In Bed with the Reds

One swipe of your brush would cover the side of a barn, Hank.

I have heard similar good things about Redstate and been similarly disappointed. Quite obviously there are some bad apples among the bunch, both post-wise and contributer-wise.
I continue to hope that their better side will eventually shine through again.

On that note, I’d also ask you to avoid conflating conservatives who show their disagreement with the post above with “right-wingers” and the IMHO unnecessary comparison of Redstate to LGF. If you actually need a reason for the latter request, how about the fact that on Redstate people spoke out against the posts you mentioned. This kind of overblown rhetoric is IMO not helping anyone, much less your case.

The LGF comparison is indeed entirely warranted, Markus.

But I think Kevin’s on point with why Grown-Up Republicans should post at RS. Preaching to the choir is fun and can even be essential to one’s health at times, but it’s poor mission work.

…more thoughtful side of Republicanism, huh. That must be what they call ‘moral relativism’.

AFAIK the term “right winger” is pejorative. At any rate, I’d favour erring on the side of caution.
As to the difference between RS and LGF, it’s entirly obvious to me. Charles is holding little two minute hates with every posts, and the regulars pile on and try to outdo each other in their online machismo and jingoism. RS is not.
And that post by Cella you so deem so objectionable does not seem that bad to me. If I squint hard enough I can see where you got your take from, but it’s not my first impression. Instead IMO he makes the point that the US is in the process of importing the struggle between Chrisianity and Islam (as someone in comments points out, the US has already successfuly imported the Catholic-Portestant split within Christianity). And he’s right saying it will be difficult and a whole new challenge. It will require re-thinking all that Judeo-Christian heritage stuff.
Where he goes wrong IMO is when he highlights that freshman quote without inspecting it further and then briefly mentions a stop of immigration as one solution of the problem, without discussing that solution or considering alternatives. But he’s right in that disallowing Muslims to enter the US would solve the particular problem he spoke of. So rightly call his behaviour careless, inconsiderate etc. but don’t compare him to LGF.

“But I think Kevin’s on point with why Grown-Up Republicans should post at RS. Preaching to the choir is fun and can even be essential to one’s health at times, but it’s poor mission work.”

Posted by Anderson

OTOH, perhaps the mission work should be concentrated on the salvageable. Center-right
people, rather than right-wingers.

The phrase “this kind of overblown rhetoric” has just been added to my list of indicators. To give you an idea of what I mean by this, the most recent previous additions to the list were “Russian women want to meeet YOU” and “Texas hold’em poker”.

Well, given that Powerline is now enthusiastically endorsing a line of “I Gitmo” t-shirts and other merchandise, maybe RS has spotted an opening in the “not-quite-completely-batshit” category of right-wing thought.

P.U. I screwed that one up royally.

Ahem. Take 2.

Well, given that Powerline is now enthusiastically endorsing a line of “I [heart] Gitmo” t-shirts and other merchandise, maybe RS has spotted an opening in the “not-quite-completely-batshit” category of rightwing thought.

@henry: Well, I did read the post that way, so it apparently can be done. Can you accept that?
Otherwise, please provide an argument why the two lines that to you make out to be the core of the post are in fact the gist of his post, because I do not see it that way. (Apoligies if you’ve already done so, please me point out where.)

Or could somebody else please weigh in with their interpretation of the Cella post?

Sigh. Would it be against the first amendment to prevent polemicists from cherrypicking?

This “tearing his hair out” guy is a thus-far unsubstantiated allegation. It could be untrue or exaggerated.

If it is true then his treatment was contrary to orders. The appropriate response is to ensure that the offenders are prosecuted and that processes are in place to prevent a repeat.

It is *not* appropriate to assume that the event happened, and, for propaganda purposes, to assume without substantiation that it in some ways typifies US behaviour.

This is all just common sense and ordinary decency. All quite beyond Henry.

Sigh. Would it be against the eighth amendment to chain silly commenters in the fetal position for 48 hours?

First the infinite regress of who’s watching the watchers argument. Using this, everything that has ever happened in human history is unsubstantiated rumor.

Then, circular reasoning of the few bad apples theory. Americans couldn’t possibly do something like that, so if they did, it conflict with orders publicized post facto, which only coincidently looks like PR spin.

Finally, the combination of the two, somehow becomes the “common sense and ordinary decency” which, of course, the humble commenter is the arbiter of.

Sebastian writes: ” I suspect (though obviously cannot prove) that the general reader is much more moderate than the general commenter.”

Perhaps, but I’d think one reason for the site’s existence is to coax the moderate readers toward being increasingly less moderate, and approaching the position of the more extreme positions of most contributors.

I mean, presumably, the contributors are hoping their posts will garner adherents to their views. The site was created specifically as an activist political organ, was it not?

“Perhaps, but I’d think one reason for the site’s existence is to coax the moderate readers toward being increasingly less moderate, and approaching the position of the more extreme positions of most contributors.”

I’m not sure if that is the purpose of the site. But even if that is theoretically the purpose of the site, that doesn’t mean that I have to use the site that way. If they were censoring my output, that would be one thing. But they aren’t, so when I write I get to write what I want.

You did not read my post, Henry. I did not write that Durbin’s diatribe was “just another example of Democrats’ hatred for Bush and Republicans.” Not even close. My argument was a little more complex that that.

There is a mindset amongst the Democrats, the genesis of which I put with Carville and Begala, where the Democrat masses have been trained to want to hear such over-the-top dimwittery. IT’s not a case of “the public gets what the public wants”; rather, we’re looking at “the public wants what the public gets.”

And this seems to apply not simply to the President and, by extension, elected Republicans; you expect it of, and replicate it for, such institutions as RedState.org.

I wish I were wrong.

Henry: Frankly Markus, I can’t see how anyone who reads this with any care can come to any conclusion other than the one that I did. He’s not in the least ambiguous.

Anyone know whether Cella ever answered the question of whether he thought atheists should be permitted in public office?

Although, hell, the fact that I can write that in absolute seriousness tells you pretty much everything you need to know…

rilkefan: SH, wish you were writing more at ObWi.

Agreed. You too, rilkefan.

To question the motives of Soros, the egomaniacal billionaire and “citizen of the world” who wants to reshape the world to fit some mental map of his own, is now anti-Semitism?
Hmm.

Without claiming any particular direct knowledge one way or another regarding the conditions at Gitmo… It strikes me that the actual documents are available on-line and the authors and sources are checkable (if one cared enough to put in the hours).

The Red Cross report from nov. 2004 doesn’t impress me as particularly serious in its attributions. There aren’t random people walking in and out of a US military detention facility in Cuba (“pssst, wanna buy a cigar”). As all the IRC conversations and contacts were certainly recorded, transcribed and annotated in exhaustive detail (the military bureaucracy loves generating paper if nothing else), there’s no clear reason not to attribute sources that the military (and CIA) are able to confirm or discredit.

By playing coy with sources for this level of accusation, even if undertaken with the best intent, they’ve made it easy for the US military to ignore or dispute the charges and hard for others to verify their claims. It’s a fact that there have been abuses in US military detention facilities. It’s also a fact that there have been a tedius number of demonstrably false and bizzare accusations from detainees and supposedly independent observers. The wise default position is probably skepticism on all sides.

I think it’s reasonable to give more weight to attributions and testimonials that are checkable. And therefore would hope that the Red Cross is willing and able to provide sources or additional information that addresses the difference between their original charges and the findings of the military’s investigators. Even giving the IRC guys some slack as non-journalists, they should know better than to be other than literal in leveling a courts martial type accusation (which means all the video and transcipts and logs would be made public).

But I can’t understand why, say, Sebastian Holsclaw (who’s nobody’s torture apologist) is happy to be associated as a co-blogger with this particular bunch of yahoos.

Oh, that’s just because the Right is actually as diverse as the Left pretends to be.

I too believe that being a citizen of the world with no allegiance to any particular government (or race, or ethnicity, or any other carass) is praiseworthy. And it doesn’t prevent you from being a good citizen of your community, in fact, it’s a prerequisite of being a good citizen.

What’s your problem? I understand that this philosophy is different from yours, but otherwise?

Also, Billings, if you find it objectionable that someone ‘wants to reshape the world to fit some mental map of his own’, then what would be a good motive to become active in politics, in your opinion?

“A citizen of the world has no allegiance to any country and believes this somehow to be praiseworthy.”

Damn straight. This particular “citizen of the world” feels no particular reason that I should link arms with any of the football hooligans in my country just because we were born on the same lump of dirt. When I have friends all over the world, why should I align myself morally with those I disagree with, oppose, and don’t even know personally? Why should my connection to Joe Bloggs down the street who votes for the BNP be considered more compelling than my connection to Joe Sixpack in Alabama who voted for the GOP but at least talked to me about it over a beer, just because some bigwigs who died before I was born decided to draw an arbitrary line in the sand and say “you guys on this side are going to fight the guys on the other side, now get to!”

I have an allegiance to democracy, liberalism, freedom and basic human motherfucking decency. If you have this, be you in Germany or England or the USA or Nigeria, then you have more in common with me than the guy next door who does not. So why should my own alliances not reflect that? Why should I blindly swear to pin my destiny to rock rather than to an ideal? Because of some thousand year-old fatally flawed system that doesn’t work but that we haven’t got rid of yet? Because nobody has worked out that you can run a state government as an administrative body and not have to force everyone to be tied to the land with laws and pledges of allegiance?

Frankly, I love England, but I don’t see why any pissant government has the right to tell me I can’t love America just as much. So, yeah, citizen of the world. Citizen of it all. Free to love it all and hate it all, to stand in the bar and say how crap it is or to stand on the podium and say how wonderful it is. You can admire me, bite me, or just get on with your own life and have a drink. But if you’re listening to the beaurocrats and the generals when they tell you it’s the law you’ve got to do this and that because you were born here, not because you decided to like some kind of grown up with a mind of your own, your intellectual high horse is mud. So climb down off it.