There’s only a certain amount of sanctimony I can stomach, (as any one who’s seen me comment regularly can surely attest…) and claiming the ‘decent left’ mantle uses up much of the tank before we even make it to substance.

As I said above, much of the platform is sensible, but some of it isn’t to my mind. And in an especially dry and British way* disagreement is at many places either explicitly or implicitly dismissed as a moral failing, or of insufficiently pure commitment to ‘progressive principals’.

Why just today John of John and Belle fame has a post with the inevitable and unfortunate title discussing some of the oddities.

* From what I’ve seen elsewhere, there’s a certain degree of context that North American readers might be missing due to peculiarities of the British polity from which the EM emerges.

Pooh, there’s something specious and twisted about that argument. (And unfortunately, Lewis plays right into it.)

All evils are not equivalent. That doesn’t make lesser evils not evil. You can fiercely oppose the sexual shaming of Muslim men at Abu Ghraib (as e.g. Andrew Sullivan does) and still not equate it to cutting off Nick Berg’s or Danny Pearl’s head.

JP: I think that statement is meant as an antidote to “If anything is wrong with America, everything is” thinking. They do not seem to me to be pushing uncritical patriotism, but something more like, “Hate the sin, but love the sinner.”

However, the anti-anti-Americanism is a bit overdone. I can’t help but have a problem with “That US foreign policy has often opposed progressive movements and governments and supported regressive and authoritarian ones does not justify generalized prejudice against either the country or its people.” This sounds too much like the “you’re either with us or against us” dissent-squashing propaganda we’ve been hearing since 9/11. If the US does things its citizens are not proud of, they should NOT be instructed to pretend that they are.

This Manifesto is a really good example of grown-up thinking. Almost perfect.

Abu Ghraib – doesn’t really bother me.

Gitmo – Keep them locked up and throw away the key.

Comparing the above to gulags and those who chop off heads or do suicide bombings – A waste of breath. There is no comparison.

Secret government wiretaps to try to discover terrorists – doesn’t bother me at all and sounds like smart strategy. If the government listens to my phone calls, I don’t care as I’m not doing anything wrong.

Pre-emptive foreign policy – after 9/11, anything else is irresponsible.

Stopping genocide – Absolutely, with all means possible.

Finally getting over the 60’s and 70’s attitudes and behaviors – That can’t happen soon enough.

Where to start? Aside from the dripping self-importance and pretension of a ‘Manifesto’, I’m not sure that there’s a swifter way to lose credibility with me than to argue that ‘false’ analogies between Abu Ghraib and ‘rendition’ on one hand and gulags on the other are worse than policies which produce Abu Ghraib and rendition.

And of course the great Anti-Americanism Canard rears its ugly head again.

Not to mention to continuing propogation of the “angry left” meme used purely for its smear value by the so-called “decent left”.

I mean there is certainly a great deal to agree with within the document, but those portions mostly consist of platitudes and salutations interspersed between castigations of the Eustonites’ opponents for paying only ‘lip service’ to progressivism.