Mumia Abu-Jamal and Alexander Cockburn would certainly not consider themselves liberals. Cockburn attacks liberals, as such, on Counterpunch regularly. Now, I’m on his side of that debate, but it’s still not any more fair to taint a good liberal imperialist (I’m sorry, patriot who opposes preventive war only when it might be counterproductive for America’s position in the world) like Kerry with Alexander Cockburn than it is to do the reverse. Hard as it may be for people in the US to believe, there are in fact positions to the left of liberalism.

And even then, it would be wrong to suggest that someone like Noam Chomsky represents the face of the left. I would allow that Chomsky has some traction, but he’s never had an impact on anything that the Democratic Party has done.

So, I’m inclined to think that even that argument fails to hold water.

But if you subtract his bile and his snarl, and reduce his screed to a series of unemotional statements, how many would sign on to it? That’s a pure hypothetical, of course, and probably a topic for another thread and another day.

The reason we’re hammering away at this is that it seems to me that being a serious centrist or moderate would mean being able to see through such a transparent rhetorical strategy as the whole Ward Churchill thing.

I’m sorry, but this is silly; the “trapdoor” is demanded by the nature of the claim. Reynolds didn’t say that “a few radicals” supported Ward Churchill; he said that he was “the face of the left,” and Justin said he was getting significant “traction.” To have to come up with at least *one* prominent liberal still doesn’t come close to justifying Reynolds’ smear, but it’s certainly a minimum. (Maher might qualify, although I’m not aware of him defending the *substance* of Churchill’s remarks. And, of course, the Stalinist Cockburn would not call himself a “liberal.”)

And, again, I’m not saying that Reynolds is a conservative because he voted for Bush. I’m saying he’s a conseravtive because he considers anyone to the left of Joe Lieberman a traitor.

Your caveat of “of any prominence” would allow you to dismiss anyone I could name who HAS defended W.Churchill (Mumia Abu-Jamal, Bill Maher, Alexander Cockburn, among others). You’d likely say they have no political power, therefore no prominence. But you’ve heard of them before and so have I and many other people, which seems to suggest some “prominence.” On the other hand, I wouldn’t call any of them “liberals” (well, Maher, maybe), but they’d call themselves that, and many of the liberals I know and work with are quite fond of them.

So, you set up a challenge for us, but built in plenty of trap doors to disqualify any answer you don’t like.

2)An ad placed by one Democratic “club” cannot be extrapolated to “large numbers of Democrats,” unless you believe that since Tom Coburn and Glenn Reynolds are both supporters of George Bush they share exactly same views. (And, of course, this analogy is too generous, since Coburn is actually a United States Senator, not a few random cranks.)

Anyway, it is hardly surpising that someone who considers the Democratic Party to consist largely of traitors is considered a “conservative” blogger, and nor is there any significant difference between the level of discourse at Instapundit and LGF. (Charles Johnson is nominally pro-choice too.)

First, the post about Ward Churchill (WC) is a good one, and I agree with much that Reynolds says because he’s talking about how the Dems can help themselves by shunning idiots like WC. However, I do disagree with he says:

Various lefty readers email to say that Ward Churchill is not the authentic face of the Left.

I wish I agreed with that. But, sadly, he is its very image today.

However, I think in this context, Reynolds gets my sympathy because I think he’s genuinely frustrated that guys like WC are getting so much traction on the left. But again, I think he’s wrong. If anything, Dean is the face of the the left right now, which isn’t great, but it’s a whole lot better than WC.

The second post is spot on and I agree with Reynolds. When ads are calling for the death of Rumsfeld, they should be shunned out of hand. That’s ridiculous and Reynolds points to it as an example of how Kerry is going to have a tough time convincing the middle that he’ll be a good leader, when the vocal ones within his party are being so unreasonable.

To the statements that Reynolds is a conservative blogger, I still disagree. But I do think he’s right-center and usually that’s what most people think a moderate is: a republican. And I’m here to tell you that this isn’t the case. In my experience so far, moderates are more interested in ideas than ideology, and I think Reynolds falls into this camp.

The authors are Chris Bowers of MyDD.com and Matt Stoller of Blogging of the President (BOPnews.com)

The link you found is the correct article.

I concede that defining “left� and “right� is an inherently amibguous exercise, but if somebody (like Glenn Reynolds) who calls Ward Churchill “the fact of the left� and that large parts of the Democratic Party “aren’t just anti-war, they’re on the other side� isn’t conservative, I’m not sure who is.

He said that? Scott, please point to these articles. Thanks.

“while liberals have “a decided advantageâ€Â? over conservatives among the top 40 blogs (24-16), “conservatives hold a whopping 133 to 77 advantageâ€Â? among the _next_ 210 blogs.”

So that’s not including the first 40. Though I agree, the top 50 would be better to see than the top 40.

So instead of 133 to 77 in the top 210, it’s actually 149 to 101 in the top 250.

Justin – if you looked at my blog, the vast majority of what I link to is conservative sources. To amend my original comment, what Reynolds links to approvingly are conservative sources.

Interesting. I won’t disagree with that observation about Instapundit, but when I looked at your blog initially, I only glanced at four or five stories. Given that sampling, I pretty much saw links to liberal blogs and online reprints of newspapers articles. And the one mention of Townhall (which is decidedly right wing) doesn’t have a link to it. But this is probably because it was glance instead of an actual look.

And Totten, Simon, et. al. are conservatives, at least in a blogging sense. The “war in Iraq� has seemingly extended in their minds to everything liberals or Democrats do. This isn’t a particularly interesting debate, commenters aside, largely because it’s obvious who’s conservative and who’s liberal by the goals they seek in their blogging.

Well, that’s just plain wrong. Totten attacks the liberals who are knee-jerk anti-war reactionists that call Bush a muderer and think he’s just as bad as OBL. He also happens to live in Portland, so I think that has something to do with it. Many of his social views are much like mine, except we disagree about the prosecution of the war. Somehow this dumps him in the conservative camp, as if to be a liberal means you HAVE to be against using the US’s military as a liberating force. I won’t agree with how Bush prosecuted the war, just like I won’t agree with how liberals cry foul once somebody talks about how the Iraq war could have been a just war. What Totten has also found, is that the right-wing seems much more inviting of dissent and the left seems much less so. Oddly enough, I have to agree with him, but I think it’s mostly regulated to the blogosphere. I think you’ll find that many respected “conservative” bloggers have many moderate views on social policy and individual freedoms. But they stop short of going the route of the ACLU. I think Totten is in this boat, and all of a sudden he’s labelled a yoostabee Democrat. Huh?

Charles Johnson will frequently say he’s not a conservative, and yet you use him as the model for conservative blogs. It’s one of the hallmarks of the conservative blogosphere – continually support conservative goals and insult liberals, yet when you’re labeled as what you’re obviously are, pull a Bill O’Reilly and trot out some dusty part of your political beliefs that you never talk about unless you’re trying to assault someone else as a labeler.

See, I don’t agree with insulting most anybody because it simply doesn’t do any good. I’ll throw up my arms and exclaim frustration, but very rarely do I throw the insults around. That’s why I created this blog as a place where people from both sides could come together and have a conversation without having to worry about the rheotric and the name calling. Sometimes it’s successful, and sometimes it’s not, but I notice that the people who stick around here the most are the ones who don’t do a heck of a lot of name calling or rhetoric slinging.

Coincidence?

And Totten, Simon, et. al. are conservatives, at least in a blogging sense. The “war in Iraq” has seemingly extended in their minds to everything liberals or Democrats do. This isn’t a particularly interesting debate, commenters aside, largely because it’s obvious who’s conservative and who’s liberal by the goals they seek in their blogging. Charles Johnson will frequently say he’s not a conservative, and yet you use him as the model for conservative blogs. It’s one of the hallmarks of the conservative blogosphere – continually support conservative goals and insult liberals, yet when you’re labeled as what you’re obviously are, pull a Bill O’Reilly and trot out some dusty part of your political beliefs that you never talk about unless you’re trying to assault someone else as a labeler.

(Oh, and if reluctantly voting for a major-party candidate means you’re not actually of the ideological camp you belong to, then most liberal Kerry-voters aren’t liberals at all…)

The one possible exception I saw was Intel Dump. I recall that he wasn’t necessarily keen on going to war with Iraq. I believe his problem wasn’t that force was being considered, but that going to war with Iraq would limit our options elsewhere. Maybe the fact that he even considered war as an option made him a right-winger.