"Sickening" Attacks on Liberals: Sullivan or Rove, You Make the Call!

1. The decadent Left in its enclaves on the coasts is not dead - and may well mount what amounts to a fifth column.

2. [The terrorists] have good reason to believe that this country is soft, that it has no appetite for the war that has now begun.

3. When the current enemy struck again and again throughout the 1990s, Bill Clinton responded without real credibility, struck back without real endurance, enraged the terrorists without truly hurting them. We are now living with the consequences of his appeasement, and of his refusal to challenge Americans beyond what the polls said they already wanted to do.

4. [Approvingly quoting George Orwell:] "Pacifism is objectively pro-Fascist. This is elementary common sense. If you hamper the war effort of one side you automatically help out that of the other. Nor is there any real way of remaining outside such a war as the present one. In practice, 'he that is not with me is against me.'''

5. Of course the initial response of left-wing intellectuals to Sept. 11 was one jerking of the collective knee. This was America's fault. From Susan Sontag to Michael Moore, from Noam Chomsky to Edward Said, there was no question that, however awful the attack on the World Trade Center, it was vital to keep attention fixed on the real culprit: the United States. Of the massacre, a Rutgers professor summed up the consensus by informing her students that "we should be aware that, whatever its proximate cause, its ultimate cause is the fascism of U.S. foreign policy over the past many decades." Or as a poster at the demonstrations in Washington last weekend put it, "Amerika, Get a Clue."

6. Leftists would like to pretend that any criticism of their views raises the specter of domestic repression. But in a country with a First Amendment, no suppression from government is likely, and in the citadels of the media and the academy, the far left is actually vastly overrepresented. The real issue, as pointed out this week by Britain's Labour prime minister, is that some on the left have expressed "a hatred of America that shames those that feel it."

And that's just after three google searches.

The answers:

Of course, they're all from Andrew Sullivan.

In Fairness Update: Quotes 5 and 6 are taken from a piece which expresses optimism that "liberals" are beginning to see the light and break from "leftists."

Still, the line separating liberals and leftists is a blurry one. And, further, he's still making the "sickening" charge that liberals were (and remain) conflicted about this war. The piece is titled "The Agony of the Left," and it's about how liberals find themselves torn between an unimaginably evil enemy and the enemy they've grown to love to hate (i.e., the American way and all that).

If You're Better At Googling Than Me... Shoot me any "sickening" attacks on liberals perpetrated by the fascist Sullivan you discover.

PS... In case you don't know this (I'm sure you do, but then, you're all retards) "Fifth Column/ists" is a direct suggest of actual treason. It comes (I think) from the Francoist forces seeking to seize Madrid, and the suggestion that there were four columns of troops outside the city, and a fifth one-- sympathizers, subversives, those willing to taked armed action against their own lawful government -- within the city itself.

Covert enemies of the state, in other words. Traitors.

So honestly, Excitable Andy should spare us the lessons on civility and what makes for "sickening" rhetoric. The only standard I can see here is that it's okay when he indulges in such rhetoric but that it's (wait for it) gob-smackingly vile when anyone else comes close to expressing himself in the hyperbolically emotional and over-the-top ad hominems he does on a regular basis.

posted by Ace at 02:50 PM

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