I couldn’t understand some parts of this article, but it sounds interesting…

Let me ask you, author – how would you react if I asserted that because you are trending to Bush and the republicans mindset on specific issues, you believe that gay marriage is the number one threat to America, as Santorum said? Or, if I attributed the Colorado congressman’s words to you, who said that if we were attacked again with bio/chem/nuke weapons by terrorists, we should bomb Mecca? How would you react? I suspect you would say BS, I am smarter than that, and I dont agree with that nonsense. You would say, hey, Im a republican, but I dont believe that insanity. This is precisely what these people do – take one example, and universally attribute it to the entire half of the country who know understands what a stupid debacle this war is, and who reject the illusions, inflexibility, and radicalism of Bush.

Examples from the piece:
(1) many liberals approve of burning flags. Look at a poll. Nonesense. This is true for the “America haters” accusation – take a poll. Liberals will tell you they love America.

(2) liberals dont care about Kurds. Hello? Where does the author get this? It is a fabricated boogyman. What the hell? This does not describe me or many many other people who call themselves democrats.

(3) liberals approve of Castro. Hello? What the hell? What unaduletrated BS. I suspect that the author is dealing with the ghosts of his past, with the culture wars that existed decades ago, when in fact there were some leftists who thought the Soviets were right on. That is an element of the left, somewhat shameful, but by no means representative of the mainstream.

(4) The author assumes facts not in evidence. Iraq is, in the deluded minds of many who need war as a force to give meaning, a war on the “roots” of terrorism. BS. Thats a played out debate, but I dont consider the concept valid at all, and I perceive the question as settled.

Jean Michel Basquiat, a great painter, used to sign his early work “Samo.” That stood for same old shit. That is exactly what this article is. Once again, author, I ask you: do you believe that gay marriage is the #1 threat? Santorum does. Santorum is a republican, and so are you, so thus you must believe it too. The flaw in the syllogism is beyond obvious. Dont fall for it.

So how about being honest — where in the world are 100 or more Islamic prisoners getting BETTER treatment than Gitmo?

If you can’t find one, and you continue to claim Gitmo isn’t good enough, why can’t I accuse you of wanting Unreal Perfection?

The critics don’t have a realistic standard; that’s honestly my problem with the critics. See the Stanford Prison Experiment, especially the sexual humiliation, and tell me again Abu is not kids — and see how you bait & switch from Abu to Afghanistan to find some killings.

Some 100 in custody; 26 being investigated? Quite a few US soldiers being punished for not treating prisoners good enough. Any other military force in the world in the last 50 years that have punished more of their own soldiers? If you can’t tell me about a BETTER force, you’re expecting unreal perfection from ours.

That seems often the case with Bush critics; Glenn Reynolds calls it Bush Derangement Syndrome.

That’s not conservative, that’s Whiggy. Or Burkean, if you prefer the term.

The goal is to put Parliment, (or deliberative bodies like it) between the capriciously changing demands of the mob-ocracy and the intrinsic desire of kings, tyrants, and Dick Nixon or Joe Stalin for criticism-free stability, order, and obedience. Change, but in good ways; change, but slowly; change, sluffing off the obsolete past while keeping the best of what has demonstrated its value; change, but …

Well, I’ll mention to you what I said to Michael. If you stick around (re: don’t go back to the partisan dem fold) we conservative types don’t mind change. We’d just like to do it without making the government larger and keeping people from being dependent on it. Also, some business regulation is good… the other side has this caricature of us that is pretty different than the reality…

Example, instead of ‘universal’ healthcare (government taking over healthcare, either overtly or covertly via single payer), how about the government buys [private] insurance for people who can’t get it….

That kind of stuff…

Otherwise, I hear you. Except as someone who has always been in the anti-commie camp, there were cool non blue hairs all along. You just didn’t seek them out probably.

This site is now required lunchtime reading for me every day. (But you’ll never get me to accept Universal Health Care!)

Oh, one more thing, today’s Democrats hate America and hate Americans. Yeah, I’ll vote for them soon. Not.

Again, if you’re on this site and you’re saying things like this you’re completely missing the point.

And Abu Ghraib was not just a bunch of kids acting stupidly, and that’s been proven since the same tactics have been used at Gitmo and other U.S. detainment centers around the world. Two people died (one by blunt force trauma) in an Afghanistan detention center. We really need to start getting honest about this topic because it certainly isn’t helping us win the hearts and minds.

Can you name any other prison system where Muslims get better treatment? (link, please)

The US pres. apologized, the SC said combatant distinction was untenable — what position do you think I support, or not?

I support detention for suspects; I support firm — not torturous — interrogation, especially sleep deprivation and constant video surveillance.

I think most are guilty, without enough proof “beyond reasonable doubt” to convict them. Every justice system has two errors:
innocents wrongly held/ punished; guilty wrongly set free.

The mistake of holding innocents is reduced when their main punishment is merely segregation. I think Gitmo is the most humane prison system that has more than 100 Islamic prisoners, but I’m pretty ignorant on this — but I do notice comparisons with other prisons is NOT a big media interest.

I’ve posted on this before. And I notice the critics, like Totten, are usually unwilling to say what imperfections they accept. If you can’t own up to the REAL errors of your chosen balance, you’re advocating Unreal Perfection.

Your closing paragraph “…They cling to Castro” speaks directly to my experiences, and I grew up in Milwaukee, not Berkeley.

However, people who fight soldiers out of uniform are lucky they are not shot on the spot. WW2 battle of the bulge, those Germans in American like uniforms, shot on the spot. Any spy caught, shot on the spot.

Anyone fighting Uniformed Soldiers without wearing some kind of Insignia are allowed to be shot according to the Geneva Convention. Maybe we should just do that instead eh Justin. Just shoot em. But then we will not get Information out of em or maybe find out they are just innocent people being locked up. They would just be dead. I guess to some people that might be better than 3 hots and cot, air conditioning, Soccer in the open sky, freedom to pray as you like.

I guess you are right, lets get on this, tell the Military to shoot those bastards, after all a 20 cent bullet is cheaper than housing them in Gitmo. Good Idea.

This reminds me of liberals reading the dictionary definitions of ‘liberal’ and ‘conservative’. It has nothing to do with today’s political reality. This description may apply to pre-1960 liberals.

Today’s ‘liberals’ are totally reactionary and fear any change. Today’s liberals hate free inquiry and cling to the most absurd beliefs which make them strangers to reality. Today’s liberals have a firm sense of what is right, but their ‘right’ can only be described as perverse by the Normalo-American. Today’s liberals support limiting personal freedom and believe if people ran their own lives, they’d make the wrong decisions without the firm guidance by the liberals. Today’s liberals are compassion fascists, they have a monopoly on morality and they’re going shove their morality down everyone’s throats and make them comply.

30 years ago, I was a Democrat supporting clean government, cleaning up the environment, civil rights and more personal freedom. Today’s Democrats celebrate government corruption, expanding government power without it doing anything to clean the environment. Today’s Democrats support racism, race-baiting, identity politics and government classification by race and for race. Today’s Democrats support the rich and powerful over the little guy, they support every effort to limit personal freedom and to lock their perverse ideology into granite, so that people can’t change it.

Oh, one more thing, today’s Democrats hate America and hate Americans. Yeah, I’ll vote for them soon. Not.

I think most criticism of Abu Ghraib and Gitmo is based on silly expectations of Unreal Perfection.

How exactly do you define perfection?

The president already apologized for Abu Ghraib and the Supreme Court said that the enemy combatant distinction was untenable. How can you, being the religious man that you are, support positions like this?

I’m not saying detention isn’t warranted, but when we say that we can abduct anybody from any country and hold them for as long as we want, don’t you think that goes against our Constitution?

I think most criticism of Abu Ghraib and Gitmo is based on silly expectations of Unreal Perfection.

I thought you were going to end with “Che,” the idealistic dreamer — who really IS on so many T-shirts. Ignorantly, for the most part.

Similarly
“Many of the people advocating it didn’t really care about Marxism-Leninism, except insofar as the idea of their advocating it pissed off their parents. Many of them also didn’t really care about North Vietnamese or South Africans, except insofar as those people were shaking their fists at the company daddy runs.”

I note that Peter Gabriel and Bono, for instance, are pretty quiet about their prior support for Mugabe in Zimbabwe — anything better than white rule by Ian Smith. It’s anti-capitialism, anti-Christianity, anti-America, anti-parents … because none of them are Perfect.

The upshot is, a liberal in Kansas, or in my very red Pennsyltucky county, is likely to be more of a pain in the neck than his typical counterpart in coastal Oregon. People who live in deeply liberal enclaves can tell me whether the reverse holds true.

However, I guess I’m exposed to the right-wing hallucinations too since I monitor the blogosphere and see the venom that’s passed around in the name of freedom and democracy. And it certainly doesn’t help that Bush’s adminstration leans on these hacks to spread their talking points to the faithful. And the same is true for the Dems and the liberal fringe.

But still, we have our own brand of clueless liberals who try to say there was a connection between Bush and 9/11, etc. They were out during the campaign season waving their signs and it angered me because I knew that these were the people conservatives were associating with liberalism. Ugh.

In any event, my point was to make sure we’re not cutting wide swaths in the ideological spectrum with phrases like “too many modern liberals.” But I trust Callimachus when he says he was making points about the liberals he knows.

Where do you live?

I live in a left-wing unreality bubble neighborhood of Portland. It’s Berkeley without the college attached.

Liberals and Democrats in other places – even in different parts of the same city – are much more reasonable than those who live around me. I think the difference is that I live in a place where conservatives do not really exist and there is little or no reality check on left-wing opinions.

Liberals in my conservative home town (45 minutes south of here) are more like you and not really at all like the people Callimachus describes. Most of my liberal friends are from my home town, and that probably at least partly explains why they tend to be pretty moderate. I’m surrounded by leftist lunatics, though, who really do think they live in a hijacked police state. That’s one reason I vent about the left more than the right. I am never exposed to right-wing nut jobs unless I go looking for them. I cannot escape the left-wing nut jobs unless I pick up and move.