, in whatever manner you like, and if you have the correct ideological credentials and hate the right people, many on the left will actively defend you as an exemplar (Google the term "political pilgrims"); some will even volunteer to act as "human shields" to protect your regime.

But we're focused on is the US Democratic Party, which is a different argument.

Hindrocket and I certainly disagree that The Left = The U.S. Democratic Party. Not so. Is the party becoming more leftist? Unarguably, yes, especially among its activist cadre which has influence out of proportion to its numbers. But just because John H. doesn't know all the exceptions personally doesn't back up his conflation of "The Left" and "The Democrats." So let's spearate them, and deal only with the US Democratic Party. Rephrased:

(Hindrocket) "[The mainstream of the U.S. Democratic Party] doesn't care about terrorism, doesn't care about islamofascism, doesn't care about the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people."

I would change "care" to "care enough" - at which point he has the basis for a case.

Polls of Democratic Party delegates consistently showed that terrorism was at the bottom of their agenda of priorities, with figures around 4% who listed it as one of their top issues. Heather Hurlburt, a Clinton NSC staffer, has argued that the party as a whole finds it very difficult to focus on military or international events except through a domestic political lens. Noted right-wing stooges like Matt Yglesias have made much the same point.

Islamofascism is not frequently invoked as a major enemy by the Democrats, but as an irritant or nuisance - to be disposed of in policing actions, and certainly not justifying armed confrontations abroad. Some ex-Senator named Daschle was openly lamenting back in 2002 (!!!) that the mid-term elections' focus on the war had taken his party away from the issues they wanted to talk about. One could legitimately infer from this some lack of concern, or at the very least markedly lesser concern than one finds across the aisle. Biden takes it pretty seriously and has some good ideas, but this theme really hasn't emerged with any force in the party.

As for the deaths of hundreds of thousands... We were pretty lucky to lose only 3,500 or so on 9/11. It could easily have been much worse, and in fact the original 1991 WTC bombing was designed to kill 50-60,000 people. A party that wants to continue with business as usual and fake treaties/ fake organizations as its front lines of defense in an age of mega-terrorism and rogue regimes with nukes is certainly open to this charge.

Just as, if I may remind my learned opponent, Republicans are accused, regularly, of showing through their actions and words that they have no concern for the fate of "hundreds of thousands [homeless/poor/working/black/insert here] people" - and so electing them would destroy these people's lives. Of course, this won't be qualified by saying "Republicans don't care enough." It's "Republicans don't care." Normal political rhetoric.

Don't like it? Better explain why your program would be better at helping the folks in question, and hope it's convincing. Or accept limited damage in that area while refocusing the debate on other priorities. Welcome to politics.

You see a life-or-death spin added when it comes to the Global War on Terror - because this one really is a life-and-death issue.

(Hindrocket) "All they care about is power. All they care about is regaining the Presidency. All the care about is... is defeating President Bush.... [snip] And... and I think, uhm, the left... and by "the left" I'm including almost the entire Democratic Party, you can count the exceptions on your fingers, Zell Miller, Joe Lieberman, I mean you can name the exceptions. The whole mainstream of the party is engaged in an effort that is a betrayal of America, what they care about is not winning the war on terror, what they care about is defeating President Bush."

Sen. Rockefeller's memos re: how the Democrats should conduct the 9/11 investigations, with a clear priority given to partisan angles rather than national security, certainly adds legitimacy to the view in that last sentence. Teddy Kennedy's speeches don't exactly help correct this impression. Neither do scenes like Terry McAuliffe speaking well of Michael Moore's lying movie pre-election, as large proportions of the Democratic caucus take time out to see a screening and have nothing bad to say about it. Oh, and a number of local party chapters hold screenings of their own as official events. Let's see, there's Rep. Moran raving on about the sinister Jewish influences, meaning of course the control they have over U.S. foreign policy. Gotta love the Democratic rep. who praised Osama bin Laden's day care programs, that was certainly a winner. Or how about those elected reps visiting Baghdad just before the war with Iraq, affirming their opposition to U.S. efforts to end his regime? What a shining moment that was - what party did you say they were from? Etc.

Are any of these things treason? No. Are they sedition? Again, doesn't meet the legal test. But there's a moral test, too, one that put's the nation's interest first and sees actions that are directly designed to damage that for narrow advantage as a deep wrong. "Betrayal" is indeed the proper word for that kind of judgment.

(Hindrocket) "And I think that... that the positions they're taking, the things they are doing and saying are significantly impeding the progress of the war, and giving great encouragement to our enemies. And [audio unintelligible]... I don't think they care about the danger to us as Americans nor do they care about the danger to people in other countries. They care about power."

See my comments above. Oh, and I forgot "Mr. Diplomacy's" Presidential campaign, where he publicly referred to politicians who had allied their nations to the USA's war in Iraq as "bought, bribed... coerced", to his aides who referred to Iraqi Interim PM Allawi as a "puppet" (big help, that, thanks for legitimizing terrorism there and betraying - yes, betraying - an American ally), and his official campaign staffer and relative who worked against the re-election of Australian PM John Howard saying he had endangered Australians by cooperating with the USA (betrayal is a good word here too), and so many other heart-warming episodes. No denials or personal retractions for any of these, of course.

Back to what I said earlier:

"The idea of loyalty to country that demands certain standards of responsibility beyond empty invocations of "dissent is patriotism" is something that needs to be reinforced these days. That's especially true in times or war or armed conflict, of the type we currently face."

Ya think?

JC says:

For myself, this seems to be an example of the "paranoid strain in american politics", similar to those idiots who argue that 9-11 was a conspircacy by Bush and company.

Not the subtle merging - the "left" that Hindrocket then turns into the Democratic party, then subtly turns into "betraying America".

Note that people like you, who I would normally respect, Joe, simply let this type of thing pass."

Because I think he has an argument that can be backed up with specific examples, even when using the narrow characterization of "official representatives of the Democratic Party" as opposed to "the mainstream left" (which to me would be a slam dunk, so I rephrased his argument).

After the examples I've cited above, I'd have to be a complete idiot to say: "I have no idea why anyone might say the things "Hindrocket" does.... no idea at all."

But I'm not prepared to accept them wholesale, either.

The mistake I see here is assuming that this is the whole picture, or that the entire Democratic Party mainstream is captured by this. Someone recently emailed this to me, and I'll be mentioning it soon, because it's good. David Brooks, the lone semi-consrvative voice at the New York Times, writing in Back from Battle - gives one more hope than the usual media or blogosphere portrayals.

Reporting this kind of "good news" is necessary to form a balanced picture, but it doesn't happen often enough. A gap we've seen elsewhere, and one that leads to similar mistakes of unwarranted pessimism and flawed conclusions.

It is equally a mistake, however, to assume that the above instances I cited do not represent a significant and systemic problem in today's Democratic Party. Otr that they are not grounded in many of the assumptions and power structures of a "bad philosophy" movements that all too often defines themselves in opposition to America, frequently hate it outright, work to replace morality with power as the only unit of analysis, and sympathize with America's enemies regardless of their cruelty or moral turpitude.

Fortunately, there's a lot of politics to watch between now and 2008, and Den Best's point about Moore and his ilk having both the wild-eyed fervour AND the poor political calculation skills of Muqtada al-Sadr were on the money. So we'll see.

In the late 40s, the Democrats had a similar issue with the pro-Soviet "Wallace Wing" of the party, and faced it. It's a question the party will eventually face again - the only question being what size and influebce the party will retain by the time they're finally forced into facing it.

Coulter isn't a helpful voice in any of these discussions, IMO. But neither is a level of denial that calls Hindrocket's video "chilling" or equates it in any way to McCarthyism.

Joe
Thanks for some meat behind my thoughts concerning Hindrocket and his comments.

As for the link you provided I'm looking forward to your synopsis and the discussion that will follow. One line by Mr. Brooks certainly summed it up nicely for me.

"I tried to think of the Munich conference from their perspective. If those marines had had the stomach to sit through all those panel discussions, would they have thought that the political class was playing games at luxury hotels, or that the politicians were doing something useful to make the most of those 22 Marine deaths?"

He summarized in a nutshell my feelings toward the loud mouth fringes of the Democratic Party. After all it is they who are getting the air time within the Democratic Party and not the ones identified by Mr. Brooks that really want to accomplish something.

A new commenter at Tacitus named Lydia has kindly provided a list of insane comments from key members of the Republican Party on a similar thread. Her list:

1. AIDS being transmitted through sweat or tears, which Senate majority leader Dr. Bill Frist seems to be unclear on.
2. George Soros being funded by drug cartels, which Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert insinuated on national television.
3. "Lesbianism is so rampant in some of the schools in southeast Oklahoma that they'll only let one girl go to the bathroom," as Senator Tom Coburn noted at a town meeting on the campaign trail.
4. The EPA can reasonably be called "the Gestapo of government, pure and simply has been one of the major clawholds that the government has maintained on the backs of our constituents" as your current Speaker of the House, Tom Delay did in 1995.
5. The REAL AARP Agenda includes opposing American soldiers and supporting gay marriage.
6. "We continue to discover biological and chemical weapons and facilities to make them inside Iraq," as Congressman Chris Cox recently stated.

Let the compulsory denouncing begin! (Or is that only for Democrats, while the party of cowards and bullies marches triumphant?)

[Aside for Raymond: Murrow's attack on McCarthy apparently pre-dated the "decency" remark. But your complaint that they edited his remarks is too richly ironic. You do know that McCarthy made a composite photo of Communist leader Earl Brower next to his political opponent Millard Tydings, right? And it worked??]

USMC,

It's a fair question he asks. It's only fair to note as well that Brooks' article then chronicles a group of representatives who met that standard, and who come from both parties.

While the paragraph you cite is key, therefore, you invert the meaning of his article if you imply that it corroborates your feelings about the Moore-ons' influence with the Democratic Party.

AJL,

[1] Frist's response was actually pretty scientific/geek standard. If not 100% sure, say "I don't know." Follow the links all the way to the interview - he cited some reasons why it probably wouldn't be transmissible this way, but unless he's sure from reading specific studies he won't say that he is. Good for him.

[2] That was a low thing to say. I'm in favour of some drug legalization, Mr. Hastert, and so is my fellow blogger M. Simon (vastly more so). That doesn't mean we get money from drug cartels as a result, and it doesn't mean Mr. Soros does either. Good for Wallace, who immediately called him on it.

[3] I know of no human agency powerful enough to ensure that only one woman goes into the bathroom at a time. For not knowing this one fact all by itself, Coburn is a fool.

[4] Government being what it is, there are always so very many contenders for this title. Texas and the Western states are never happy with the EPA, and I don't doubt that DeLay's constituents have used that language and use it still. Personally, my vote for the title goes to the drug-enforcement folks... see issue #2.

[5] Not the Republican Party, just an activist group somewhere. Still idiotic - don't they know that the real AARP agenda is siphoning huge amounts of money from children and working families, in order to pay for its members' extra trips to Tahoe? Anything else is decidedly secondary... though as is the case with many activist groups, AARP frequently confuses what its members want with the interests of the Democratic Party. If this rival activist group was trying to say that giving money to AARP is like giving money directly to the Democrats, they may have a point.

[6] Before I respond to anything in Salon, I wanna see the full transcript.

Gotta love the Democratic rep. who praised Osama bin Laden's day care programs,

In a recent interview with CBC Television, she claimed that Canada fought alongside the US in the Vietnam War. She claimed that even after the interviewer told her she was wrong. The third time, she said she'd look into it.

Whatever someone's ideological perspective, if they don't know basic facts I don't see any reason to treat them as credible sources of insight or information.

"# George Soros being funded by drug cartels, which Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert insinuated on national television."

A college professor of mine who was a former member of the Foreign Service as well as an ambassador to Peru would swear on a stack of Bibles that Soros was funded by drug cartels. Half the class I took with him consisted of his discussing Soros and drugs. How many people believe this? And where are they getting their info? Is it possible they're right? He was not crazy and was certainly not going to gain anything from this statement.

Lindsey, this might be a case where a little context makes all the difference. And as for Hastert, the bottom line is that if you make such a serious a public accusation, you had better back it up.

Context...

Soros is a very successful money manager, and a very famous one. There are literally trillions of dollars in what we might call "hot money" sloshing around in the international economy. The folks who have that money don't keep it under their mattresses - they invest it, just like you and me. Well, actually they have all kinds of whiz financial advisers and front companies who invest it, so it probably isn't like you and me. But you get the point.

If you're a famous investment manager with a good track record, what are the odds that your multi-billion portfolio has no "hot money" in it? This is purely a speculative guess, but logically the odds approach zero. Is there anything you can do about it? Not really, no. Is this different from any other successful and well known money manager? Not really, no.

It might therefore be technically true to say "Soros is funded by drug cartels", but the implication when you leave it at that is so misleading as to amount to a lie. The clear implications is that he is knowingly collaborating with drug cartels, who make up a substantial portion of his funding.

Which is not the same thing at all as saying that "Soros, like most successful money managers, probably has laundered drug cartel funds somewhere in his managed portfolio."

Wih that said, given that your professor had no obvious reason to pick on Soros so vehemently, I'd be interested in the basis for his views. He could just be wacky on that issue - professors with far wackier views abound in today's academia. But I'd be curious.

Until I did have a more substantial basis for such statements, however, I would not be making them. Hastert was way out of line.

Joe,

There are quite a few objections I would raise to your post - however, this particular disagreement isn't going to resolve, and it won't be useful to continue. So I'll simply bullet point it, and leave it at that. Since this is your space, you can answer the bullet points as you see fit.

- You walk back from from Hindrocket's actual comments to fashion an acceptable argument
- how one uses "betrayal" matters quite a lot.
- in terms of deaths, it is quite the canard to, again, conflate Marxism and the deaths caused from that, in addressing what outrages me
- examples of democrats using 9-11 politically, doesn't really meet the laugh test, in my opinion. The Bush administration has been cynically using 9-11 for pure partisan political purposes for years now. And doing so in a much more overt manner than "Mr. Diplomacy".
- Using Dan Beste as the appeal to authority only diminishes the argument, in my eyes.
- The "betraying left" - that nightmare/whipping boy of superconservatives everywhere, bears little relationship to the democratic party, Howard Dean and his policies, Bill or Hilary Clinton, John Kerry, all of the Senate Democrats, almost all of the House Democrats, AND the 48.5% that voted for "Mr. Diplomacy".

You sir, are wrong.

Randy - good rule of thumb.

That said, while Canada didn't fight in Vietnam, quite a few Canadians did. Estimates go as high as 40,000 (all with no government involvement and a population 1/10 of America's), though this CBC Report about veterans seeking benefits puts the figure at 30,000.

I'm not a fan of Coulter's, but she could have read a report about 40,000 serving Canadians and come to a logical but incorrect conclusion about a minor aspect of that war.

I got to thinking, I remember reading about the errors and problems found in school textbooks, way before they became fake perverse leftist propaganda rags teaching self hatred.

Ann seem to have reached a quality factor beyond the expected flaws found in pre-leftist school textbooks.

And for all the accusations of fraud, the fraudulent book of recent times is the leftist Bellesiles book from one of those leftist wackjob professors

Of course, that not the only fraud, the other one in the news is the fake hockey stick the global warming fraudsters was using.

There are now accusations of deliberate deception, where his program was deliberatly rigged to produce a fraud result.

Feed the program white noise, and you get a preprogammed hockey stick.

Hier professor fraudster is duplicating the behavior of Bellesiles, refusing to show his work and i expect him to follow the same trajectory, complete with the light show.

JC,

• I narrow Hindrocket's target to remove his conflation error and apply his charges only to Democratic Party officials, then test them to see if he still has a basis for his statements. In fact, this makes his conclusion harder to sustain - I've removed leftist organizations, bloggers like Kos, and many others from his potential pool of evidence. I then conclude that he's not wholly wrong in stating "Washington, we have a problem", but explain why I believe he is mistaken in his blanket characterization of the Democrats as a party. I also conclude that the rhetoric he uses fits standard patterns and usages in political rhetoric on both sides. You are, of course, free to disagree.

• It is not a canard to note Marxism's deaths and the global left's long history of apology for same when discussing his description of The Left, and before distinguishing that from the U.S. Democratic Party.

• Nor is it a canard to note the global left's ongoing apologia for tyrants and murderers with the "correct" politics, a phenomenon noted with no little dismay by many principled leftists and one that's rather central to the notion of fighting a global war on an Islamofascist philosophy that is increasingly supported by and allied with the hard left around the world.

• The bottom line is simple: to the extent that the U.S. Democratic Party both mimics and ties itself more closely to the global left, it will be open to attack on the same grounds. Hindrocket and I have differing perceptions of that closeness, as I note above.

• Den Beste is not an argument from authority, but an authoritative argument. However, you'd have to actually click the link and read him to see why. It helps to, you know, quote the constitutional definition of the term "treason" to explain why it's inappropriate as a term for one's political enemies. Of course, if you'd rather take the opposite view because Den Beste supports this one, I'm sure Ms. Coulter (whose has a book entitled, yup, "Treason") would be delighted...

• My examples were not about using 9-11 politically. It's the seismic event of our age, and it is impossible NOT to introduce it into politics. If it isn't central to a U.S. party's foreign policy platform, communications, and message, there's a problem. The examples I offered were about something else - deliberately undermining their country's efforts in a time of war, attacking American allies, and working to spread works like Moore's whose rough analogy would be to hold party events showing "Triumph of the Will" in 1940. Except, of course, that the latter would be a much better film.

• While there is a larger "sensible middle" in the Democratic Party than one would assume from following most news reports or reading the blogosphere (as Brooks notes), the characterization of the Democrats as having an internal problem with loyalty and security is more than an imaginary bogeyman. It's a real problem, with real effects in public perceptions, concrete events on which base such a perception, and observable signatures in voting patterns, polls, etc.

• Whether you choose to believe that, or whether the Democratic Party chooses to face it, is a separate issue. I do not believe that I am wrong, and I'd say there's a pretty good case up above, but you are of course free to believe whatever you like.

Meanwhile, I certainly believe in supporting Democrats who are working to wrestle with these issues and counter this trend by standing tall in advocacy and crafting strong policies. Those policies need not necessarily be the same as the GOP's approach, as long as they are grounded in a generally clear-eyed appraisal of our enemies, awareness of the limitations of the current international order, and a commitment to victory.

One should not deny that Democrats like these exist as more than a fringe. Hence my disagreement with Hindrocket. One also should not deny that there is a problem. Hence my disagreement with JC.

It's precisely because of these disagreements that I see the Democrats' future as so variable. Just as many "Reagan Democrats" were driven out of the Democratic Party (which was at the time a majority governing party, and is now a minority party at all 3 federal levels), it is possible that the Democrats I cheer for may be driven out of today's Democratic Party. The blogopshere's ex-liberal "New Independents" are evidence that such a shift is not only possible, but underway unless there's a course correction.

That would get conservatives like me some great new companions, but I think it would be a tragedy for the larger country.

Fortunately, I'll agree with Den Beste again, and note that the Moore-on types share both Muqtada al-Sadr's wild-eyed fervor AND his terrible sense of political calculation. I also know that money won't chase losers forever in politics, and that failure brings loss of political influence as night brings day.

As such, I tend to be more optimistic than "Hindrocket" about the future influence of the MoveOn types - but the problems remain right now, and as they say in sports, the game ain't played on paper.

Yes, we need a strong opposition, i too feel the political health, and well being of the country depends on it.

It has not helped us that the opposition is tainted with toxic cultural marxists.

Im quite a fan of peer review, the linux OS i compute with, is an open source system that is the product of peer review as detailed as the attacks on Coulters books.

Peer review is and should be ruthless and unrelenting, its the method of science, its the method that produced my OS that is robust, rock stable, and a joy to use.

Look at the scrutiny given to Ann's books and their inability to discredit them in any significant way.

Politics also needs the same ruthless peer review, it needs a strong honest broker opposition of peers in the free market of ideas.

Perhaps the bloodstained left will finally drive away the likes of Zell Miller, Liberman, Jeff Jarvis, Hitchins, and all the others, and perhaps the Libertarians or such will replace them.

Whoever it is, we will need then, without a loyal opposition, and the benifits of review that brings, leaves us in greater danger of mistake

Ideas that stand up to scrutiny are stronger.

Like for example, Ann's books. ;=)

Joe, my professor was David C. Jordan who teaches at the University of Virginia. Maybe he's a total crackpot. Other than the discussions regarding Soros and hedgefunds, he struck me as completely sane and certainly not off in La La Land like Ward Churchill. It's more than possible given the state of the academy though. Here are his books at amazon.com. He hasn't published a book in awhile apparently, since 1999. He must be publishing in journals though because I doubt UVA would let him get away with such slackness. Maybe he's dead but they haven't updated the page? I admit to never bothering to read his work (other than what was assigned in class). The amazon reviews for his last book are an interesting "mix". One of them seems a bit hilarious to me since I never heard him mention the Freemasons or Playboy Magazine.

Hmmm... this site indicates he's on the Academic Board of the National Humanities Institute. The site says it was updated in 2003. ???

Hammorabi, (no doubt Sticler says its another CIA front")

Is also reporting on the Syrian involvment.

Adam Doma (42 years) from Sudan confessed that he received training in Syria under the supervision of Syrian Intelligence officers. He confessed that he beheaded 10 Iraqi civilians by his own hands so as he was given a leadership activity as Amer. He studied (Sunni Shariah) and lived in Iraq for 15 years! He confessed that he is a Syrian Intelligent agent. He was responsible for many terrorist activities including beheadings and recruiting Arabs in Syria and Iraq.

Rest of it

"Greek orthadox marxist Syrian Baath Socialist infidel beheaders"

Ya, i know i know, but i reflect back on the LGF post Moronic Convergence where the Marxist NGOs imported Jew Hate into Brazil

And i reflect back opon the direct NAZI roots of the brand of socialism that dominates the ME.

Then the memeory all the denials historic and current come into focus.

Well its "complicated" they say, but to me lots of the "complexity" is faux, a smoke screen, for the actors of evil to hide behind.