April 5, 2004
No Solution but to Defeat Them
Bryan Preston has moved through a transition of a different sort:
Dialogue in our own culture hasn't done squat. We're about as divided as a country can be, and over such a basic question as whether to defend ourselves or not. Leftists today openly cheer the deaths of their own countrymen. How sickening is that? We're sure not going to win the war with Islamofascism with dialogue. Sometimes you've just gotta kill the other guy before he kills you and your family, and when it comes to Islamofascism, that's the situation we're in. You lefties didn't understand that on 9-11, you don't understand it now and I'm convinced you never will. You'd rather bury your empty little heads and pretend George W. Bush is a bigger threat to world peace than an Osama fanatic with a suitcase nuke hanging out in downtown Chicago. You're entitled to your opinions, no matter how asinine they may be.So here's what I plan to do with the next few months, in terms of the blog and in terms of my attitude. Dialogue with you people is done.
Of course, we ought to approach each new person across whom we come as if he is sincere and open to persuasion (and even capable of persuading), but it's always disheartening to realize that a great number of people are determined to believe as they do regardless of the reality upon which they propound. When there are enough of those people to constitute a political force, political victory becomes the first consideration... especially in an election year.
(And yes, I realize that those who live in the parallel realities of the Left or extreme Right will call me a hypocrit for this post. Leave your comments if you must, but don't expect a response. [Although you may, in fact, get one.])
Posted by Justin Katz at April 5, 2004 7:21 AMLiberalism vs. Conservatism
There's no consistent view among conservatives about who the leftists are, so I'm never sure if my integrity is being questioned or not.
Both conservatives and liberals have a tendency to compare the best character traits of those they agree with to the worst character traits of those they disagree with. Then, those character traits are said to either validate or invalidate a given position. Thus, Ted Kennedy is wrong not because of his position on an issue, but because a woman drowned 35 years ago. Trent Lott is wrong not because his reasoning on an issue is flawed, but because he once said something racially insensitive. Even in the current Clarke vs. Rice debate, neither side seems able to objectively anlayze the evidence of what we did or didn't do to prevent terrorism exactly because of the "political victory" consideration that you wrote of. (My own view is that an objective observer would have to say that, pre-911, there wasn't a dime's worth of difference between the Clinton and Bush adminstration's policy.)
Many fundamentalist Christians hold to the view that the Biblical account of creation is a scientific one, despite overwhelming evidence that it isn't. Many liberal Christians support abortion despite overwhleming evidence that it cheapens both our understanding of God's grace and our apppreciation for God's grace amidst the creation process.
Joel,
For my part, I think I might include people who would characterize themselves as "liberal" as conservative. I believe, at least, that the relative proximity extremes to the commonly held definitions of the movements aren't as even as your equivalence would seem to suggest.
Posted by: Justin Katz at April 6, 2004 9:29 PM