Comments on: Sigh (this post is probably a big waste of your time, and mine)

By: Crooked Timber » » Not another one

Crooked Timber » » Not another one — Fri, 12 Aug 2005 14:28:07 +0000

[...] Of course, James Taranto carelessly uses this sort of language all the time, and readers know damn well who he’s talking about. It’s not referring to a handful of psychopaths and extremists who hardly need refuting. It’s aimed at opponents of the war in Iraq, who aren’t anti-war, just on the other side. In the past few years, we’ve seen a constant, sickening effort on the part of supporters of the war in Iraq to conflate opposition the war with support for terrorists. [...]

By: Oscar

Oscar — Tue, 08 Feb 2005 00:05:42 +0000

Actually most of the comments here seem just as lame poor-little-us and down on the lack of interest in debate and discussion as the average right wing blog. At times you all (Left and Right alike) seem like pathetic whingers.

By: derek g

derek g — Mon, 07 Feb 2005 23:15:11 +0000

anyone, including instahack, who refers to the “democrat party” is already displaying their ignorance and lack of integrity.

By: Gotham Image

Gotham Image — Mon, 07 Feb 2005 17:51:43 +0000

Loved this post and I think I will link to my blog, if you don’t mind being associated with me controversial positions! I love this treason talk.

By: John_O

John_O — Mon, 07 Feb 2005 09:29:44 +0000

Let’s be reasonable and open our eyes. Why bother with such a lengthy and convoluted reply to a man who is obviously a hack, not an academic? Reynolds long ago left any “open society” that might be available. The truth is, the Right at this moment in time are not interested in debate. They probably never were. They are interested in power. If you cannot see that – if you cannot see that it is now genuinely, overwhelmingly important that they be resisted, that their hackwork be shown up for what it is, that they be, in short, destroyed – then you are a fool. A well intentioned fool, but a fool nonetheless. This post should have been written several years ago. It doesn’t go nearly far enough, nowadays. For God’s sake, man, all that right wing pundits like Reynolds want to do is to secure more power for themselves and for their friends. They don’t give a shit about complex arguments or knotty logic problems. They are monsters. Open your eyes.

By: x

Sun, 06 Feb 2005 13:33:51 +0000

rob, but the beauty of it is that a professor can actually be made to resign. Unlike Presidents, Attorney Generals, Ambassadors or Secretaries of Defense. With greater power comes greater impunity.

By: Rob

Rob — Sat, 05 Feb 2005 16:21:01 +0000

Lets keep perspective. Bush just apointed an Attorney General who approves of torture and believes the President can set aside the law. He appointed a man convicted of lying to Congress in Abrams. He put a guy who at best overlooked death squads as our Ambassador to Iraq. But I’m sure Ward Churchill may say something stupid again and so we must be vigilant against the Left!

By: Ben Alpers

Ben Alpers — Sat, 05 Feb 2005 13:14:26 +0000

So what would a strong opposition look like that looked nothing like what we’ve got? While I truly have no business speaking for the right, I can hazard what I honestly believe is a good guess: Daniel Patrick Moynihan. For decades, Moynihan was many conservatives’ idea of a perfect liberal. Urbane (which is both good and bad to them in complicated ways), philosophical. In favor of an active government, yet religious and actively disdainful of everything the right means by “the Sixties” (even though his rise to fame was entirely a product of that decade). And there’s a bonus: many hardcore Democrats (some of whom might call themselves “left,” though I probably wouldn’t call them that) had (and to this day maintain) an affection for Moynihan. (On the other hand, at least through the 1970s, many others labelled him a “neo-conservative,” though he always rejected that label, instead calling himself a “centrist.”) Let me give give you two purely anecdotal bits of evidence to suggest that Moynihan is the “liberal” many conservatives love (or at least loved). First, years ago, I was having dinner with some of the directors of the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation (to give credit where credit is due, they had provided very generous funding for a conference I had co-chaired on the history of American conservatism, and then took the conference organizers out for dinner). They expressed sorrow over the fate of Moynihan. He was the one great liberal voice of his generation, one of the Bradley folk said, but unfortunately….(he then made a drinking motion with his wrist). There was general agreement that this was a fair assessment. I also recently came across in the archives a 1975 letter from Allan Bloom to Moynihan himself, noting that, toward the end of his life, Leo Strauss had told Bloom that Moynihan was “the most appealing and decent man now in American political life.” In the interest of being fair on this point (there goes the left again, feeling it has to present both sides…) I think liberals / Democrats / “the left” have, over the years, had their own list of conservatives that they wish were the folks they were up against. Some of these “conservatives” (like Moynihan as the ideal liberal, I’d argue) ended up not really being conservatives at all (e.g. Garry Wills, Kevin Phillips, and Michael Lind); others ended up being not nearly as pallatable as liberals would like them to be (e.g. John McCain).

By: tocque

tocque — Sat, 05 Feb 2005 05:48:29 +0000

“It’s just those yahoos who inexplicably control the government, and the great mass of bubbas and Scrooge McDucks who keep electing them…” A self-refuting point. From your point of view, other Yahoos who have “inexplicably” controlled government in history would then have to include examples that disprove your point, including: * Your buddy Bill Clinton. Two terms and ultra-high approval ratings even during impeachment proceedings. * Coleman Young, who while wrecking Detroit was elected over and over and over and over. By your reasoning he I must conclude he was a fantastic mayor because of his overwhelming support. * Any given mayor or ombudsman of Chicago—ever. While you were trying to make the point that somehow just being elected gives the current administration some kind of cred or approbation of competency, the preceeding examples and the countless unnamed ones show that to be counterfactual. The masses can be, and often are—duped.

By: tib

tib — Sat, 05 Feb 2005 04:14:19 +0000

I think you are giving Kennedy too much credit. He was not taking a particularly risky position, he was merely getting out in front of administration policy. His immediate prescription, withdraw 12,000 troops, was bested yesterday by Wolfowitz (15,000 troops to withdraw). It is a good bet that some variation of the ‘American troops too visible’ will become and adminstration talking point shortly, they tried to push it as part of the ‘handover’ in 2004. Kennedy’s ‘out by 2006’ is already a negotiating stance of some interim Iraqi ministers (Iraq’s Interior minister predicts we will be gone in 18 months). All of this will pass by Reynolds, et al, but as you say your post was a big waste of time so what else can you expect.

By: bob

bob — Sat, 05 Feb 2005 04:09:45 +0000

Actually, Andrew Sullivan notes on his semi-inactive blog right now that what Kennedy said just before the election is almost exactly the same as what Wolfowitz just said after the election (pulling out 12,000 vs. 15,000 troops as a gesture of goodwill to indicate lack of designs on colonization of Iraq). I always knew Wolfowitz would eventually be shown to be a fraud, but I never would have guessed it would take this form. Ah, well, the Lord works in mysterious ways.

By: Chris Rasmussen

Chris Rasmussen — Fri, 04 Feb 2005 23:32:36 +0000

Can we set up a pledge drive for Mr. Sullivan to leave the blogosphere, as promised?

By: crasmussen

crasmussen — Fri, 04 Feb 2005 23:30:50 +0000

“The same people who claim to have been for the Afghanistan action in order to justify their exceptional opposition to the Iraq action were, for the most part, against Afghanistan.” Uh, no. Fact is: when you go to a land you barely understand without a clear way to get out, you might want to bring along some friends to keep you company. That’s why Afganistan made sense (along with, OH THAT’S RIGHT, retribution for an actual and not imagined terrorist attack) and Iraq ultimately didn’t.

By: Mark Childerson

Mark Childerson — Fri, 04 Feb 2005 22:32:51 +0000

I think you misunderstood Sullivan’s statement. When he says “That may well be empirically true”, he says (in my opinion) that it may be true that the right is refusing to criticize Bush, out of fear of handing talking points to the left. He is not commenting on whether the left want to be chastened or not. The depressing bit is the right refusing to voice criticisms that they actually feel are valid.

By: Decnavda

Decnavda — Fri, 04 Feb 2005 22:25:37 +0000

As a kinda-sorta leftist (left-libertarian, to be precise), I have a question: Who the hell is Ward Churchill?