| Thursday, April 8, 2004 |
21:21 - A thousand words are just as good as a video
http://brain-terminal.com/articles/politics/quantum-democrats.html
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Evan Coyne Maloney, he of the excellent videos that expose Lefist moronism in the detail that only the eyes and ears can convey, has penned a brief essay that comes as close as I've ever seen to explaining what the psychological malfunction is that's got the Democrats and the American Left in such a stranglehold these days.
It would behoove you to read it all.
Here's the problem for the Democrats. You can't be both for and against unilateral action. You can't be both for and against a pre-emptive attack against a known enemy who has vowed to do us harm. You can't talk about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction in the 1990s and then pretend now that they never existed. You can't call for toppling Saddam Hussein and then criticize someone for actually doing it. Actually, I guess you can do these things, because that's exactly what the Democrats have been doing.
According to principles of quantum mechanics, it is possible for a subatomic particle to occupy multiple positions at the same time. Perhaps the Democrats hope to become the quantum party. If so, it explains why John Kerry, the consummate Quantum Candidate, is the perfect person to head the Democratic ticket this fall. Here's a man who criticizes President Bush for not giving our troops in Iraq sufficient supplies and equipment. But when he was given a chance to vote for an $87 billion package to supply our troops, he ultimately voted against it. (Although, in fairness to Kerry, I should note his nuanced stance on the issue: he explained his vote by saying, "I actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it.")
Principled, persuasive arguments can be made both for and against the tenets of the Bush Doctrine. Unfortunately, the Democrats are squandering their opportunity to outline an alternative vision and instead are resorting to knee-jerk criticisms and ad hominem attacks. That's too bad; this is a discussion our country must have, because it will determine how we handle this war against radical Islam, a war that could easily last a century. But it seems that the only war the Democrats want to wage is one against President Bush.
And against anyone who supports him. Check out what Markos Zuniga of the Daily Kos has decided is the course of action to take against the indispensable LGF:
So nice to see Coffman advertises on a site that calls for an ethnic cleansing of an entire region in retaliation for the - completely unwarranted - killing of four men. Yes it was a terrible thing, but killing women and children fixes this how?
And then we have the lovely insult to Islamic women, like this:
(Accompanying a photo of Islamic women in traditional garb) I don't know why more people - especially women - aren't converting to Islam. They make it seem so inviting.
Tell Mr. Coffman that America is not about ethnic and religious hatred.
You have to work really hard to find a way to describe LGF as a "hate" site, or as advocating genocide, religious hatred, or incitement against women. If LGF has a constant drumbeat, it's one of unrelenting vigilance against Islamic terrorism and fascism, including repression of women, indoctrination of kids into a cult of death, and moral bias in the media and other pundits that never miss a chance to lambast some American wrongdoing, or to overlook one committed by Arabs or Muslims. If you want to try to cherry-pick quotes from commenters and out-of-context post titles to paint LGF as a "hate" site, Kos is welcome to try-- but it doesn't do any good at all to do it by accusing Charles Johnson (baselessly, if necessary) of being some kind of neo-Nazi, not when you're coming from a site whose reputation is now primarily one that was won by saying "Screw 'em" when the American security contractors were killed and hung from a bridge in Fallujah, and claiming that the "mercenaries" deserved it. No real apologies or retractions have been forthcoming-- just statements that it's all the fault of America and of people like Charles for running a smear job on him.
The trouble is that the majority of Americans, whether the Left likes to hear it or not, are intelligent enough to make their own decisions. I know this is hard for elite-minded, self-important web geeks fresh out of college to swallow, but it's true. And whenever I see some Leftist-filled site-- like this one-- where the commenters haughtily dismiss accusations that they're not unpatriotic or anti-American, I can't help but notice that they immediately follow up such sentiments by saying things like "I love America-- I just hate Americans". Apparently without irony.
I want to ask these people: Okay, if not the people, what is it you do like about America? Yosemite? Castro Street? Hollywood? Humboldt County? When some European wag, like any of several dozen posters at the abovementioned link, sniffs that America is a "sick little country"-- why don't you defend it against him, and explain why he's wrong?
And if you're not willing to do so, then how exactly are you being patriotic?
To decry the majority of the people in your own country as too stupid or corrupt to make decisions for themselves is not democratic. It's quite the opposite. It's the antithesis of what democracy, the Constitution, and this country are all about.
(Wait. I just visited that link, and it seems the entire site has been removed. Well, hell. It was quite a spectacle.)
But I hope the illustration is clear. One blog's commenters can snipe at another blog's commenters all they want; that's how this modern form of discourse works. But the line gets drawn at slander; and more specifically, if impartial third-party observers should come by and look at the respective facts on the ground, they're going to notice that one side treats the facts as something worth presenting on their own merits, for readers to make up their own minds about-- and the other side treats such impartial observers, sight unseen, as unqualified to cogitate upon such matters.
These are the people who will look at the debate in coming months and decide who's laying out the facts for us all to make our own decisions about, and who's trying-- through sheer force of volume-- to prevent us from accessing those very facts.
UPDATE: Charles says:
I’m just curious; has anyone ever heard of a blogger or other citizen on the right side of the aisle demanding that a left wing site be shut down, by making false claims of TOS violations? Has anyone heard of a blogger on the right side of the aisle trying to find a home address and phone number to encourage their readers to harass and stalk the owner of a left wing site?
Remember, Charles Johnson was a liberal prior to 9/11-- a long-haired bike-riding art hippie.
He still has the hair and the bike. And the artistic sensibility. And everything else. And then some.
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Brian Tiemann
