Calpundit: Liberal Hatred

LIBERAL HATRED....Here's a meme that's had its day and needs to be put out to pasture now: the horror of all us Bush-hating liberals. David Brooks picked it up last month, Nick Kristof repeated it yesterday, and former Bob Dole flack Douglas MacKinnon spreads more alarum today.

Normally, when you agree that the other fellow started a fight, you also agree that it's the other fellow who should be taken to task. You don't blame the victim for finally getting up the gumption to fight back. Yet that's what all three of these guys do.

What's more, they act as if conservative rage is just some quaint bit of nostalgia from days of yore. Give me a break. Bill Clinton left office three years ago and the hate brigade is still churning out books about him and Hillary. And the vitriol is every bit as intense as ever.

Now, I happen to agree that white hot anger can eventually become counterproductive, but I want to know why these guys all think that it's liberals who should back down, rather than the conservatives who are the original rage-meisters and continue to shout from the rooftops to this day. Shouldn't they be the ones to hold out an olive branch first?

I think I've argued this before, and the result was that the right deserves what it is getting.

OK. But answer me this: when does the fighting stop?

Posted by: Ron at November 14, 2003 10:06 AM | PERMALINK

What makes it worse is that the commentary implies some sort of equivalence between what was directed at Clinton and what has been directed at Bush. The two are hardly comparable in terms of scope or intensity.

Posted by: Joe Bob at November 14, 2003 10:07 AM | PERMALINK

I wouldn't be wasting my time standing around waiting for one of them, either side, to go first. Hell will freeze over in the meantime.

Partisan politics has reached it's nadir.

Posted by: Granmere at November 14, 2003 10:10 AM | PERMALINK

One could fairly argue that Bush is simply a far worse president than Clinton was. Still, liberals can't seem to match the level of vitriol and animosity displayed during the Clinton years. I guess it just takes a lot more to piss us off.

Posted by: Steve at November 14, 2003 10:11 AM | PERMALINK

I am with you on this. The right needs to convince us liberals that they have changed. I see no evidence that they have changed and are seeking compromise (people in the middle wind up as road kill - that is the republican philosophy). Look at the arrogance of the filibuster in the senate. The democrats are being labeled as subverting democracy and yet they are using the same tactics that the republicans side has used for years. Now is the time to fight back. I am giving more money this year to candidates and the demo party. I am calling my representatives and senators on a weekly basis demanding that they seek compromise and comity. Everyone should be doing it. The radical right must be resisted.

Posted by: Cliff at November 14, 2003 10:12 AM | PERMALINK

After we've regained power and ground the reactionaries back into the mud. Right now we're losing on most fronts, including the class war, the civil liberties war and the war for a clean planet earth. The only way we can win is to fight fire with fire, and fight to win. Screw the fascist bastards - let's teach them a lesson they'll never forget!

Posted by: Green Boy at November 14, 2003 10:12 AM | PERMALINK

The point here is not who started what. That simply falls, once again, into the GOP bait and switch trap.

The point is that the wingers were enraged over . . . well, I'm not sure what. Trumped-up phony bullshit, mostly.

The anger which Bush is fueling right now is in response to very real actions on the part of the right wing: lies, corruption, infringements on hard-fought civil liberties, and attempts to force fundamentalist christianity down the throats of everybody else.

Let's keep our eye on the ball, Cal.

Posted by: Brautigan at November 14, 2003 10:14 AM | PERMALINK

"they all agree on who started this"

Uh, no. They all agree that it occurred during Clinton's term. They are silent on when it started.

I would argue that it started in the '60s, continued during Reagan, and has just ratcheted up a little during Clinton and Bush.

Posted by: Al at November 14, 2003 10:16 AM | PERMALINK

I quite literally quit the democrat party in 2000 because they playfully allowed right-wingers to step on their throats.

I will come back to the democratic party when they stop waiting for an olive branch...and wake to the fact that the best way to curb a vicious ugly dog is with a big ugly club.

Swing it hard. Swing it often. Swing it mean.

Posted by: -pea- at November 14, 2003 10:17 AM | PERMALINK

Partisan politics has reached it's nadir.

I think Gran may have struck upon a very important point. Maybe the two-party system has reached it's logical conclusion, and we had better embrace a parliamentarian system of government if we want to save democracy?

Posted by: Brautigan at November 14, 2003 10:17 AM | PERMALINK

Well, I didn't like the cheap partisan potshots and frenzied Clinton-hatred either, nor do I appreciate it when Bush-haters blithely accuse the President of being a liar, a rapacious ultracapitalist, a moronic ultrareligious hick, and a warmonger.

I feel that Presidents, whether Democratic or Republican, are entitled to not have their motives impugned on scant evidence. Democratic and Republican Presidents alike generally want what is best for the country. Fight their polices as hard as you want, say their solutions are dead wrong, say they're misguided or not up to the job. Fine. But don't regularly trot out that they are "evil" or are the head of some cynical cabal whose nefarious purpose is to end American life as we know it, to take all our civil rights away, and turn the U.S. into one big a police state or one big orgy.

Cheap political shots are easy, ubiquitous, and should be easily recognized for what they are, regardless if they issue from the left or right.

Posted by: Daniel Calto at November 14, 2003 10:18 AM | PERMALINK

Howard Dean tapping into the reservoir of Democratic Anger scares the crap out of them, that's what's going on. They remembered that for all their moralizing now, the Limbaughs and the Coulters propelled these MFs to victory, and they're worried we can mobilize ourselves to do the same. These tactics can work.

Civility my ass.

[And yes, I wrote Kristof an email, reminding him that Nice Guys Finish Last.]

Posted by: Andrew Lazarus at November 14, 2003 10:19 AM | PERMALINK

"What's more, they act as if conservative rage is just some quaint bit of nostalgia from days of yore. Give me a break. Bill Clinton left office three years ago and the hate brigade is still churning out books about him and Hillary. And the vitriol is every bit as intense as ever."

As if the Hate-Reagan Brigade hasn't just put out a movie with vitriol as intense as ever. Puh-leaze.

You look like you're old enough to remember the eighties, Kevin...

Posted by: Al at November 14, 2003 10:20 AM | PERMALINK

I think the problem shouldn't be framed as "Bush Hatred", the real problem facing America today is "Bush Idolatry".

It was Bush Idolatry that kept many from questioning the specious arguments for going to war in Iraq. Even poor Andrew Sullivan found out about being on the wrong end of Bush Idolatry when he panned Bush's carrier landing --- the irrational response surprised him, and he asked if "this sort of hagiography is really necessary?"

There are some trivial, but ultimately weird bits of Bush idolatry at work --- e.g., the flight suit action figure, of course (and the fawning over Bush's manly image from Ann Coulter to Tom Delay), but also replacing the pictures in the exhibition at the State Department of historic scenes of American diplomacy with pictures of the Bush family in foreign locales.

But the real problem with Bush Idolatry is the way it hinders open debate about policies --- and, in fact, causes people to mistake disagreement with the man's policies for hatred of the man.

Posted by: dm at November 14, 2003 10:21 AM | PERMALINK

Observing from the right I'd say Liberal " Bush-hating" is propelled partly from frustration at losses at the ballot box and is somewhat depersonalized and abstractly generalized to the entire purported " VRWC". It's hard to call your enemy an evil genius and an idiot and believe both concepts equally.

While I'm sure a lot of ppl on the Left hate Bush personally and in a visceral way I'm not sure if all of them strictly speaking qualify as liberals. Nixon was far more widely hated on a personal basis than for his policies by liberals - they loathed him vehemently back in the fifties, not just because of Watergate.

Posted by: mark safranski at November 14, 2003 10:21 AM | PERMALINK

Green Boy's comments being a case in point. There's a lot of difference between a Republican Midwestern farmer or a solider and his wife who support George Bush and a "fascist bastard." Conflating the two is moronic and factually wrong.

Posted by: Daniel Calto at November 14, 2003 10:23 AM | PERMALINK

Each of the columnists mention how different things are now than they were in the 80s. Al is just being a disingenuous ass.

Posted by: Spinning Tops at November 14, 2003 10:27 AM | PERMALINK

The thing is: Clinton-Hating worked for the right. Look at the all the people who made their name (and fortune) via Clinton-Hating. Limbaugh, O'Reilly, Coulter, etc. And look at the members of the Administration who were also Clinton-Haters.

Why should the Left not emulate a tactic that worked?

dave

Posted by: DaveInSeattle at November 14, 2003 10:27 AM | PERMALINK

I feel that Presidents, whether Democratic or Republican, are entitled to not have their motives impugned on scant evidence.

"scant" evidence?? Give me a break.

The anger arises precisely because the putrid pile of evidence surpassed scant about 5,000 feet ago, yet nobody (read, the media) is calling him on it.

Posted by: Brautigan at November 14, 2003 10:27 AM | PERMALINK

Like Mark, I'm not too sure all this hatred is a new thing. Nixon was the most hated politician of the 20th Century although the upper class's reaction to FDR is close.

It is always in the interest of those in power to say, "lets play nice" and avoid partisanship (witness the "debate" on the judges this week). Similarly it is always in the interest of those out of power to do whatever is possible to denigrate those in power. One might even argue that the incentive to hate goes up with the rate of success of the party in power.

Posted by: Stuart at November 14, 2003 10:29 AM | PERMALINK

As if the Hate-Reagan Brigade hasn't just put out a movie with vitriol as intense as ever. Puh-leaze.

Do you have any evidence to support what you're saying? What about the miniseries struck you as vitriolic? Or are you just parroting what someone told you?

Everyone seems to be taking it for granted that this miniseries "trashed" Reagan even though nobody has seen it. I think the truth is closer to this: all political miniseries are schlock, regardless of who they're about, and since Reagan worshipping conservatives view Reagan as somehow residing on the same elevated plane occupied by Jesus, any schlocky miniseries about him at all is going to be off limits and "unfair".

Posted by: MillionthMonkey at November 14, 2003 10:30 AM | PERMALINK

"There is a difference between hatred and anger." Molly Ivins said it, we need to repeat it. Over and over and over. Anger is legitimate public and political discourse. We are justifiably angry at what has happened to our country in the last three years. We are angry at the Bush Administration, whatever we may feel about Bush personally (and sure, there are those who hate him personally -- and may even feel that his personal failings contribute to his administration's failings -- but his person and personality are not really the issue.)

Over and over and over. It is not hatred. It is ANGER. White-hot anger, at the incompetence, the recklessness, the radicalism, and the breathless audacity of the people who lead us -- from the Supreme Court to the Congress to the White House.

Posted by: eyelessgame at November 14, 2003 10:30 AM | PERMALINK

Myself, I'm happy at how Daschle after the Republican Gasbag-A-Thon simply mustered the votes necessary on the Bush judicial nominees, which nicely punctured the pomposity of said Republican gasbaggers in the Senate.

Better to do what one can and suffer what one must, than do nothing and suffer anyway.

Posted by: David W. at November 14, 2003 10:30 AM | PERMALINK

Q: Who on our side of the board really hates Bush?

A: Not too many, if at all. That's like saying you hate Howdy Doody (for those of you too young to know, HD was THE TV puppet show of the 50's). Bush is the Howdy Doody President: head made of wood and does whatever his puppetmasters tell him to do.

This "Bush hating" nonsense by Brooks, et. al. is the latest version of "slime and defend"; it's an attempt to fool everyone into thinking there is some moral equivalence between what the wingnuts did to Clinton/are doing today and the (so far tepid) response of the Dems.

There is no moral equivalence -- what we dislike intensely is what he's doing to the nation on every level. He may be a nice guy for all I know, but his tenure as President has been disgraceful. That's what we don't like.

Posted by: fbg46 at November 14, 2003 10:31 AM | PERMALINK

Anyone who wants to see some excellent righteous anger should have watched Mary Landrieu (D-Louisiana) last night at about 10:30pm ET when she took apart Orrin Hatch for calling the Democrats anti-woman and anti-hispanic. She took the floor on fire and when Hatch asked if she'd yield for a question, she said, "No. I will not yield." Apparently she said it wrong and was admonished by the presiding officer and Hatch asked again if she'd yield. She said, "I will not yield. No, I will not yield!" It was very exhilarating to watch her speak for the next 24 minutes, of which she yielded not one. Cspan.org may have her in the archives.

Posted by: Get HR2239 Passed Now at November 14, 2003 10:33 AM | PERMALINK

Looking for who started this is just a method of perpetuating it. A few post ago Mr Drum brought up filibusters of judicial nominees again.

The sequence went like this:
*Repubs blame Dems for filibuster
*Dems blame Repubs for starting it with Clinton
*Repubs say they didn't start it, the Dems started it with Bork
*The Dems say they didn't start it with Bork, ...
etc.
We were back into the 1800's before you knew it.

There is no beginning to this Gordian knot. If we want a way out, we have to look forward not back.

Posted by: Ron at November 14, 2003 10:34 AM | PERMALINK

White-hot anger works wonders to motivate the base, but it doesn't actually win elections. Reagan's campaign against Carter was not full of anti-Carter vitriol (at least not on Reagan's part). Clinton's campaign against Bush I was not full of anti-Bush vitriol. Bush II's campaign against Gore was not full of anti-Gore vitriol. (Yes, there was plenty of anti-Gore vitriol, but Bush himself didn't display it.)

I think that intense anger frightens those voters who don't share it. Unless the people who hate Bush are in the majority by November 2004 (which does not seem likely) the winner will be the candidate who projects calm, determined optimism, rather than anger.

So I agree that getting angry is counterproductive. But it is paradoxical: the more awful and incompetent Bush is, the more likely he will be to incite irrational and self-defeating anger in his opponents. I think that must be the strategy he is following. Karl Rove is such a genius!

Posted by: Daryl McCullough at November 14, 2003 10:34 AM | PERMALINK

Kevin,
The well-he-started-it routine is a lame reaction to the alleged 'hatred' of the left. Rage-meisters? Hate Brigade? Um, my third grade elementary school teacher would like to see you after class. (BOTH of you) ;)

Posted by: bj at November 14, 2003 10:35 AM | PERMALINK

As if the Hate-Reagan Brigade hasn't just put out a movie with vitriol as intense as ever. Puh-leaze.

Heh, go see "Bedtime for Bonzo" sometime. I did back in college in 1980 and I must confess that in the scene where Ronnie is out on a ledge with the chimp, I too joined the audience in a rousing chorus of "jump, jump, jump...".

(However, if anyone thinks it's possible to hate someone while laughing your ass off at the same time, trust me, it really isn't... ;-)

Posted by: David W. at November 14, 2003 10:35 AM | PERMALINK

>But answer me this: when does the fighting stop?

When we win. When the Bush Junta and the Right is totally discredited and tossed on the ash heap of history, right next to Jefferson Davis, Hitler and Stalin.

We didn't start the Cold Civil War, but we're going to finish it. For the good of the country and the world, we're going to finish it.

Posted by: grytpype at November 14, 2003 10:36 AM | PERMALINK

Observing from the right I'd say Liberal " Bush-hating" is propelled partly from frustration at losses at the ballot box..

Or unrecognized wins at the ballot boxes. Or radical change in a time of electoral balance. Or God-awful policies when more established ones were working. Or mismanagement of everything on the part of the administration. Or having to listen to slurs on our patriotcy from a bunch of chicken hawks.

It's not personal, Mark. Its political. It was personal for Nixon. You know why don't you?

Posted by: LowLife at November 14, 2003 10:36 AM | PERMALINK

The Dems say they didn't start it with Bork, ... etc. We were back into the 1800's before you knew it.

Don't forget Abe Fortas back in the '60s...

Posted by: David W. at November 14, 2003 10:37 AM | PERMALINK

There's a lot of difference between a Republican Midwestern farmer or a solider and his wife who support George Bush and a "fascist bastard." Conflating the two is moronic and factually wrong.

I think that there is a big difference between Republican party leadership and its supporters.

At the same time, Green Boy didn't say what you're imputing to him. There's no hint in his post about any conflation you mention. It looks you either read that into his post or made it up, not sure which.

Posted by: Spinning Tops at November 14, 2003 10:38 AM | PERMALINK

Daniel Calto says: "Well, I didn't like the cheap partisan potshots and frenzied Clinton-hatred either, nor do I appreciate it when Bush-haters blithely accuse the President of being a liar, a rapacious ultracapitalist, a moronic ultrareligious hick, and a warmonger."

I only one problem with dismissing anger at Bush as 'blithe'.

Just suppose -- pretend with me for a second -- that somehow, in some parallel universe, a lying, rapaciously ultracapitalist, ultrareligious warmongering hick somehow actually became President.

In this parallel universe, how would you expect those people who recognize this fact to act? By pretending he's not? Certainly members of his party would defend him, since to admit these terrible things of one's own leader would be to admit a horrible failure of one's own intelligence and the party's ability to govern.

Now ask yourself. How would a lying, rapaciously ultracapitalist, ultrareligious warmongering hick actually govern, in that parallel universe? In what way is that parallel universe different than our own?

It doesn't matter whether Bush is actually a lying, rapaciously ultracapitalist, ultrareligious warmongering hick. In every way that I discern, he acts exactly as if that's what he is. And it is his actions, not his hypothetical nature, by which I must judge his administration.

Posted by: eyelessgame at November 14, 2003 10:38 AM | PERMALINK

David W
Not that my example is the only example of not being able to find who started it, but thanks for helping make my point.

Posted by: Ron at November 14, 2003 10:39 AM | PERMALINK

>nor do I appreciate it when Bush-haters blithely accuse the President of being a liar, a rapacious ultracapitalist, a moronic ultrareligious hick, and a warmonger.

But Bush IS all of those things! Are we not allowed to tell the truth? Are we supposed to pretend Bush is a better man and a better president than he obviously is?

Posted by: grytpype at November 14, 2003 10:39 AM | PERMALINK

Q: Who on our side of the board really hates Bush?
A: Not too many, if at all.

I beg to differ. I've long since lost the ability to differentiate my disgust for Bush policies with my disgust in Bush personally. IMO, I'm not alone in that regard. While I agree that he is to some degree a figurehead, I still detest the man/chimp. I can't think of too many people I hate, but Bush and Cheney, for what they've done to this country and the world, are definitely on that list of the loathsome.

Posted by: Bragan at November 14, 2003 10:39 AM | PERMALINK

They are the political equivalent of wife-beaters. Yeah, he hit her, but only because she wouldn't defend herself.

Posted by: jri at November 14, 2003 10:39 AM | PERMALINK

Let me try to understand.

The right hates the left, and impeaches the president for an extramarital blowjob.

This is somehow equal to:

The left hates the right, and produces a mini-series that tells the truth about Ronald Reagan sitting on his thumbs while tens of thousands of gay men die from aids, ignoring the advice of his own Surgeon General and health officials.

And the mini-series never gets shown, due to right-wing pressure.

This country is scary. I can't wait until Bush arrives in London and tries to speak English.

Posted by: Manhattan Dan at November 14, 2003 10:40 AM | PERMALINK

One need only understand this meme is what Bush is going to run on in 2004. Ed Gillespie has confirmed his intention is to paint the Dems as the party of political hate speech.

Let's face it, in 2004, Bush can't run on his handling of the economy or his foreign or domestic policies. And given that the GOP has control of the WH and Congress--he can't really blame the Dems for why we're in worse shape all around than in 2000.

The only thing he has is pure McCarthyism: try to paint Dems as anti-American.

Posted by: Jadegold at November 14, 2003 10:40 AM | PERMALINK

block off, hopefully.

Posted by: bragan at November 14, 2003 10:40 AM | PERMALINK

>Q: Who on our side of the board really hates Bush?

(raises hand) I wouldn't piss up his ass if his guts were on fire.

Posted by: grytpype at November 14, 2003 10:42 AM | PERMALINK

OK. But answer me this: when does the fighting stop?

Gee, I don't know, Ron. It seems like every time someone brings up the latest catastrophic horror from Bush & Co, some right-winger is sure to find some moronic parallel with Clinton, or start whining about Carter. I advise you to ask those right-wingers, every time they do this, "when does the fighting stop?" Since they started it, since they perpetuate it, maybe they can give you an answer.

Posted by: Jesurgislac at November 14, 2003 10:42 AM | PERMALINK

What amazes me is that these conservative columnists somehow seem to think this is something NEW.

Anyone who's studied American history should know that it's not. In fact, the two parties are probably far more civil towards each other today than was the case in the 19th century. No, this stuff is as old as politics itself.

That said, I do agree that SHOWING too much anger as a CANDIDATE is a recipe for losing big. The most successful presidential campaigns are the ones that rise above it and put on a more positive face.

Posted by: Kent Lind at November 14, 2003 10:42 AM | PERMALINK

Not that my example is the only example of not being able to find who started it, but thanks for helping make my point.

There have always been disputes about judicial nominees. However, the level of partisan bickering about them has reached new highs and Senate Republicans should own up to their own very partisan shennanigans if they really want the Democrats to cooperate with them now. Otherwise, the Dems should keep on playing hardball and suffer the consequences, because they'll suffer anyway if they don't.

Posted by: David W. at November 14, 2003 10:44 AM | PERMALINK

What we're seeing here is nothing short of religious fervor on the part of the right. These people are truly in full worship, and nothing--absolutely nothing--can shake their faith.

This is the natural result of 25 years of a message repeated milllions of times at ever-increasing volume: Liberals are evil scum. Better to be dead than a liberal.

With this as their thoroughly internalized creed, the right finds it oh-so-easy to mouth today's scripted line. Never mind that today's scripted line is actuall contradicts yesterday's scripted line. (Example: Sept. 2000--"Nation-building is a flawed concept that endangers America." Sept. 2003--"We must engage in nation-building around the world to spread freedom!")

Thus, disagreement with the views of the right is automatically perceived as an attack. It cannot be otherwise, because you are questioning their religion. Such questioning can only be the result of hate--especially when it threatens to remove the listener from the warm-and-cozy comfort of belief that requires no thought, salvation that requires no effort or change, and the dizzying thin air of moral superiority.

Posted by: Derelict at November 14, 2003 10:45 AM | PERMALINK

"...but I want to know why these guys all think that it's liberals who should back down, rather than the conservatives who are the original rage-meisters..."

Do you remember a guy named Reagan? I think the conservatives are just inserting a mea culpa in order to forestall the logical first response. It really does have to stop somewhere, now is the time, someone has to act grown-up first... why not us?

Posted by: Gari at November 14, 2003 10:47 AM | PERMALINK

People wipe their feet on anything maked welcome.
Look at Rove, look at Delay.

They have no respect for anything but power.

Rove spread rumors of (IIRC) Pedophilia when a former partner struck out on his own.

They have no respect for civility.

You don't bring a wiffle ball to a gun fight.

Posted by: Matthew Saroff at November 14, 2003 10:50 AM | PERMALINK

By my lights, a 'common sense contempt' for the GOP is a far more apt characterization than that of 'liberal hatred'.

Posted by: Sovereign Eye at November 14, 2003 10:52 AM | PERMALINK

Al - given that CBS backed down and sold the movie to a premium channel, your analogy would be more fitting if all the Ann Coulter books had been released in the pay section of the WSJ website.

Posted by: scarshapedstar at November 14, 2003 10:52 AM | PERMALINK

I'll be interested to see Kristoff and the rest feel the same way about the practically-Republican Zell Miller's political hate speech. After all the ink spilled over Howard Dean and the confederate flag, Howard Dean's "anger," and so on, will these media schoolmarms ignore Miller's likening his fellow Democratic Senators to racist murderers?

Posted by: John McCrory at November 14, 2003 10:53 AM | PERMALINK

Jesurgislac says
Since they started it, since they perpetuate it, maybe they can give you an answer.

As I have said, declaring who started it just gets into an infinite loop. I agree that the right helps perpetuate it.

When my boys used to start in with the "But Daddy he did it first!!" stuff, I knew how to stop it. But I'm afraid that the only influence I have over this is my own behavior.

I will also agree that perceived errors by Clinton is no defense for perceived errors by Bush. Each should stand on their own merits.

Posted by: Ron at November 14, 2003 10:53 AM | PERMALINK

In fact, the two parties are probably far more civil towards each other today than was the case in the 19th century.

But where did that end up?

Relative civility varies by degree over time. When things deteriorate, as I think they have now, it demonstrates a failure of leadership, and (to put it mildly) somebody generally ends up getting hurt.

Posted by: Spinning Tops at November 14, 2003 10:54 AM | PERMALINK

You're right, millionthmonkey. I haven't seen the Reagan movie. But I'll take the reporting of the made-up AIDS quote for evidence.

BTW, nor have I read the Moore/Franken/Coulter/Krugman/Limbaugh/Ivins/O'Reilly books. So you can discount my opinion on the level of today's vitriol as well, if you must.

Posted by: Al at November 14, 2003 10:54 AM | PERMALINK

And, yeah Al, did you see the movie? If not, are you just upset that it portrayed a conservative as wanting gays with AIDS to die? Well, shit, allow me to take off your rose-colored glasses sometime.

Posted by: scarshapedstar at November 14, 2003 10:54 AM | PERMALINK

David W
I know, that is my point. There is no beginning, and you get the same type arguments for who escalated it. It is fruitless.

Posted by: Ron at November 14, 2003 10:55 AM | PERMALINK

As I have said, declaring who started it just gets into an infinite loop. I agree that the right helps perpetuate it.

Exactly. So why aren't you, a right-winger, standing up to your own side, and calling them on it every time they post something bashing Clinton or bashing Carter, or accusing Dems of being racist for opposing Rep-appointed right-wing judges? If you think it's bad behavior when they do it, tell them to quit it. Maybe you can start a meme of your own, getting right-wingers to play nice.

It might not work. But it'll never happen if you don't try.

Posted by: Jesurgislac at November 14, 2003 11:00 AM | PERMALINK

>I agree that the right helps perpetuate it.

Ron, the rightists are greedy, hyperaggressive, ruthless predators. Nothing is beneath them. They lie, cheat, smear, steal elections, start wars, subvert every organ of policy and government, all to perpetuate and increase their power.

If the left played nice, the rightists would still be greedy, hyperaggressive, ruthless predators.

Posted by: grytpype at November 14, 2003 11:00 AM | PERMALINK

You all may like an article in the Economist discussing the nature and implications of American partisanship:

http://www.economist.com/printedition/displayStory.cfm?story_id=2172130

Excerpts:

Increased partisanship has implications for the nature of America's public debate, the country's decentralised political tradition and Mr Bush himself. Politics as warfare is rooted in debates about fundamental issues.

America's political system is decentralised, with proud, distinctive traditions at state level, and national parties that used to be loose coalitions of diverse groups which banded together to win power. Partisanship, on the other hand, is a centralising force that encourages uniformity. America's distinctive political traditions have been tested before, and survived.

Also, a totally COOL assessment of two-faced G.W.B:

http://www.economist.com/printedition/displayStory.cfm?story_id=2172181

Posted by: Dem at November 14, 2003 11:03 AM | PERMALINK

I see no reason for the Left to back down until the last vestiges of Clinton-bashing has been eradicated. We may need to wait until a period emerges, say two years, during which NOT ONE book critical of any Clinton appears. Only then will we be sure that this scourge, like smallpox, has finally been destroyed. Only then will we on the Left feel free to reduce the vitriol and win the 2008 election.

Posted by: melk at November 14, 2003 11:05 AM | PERMALINK

Wait, wait, wait. Al is trotting out Reagan as an example of the left and their hating? Come on, Al - Reagan was an incredibly popular president, who was elected and reelected in a landslide. Certainly, there were those who hated him, and I would argue that there was ample justification for hating his policies, but what a ridiculous example.

Posted by: maurinsky at November 14, 2003 11:10 AM | PERMALINK

Jesurgislac
The only problem I see with that is if I'm successful, my head will swell sooooo big at my accomplishment:-)

Seriously, I have nearly jumped on some right-wing mouth breathers here. I didn't because
1)this isn't my playground (I just play here). Mr Drum seems to be extraordinarily tolerant of all commenters. (Kudos Mr Drum).
2)there isn't any stopping them anymore than there is stopping the comments from the left on this post.

Would you be willing to jump on the left-wing mouth breathers?

Posted by: Ron at November 14, 2003 11:13 AM | PERMALINK

Kevin:

I think you are missing the point. The issue is not "I'll stop when they stop" the issue is what is the best political strategy for the Democratic party. It was politically counterproductive for the Republicans to become obsessed about Vince Foster and Monica Lewinski (particularly given the otherwise relatively healthy state of the country during Clinton's presidency) and its politically counterproductive for the Democrats to develop a Krugmanesq fixation on Bush's supposed stupidity and Ashcrost's supposed Gestapo like tactics (given the relatively healthy state of the country--yes, yes I know its not prefect, but its not 1930 either). At the end of the day the goal in politics is to win, and to win you have to convince voters to vote for you. White hot anger is a winning tactic when you are facing an incumbent with Gray Davis poll numbers, its a losing tactic when at least half the electorate does not share your party's hatred and disdain for the incumbent.

By the way, answering the question as to when the the guns will be turned off Bush in the following manner is far more likely to turn off voters than bring them over to your point of view:

"When we win. When the Bush Junta and the Right is totally discredited and tossed on the ash heap of history, right next to Jefferson Davis, Hitler and Stalin."

Comparing Bush to Hitler and Stalin (no matter how tongue-in-cheek--and by the way I don't think this was tongue-in-cheek) displays a high level of stupidity and ignorance. When someone can point out Ashcroft's concentration camps and gulags to me I will take the accusation seriously.

Posted by: nc at November 14, 2003 11:13 AM | PERMALINK

How it works down under (via This Modern World):

"At the opening ceremonies [of the rugby world cup]a few weeks ago, Aussie Prime Minister John Howard, recently censured for lying about Iraq, stepped out to declare the games officially open -- and the entire stadium of cheering fans suddenly unleashed a cathartic chorus of boos. Howard looked humiliated, and didn't even speak for about ten solid seconds. Dishonesty actually being treated as dishonorable -- a national leader actually being held accountable, face-to-face, by the public -- oh man, that was something to see."

I think a difference between the US and Australia (and the UK) is that while the dirtiest of politics is par for the course in the US, the public is still supposed to show some reverence for the leader. (Not that Republicans abided by that so much under Clinton.) In Australia and the UK, the political knives don't seem to be as sharp; at the same time, the public doesn't feel as constrained to be "loyal" to a leader they disagree with. Perhaps this is because in the (monarchy-less) US the president is both the nation's political leader and the de facto embodiment of the nation's politics.

Or maybe it's just because American papers suck ass.

Posted by: reuben at November 14, 2003 11:13 AM | PERMALINK

Democrats don't hate Bush as much as Republicans hated Clinton. But they still hate Bush far too much.

I was disgusted by the Clinton-hating Republicans during the 1990's, and I am disgusted by the Bush-hating Democrats today.

I didn't vote for Bush and I do not agree with many of his policies. But that's as far as I go. I don't buy into conspiracy theories about shadowy pro-Israel/big oil neocon cabal. Nor do I believe that the Republicans will ever manage to roll back the New Deal, try as they might.

The Republican's rigid and hypocritical moralism alienated me in the 1990's, and the Democrats' shrill fear-mongering and negativism alienates me today.

What I do know is that I want a return to civility in politics. For this reason, I was glad to see the Republicans get crushed in the 1998 elections. If the Democrats continue behave in an such an angry and hysterical manner, I hope that the Republicans destroy them in 2004.

Posted by: Joe Schmoe at November 14, 2003 11:15 AM | PERMALINK

Spinning:

Throwing around rhetoric about "grinding the reationaries back into the mud" and "Screw(ing) the fascist bastards" doesn't explicitly conflate Republican voters with being fascist, as you say.

But this kind of highly inflammatory rhetoric, which sounds like it comes straight out of some Soviet newsreel, will certainly be heard that way by swing voters and those who may have serious doubts about Bush and might actually vote Democratic in 2004.

Just as Pat Buchanan's "culture war" speech at the (1996?) convention scared the bejeezus out of people, and made a lot of viewers think that the Pubs were all a bunch of foaming-at-the-mouth reactionaries, a similar speech at the Democratic convention which paints Bush as a crypto-fascist or attacks him for being religious or stupid will alienate huge numbers of people.

I think Kristof is dead on when he says that contempt for religious people, who make up a large majority of the electorate, among Democratic party stalwarts is a very serious problem. Most Americans are religious, and if they get the message from the Dems that they hold religious belief in contempt I can guarantee you the Dems will not win in 2004.

This is Politics 101--you might get a campaign's momentum going based on anger among the base, as Dean has demonstrated, but you certainly can't win without cooling that anger and putting together some positive alternative vision, especially in a Presidential election as opposed to a House seat or something.

Kent is right about politics always being a nasty business--some of the presidential campaigns in the 1800's make today's "nadir" look like a high point of politesse.

Posted by: Daniel Calto at November 14, 2003 11:15 AM | PERMALINK

Reagan was also responsible for using "liberal" as an invective, hinting at un-Americanism. One could lay a certain portion of the current environment at his feet.

Posted by: Spinning Tops at November 14, 2003 11:16 AM | PERMALINK

Quick! Give me an example that you don't have to Google up as evidence for your assertion about Democratic stalwarts being contemptous about religion.

Posted by: David W. at November 14, 2003 11:17 AM | PERMALINK

Would you be willing to jump on the left-wing mouth breathers?

I have. Have you?

Posted by: Jesurgislac at November 14, 2003 11:18 AM | PERMALINK

Wow; great thread. My feeling is that the candidate should not come across as too angry. A small amount of righteous anger mixed with generous amounts of optimism and enthusiasm is probably about right.

But when the base is angry, that's all to the good. I plan to be much more active in this presidential campaign than I ever have been before, and it's because I am very angry at what this administration has done. I'm guessing there are a lot of people like me.

Republicans are complaining about Democratic "hate speech" because they want us to go back to being cowed and placating. I see where that is to their advantage, but it isn't to ours.

Posted by: Emma Anne at November 14, 2003 11:18 AM | PERMALINK

"Normally, when you agree that the other fellow started a fight, you also agree that it's the other fellow who should be taken to task. You don't blame the victim for finally getting up the gumption to fight back. Yet that's what all three of these guys do."

Not really. Fighting against and refuting the various idiocies against Clinton is fighting back. Doing Bush body count, BFEE, etc is simply emulating behavior.

That isn't at you Kevin or the majority of people who disagree even dislike Bush. The foaming at the mouth Bush hating seems to be limited more to the fringe.

What I do see is much the same write offs of critiques of Bush as Bush haters much like critiques of Clinton came down to Clinton hating.

The broad brush is an unfortunate tool in the political and cultural wars. One used by both sides. But it does have political consequences. The GOP floundered a bit in the 90's(even with electoral victories) because of Clinton obsession. The Dems(at a Congressional or Senatorial level) have yet to make this mistake and one hopes they will not. That is not in reference to critiques, investigations, etc but Burton style idiocy.

Posted by: Ryan at November 14, 2003 11:19 AM | PERMALINK

David W
Quick! Give me an example that you don't have to Google up as evidence for your assertion about Democratic stalwarts being contemptous about religion.

No problem, Judge Moore. The locals supported his rock.

Posted by: Ron at November 14, 2003 11:19 AM | PERMALINK

Daniel Calto: nor do I appreciate it when Bush-haters blithely accuse the President of being a liar, a rapacious ultracapitalist, a moronic ultrareligious hick, and a warmonger.

Excuse me, but back here on planet earth, Bush did start an unnecessary war, and he did lie repeatedly and verifiably on the record to achieve that end. "Lying warmonger" isn't a smear, it's the simple truth about the man and his policies.

Posted by: Doctor Memory at November 14, 2003 11:23 AM | PERMALINK

Jesurgislac
I did't know you had a blog (shows how much attention I've been paying). Any right-wing mouth breathers hang out there? I'll come over and pound them for you.

Posted by: Ron at November 14, 2003 11:25 AM | PERMALINK

No problem, Judge Moore. The locals supported his rock.

Sure, but that doesn't make it any less unconstitutional, which doesn't make it contemptuous of religion.

Posted by: David W. at November 14, 2003 11:26 AM | PERMALINK

I think "rage-meister" sounds like a good song for a German metal band.

Posted by: scarshapedstar at November 14, 2003 11:26 AM | PERMALINK

To the general theme here that we seem to have reached some "new low of partisan politics":

Are you people high?! Or did you just sleep through your American History classes?

Do yourselves a favor and pick up a copy of David McCullough's biography of John Adams, and address yourselves to the sections on the Adams/Jefferson presidential race.

There's nothing new under the sun here.

Posted by: Doctor Memory at November 14, 2003 11:27 AM | PERMALINK

"Exactly. So why aren't you, a right-winger, standing up to your own side, and calling them on it every time they post something bashing Clinton or bashing Carter, or accusing Dems of being racist for opposing Rep-appointed right-wing judges? If you think it's bad behavior when they do it, tell them to quit it. Maybe you can start a meme of your own, getting right-wingers to play nice."

Silly silly, Do you call out every nasty thing ever said about the other side or does it make you feel warm and fuzzy occasionally? I would doubt it. No one does. We're human, we let our side slide when being objectionable even if we can also be over the top indignant when the other side does something comparable.

This "apologize for everything the party or political aisle you side with has ever done" is counterproductive. We don't all have to get along & agree but there's no need to be childish about it.

Posted by: Ryan at November 14, 2003 11:29 AM | PERMALINK

>No problem, Judge Moore. The locals supported his rock

Not all of them "supported his rock." Some of them sued to get the rock removed from its prominent position in the courthouse of the supreme court of Alabama.

Posted by: raj at November 14, 2003 11:29 AM | PERMALINK

David W
This is too off topic to continue, but Judge Moore made no laws establishing a religion, or preventing the free exercise thereof.

Posted by: Ron at November 14, 2003 11:29 AM | PERMALINK

I came across an interesting variation on this theme recently: Democrats should be good citizens and accept ownership of this war along with the rest of the country even though Republicans didn't do this in the 90's and their criticisms of Clinton's Balkan conflicts weren't appropriate, but that was then and this is now and the Democrats should just suck it up and get on board. Nothing was said about the Republicans in Congress apologizing or even admitting their lack of good citizenship and approaching the Democrats in a spirit of bipartisanship. No, just "don't be such big crybabies, you silly liberals."

Posted by: wmr at November 14, 2003 11:30 AM | PERMALINK

True, Doctor M. Why, in 1800 there were even rumors about Jefferson fathering a child with one of his slaves. Of course, no one today would even think of doing such a thing, well, except you might want to ask John McCain about that rumor the Bush campaign spread about him before the South Carolina primary in 2000...

Posted by: David W. at November 14, 2003 11:31 AM | PERMALINK

You know, it's strange to me. Republicans keep saying how we should be nicey nice (and I agree that's a Christian virtue; they could try it themselves). And then I see someone like nc trot out the old "oh, but it was *bad* for us."

nc, do you honestly think we haven't noticed you control all three branches of government or something? I know Republicans like to play the martyr card and thrive when they feel persecuted, but seriously, you do know that the anger thing worked, right? You do realize that your guys are in charge.

Oh, and the Ashcroft gulag? Guantonomo Bay is certainly a step in the right direction. And that's said even though I don't believe Bush is Hitler or Stalin and avoid making those comparisons personally. (And my dad -- a lifelong Republican -- compared Bush's pre-emption strategy to Hitler's the other day, so it's not so far out of the mainstream.)

Posted by: Magenta at November 14, 2003 11:33 AM | PERMALINK

I can remember people spitting on Adlai in Dallas
I remember Bob Dole saying the Watergate investigations were vivious partisan political attacks on a noble and nearly faultless man.

I remember these people in their youth spitting on Nelson Rockefeller in 64

I remember HUAC, the Hollywood Ten, loyalty oaths,
Helen Galaghan Douglas

I remember the persecutions of Socialists in the early twenties, Thomas going to prison, the Klan rising in Repub states like Indiana. The horrible campaign of 1928

I remember the stealing of the 1876 election.

And this consistent pattern of behavior, now repeated, over the course of 150 years leads me not to an anger over their policies but a hatred of their persons. Individually. Each and every Republican. I Hate Them.

Posted by: bob mcmanus at November 14, 2003 11:33 AM | PERMALINK

This is too off topic to continue, but Judge Moore made no laws establishing a religion, or preventing the free exercise thereof.

Agreed as to the off-topicness of the subject. But I'd say the decision over Moore's monument was proper because it affirmed the neutrality of the state in matters of faith. Which to me shows respect for faith, not contempt.

Posted by: David W. at November 14, 2003 11:33 AM | PERMALINK

Jesurgislac
Hey, that wasn't your blog (shows how much attention I've been paying).

Posted by: Ron at November 14, 2003 11:34 AM | PERMALINK

"What amazes me is that these conservative columnists somehow seem to think this is something NEW.

Exactly. Though this made me think of a interesting historical novel by Safire called "Scandalous" released during the late 90's.

It dealt with scandals(sexual and otherwise), paid hit pieces, fist fights in Congress etc during Adam's term leading to the election between him and Jefferson. Interesting read if not historically accurate to a tee.

Posted by: Ryan at November 14, 2003 11:37 AM | PERMALINK

It doesn't matter who started it. That kind of thinking is kid stuff. The question is who'll have the courage to stop it and replace vitriol with reason. The voters who will decide the 2004 election do not like this kind of talk from either side.

Posted by: fyreflye at November 14, 2003 11:40 AM | PERMALINK

David W:

I'm sure that there are plenty of Dems with respect for religion, and I'm also sure, living in Manhattan, that numerous liberals look upon the religious with real contempt. Contempt is a very bad strategy for politics. People tend to have very sensitive noses for it. Evangelicals, as Kristof pointed out, are abandoning the Democrats in huge numbers--on a socioeconomic basis, the majority of evangelicals would seem to be natural Democratic voters.

I doesn't even need to be true that the Dems are contemptuous of religion--if the perception is there, and the Republicans can make this simplification stick to the Dems, you still have a problem. The same analysis is true for denigrating patriotism, mocking people's desire to drive SUV's, or telling them how they ought to live. Elites of all kinds tend to do this, but there is liberal moralizing as surely as there is conservative moralizing. Most people don't like being told that they are stupid reactionaries and/or immoral sluts will respond to such charges accordingly.

Posted by: Daniel Calto at November 14, 2003 11:40 AM | PERMALINK

>>Give me an example that you don't have to Google up as evidence for your assertion about Democratic stalwarts being contemptous about religion.

>>No problem, Judge Moore. The locals supported his rock.

Huh? The locals also supported lynching back in its day - doesn't mean it was Constitutional. And since when is Pryor a "Democratic stalwart"? And since when is respect for and upholding the US Constitution "being contemptuous about religion"? Wouldn't Moore's insistence on mixing church and state and using the state to impose his religious beliefs on others be "contemptuous" of the Constitution? What part of having a Constitution and protecting the rights of the minorities do you have a problem with? I really don't get it.

Posted by: Andy at November 14, 2003 11:40 AM | PERMALINK

Today's GOP: they've been concscienceless, stupid goons for years, now they've added whining to their repertoire. I just look forward to the verdict of history.
Because there will be one.

Posted by: John Isbell at November 14, 2003 11:41 AM | PERMALINK

BTW I have every intention of moderating my language. I just did, in my previous comment.

Posted by: John Isbell at November 14, 2003 11:43 AM | PERMALINK

BTW, I agree with you that removing both Moore and his monument was proper. That guy was flouting a court order, and deserves to be removed as an officer of the court.

Moore's removal, and the Supreme Court's recent decision to hear the Guantanamo case, tends to demonstrate that the U.S. as police state of civil liberties nightmare meme is a little overblown; the U.S. has a very substantial capacity to rectify its errors; we continue to have separration of powers; and regardless of how much one despises the occupant of the White House it's a certainty that that person will eventually be gone.

Posted by: Daniel Calto at November 14, 2003 11:44 AM | PERMALINK

this whole civility thing is just republican whining and should be ignored by democrats. the whole point of the democratic party is to criticize and oppose the republican party. this just gives us an opportunity to criticize them for being a bunch of crybabies on top of everything else. bring it on.

Posted by: Olaf, glad and big at November 14, 2003 11:45 AM | PERMALINK

Who asked for the religious example? Last time, it doesn't matter whether you think it was being contemptuous toward religion, it matters whether the religious think it was being contemptuous toward religion.

My new thoughts are that Mr Drum was so proud of that post with 337 comments that he was looking for a topic that could beat it. My prediction: he will be successful.

Posted by: Ron at November 14, 2003 11:46 AM | PERMALINK

I doesn't even need to be true that the Dems are contemptuous of religion--if the perception is there, and the Republicans can make this simplification stick to the Dems, you still have a problem.

Agreed, but let's remember it is in fact a false perception. There's nothing wrong with sticking up for the First Amendment, certainly. And as I recall, Jimmy Carter is one of the most honestly religious Presidents to ever serve in that office. 'Nuff said.

Posted by: David W. at November 14, 2003 11:48 AM | PERMALINK

We're human, we let our side slide when being objectionable even if we can also be over the top indignant when the other side does something comparable.

Ryan, the point is, as you will realise if you read this thread from the start, that Ron has been virtuously complaining about how badly both sides behave. Hence my question to him: if he's ready enough to tell left-wingers they ought to stop, why isn't he as ready to tell right-wingers they ought to stop, if (and it's a big "if") he does actually think both sides are behaving equally badly?

The answer, I suspect, is that when right-wingers are criticized they get much more vicious than left-wingers do...

Ron: I did't know you had a blog (shows how much attention I've been paying). Any right-wing mouth breathers hang out there? I'll come over and pound them for you.

Well, thanks... I think. I don't have a blog, I have a livejournal, and I don't get all that many right-wing mouth breathers.

The blog I linked to is someone else's: I posted a comment in a thread that I felt was unfairly bashing "the right" because of some peculiarly poisonous comments made by a few right-wingers about Jessica Lynch.

Posted by: Jesurgislac at November 14, 2003 11:48 AM | PERMALINK

nor do I appreciate it when Bush-haters blithely accuse the President of being a liar, a rapacious ultracapitalist, a moronic ultrareligious hick, and a warmonger

neither do I, but with all due respect this raises the "Shape of the world: views differ" problem. empirically speaking, Bush is a liar for any reasonable definition thereof, so unless you want to abandon empiricism altogether let's just pass over that one.

rapacious ultracapitalist and moronic ultrareligious hick are both very vague, very loaded expressions which interfere with reasoned analysis and polarize debate without adding any content. if you want to determine whether the Bush administration systematically pursues the interests of large corporations in preference to the interests of small corporations and the general public then all you have to do is look at their policy record (I happen to agree with this premise).

if you want to determine whether GW's personal philosophy and background are provincial and fundamentalist in nature then all you have to do is look at his actions (I happen to disagree with this premise)

warmonger is problematic. the American Heritage and Webster definitions are way too simplistic. AH's primary - "One who advocates or attempts to stir up war" - works great if you're a flaming lefty who wants to call Bush a warmonger, but precludes any mention of motivation or circumstance, which is a more interesting question. anybody here got a NOAD? what do you think "warmonger" means?

what I'm getting at is that demagoguery is not an indication that a particular argument is mistaken, unworthy of clarification, or beneath notice. I personally am pissed off (see eyelessgame's 10:30 post) because I feel that the Bush administration has been characterized by deliberate attacks on separation of powers, freedom of speech, due process, and rule of law in general. you may disagree, but if in a fit of pique I (or more likely grytpype) call GW a liar, a rapacious ultracapitalist, and a warmonger, it's not because I or others don't have a coherent case.

When someone can point out Ashcroft's concentration camps and gulags to me I will take the accusation seriously.

is this some kind of sick sarcasm?

Posted by: radish at November 14, 2003 11:51 AM | PERMALINK

"The verdict of history"

Ann Coulter writes a book praising McCarthy.
This group in WH wants to attack the new deal, and even before, the LaFollette progressives, and, hell most aint too happy about TR.

They defend their past (Republicans) and keep fighting the old battles without most of America realizing why. Because of the consistency...this is the party of Haldeman and McCarthy and Rutherford Hayes.....and I think John Calhoun

Modern republicans realize that all the past crimes belong to them, just as Southerners will spend another century fearing a black backlash. Why Guilt and fear and empathy for lynchers in all forms.....hate is the flowing blood of republicanism, it is why the party was born and why it exists

Posted by: bob mcmanus at November 14, 2003 11:53 AM | PERMALINK

I don't get all that many right-wing mouth breathers.

I'll start advertising on LGF for ya so you can get some:)

Posted by: Ron at November 14, 2003 11:55 AM | PERMALINK

>>Last time, it doesn't matter whether you think it was being contemptuous toward religion, it matters whether the religious think it was being contemptuous toward religion.

you know Ron - on a different thread yesterday, or the day before, you went on about how you couldn't understand why liberals were afraid of religion - or some such sentiment - and this is a perfect example - according to you, it doesn't matter that a serious Constitutional principle that protects us all is being trampled on - that what matters is how the religious percieve it (if I'm understanding your point here correctly). So basically a principle FUNDAMENTAL to ALL Americans is being recast and redefined solely by one group and anyone who objects or points out the Constitutional problem with that is being cast, not as defending our common Constitutional heritage and rights, but solely as *contemptuous* of that group. And then you wonder why "liberals" have an animosity toward religion? Why does the Christian right have an animosity toward the Constitution - or am I being "contemptuous toward religion" for asking the question?

Posted by: Andy X at November 14, 2003 11:55 AM | PERMALINK

In the interest of blowing the 337 out of the water, I'm commenting yet again--last time, I promise. Olaf, the purpose of th Democratic party is not to criticize and oppose the Republican Party, it's to win elections and govern based on some positive principles.

I think this only makes the point that the Bush-obsession is bad for the Dems. Think outside the Bush-hatin' box and it's more likely the Dems will actually win in 2004.

Posted by: Daniel Calto at November 14, 2003 11:56 AM | PERMALINK

"Ryan, the point is, as you will realise if you read this thread from the start, that Ron has been virtuously complaining about how badly both sides behave. Hence my question to him: if he's ready enough to tell left-wingers they ought to stop, why isn't he as ready to tell right-wingers they ought to stop, if (and it's a big "if") he does actually think both sides are behaving equally badly?"

Fair enough. That's what I get for stepping in.

Posted by: Ryan at November 14, 2003 11:57 AM | PERMALINK

Who asked for the religious example? Last time, it doesn't matter whether you think it was being contemptuous toward religion, it matters whether the religious think it was being contemptuous toward religion.

I asked for the example, thankyouverymuch. I asked because I thought a concrete example of such contempt towards religion was in order. Because many times such assertions get a pass without much scrutiny. Is removing Moore's rock *really* contemptuous of religion? Why do you think so, if you do? Might it be possible that Moore is grandstanding? Or even possible that he really does think the Ten Commandments should have legal standing under U.S. law? If so, I would think that would concern you, for what I hope are obvious reasons.

Posted by: David W. at November 14, 2003 11:58 AM | PERMALINK

I think that there are some people in the Republican party who do not just want to keep the reins of power, but want to eliminate the opposition. They want to relegate the Democrats to the dust bin. So here we are spending all this energy defending ourselves, against ridiculous claims of being anti-American, unpatriotic, uncivil and just being haters.

Reasonable people can disagree with the policies of this government, and it doesn't make them any of those things. What I see that I find disheartening is that the reasonable people are being lumped in with the far fringes, and that they are being expected to take responsiblity for all the varied opinions that might be expressed.

A difference here between the Republicans and the Democrats is that the far fringes of the Republican party happen to have a much greater proportion of power within their party than the fringes of the Democrats have within their party - evidenced by the passing of the Iraq resolution, for example - if the leaders of ANSWER had as much power on the left as the Grover Nordquists have on the right, it would have been a huge battle in Congress.

I do think there is a tendency on the right to equate their politics with their religion, which diminshes both, imo. I agree with a previous poster that too many people have deified the Republican leadership.

And if there was only one place in the world where it was okay to boo your president, America should be that place. Come on! It's our job as citizens to examine what they are doing and criticize it if necessary! And I really think that when there are millions of people out of work, that when homelessness has increased by 137% in my neck of the woods in the past 2 years (and most of those homeless are veterans), when we have millions of children with no health insurance, when we have men and women dying every day in the desert, when we were brought to war on evidence that turned out to be untrue - well, gosh, there's a lot to criticize in the way the current administration does business.

Posted by: maurinsky at November 14, 2003 12:00 PM | PERMALINK

"but I want to know why these guys all think that it's liberals who should back down, rather than the conservatives who are the original rage-meisters and continue to shout from the rooftops to this day"

Bullies hate challenges to their perceived sense of dominance. When their targets decide to stop being victims and to fight back, bullies respond first by behaving even more viciously. They "should" hold out the olive branch first, but they won't. The best strategy is to remain steadfast, spot their weaknesses, and wipe the floor with them.

Posted by: James at November 14, 2003 12:00 PM | PERMALINK

NC: "Comparing Bush to Hitler and Stalin (no matter how tongue-in-cheek--and by the way I don't think this was tongue-in-cheek) displays a high level of stupidity and ignorance. When someone can point out Ashcroft's concentration camps and gulags to me I will take the accusation seriously."

It's been pointed out, but seriously, you make me laugh. Guantanamo. Hello??????????????

G-mo is an utter disgrace, and an embarassment to our great country.

BTW, crazy lefties aren't the only ones who dislike Johnny A--Eagle Forum and others despise what he's doing too...

Posted by: TolucaJim at November 14, 2003 12:03 PM | PERMALINK

While I agree that American politics has always been a knockdown dragout - many historians will insist that the election of 1800 was as ugly as any we've had - what I think *is* new is the way in which today's Republicans tend to think of Democrats/liberals as an "enemy" that must be marginalized (if not actually eliminated). Abraham Lincoln was an antiwar Congressman during the Mexican War and offered many quite pointed criticisms of President Polk - but AFAIK no one accused him of being "objectively pro-Mexican" or asked why he hated America. Yes, the parties in their various incarnations have always had vigorous disagreements, but only within the last couple of decades (again, as far as I know) have we seen the widespread acceptance that one of the parties should not be allowed to have a say.

I've been watching these people (i.e., the GOP) over the last twenty years and I'm convinced there's nothing they won't do to consolidate their power. They are contemptuous of compromise. So when did it start? IMO it began when the extremists in the GOP - the people that other longtime Republicans sometimes described as "scary" - began taking over in 1980.

Posted by: Silence Dogood at November 14, 2003 12:03 PM | PERMALINK

McManus:

Lincoln was a Republican, and most of the most virulent opponents of civil rights in the South were Democrats. "All the past crimes belong to them?" I don't think you know what the hell you're talking about. You certainly don't seem to know even basic facts about history.

Saying the Republicans are the party of Haldeman and McCarthy and Rutherford B. Hayes is like saying the Democrats are the party of Bull Connor and Marion Barry and Gov. Faubus.

The Republicans are also the party of Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt, just as the Democrats are the party of such great Presidents as FDR. Hell, even Nixon, much as I couldn't stand him, was critical in making an opening to China, and thus positively altering the course of history.

Posted by: Daniel Calto at November 14, 2003 12:05 PM | PERMALINK

With regards to the religion comments, wasn't this country founded impart on the concept of protecting the minority from the tyranny of the majority? Whether or not the majority sides with Moore is irrelevant, it was unconstitutional to place that monument in the courthouse.

Posted by: Moroboshi at November 14, 2003 12:07 PM | PERMALINK

The best strategy is ostracism, to make casual Repubs reponsible for the actions. Those who will say maybe Delay goes too far, or i don't agree with everything in the platform

McCain and Rudman are utterly despicable.

My wife brought her eighty year grandmother to dinner, she was wearing a Bush button. I got up and left the table

Posted by: bob mcmanus at November 14, 2003 12:08 PM | PERMALINK

I've been saying for months that dialogue is no longer possible because the controlling majority on the other side does not want dialogue. Any overtures on our part will be met with game-playing and monkeywrenching.

There are moderates who we need to convince, but they're not the people who strut around calling themselves moderates and picking fights with liberals on comment boards (and moderate Democrats too -- these guys will turn on you in the snap of a finger, as Kevin found out).

Can anyone even imagine learning anything from "Al"? (MUCH LESS teaching him anything!) The guy is a right-wing-talking-point generator and that's all he is. Artificial stupidity that doesn't pass the Turing test.

All this makes it tough for moderate, rational Republicans. They do have an option, though. they can quit supporting DeLay, Frist, and Bush. But when they come around shouting about their minimum conditions for switching I can't take them seriously. As long as they're on the Bush team, there's no talking to them.

Right now Tacitus is huffing and puffing on Pandagon because he says Jesse cruelly and viciously misinterpreted an elaborate, murderous fantasy published on a Christian site. The Christian did NOT advocate murdering 21 Senators and 5 Supreme Court justices (all of whom he named); he explicitly said it would not be a good idea. But he developed the fantasy in very considerable detail. Suppose a liberal wrote exactly the same kind of thing, changing the targets as necessary -- how would the right react? Do we even have to ask?

Moderate Democrats like Kristoff have to open their eyes and figure out what's really happening.

As for reasonable conservatives and moderate Republicans -- they should caucus with the unicorns, griffins, whooping cranes, dodos, and other mythical, extinct, and endangered species. There's plenty of room for them over on this side, but if they insist on keeping up their charade, we can't stop them.

Posted by: Zizka at November 14, 2003 12:09 PM | PERMALINK

My wife brought her eighty year grandmother to dinner, she was wearing a Bush button. I got up and left the table

Troll.

Posted by: David W. at November 14, 2003 12:10 PM | PERMALINK

Daniel Calto: "Lincoln was a Republican, and most of the most virulent opponents of civil rights in the South were Democrats."

True, but only facially. All those old anti-civil rights "democrats" have since flocked to the Republican side (see Strom Thurmond, et al.).

Today's Democratic party is the spiritual heir to Lincoln's legacy; today's Republican party (constantly yammering on about state's rights and filled with those CCC/HaleyBarbour/TrentLott racist types) is the spiritual, and indeed (until Strom kicked it) the actual physical heirs of Jeff Davis and co.

Posted by: TolucaJim at November 14, 2003 12:11 PM | PERMALINK

Yes indeedy Lincoln was a republican, and the civil war was a war of hate.....not the love of black slaves, but the hatred of white slaveholders

Self-righteous, uncompromising, religious based hatred.......yup that is where the republicans began......at antietam and gettysburg

Posted by: bob mcmanus at November 14, 2003 12:11 PM | PERMALINK

Daniel Calto -- if you want a laugh, read up on all the resistance there is to putting up a statue of Lincoln in staunchly-Republican Richmond, Va. HINT: it's coming from members of a major party, and they're not democrats.

Posted by: Zizka at November 14, 2003 12:11 PM | PERMALINK

Speaking of right wing vitriol, here's an example of the Republican right's downright pathological hatred of Democrats.

I don't know about you but fantasies about killing Democratic Senators go a bit beyond the pale for me.

Posted by: Tom Spencer at November 14, 2003 12:15 PM | PERMALINK

"While I agree that American politics has always been a knockdown dragout - many historians will insist that the election of 1800 was as ugly as any we've had -"

Fascinating stuff isn't it?

"what I think *is* new is the way in which today's Republicans tend to think of Democrats/liberals as an "enemy" that must be marginalized (if not actually eliminated)."

I am not so sure. Marginalization of opposition has been the goal of many movements and parties over time. Though I would agree the interpretation and designation of someone as an enemy is something that may have been taken a bit more seriously back in the day.

"Abraham Lincoln was an antiwar Congressman during the Mexican War and offered many quite pointed criticisms of President Polk - but AFAIK no one accused him of being "objectively pro-Mexican" or asked why he hated America."

Kind of non-sequitur as the nation still thought of themselves in more regional terms. National pride was still in its infancy to a degree. More plasuible that Lincoln could be called anti-Texas or anti-South than anti-American.Though again, to my knowledge he was not called such for his Mexican war position. I would have to read up some more though.

"Yes, the parties in their various incarnations have always had vigorous disagreements, but only within the last couple of decades (again, as far as I know) have we seen the widespread acceptance that one of the parties should not be allowed to have a say."

I would disagree just a little here. The Dem dominance of Congressional politics durin ghte 20th century brought about built in advantages of marginalization. But I think you are getting to the mentality aspect which I see far too often on both sides though far more on the right side of the aisle.

Too many of us do not take Voltaire to heart.

Posted by: Ryan at November 14, 2003 12:18 PM | PERMALINK

I don't know about you but fantasies about killing Democratic Senators go a bit beyond the pale for me.

Sounds more like an over-the-top plot for a political thriller to me. I prefer Richard North Patterson's novels when it comes to that sort of thing, myself.

Posted by: David W. at November 14, 2003 12:22 PM | PERMALINK

The best strategy is ostracism, to make casual Repubs reponsible for the actions.

I disagree. that way lies madness. ostracism works only in small, homogenous groups of people and even then it's a sucky practice.

anything that gets people talking about actual policy (rather than party affiliation) is good for the country.

Posted by: radish at November 14, 2003 12:22 PM | PERMALINK

One more on the Judge Moore imbroglio:

Just FYI, from what I read this morning, the panel of judges which voted unanimously to remove him from his position has both Democratic and Republican members. How does this fit with the liberals hate religion theme?

Also--suppose the Ten Commandments monument was instead a giant Koran put in place by a devoutly Islamic judge. I think there would have been howls of outrage from the Christian right that would have been heard from Alabama to the Pacific. And I don't think we'd be hearing the same arguments that people who were offended by the presence of the monument hated religion.

Posted by: tendancer at November 14, 2003 12:25 PM | PERMALINK

"When someone can point out Ashcroft's concentration camps and gulags to me I will take the accusation seriously."

Yo ostrich, ever hear of Guantanomo Bay? Oh really? You're alive, then? Good. Look at this:

Thousands of "scary" humans who had done absolutely nothing wrong have been detained, lied to, and deported. Then they're put in a gulag, raped, tortured, and left to rot.

I hate Bush for pissing on all the graves of the men who have died fighting for Democracy. When he stole the election and refused to count votes--men have held their intestines in their hands to make sure votes are counted--I've hated him for it.

I'm not a Democratic candidate. I don't have to be rational or cool or good or whatever the fuck y'all think I should be. Mind your own business, god damn nosy gotta-legislate-your-bedroom-Republicans. Man I hate nosy people who tell me what to do.

Personally I don't give a rat's ass what these media whores yap about. Their whole profession is in complete disgrace, they're just too stupid to know it.

I flip off Republicans on the freeway. I give away gobs of money to my Dem primary candidate. I write and publish whenever I can.

Bush is an illegitimate liar who has millions of gallons of blood on his hands. You don't like it I think so, tough shit.

Posted by: paradox at November 14, 2003 12:27 PM | PERMALINK

I'm certainly not going to argue that all the old white racists in the South haven't found a new home with the Republicans--witness the election of Haley Barbour, who is not only questionable on the racial question, but also a K street fat cat. But being a Democrat hardly means one is exempted from being a racist. I grew up in Chicago, overwhelmingly Dem, also plenty racist.
Does anybody remember Mayor Daley?

I also lived in the South for a long time, and I can tell you that not every white guy there is a KKK'er.

I would say that we're all the inheritors of Lincoln's legacy, excepting the racists, America-haters, and wingnuts in both camps. Or at least we should be.

Posted by: Daniel Calto at November 14, 2003 12:28 PM | PERMALINK

Yeah and the guy in Bavaria who got a nice mayor job, turned his back to what Heydrich was doing, and hell kept the mayor job after the war

My stomach turns when I see Bob Dole doing commercials on TV, let alone running for president
The guy was an utter monster in the early seventies defending the indefensible with utter conviction and passion. (Let alone how he treated his first wife)

There has to be consequences for this stuff, or they will just repeat it. Duh, they are repeating it.

Ostracism. Make it personal. The political is the personal. It is for them, and has to be for us

Posted by: bob mcmanus at November 14, 2003 12:32 PM | PERMALINK

True enough Daniel. No side is perfect.

But answer this question:

Which current political party--the Democrats of 14 Nov. 2003, or the Republicans of 14 Nov. 2003--has a greater claim to the legacy of Lincoln?

The answer is undeniably the Democrats.

Lincoln fought a war over a strong federal government.
Grover Norquist wants to drown it in his bathtub.

Lincoln fought a war that ended up freeing the slaves.
Republicans run Haley Barbour as a gubernatorial candidate--and win. Republicans have Rick "man-on-dog" Santorum as their #3 guy in the Senate (and I think homosexuality today is decent barometer for slavery in the past--that is, Jeff Davis and co wanted to deny basic rights to a whole class of people based on superficial distinctions; Rick Santorum & co also want to discriminate against and deny rights to a whole class of people based on a superficial distinction).

Posted by: TolucaJim at November 14, 2003 12:34 PM | PERMALINK

I posted the following over at Body and Soul, but it seems germane here too:

I'm been mulling this one over for a while and have started wondering if there is a lesson in this meme that the Left really needs to understand. First of all, this conservative outrage at liberal disgust with Bush is useful because it hits the Left in a vulnerable spot. Not the fact that we may dislike Bush, although that is what we are responding to. Rather, raising the issue is useful because the Left is deeply susceptible to stopping for a moment of self-reflection, to looking inwards to see if indeed it is true.

As someone somewhere wrote recently (Ivo Daalder maybe? In an interview about his new book America Unbound: The Bush Revolution in Foreign Policy), Bush and his team do not negotiate with themselves. In other words, unlike Clinton and even Bush I, they do not try to understand the other side and come to some moderated position that the other side can support.

Taking off from that idea, I think that the Right generally has stopped negotiating with the other side (i.e. us). Which leads me to make the gross generalization that they see no use in turning inward as the Left does and being self-critical. In fact, I get the sense that the Right thinks of that as our weakness. And so in debates like this one about liberal outrage, they use our weakness against us.

True to form, we respond, with the net effect being that we back off. Not because the Right has some rational argument that wins us over, but because we collectively disagree with the lack of balance we'd have to have within ourselves to hate Bush as much as the Right hated Clinton.

I'm not trying claim a moral superiority here (although I'm getting closer to it every day); instead I'm trying to identify the cultural foundation of the Left's response. And to identify how the Right has learned how to use that against us. The lesson, if there is one, is that we probably have to find a way to convert that supposed weakness into a strength again to kick conservative ass.

Posted by: ccobb at November 14, 2003 12:36 PM | PERMALINK

Numbers are close...like 40 percent of the US Navy was black in 1875, 1 percent in 1900. "Jim Crow" was a deal struck by Repubs in 1870's to get Hayes elected. And Dems in Alabama were'nt all excited about who got the NY port authority job. So we got a hundred years of pain.

And which party was in power when the Indians finally got exterminated?

Who becomes a Republican and why they all become monsters, with a hundred and fifty years of examples to learn from, is a little too deep for me. But I believe there is a direct relationship between party affiliation and despicable character

Posted by: bob mcmanus at November 14, 2003 12:47 PM | PERMALINK

magenta and tolucajim:

With due respect to each of you, there may be good arguments as to why Gitmo is not a good idea (though I happen to believe its probably the best solution available to us at the moment), but comparing Gitmo to Hitler's concentration camps or Stalin's gulags is truly comparing apples to oranges, or more accurately, apples to the poisoned dates prepared by that bearded, turbaned Nazi agent in Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Can you explain to me why Gitmo is remotely like a concentration camp or a gulag? If I remember the history of the Holocaust, the folks who went in Hitler's concentration camps, often--by design--did not come out. I don't recall any ovens or showers being set up in Gitmo. As for Stalin's Gulags, a read through Solzhenitsyn's A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich or the Gulag Archipelago will disabuse any notion that Gitmo is any way comparable to Stalin's camps. German concentration camps and Soviet gulags were designed to hold the unwanted members of German (or more broadly European) and Soviet society respectively. Killing the inmates was, in many cases, the purpose of the German camps, and a clearly understood, and not undesired byproduct, of the Soviet work camps.

Gitmo is a holding area for enemy combantants who were waging war on the US. Gitmo is not a concentration camp and Bush is not Hitler.

Moreover, given the ongoing danger of terrorist incidents, I am not sure releasing all of the Gitmo detainees is a particularly wise move (either on policy or political grounds).

Posted by: nce at November 14, 2003 12:49 PM | PERMALINK

Can we not blur the historical background by assuming party allegiances have been consistently right=Republican, left=Democratic?
Let's just look at historical figures against the right-left spectrum of their time (although it gets very murky before Andrew Jackson...).
I think we can then see that on the plus side, the left has Jackson, Lincoln, Samuel Gompers, Wilson, FDR, Truman, JFK, MLK. On the minus it has LBJ and Communist spies.
The right has, on the plus side...OK...still thinking...maybe Ike can be counted on their side. To the minus it has the Confederacy, John Wilkes Booth, Nathan Bedford Forrest, McKinley, J. Edgar Hoover, Joe McCarthy, Bull Connor &Co., and Nixon(I'm counting TR and Bryan as populists/independents, if you please).

Any guesses as to where the judgment of history is going to place the current regime?

Posted by: Social Scientist at November 14, 2003 12:50 PM | PERMALINK

ccobb says
I think that the Right generally has stopped negotiating with the other side...

I've been thinking that the Repubs were in the minority (at least in Congress) for so long, that they became good at being the party out of power, while the Dems became good at being the party in power.

Now, the roles are switched, and I don't see where the Repubs have adjusted (your comment was right) nor do I see where the Dems have adjusted (they seem to think they should have just as much control as they used to have).

I think that the problem lies with both parties, for not being able to deal with their new roles.

Posted by: Ron at November 14, 2003 12:50 PM | PERMALINK

"But I believe there is a direct relationship between party affiliation and despicable character"

I must laugh at this inflation of your own sense of moral superiority. Especially as you exhibit one of the worst qualities attributed to conservatives and the right...black and white thinking.

Posted by: Ryan at November 14, 2003 12:52 PM | PERMALINK

When someone can point out Ashcroft's concentration camps and gulags to me I will take the accusation seriously.

Posted by nc at November 14, 2003 11:13 AM

What a maroon. Toluca Jim called this one and I just have to chime in: Hellooo!!! Guantanamo Bay!!!

Posted by: Temperance at November 14, 2003 12:54 PM | PERMALINK

"Can anyone even imagine learning anything from "Al"? (MUCH LESS teaching him anything!) The guy is a right-wing-talking-point generator and that's all he is. Artificial stupidity that doesn't pass the Turing test."

Yep, I'm MUCH (love those caps) worse than:

"Thousands of "scary" humans who had done absolutely nothing wrong have been detained, lied to, and deported. Then they're put in a gulag, raped, tortured, and left to rot.

I think he's got all the left-wing-talking-points (to quote Zizka): Bush raping and torturing prisoners... Bush pissing on veterans graves... Bush stole the election... anything missing? Ooops, looks like he forgot Cheney's war for oil and Halliburton!

The worse thing is, probably half of y'all agree with him... which pretty much proves the point that Dems today are not any better than Reps yesterday.

I will agree with Bob McManus on this point, though: "There has to be consequences for this stuff, or they will just repeat it." Republicans got theirs in the 1998 election for what they did in impeachment. And the Dems will get theirs in 2004, when Bush crushes Dean...

Posted by: Al at November 14, 2003 12:54 PM | PERMALINK

Ccobb: There is a liberal belief in reasonableness and discussion which hurts us in streetfighting activities such as politics. And there are plenty of trolls who presume on our reasonableness, and try to keep us tied down proving we're not "just as bad", etc. We have to deal with that kind of shit, but if we actually listen to them and think abouyt what they're saying, we hurt ourselves.

Because what it is is trash talk. It's like we're stopping and asking ourselves "Gee! Is my mother really a ho'? I don't think so, but I'll have to ask her if she has anything in her past I don't know about".

During the game you don't really chat with the other side. And really, everyone's on one side or the other. You actually don't want a bunch of people wandering around the court wondering what's going on. The Republicans certainly don't put up with that kind of BS.

And as I keep saying, being partisan is good. If you don't like partisanship, go to China (one-party system) or Saudi Arabia (zero-party system). When members of one party criticize the other party, they're doing their job. That's what they're there for. Right now Bush is fucking up royally, and we're darn lucky we've got a two-party system, because that way someone might call him to account. (Unfortunately sometimes it seems that we have a 1.51 party system, with the Dems counting 0.5 and the Greens 0.01

Posted by: Zizka at November 14, 2003 12:58 PM | PERMALINK

TolucaJim:

Yes, as a lifelong Democrat I would agree that the Democrats are generally more inclusive. But I also think that the Dems increasingly have become captive to particular intrests groups at the expense of the general interest (ie. teachers' unions vs. educational experimentation), and are too often PC, which can be its own form of discrimination. I can't stand
Ann Coulter or Rick Santorum either, but I don't like equated them with the garden-variety Republican; nor is it even remotely fair to make such crude sloganeering as Republicans=racists, or the they-don't-deserve-to be-talked-to silliness, which is all too common on the left.

I also supported the war in Iraq, and continue to do so, on both national security and human rights grounds. The left was horribly conflicted about the war, and I thought their arguments were very weak conceptually, that they proffered no clear alternatives, and didn't convince me that they really cared about the consequences for Iraqis of continued inaction.

For this, I have been relentlessly pillioried by members of my own party, called a "fascist" more times than I can count, called a bloody-minded warmonger and accused on not giving a damn about American troop deaths, when I greatly resented, since both my father and brother are Navy vets, my brother a combat veteran.

I do think the level of vitriol among the Dems is excessive--it clearly is so in any number of comments above--and will only hurt the Democrats. It's certainly turning me off in a big way.

I have no great love for George Bush, but I don't hate him either. I think his economic polices are very unwise, but support his foreign policy in general, though certainly not in all particulars. I'm a secular New Yorker, and wouldn't live in Alabama by choice, but am not horribly bothered that most people in Alabama are conservative and religious, just as I'm not bothered that most people in San Francisco are liberal and secular. I don't think liberal Democrats hate America, but I also can think for myself and find the arguments of many anti-war supporters either highly intemperate or logically weak.

It's possible that the Republicans might actually have a few good ideas now and then. Clinton was a past master at stealing the thunder of the right by co-opting some fo their positions, a far smarter strategy than the current vitriol, to my mind.

Posted by: Daniel Calto at November 14, 2003 01:03 PM | PERMALINK

"Can we not blur the historical background by assuming party allegiances have been consistently right=Republican, left=Democratic?"

Ahhh but still the blur will exist as "right" and "left" have evolved since Jackson often switching sentiments. I think you would be better off limiting it to its more modern incarnations such as FDR and beyond.

Posted by: Ryan Cox at November 14, 2003 01:03 PM | PERMALINK

paradox is right on the money. there is a fundamental difference between bush hating and clinton hating too. bush hating is based on opposition to his policies. clinton hating was strictly personal, as is the charge of bush hating.
the republicans always get personal when they are having problems misrepresenting their policies.
right now the war they started is getting harder to portray as a success so they are using the "liberals are bad" argument.

Posted by: Olaf, glad and big at November 14, 2003 01:03 PM | PERMALINK

1998 a disaster for Repubs? didnt really notice the devastation. However, that Congress was a disaster, because that is when Repubs decided to spend us into bankruptcy, and Dems thought it was some kind of victory.

Posted by: bob mcmanus at November 14, 2003 01:03 PM | PERMALINK

Al says:

Dems today are not any better than Reps yesterday.

[snip]

Republicans got theirs in the 1998 election for what they did in impeachment. And the Dems will get theirs in 2004, when Bush crushes Dean...

Unlike the Right, the Left has too self critical a culture to let the wackos run the place. Oh, you'll get some crazies on the web or smashing in windows at WTO conferences on occasion. But by and large the Left is harsher against those who behave like that than the Right is. I've come to believe it's because the Left actually disagrees with the tactics used, whereas the Right likes the tactics but wants other targets (e.g. abortion clinics, the Clintons, the State Department).

So, to your point, if Bush "crushes" the Dems in 04, it'll be with the help of Dems crushing themselves first. Otherwise his chances are no better than 2000, and probably worse.

Posted by: ccobb at November 14, 2003 01:05 PM | PERMALINK

NCE:

thanks for your reply; I was beginning to worry you were a troll and had already wandered off. I also enjoyed your analogy incorporating a bit for the Indiana Jones movies. Amusing.

Onto substance, I have to disagree with you as to whether Gitmo is the best option open to us at the moment. I also have to disagree with you that Hitler's concentration camps have a monopoly on what the term concentration camp can mean--Gitmo is a concentration camp. According to M-W.com, the word originated in 1901, and refers to "a camp where persons (as prisoners of war, political prisoners, or refugees) are detained or confined." Just because we're not gassing the al qaeda detainees in Gitmo does NOT mean it's somehow not a concentration camp.

We should be able to charge those people one way or another. We also should not be releasing people to states where we KNOW THEY USE TORTURE. that is disgusting and loathsome, and we may as well have the blood and immorality stained all over us.

Saying that Gitmo is simply "a holding area for enemy combantants who were waging war on the US" is a bit disingenuous. it's been around 2 years now. we still don't have any real or substantive data about who's being held there. we have our CLOSEST allies (Britain) getting quite upset about their nationals rotting there. you mean to tell me we really can't trust britain to deal with their own and prosecute the war on terror?

Lastly, you said "given the ongoing danger of terrorist incidents, I am not sure releasing all of the Gitmo detainees is a particularly wise move (either on policy or political grounds)." I don't know _any_body who is advocating that. That's a total strawman argument.

I have faith in our criminal justice system and the ability to achieve justice under our constitution. Don't you? It's sad (and scary) that our current administration obviously thinks otherwise.

Posted by: TolucaJim at November 14, 2003 01:07 PM | PERMALINK

Today on the O'Really Factor:

Do liberals eat dogs? Are conservatives cat killers? Join our guests Fluffy and Bowser and watch the fur fly as they together uncover the shocking truth about the politics of pet ownership.

You'll not want to miss this incisor of a show!

Posted by: David W. at November 14, 2003 01:13 PM | PERMALINK

I just had an image of Al crying into his beer if Bush loses the election, maybe with a little snot running down his lip.
That's two images of November 2004 here now. But since I broke my damn time machine, mine says if not when. I can however tell you the Bills win the Superbowl. Who knew?

Posted by: John Isbell at November 14, 2003 01:16 PM | PERMALINK

Manhattan Dan had the line....if not the post...of the day:

This country is scary. I can't wait until Bush arrives in London and tries to speak English.

Yea verily....I am on the floor in full chortle mode...

http://www.chortle.co.uk/

Posted by: -pea- at November 14, 2003 01:16 PM | PERMALINK

Why the heck would a media bubbly like Coulter write a book defending the McCarthy years? What does it mean?

Cause the right thinks is fighting a war that is at least 1 hundred, maybe 500 years old, and knows and loves all the heroes of its fight. It is the same war the same fight. Modern repubs do not feel distant from Burke, they feel comtemporaneous with him.

Bush may not be able to name the President of India, but I bet he knows who Jonathan Edwards is, and that there two Wesley Bros.

Policy, prescription drugs and Guantamano..... what a joke. Dems don't have a clue what they up against

Posted by: bob mcmanus at November 14, 2003 01:22 PM | PERMALINK

nce, if you don't like the Gulag or concentration camp comparison, try Manzanar. There are a lot of folks here in Hawai'i who have unpleasant memories of it and places like it.

Posted by: Linkmeister at November 14, 2003 01:23 PM | PERMALINK

Daniel

Thanks for the post. It was very thoughtful and contained some good points.

I want to respond to a few things you mention tho.

"But I also think that the Dems increasingly have become captive to particular intrests groups at the expense of the general interest (ie. teachers' unions vs. educational experimentation), and are too often PC, which can be its own form of discrimination."
Sure, that may be so. Please don't abandon us over this tho. Surely you see the GOP is _just as_ if not _more_ captive to its interest groups (religious right, ultrabigbusiness, southern bigots). I think it's better to be captive to a labor union than to a bunch of folks who think matthew sheperd's death was a good thing (or to big business, who want less and less oversight, so they can merrily pollute our environment or poison our citizens, while getting tax breaks, and hopefully "tort reform" so that they can't be held accountable for their atrocities).

"I can't stand Ann Coulter or Rick Santorum either, but I don't like equated them with the garden-variety Republican; nor is it even remotely fair to make such crude sloganeering as Republicans=racists, or the they-don't-deserve-to be-talked-to silliness, which is all too common on the left."
Ann Coulter you can dismiss, but Rick Santorum you cannot. He is the number #3 GOP senator!! He holds a position of power in the party. He is a major leader in the party. Don't tell me it's unfair to equate "garden-variety republicans" with him--he's _their leader_. if they don't like it, these supposed "garden-variety" and moderate republicans need to show it and stop voting GOP.

"I also supported the war in Iraq, and continue to do so, on both national security and human rights grounds. The left was horribly conflicted about the war, and I thought their arguments were very weak conceptually, that they proffered no clear alternatives, and didn't convince me that they really cared about the consequences for Iraqis of continued inaction."

Yes, there were a lot of lunatics on the left. But not many were calling for continued inaction. I wanted continued stiff inspections, and if further incooperation persisted, a genuine effort to reach out and demand that our international partners recognize and DO something about it. Bushco were clearly uninterested in even trying to build bridges (let me be clear--the French suck, and they are almost equally bad, as they made it fairly clear they weren't going to be receptive to much of anything). but "old europe" type posturing was embarassing.

"For this, I have been relentlessly pillioried by members of my own party, called a "fascist" more times than I can count, called a bloody-minded warmonger and accused on not giving a damn about American troop deaths, when I greatly resented, since both my father and brother are Navy vets, my brother a combat veteran. "
I'm sorry. for opposing this deceitful, ill-advised and rushed war, i've been calling unamerican, objectively pro-saddam, accused of aiding and abetting the terrorists, etc etc

"I do think the level of vitriol among the Dems is excessive--it clearly is so in any number of comments above--and will only hurt the Democrats. It's certainly turning me off in a big way."

I'm very sorry, and I sincerely hope we don't lose you.

"It's possible that the Republicans might actually have a few good ideas now and then."

that is true, but these republicans have far, far too many bad ideas to support. Government-funded religion is bad. dismantling our regulatory system to the ever-increasing profits of big-business is bad. engendering the hate of nearly the entire world is bad. attempts to amend the constitution to discriminate against gays is bad.

these folks must be defeated. i really hope you join us in defeating them. if they win again, i'm afraid our country is going to be unrecognizable.

Posted by: TolucaJim at November 14, 2003 01:24 PM | PERMALINK

I think Daniel Calto (upthread) is the political center right now. Take note.

Posted by: praktike at November 14, 2003 01:28 PM | PERMALINK

Dear Democrats,

When being shot at, you don't have to apologize for shooting back. If you believe there is any chance of reasoned discourse with the current Republican Party leadership, then you have completely misapprehended their goals.

They are more likely to start physically assaulting you at political rallies than to revert to statesmanlike discourse. Fascist movements don't play nice.

Posted by: AngryElephant at November 14, 2003 01:29 PM | PERMALINK

Hi Al!

If I saw you on the street I'd say "Afternoon, sir," and really mean it.

If I saw you at a pro-Republican rally I'd just move on and let you have your fun. People have a right to politically protest.

If I saw you at church I'd sincerely wish that "the peace of the lord be with you" (I'm there every Sunday).

Yeah once in a while I lose it and flip of a Republican on the freeway. I'm still a Navy vet, still a father, still trying to be the best citizen I can be. Becuase that's what I'm supposed to do.

I hate Republicans for what I perceive they're doing to my country. It's mine too, you know. The point here is that I'm a good person who treats all with respect. I'm passionate about my politics and I treat fools on these threads brutally. They deserve it.

I'm not some crazy fringe lefty--lol, I like regulated capitalism. I just hate republican policy. It may seem like a total mystery to you but I assure it's a perfectly rational and legitimate intellectual position to take.

Posted by: paradox at November 14, 2003 01:40 PM | PERMALINK

a holding area for enemy combantants who were waging war on the US

the problem with this argument is that if that is what Gitmo is, then it is also squarely and unmistakably a violation of the Geneva Convention.

if you don't like awkward comparisons you need to debunk them. for example I'd love to hear why our disregard for the Geneva Convention and UN Charter is either legally or morally justified while Germany's disregard for the Treaty of Versailles was not.

Posted by: radish at November 14, 2003 01:41 PM | PERMALINK

There is one thing that ignites a flicker of hope in me. It may be only a wild hope, but at least it's something to cling to.

I'm reading Kevin Phillips' "Wealth and Democracy" (yes, I know that belongs in italics, but I'm new here and I don't know the formatting) and he points out how, since 1860, the major shifts in the American political landscape have tended to occur at intervals of 36 years: 1860 (Lincoln), 1896 (the end of the Gilded Age and the beginning of the Progressive Era), 1932 (FDR and the New Deal), and 1968 (the end of the New Deal and the beginning of the current GOP age). Guess what, kids - next year's election marks the end of that 36-year period. Here's hoping.

Posted by: Silence Dogood at November 14, 2003 01:47 PM | PERMALINK

I believe that what they are holding in Gitmo is what they term "unlawful combatants" who have no standing according to the Geneva Convention.

Combatants are required to wear uniforms or carry a designation of some type indicating that they are combatants so they can be distinguished from civilians.

Posted by: Ron at November 14, 2003 01:50 PM | PERMALINK

Why do I feel that at least some Republicans would not agree with Philips that 1968 marks the beginning of a 36 year conservative dominated era?

Posted by: bob mcmanus at November 14, 2003 01:50 PM | PERMALINK

"Why do I feel that at least some Republicans would not agree with Philips that 1968 marks the beginning of a 36 year conservative dominated era?"

Well, I don't doubt that they would do so if it served their purposes. But there have only been two Dems in the White House in that time and neither one was exactly a raging "liberal."

(It wasn't 1968, it was 1980, right? And it wasn't a 36-year era, it was the beginning of a thousand-year reich! Okay, someone slap me with a violation of Godwin's Law.)

BTW, how *do* I put something in italics?

Posted by: Silence Dogood at November 14, 2003 01:57 PM | PERMALINK

Shamelessly cribbed from ArchPundit, via Atrios, a little conservative hatred. Yes, it's for real:

Hey Commie:

Imagine my chagrin when I used a search engine to find commentary about myself, and there was your shallow, dilettante, asshole self, labeling me a "white supremacist."

Being the shallow, nigger-loving dilettante that you are, you probably DO consider niggers to be your equal (who am I to question this?): Yet, unlike you and your allies, I have an I.Q. in excess of 130, which grants me the ability to objectively evaluate the Great American Nigro (Africanus Criminalis.)

The nigro is 11.5 % of the U.S. population, yet he commits in excess of 55% of all felonies (although felonies are UNDER-represented in the nigro community, where observing the law is considered "acting White!") Moreover, he (or should I say she?)accounts for 48% of all ADC recipients in the U.S. We have spent over $7 TRILLION on "Urban Welfare Spending" since the mid-1960s, (black economists Thomas Sowell & Walter Williams) and the nigro is still as criminal, surly, lazy , violent and stupid as he/she ever was, while his illegitimacy rate is 80% nationwide, and over 90% in the "large urban areas."

By the way, those of us who tried to end forced busing in St. Louis did so because it is a colossal waste and nothing more than a symbolic gesture that has seriously deprived every school district in Missouri that doesn't benefit from a deseg program : It has cost the state of Missouri $3.5 BILLION since 1983, (another $3.5 Billion in Kansas City,) yet, the nigro "scholars" bussed to county schools under deseg "improve less academically than every other category of student in the St. Louis Public Schools," according to the Federal Court- ordered Lissitz Study.

Also, you lying asshole, in the 2003-2004 school year, St. Louis spent $11,711 per nigger -idiot in the public schools, yet, half of all students test at the 20th percentile (or lower) on nationally-standardized tests. (If I were Emperor, I would forcibly hand over you and all your commie apologists for nigro under-achievement to White, working-class parents of public school students, and let them have their way with you...)

Some day, You sanctimonious nigger-lovers will either have to live amongst them ("nothing cures an enthusiasm for integration like a good dose of niggers") or else defend yourselves against them. My guess is that you are such a cowardly and pusillanimous lot of girly-boys, they will kill fuck, kill and eat you just as they do young White males in every prison system in the U.S. That's right: When defending this savage and brutish lot, you must also consider their natural ( or should I say UN-natural) enthusiasm for buggery!

I honestly pray to God that some nigger fucks, kills and eats you and everyone you claim to love!

Earl P. Holt III
4029 Shaw Blvd.
St. Louis, MO
63110-3621

P.S. I dare you to print this e-mail verbatim: You know as well as I do that most people know I speak the truth, and you are a liar and whore who takes to heart Lenin's dictum that "The first duty of the propagandist is to subvert the meaning of words."

Posted by: David W. at November 14, 2003 01:59 PM | PERMALINK

Silence Dogood
Since Nina isn't here, you put things in [i]italics[/i] like that. Only use the greater-than and less-than signs instead of square brackets.

Posted by: Ron at November 14, 2003 02:01 PM | PERMALINK

>>Combatants are required to wear uniforms or carry a designation of some type indicating that they are combatants so they can be distinguished from civilians.

as if wearing civilian clothes helped that thousands of innocent Iraqi and Afghani civilians killed by our aerial bombing? Funny how the technical rules of warfare only apply when we can hide behind them to our advantage.

Still doesn't mean that Gitmo isn't a Concentration Camp as the term has been used since it was invented during the Boer War.

Posted by: Andy at November 14, 2003 02:03 PM | PERMALINK

At last. An honest republican! Earl Holt, I salute you

Posted by: bob mcmanus at November 14, 2003 02:04 PM | PERMALINK

Andy
I'm not going to argue over the semantics of whether Gitmo is a "concentration camp" or a "holding area". The only objection I have to "concentration camp" is that WWII somewhat affected the meaning of the phrase. But use it if you want.

As for the rest of your post, it seems to point out the importance of combatants dressing like combatants and not hiding among the civilians.

Posted by: Ron at November 14, 2003 02:08 PM | PERMALINK

I seem to recall a certain presidential condidate promising to change the discourse in Washington. Some promises about being a uniter not a divider. Oh well, I guess those promises will stay in the to-do box with 1) find bin Laden, 2) find Saddam, 3) find the anthrax killer, 4) find the CIA operative leakers, 5) rebuild Afghanistan, 6) rebuild Iraq, 7) create jobs for working people, 8) restore honor to the oval office (I guess the objectionable thing was the hummer not the lies about the hummer). What else am I missing?

Posted by: Snow at November 14, 2003 02:11 PM | PERMALINK

Why do I feel that at least some Republicans would not agree with Philips that 1968 marks the beginning of a 36 year conservative dominated era?

Isn't it dogmatic on the right that conservatives are always a persecuted majority, whose will is subjugated by the liberal elite establishment that controls society, particularly the media?

Posted by: cmdicely at November 14, 2003 02:18 PM | PERMALINK

Silence Dogood
Since Nina isn't here, you put things in [i]italics[/i] like that. Only use the greater-than and less-than signs instead of square brackets.

Thanks, Ron. I'm accustomed to message boards, where you use the brackets.

Posted by: Silence Dogood at November 14, 2003 02:22 PM | PERMALINK

Ah, but Ron, the problem with Gitmo is that it provides absolutely no tribunal, military or otherwise, to protest the decision that the captive is an illegal combatant. (The ex parte Quirin Nazi spies got military trials before execution.) The Administration's position is that the captives there have no recourse of any kind in any forum. Unlike a regular war, where at least the captives would have expectation of repatriation after the Taliban fled Kabul, we are holding them for the open-ended duration of a vague war on terror.

You might look up "Lettres-cachet" in a legal dictionary. The fact this term is French suggests that until now, the idea the Executive could order indefinite detention at whim was alien to the Anglo-American judicial system.

Posted by: Andrew Lazarus at November 14, 2003 02:24 PM | PERMALINK

Normally, when you agree that the other fellow started a fight, you also agree that it's the other fellow who should be taken to task.

Pure magic. Kevin, that has to be on of your greatest lines.

Cheers.

Posted by: freelixir at November 14, 2003 02:24 PM | PERMALINK

Silence Dogood
No problem. As I was told when italics was explained to me: always happy to promote trans-wing comity.

Posted by: Ron at November 14, 2003 02:26 PM | PERMALINK

Ron: I believe that what they are holding in Gitmo is what they term "unlawful combatants" who have no standing according to the Geneva Convention.

Except that according to the Geneva Convention, they are required to treat all captives as prisoners of war with the full protection of the relevant Geneva Convention: captives can only be stripped of the protection of the Geneva Convention after a tribunal has proven that the captive is not a prisoner of war. No such tribunals have ever taken place. (This is beside the point that many of the people held there were arrested by local police, nowhere near a war zone, and are being held with no legality at all, simply because the US has the power to detain them.)

Posted by: Jesurgislac at November 14, 2003 02:28 PM | PERMALINK

who have no standing according to the Geneva Convention

no. to begin with there is no reason to believe that they are all or even mostly unlawful combatants. also, every detainee has rights under the GC, e.g. that designations of status have to be applied and tribunals held within a reasonable time frame. if they are indeed unlawful combatants then they are entitled either to summary execution (too late for that) or fair treatment followed by a timely tribunal.

furthermore, this is precisely the kind of quibbling that pisses me off. where the hell do you get off saying that the United States of America should resort to shady legalisms in order to hold people without due process!?

Posted by: radish at November 14, 2003 02:30 PM | PERMALINK

As for the rest of your post, it seems to point out the importance of combatants dressing like combatants and not hiding among the civilians.

Actually, what it points out is the importance of not permitting the US government - or any other government - simply to decide that a civilian is allegedly a combatant, and deserves indefinite detention without tribunal, trial, legal representation, or indeed any rights whatsoever. That is the status of many of the captives in Guantanamo Bay.

Posted by: Jesurgislac at November 14, 2003 02:30 PM | PERMALINK

Tolucajim:

You raise some fair points with respect to Gitmo. I concede that the term concentration camps has (or at least had) a far broader meaning than Hitler's death camps. In fact, I believe (though I may be mistaken) that the term originated with the camps the British used to intern the Afrikaaners during the Boer Wars. Though, I also think that following the Holocaust the use of the term "concentration camp" clearly has taken on a more sinister meaning.

In any event, I was not trying to argue Gitmo was not a detention facility--clearly it is. I am simply arguing that Gitmo is not comparable to one of Hitler's camps or Stalin's gulags. Indeed, the whole point of my raising the issue of concentration camps and gulags was to ridicule the argument that Bush=Hitler/Stalin (and to address the ultimate point of this thread, that self-destructive anger irrationally leads people to compare Bush to Hitler, and consequently turns-off the vast majority of voters). As an aside, I am not accusing you of making that argument, but some posters clearly have.

As to your other points, I agree that you have raised some real problematic issues. I also agree that its fair to ask the Administration for more information about who we are holding (which Congress should clearly do--though admittedly, since Gitmo detainees don't vote that is not likely to happen anytime soon).

Radish also raised the point that if Gitmo contains enemy combatants aren't we violating the Geneva convention. I am not an expert on the Geneva convention, so I have no answer as to the international legalities of what we are doing. But I do have a couple of responses. One, I believe the administration has taken the position that we are not holding uniformed soldiers of an enemy nation, therefore the convention does not apply. Secondly, realistically, whats the alternative. Where do we release these people? Their home countries? Fine, then how do we ensure they don't decide to hjiack some cargo planes and fly them into buildings. I believe the point of the Geneva convention is to address the handling of prisoners of war when there are on-going hostilities between nation states. If you think about it that makes sense. Theoretically, you have two deterrable (sic?) actors. Each side will obey the convention because they don't want their soldiers mistreated by the other nation. In contrast, where is the nation state on the other side of our equation? Who is the other deterable actor?

Moreover, at the end of hostilities between nation states, you repatriate prisoners and assume the other country will police the behavior of its returning soldiers and ensure they do not initiate hostilities against their former enemies. In our case, I don't beleive hostilities have ended, and I have no reason to believe there is a nation that we can return these prisoners to at the moment who will ensure their behavior.

Now, all that having been said, I realize there are some thorny issues we have not addressed. One, how do we determine whether or not the people we are holding did in fact engage in hostilities against the US? Presumably, we cannot hold them forever, so when do we determine when they can be released? Do the federal courts have jurisdiction over the prisoners?

I have no good answers to these questions, but I would suggest that Congress analyze these issues. Will they? Maybe not. But, for the moment, analyzing the cost and benefits of continued detention, I believe the benefits of preventing future attacks outweigh the costs of keeping the detainees detained. Its not pretty, but neither is a plane flying into a building.

Posted by: nc at November 14, 2003 02:31 PM | PERMALINK

Abortion, gay and womens's rights, pornography,
affirmative action

Nah I don't think conservatives are ready to celebrate the thirty year Jubilee

Course those are all social issues. I have heard conservatives admit that they have managed to get control of govt spending and get taxes down to their proper point. Not :)

But Ronnie did, like Jehovah in the Sistine, or Joshua at Jericho point his index finger in the direction of Moscow(West, East,North, help me out here Nancy) and free half the world from it's chains. So maybe foreign policy until Clinton destroyed it all with a blowjob

Posted by: bob mcmanus at November 14, 2003 02:32 PM | PERMALINK

Republican/Democratic partisanship could be understood as yet another example of what Freud termed "the narcissism of small differences." Put simply, the smaller the difference between the two parties/ideologies, the greater will be the level of partisanship manifest in their political praxis. The one hates the other not because that other is so very different from the one, but rather because the other is so similar that the identity of one's own "party," in this instance, is threatened.

Posted by: sanson at November 14, 2003 02:38 PM | PERMALINK

Andrew Lazarus
The lack of uniform designated them as unlawful combatants. And, legally, they have no recourse of any kind in any forum. Now, I don't think that just because we can do anything we want to them means that we should do whatever we want to them.

If I knew the impact of releasing them, then I think I could decide whether I like them held there or not. But since I don't, I can't. Ultimately they need to be tried or released. I just don't know the timing.

Posted by: Ron at November 14, 2003 02:38 PM | PERMALINK

"I believe that what they are holding in Gitmo is what they term "unlawful combatants" who have no standing according to the Geneva Convention."

Yes, but if we accuse somebody of being an unlawful combatant, we're supposed to bring him reasonably promptly before some type of tribunal, in which he has an opportunity to defend himself. We haven't done this, needless to say.

Posted by: rea at November 14, 2003 02:39 PM | PERMALINK

I'll just add that nobody takes any shrill, hateful argument seriously. If you call your opponents liars, fascists, evil, etc., you're only appealing to people who already agree with you and repelling everyone else.

Just a thought -- the next time you want to argue your point, maybe try presenting logic and evidence.

That is all.

Posted by: Staunch Moderate at November 14, 2003 02:40 PM | PERMALINK

Wow! You guys are still here, and still carrying on at such a high plane - I wish I could believe the discourse in the congressional committees was anywhere near this level. I for one sincerely appreciate the thoughtful posts, usually the case on this blog, but especially the case in this thread.

It's Friday - Go get a beer! I wish I could buy for the house.

OT, Sen. Domenici has just announced that the Repubs have reached a compromise on the Energy Bill that, among other things, eliminates the drilling in the Wildlife Refuge; and Pres. Bush is now saying we're not leaving Iraq until we get Saddam. Both of these are sort of encouraging, don't you think?

Posted by: Granmere at November 14, 2003 02:45 PM | PERMALINK

Radish:

I think you raise some good points on the detainees. But, I want to focus on one point in particular you raised: "due process". Due process, as the term itself suggests, is not an absolute, its a sliding scale that depends on the situation. Secondly, what is the source of their "due process" rights. The Constitution? I don't believe the Gitmo detainees are US citizens or US residents, so I don't believe the Constitutional due process guarantees necessarily apply (though SCOTUS may say otherwise very soon).

All that having been said, as someone who abhores arbitrary behavior, I think we probably need to began establishing a framework for how we are going to deal with the GITMO detainees. Maybe some type of Article II Administrative courts could be established to begin hearing claims within a certain time period. Indefinite detention is not a permanent solution. But we are in a tricky, tricky area. Regardless of the legality of indefinite detention, you have to concede that as a practical matter, once we let the detainees out of Gitmo, our ability to monitor them will be very limited.

Posted by: nc at November 14, 2003 02:51 PM | PERMALINK

The lack of uniform designated them as unlawful combatants.

Not necessarily. For instance, residents who take up arms to resist an invader are not required to wear uniforms in order to be lawful combatants.

And, legally, they have no recourse of any kind in any forum.

This is debatable; under the 3rd Geneva Convention, detainees of questionable status are entitled to hearing by a competent tribunal to determine whether or not they are eligible for full protection under the convention.

I also have some qualms about infinite detention in domestic legal terms, without any controlling law or judicial process. I think the appropriate thing given existing law would be to try alleged unlawful combatants captured "on the battlefield" by courts-martial for violation of the laws of war. AFAIK, this is expressly authorized both by international and domestic law.

Posted by: cmdicely at November 14, 2003 02:51 PM | PERMALINK

"Except that according to the Geneva Convention, they are required to treat all captives as prisoners of war with the full protection of the relevant Geneva Convention: captives can only be stripped of the protection of the Geneva Convention after a tribunal has proven that the captive is not a prisoner of war. No such tribunals have ever taken place." -- Jesurgislac

Whether a "tribunal" has taken place is a question. Nevertheless, if there is a question about the issue, Article 132 of the Convention states that "any alleged violation of the Convention" is to be resolved by a joint transnational effort "in a manner to be decided between the interested Parties." Which is exactly what we're doing.

Posted by: Al at November 14, 2003 02:54 PM | PERMALINK

To lots and lots of people :)
I am too lazy (not to mention getting ready to spread some joy around here by leaving for the weekend) to look up exact wording in the Geneva Convention.

First, if our army was rounding up civilians and calling them combatants I will be right next to you hollering about it. But I'm confident that these people were captured during fighting, so we knew they were combatants.

And somebody a while back addressed this and had relevant sections of the Geneva Convention there. And as I recall, if you are fighting and not wearing a uniform (or some designation) then you are an unlawful combatant, and unlawful combatants have no standing at all. This makes perfect sense, if the combatants are dressed as civilians, then that means that civilians are wearing an army uniform. The opposing army must have a way to determine who is a combatant and who is not.

As for rounding them up and holding them outside the US, this is dangerously close to violating the ideals of the US. And I will agree that is a bad thing. The longer they are held, the less tolerant I will become.

Posted by: Ron at November 14, 2003 02:55 PM | PERMALINK

"The longer they [the Gitmo detainees] are held, the less tolerant I will become."--Ron

Ditto.

Posted by: nc at November 14, 2003 03:00 PM | PERMALINK

Secondly, what is the source of their "due process" rights.

Presumably, the same "natural law" invoked under various names by the founding fathers, the framers of the constitution, and even the current President who demanded recognition that rights, ultimately, exist prior to human law.

The Constitution?

Well, given that the Constitution reserves to the Congress the power to define and punish violation of the law of nations, and the means specifically authorized by Congress for that end (trial under the UCMJ, for instance, as well as under civilian criminal law) include various degrees of due process, that too.

I don't believe the Gitmo detainees are US citizens or US residents, so I don't believe the Constitutional due process guarantees necessarily apply (though SCOTUS may say otherwise very soon).

Constitutional due process guarantees are generally phrased as "no person shall..." or "in all criminal proceedings...". None that I can recall refer specifically to citizens or residents, except those in the 14th Amendment.

Posted by: cmdicely at November 14, 2003 03:00 PM | PERMALINK

cmdicely
I am not positive of what makes an unlawful combatant, so I will not argue. And your statement I also have some qualms about infinite detention in domestic legal terms, without any controlling law or judicial process., I have some qualms too. It is just that my qualms have not risen to the point where I am demanding action.

And now, I bid you all adieu. And y'all have a fine weekend.

Posted by: Ron at November 14, 2003 03:01 PM | PERMALINK

Ron, you really don't have to be a legal expert to understand the Geneva Convention relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War. It's not written just in babytalk, but it's clear and straightforward.

One, I believe the administration has taken the position that we are not holding uniformed soldiers of an enemy nation, therefore the convention does not apply.

Article 5: .... Should any doubt arise as to whether persons, having committed a belligerent act and having fallen into the hands of the enemy, belong to any of the categories enumerated in Article 4, such persons shall enjoy the protection of the present Convention until such time as their status has been determined by a competent tribunal.

Clear enough? In the case of those people being detained in Guantanamo Bay where there is no evidence that they even committed a belligerent act, such as Moazzam Begg, Bisher al-Rawi, or Jamil al-Banna, then it's even more straightforward: Protection for civilians is a basic principle of humanitarian law: civilians not taking part in the fighting must on no account be attacked and must be spared and protected.

Secondly, realistically, whats the alternative. Where do we release these people? Their home countries? Fine, then how do we ensure they don't decide to hjiack some cargo planes and fly them into buildings.

How do we ensure that anyone doesn't hijack a cargo plane and fly it into a building, Ron? How do I know you won't? If I allege to the CIA that I think you might, does that mean that you should be locked up in Guantanamo Bay with no hope of release because someone once said you might fly a cargo plane into a building? That is the level of evidence that you seem to think is all that's required to have someone locked up and deprived of all their legal rights.

I believe the point of the Geneva convention is to address the handling of prisoners of war when there are on-going hostilities between nation states. If you think about it that makes sense. Theoretically, you have two deterrable (sic?) actors. Each side will obey the convention because they don't want their soldiers mistreated by the other nation. In contrast, where is the nation state on the other side of our equation? Who is the other deterable actor?

If you're arguing that the people locked up in Guantanamo Bay are not prisoners of war but criminals, then the Geneva Convention still requires that they should be tried before a fair, non-political, court. The Geneva Convention prohibits exactly the kind of "black hole" into which these prisoners have fallen.

Posted by: Jesurgislac at November 14, 2003 03:03 PM | PERMALINK

Daniel:

"[I] find the arguments of many anti-war supporters either highly intemperate or logically weak."

Here are two of numerous arguments this liberal had against the war.

1. Pre-empive Unilateralism (PU) is a belief system, like creationism or astrology, that is so out there that it simply is not worth rebutting as the people who hold it are not open to reason.

2. Even if there was a legitimate reason to attack Iraq -and there was none* - the Bush administration are too incompetent to be entrusted with the task.

Intemperate? In the sense of "excessive," perhaps it is contemptuous but not "highly intemperate." But let's not argue that. I'll concede what ever level of temperance you think is right to characterize my tone.

Let's focus on "logically weak." Please describe what is logically weak about either argument:

1. The first example of PU in action -Iraq- was an inarguable disaster. It was based entirely on wrong and/or falsified intelligence and lead to an utterly pointless war.** The arrogance of a PU doctrine has angered the world - yes, the world: only a few world leaders are not furious at Bush and the vast majority of nearly every country are united against the policy. And we are seeing right now how much the US needs the rest of the world. Iraq is draining 100's of billions of dollars and thousands of man hours of concentration away from our benighted country.

2. Bush has driven away every potential ally, undermanned the forces in Iraq, refused to take responsibility not only for his own words but even for the sign "Mission Accomplished," had and has no plan for reconstruction other than Chalabi, and, unless I'm mistaken, has not had the common decency to attend so much as a single funeral for the troops who died from this war.

Go for it, Daniel. And while you're at it, please find words by any Democratic leader of equal stature to the House Minority Leader who so consistently spews out accusations of treason at Republicans.

No, Coulter's not the problem. The problem is that Coulter's ravings have been mainstreamed. By the GOP leaders.

*See Thomas Powers' devasting critique of the causae belli for the Iraq war.

**Insert boilerplate here that Saddam was a monster and I don't need people the caliber of George Bush to remind me.

Posted by: tristero at November 14, 2003 03:03 PM | PERMALINK

First, if our army was rounding up civilians and calling them combatants I will be right next to you hollering about it. But I'm confident that these people were captured during fighting, so we knew they were combatants.

For most of the Gitmo detainees, the bigger question is whether they were or were not unlawful combatants and whether that determination has been properly made, although there is always a danger of mistaking civilians for non-uniformed unlawful combatants or lawful spontaneous resistors.

OTOH, one also ought to consider the Hamdi and Padilla cases, which are asserted also to be "enemy" (and implicitly "unlawful") combatants, were not even allegedly captured on the battlefield, and are US citizens. Neither -- yet -- has been sent to Gitmo.

There are also reports that plea bargains in other terrorism cases -- involving, again, people not even allegedly caught on the battlefield -- were reached because of government threats of transferring regular criminal defendants to indefinite detention at Gitmo, which is even more worrying.

Posted by: cmdicely at November 14, 2003 03:04 PM | PERMALINK

C'mon, president-hate started with anti-American warmongering in Vietnam, and got personal against Nixon. Who prolly deserved it (I voted against Ford cause he pardoned Nixon). Ford was too clumsy to be hated, Carter was more laughed at (a Naval Academy grad, if never general or admiral). Reagan was certainly, and unfairly, hated. Bush I wasn't too popular, but not so hated; Clinton was hated, and also prolly deserved it -- he perjured himself in sworn testimony, which Bush II certainly hasn't done.

Hmm, I think a strong abortion position, either pro- or con- correlates rather highly with the amount of hatred.

Posted by: Tom Grey at November 14, 2003 03:04 PM | PERMALINK

Ron said: I have some qualms too. It is just that my qualms have not risen to the point where I am demanding action.

Ah, this is so familiar. "When Hitler attacked the Jews I was not a Jew, therefore I was not concerned. And when Hitler attacked the Catholics, I was not a Catholic, and therefore, I was not concerned. And when Hitler attacked the unions and the industrialists, I was not a member of the unions and I was not concerned. Then Hitler attacked me and the Protestant church ? and there was nobody left to be concerned."

Posted by: Jesurgislac at November 14, 2003 03:05 PM | PERMALINK

McCain and Rudman are utterly despicable.

My wife brought her eighty year grandmother to dinner, she was wearing a Bush button. I got up and left the table-- Bob Mcmanus

I just want to to say that of all of the despicable things I have read about Republicans and Democrats doing, reading about you disrespecting your wife's grandmother like that because she was wearing a Bush button is the most thouroghly, utterly, and completely despicable, base, sub-human, disgusting thing I've read. I'm surprised you still have a wife.

As soemone said upthread, Troll

Posted by: Carpbasman at November 14, 2003 03:09 PM | PERMALINK

Ron: First, if our army was rounding up civilians and calling them combatants I will be right next to you hollering about it. But I'm confident that these people were captured during fighting, so we knew they were combatants.

Excellent! Ron, I'm glad to hear you say that, because you can now come out hollering about it.

Check on Moazzam Begg - arrested in Pakistan by Pakistani police. Not captured during fighting: please holler!

Check on Bisher al-Rawi and Jamil al-Banna, London businessmen, arrested in the Gambia: Not captured during fighting: please holler!

Check on Hadz Boudella, arrested in Bosnia, cleared by the Bosnian Supreme Court, turned over to the US army and flown to Guantanamo Bay. Not captured during fighting: please holler!

Posted by: Jesurgislac at November 14, 2003 03:09 PM | PERMALINK

I knew I shouldn't have refreshed...

Jesurgislac
I don't know whose post you're responding to, but those aren't my words. But thanks for that link, I check it out later.

Later.

Posted by: Ron at November 14, 2003 03:10 PM | PERMALINK

don't know whose post you're responding to, but those aren't my words.

They sure look like the words in your 2:55pm post, or was that an imposter?

Posted by: cmdicely at November 14, 2003 03:16 PM | PERMALINK

Yes, they are:
Posted by Ron at November 14, 2003 02:55 PM: "First, if our army was rounding up civilians and calling them combatants I will be right next to you hollering about it. But I'm confident that these people were captured during fighting, so we knew they were combatants."

Posted by Ron at November 14, 2003 03:01 PM: "I have some qualms too. It is just that my qualms have not risen to the point where I am demanding action."

Posted by: Jesurgislac at November 14, 2003 03:17 PM | PERMALINK

But I'm confident that these people were captured during fighting, so we knew they were combatants.

fair enough. if you're still here I'd be interested in hearing the basis of that confidence.

Secondly, what is the source of their "due process" rights.

the legal source is the Geneva Convention. the moral source I leave as an exercise for the reader.

The Constitution? I don't believe the Gitmo detainees are US citizens or US residents, so I don't believe the Constitutional due process guarantees necessarily apply (though SCOTUS may say otherwise very soon).

in an effort to stay on topic, please allow me to clarify what pisses me off about this. it is not that your grasp of the GC is incomplete, because so is mine. it is not that I believe that the Constitutional precedents regarding due process applies to POWs, although I do believe that the GC violations are pretty clear.

no, what bothers me is seeing US citizens so take liberty for granted that they choose to defend activities which clearly violate the jurisprudential and moral principle of due process, on purely rhetorical grounds.

for example, Al provides us with this bit of moral clarity: Whether a "tribunal" has taken place is a question.

WTF? you're damn straight it's in question, buddy, and a preponderance of evidence suggests that it's damn unlikely too.

Posted by: radish at November 14, 2003 03:19 PM | PERMALINK

War is especially hell when only one side has to be nice guys. Did you hear about the booing of one of our
former Presidents (by people who voted for him)
as he presented Ted Kennedy with his plaque?

War is hell, and as was said by a feminist once, I will get reasonable when you lift your foot off my neck

Posted by: bob mcmanus at November 14, 2003 03:30 PM | PERMALINK

Jesurgislac:

First, I believe you mean to direct your snide and smug comments at me rather than Ron.

Second, you may be right that the Geneva convention was written in language anyone could understand--even someone as infantile as me who can only understand baby talk. I don't know. I have not read it and the reason for my disclaimer was because I am not in the habit of acting like an authority on matters I have only passing knowledge of. In other words, I was letting folks know that any explanation of the Geneva convention from me would not be worth much. That having been said, I thought, for the sake of advancing the argument, that I could make some assumptions as to what a treaty like the Geneva convention should logically be designed to do from a practical standpoint. But I do seem to notice from your post that you are more concerned with analyzing the Geneva convention in the light most favorable to the Gitmo detainees rather than analyzing the practical result of your legal conclusions.

Third, I think I should address your point below:

"How do we ensure that anyone doesn't hijack a cargo plane and fly it into a building, Ron? [ed--you mean nc] How do I know you won't? If I allege to the CIA that I think you might, does that mean that you should be locked up in Guantanamo Bay with no hope of release because someone once said you might fly a cargo plane into a building? That is the level of evidence that you seem to think is all that's required to have someone locked up and deprived of all their legal rights."

Uh, unless I missed something the people in Gitmo were not randomly picked off a street in Peoria. We happened to find them in Afghanistan--which, if recollection serves, was something of a Club Med for the Turbaned and bomb-laden set--during the midst of fighting following a little incident
involving some planes and some buildings in NY and DC. I think the probability that some of these people might be a little more interested in buying a one way ticket, accompanied by their box cutters, to a major American city near you or me is just a tad bit higher than the chances of you or me doing the same.

Posted by: nc at November 14, 2003 03:30 PM | PERMALINK

In the why do I bother category:

This was a family gathering made possible only by a promise on all sides to leave politics away from the table

This was not a doddering housefrau, but a still quick-witted and active party activists

And I gave her the same respect I would give a twenty year old or forty year old....she made a promise, and deliberately and provocatively broke that promise, and I reacted

And yeah, the wife was pissed off at everybody, especially pissed off at me, and is still pissed off...but hey maybe your wife is not pissed off at you, but i think a lot of men live in some small fear of their ladies long list of past grievances

Posted by: bob mcmanus at November 14, 2003 03:50 PM | PERMALINK

Great thread -

Wait! Aren't the arguments about how the Dems need to fight fire with fire contradicting the threads about "Gitmo" concentration camps, et al? The idea of "fighting" the other party is to convert more voters to your side - to not let your views disappear from public discourse. Do you honestly think you are going to convert more voters by decrying the US treatment of (at best) alledged "enemy combatants" (or not)?

The appeals for a "tough" Demo party just do not work with the Pussified world view which wants to then have these Dems cry over (and this is the way the other side will characterize it)"terrorists getting fat in our jail(s)."

You want tough? Get Tammany Hall back on-line, and GOD help that guy with the Grandmother-in-law with the Bush button - HE would get f'ing FIRED from his blue-collar patronage job- disloyalty in the family, ya' know.

You want tough? Get rid of the 98-pound girly men you call leaders. Old school Blue-collar Dems would form a phlanx of ax-handle toting linebackers and beat-the-living-shit out of an A.N.S.W.E.R. rally.

Porbrecito ("poor little") Democrats - you have lost your testicles and lack the will to regain them.

Saddest of all - the comment above which gives the mission statement of the Democratic party as "opposing the Republicans...." Wow - way to concede the field COMPLETELY to the otherside, time to play defense.....forever.

[P.S. Republicans - If the old-school blue-collar Dems came back, you would wet your pants.]

Posted by: Californio at November 14, 2003 03:58 PM | PERMALINK

Bush c2000:

"I'm a uniter not a divider"

Posted by: Guffaw at November 14, 2003 04:04 PM | PERMALINK

the practical result of your legal conclusions

huh? that would be public tribunals and full Red Cross access. it's pretty simple really.

Posted by: radish at November 14, 2003 04:04 PM | PERMALINK

yup

"Making Allies or convincing others of the value of your position"...that is diplomacy

Making your enemy completely disappear....that is called war

Republicans are playing war, democrats are crying onsies, twosies

Posted by: bob mcmanus at November 14, 2003 04:05 PM | PERMALINK

I think the probability that some of these people might be a little more interested in buying a one way ticket, accompanied by their box cutters, to a major American city near you or me is just a tad bit higher than the chances of you or me doing the same.

Not necessarily.

We know some of the detainees are children.

The larger point is we don't know who the detainees are; not you, not me. We're told these were the bad actors but since nobody has any access to them and nobody seems to know their names--we don't know.

Fact is, you don't know if they're from Afghanistan or Norway.

And we don't know what their fate might be; will there be tribunals, trials, summary executions? Don't know.

When will we know?

That should give any American pause. After all, they're doing it in your name.

Posted by: JadeGold at November 14, 2003 04:08 PM | PERMALINK

War is especially hell when only one side has to be nice guys.

I hardly see how trying alledged violators of the laws of war before regularly constituted military courts under laws promulgated by Congress is "being nice".

Posted by: cmdicely at November 14, 2003 04:30 PM | PERMALINK

that would be public tribunals and full Red Cross access

I'm pretty sure public tribunals are not required.

Posted by: cmdicely at November 14, 2003 04:32 PM | PERMALINK

Uh, unless I missed something the people in Gitmo were not randomly picked off a street in Peoria. We happened to find them in Afghanistan--which, if recollection serves, was something of a Club Med for the Turbaned and bomb-laden set--during the midst of fighting following a little incident involving some planes and some buildings in NY and DC.

So everyone in Afghanistan is presumptively an unlawful enemy combatant? Not to mention that several of the people in Gitmo weren't even allegedly taken in Afghanistan.

Posted by: cmdicely at November 14, 2003 04:34 PM | PERMALINK

"for example, Al provides us with this bit of moral clarity: 'Whether a "tribunal" has taken place is a question.'

WTF? you're damn straight it's in question, buddy, and a preponderance of evidence suggests that it's damn unlikely too."

Actually, no, since the determination made by Bush as to the detainees status could qualify as a tribunal.

In any case, it is fairly clear that Article 5 of the GC has NOT been breached, Jesurlegac's assertion notwithstanding. As was helpfully pointed out, the text of that section provides that a tribunal is only warranted in the case that there is doubt as to a person's status. Read that to mean "reasonable doubt", as I would, and it is pretty clear that Article 5 does not apply.

Finally, as I posted above, Section 132 says that if there is any question about a violation, we are to negotiate with the party involved... which is exactly what we are doing. Accordingly, we are following the GC to the letter.

Posted by: Al at November 14, 2003 04:50 PM | PERMALINK

"So everyone in Afghanistan is presumptively an unlawful enemy combatant?"

No, just the people fighting us and who don't meet the 4 criteria for "lawful" combatants.

"Not to mention that several of the people in Gitmo weren't even allegedly taken in Afghanistan."

Such as?

Posted by: Al at November 14, 2003 04:52 PM | PERMALINK

Uh, unless I missed something the people in Gitmo were not randomly picked off a street in Peoria. We happened to find them in Afghanistan--

Some of them, NC. Some of them were, as I've pointed out, randomly picked off the street elsewhere in the world.

which, if recollection serves, was something of a Club Med for the Turbaned and bomb-laden set--during the midst of fighting following a little incident involving some planes and some buildings in NY and DC.

So? The Geneva Convention still applies, NC - as you'd know if you took the trouble to read it.

And in fact, I was directing my remarks at Ron, not at you. (Unless you were posting under Ron's name... were you?)

Posted by: Jesurgislac at November 14, 2003 04:54 PM | PERMALINK

Al said: Actually, no, since the determination made by Bush as to the detainees status could qualify as a tribunal.

Actually, no. And it's rather an absurd suggestion to claim that it could. A tribunal determines status individually. Bush made a sweeping decision without regard to individuals swept up into Guantanamo Bay.

As was helpfully pointed out, the text of that section provides that a tribunal is only warranted in the case that there is doubt as to a person's status. Read that to mean "reasonable doubt", as I would, and it is pretty clear that Article 5 does not apply.

Wrong. As you will discover if you take the trouble to read the Geneva Convention, until a tribunal has determined a detainee's status, a detainee is treated as a prisoner of war. The default position is prisoner of war status: it is the responsibility of the detaining power to prove that they can remove the rights of a PoW from a detainee.

Posted by: Jesurgislac at November 14, 2003 04:59 PM | PERMALINK

Al asked: "Not to mention that several of the people in Gitmo weren't even allegedly taken in Afghanistan."

At least nine that I know of: Moazzam Begg, arrested in Pakistan: Bisher al-Rawi and Jamil al-Banna, arrested in the Gambia: Hadz Boudella and five others arrested in Bosnia. The difficulty in finding out information about prisoners in Guantanamo Bay is considerable, though, and I wouldn't guarantee that those nine are the only ones who were swept up from elsewhere and dumped in Cuba.

Posted by: Jesurgislac at November 14, 2003 05:02 PM | PERMALINK

Interesting thread on the Kevin Phillips theory of electoral cycle history. In the main, I think his theory is correct and that Phillips is one of the smartest observers of American history and politics around. However, I don't think that 2004 is the year we are going to see realignment.

This being said, I have finally come around to Dean because I think it is important the Democrats run Dean as a means towards regaining power in the longer term (being an anyone but Dean Democrat before). As I noted in a post in Monday's discussion about Dean's electability, the Democrats need to clearly enunciate what there party is and what it is about if it ever hopes to become an electoral majority. They can't continue on as being the "not Republican" Party. They have had some limited success with this strategy, cobbling together an unstable plurality of voters from election to election - but losing more often than they win (see 2002 for example). Dean is the only Democratic (except maybe Bill Clinton) who seems to be capable of campaigning and politicking on the offensive, not getting himself caught up in defending attacks thrown against him. The way he has done so in the Democratic primary so far has been quietly impressive to me.

This is not to say Dean is going to win the general election. Indeed, I would bet against it. But I'm not so sure any Democrat out there right now can be Bush - Dean, Lieberman, Gephardt, Kerry, Clark.

Dean's personality and the nature of his campaign bears an eerie resemblence to Barry Goldwater's, not George McGovern's. McGovern was always on the defensive, was to the left of Dean politically (more reminiscent of Kucinich in this regard), and conveyed an aura of weakness and indecisiveness that Dean certainly does not dispaly.

In political terms, 9/11 has given extended life and power to Republican electoral superiority. But the economy and foreign policy stability are sure to come back to bite the Republicans soon. In particular, although there may be an economic upsurge that continues through 2004, the long term health of the economy (ie foreign indebtedness, huge budget deficits, the coming baby boom retirement) all spell large problems for potential post-2004 Republican dominance.

Indeed, to get a little dialectical here, it is often at moments of greatest power that fundamental weaknesses also begin to manifest themselves. Look no further then LBJ's landslide victory in 64. Read the editorials announcing the death of conservativism and the Republican Party written in the aftermath of this election.

Posted by: Ben P. at November 14, 2003 05:14 PM | PERMALINK

"Actually, no. And it's rather an absurd suggestion to claim that it could. A tribunal determines status individually."

Says who? Does the GC define "tribunal" to preclude a deterination such as Bush's?

"Wrong. As you will discover if you take the trouble to read the Geneva Convention, until a tribunal has determined a detainee's status, a detainee is treated as a prisoner of war. The default position is prisoner of war status: it is the responsibility of the detaining power to prove that they can remove the rights of a PoW from a detainee."

Nope. You should pay attention next time you read it, Jesurgislac. A detainee is only entitled to a tribunal if there is doubt as to his status. Which, as I said, there isn't.

"At least nine that I know of: Moazzam Begg, arrested in Pakistan: Bisher al-Rawi and Jamil al-Banna, arrested in the Gambia: Hadz Boudella and five others arrested in Bosnia."

What were these 9 doing? Is there a (reasonable) doubt that they are combatants? Is there (reasonable) doubt as to whether they fit into any of the 4 categories pursuant to which their combatant status would be lawful?

Posted by: Al at November 14, 2003 05:19 PM | PERMALINK

In addition, Jesurgislac, I would request you address the point about Section 132 of the GC, in which I argue that we are following the Convention TO THE LETTER.

Posted by: Al at November 14, 2003 05:20 PM | PERMALINK

Do you approve of lying to the public, Congress and the UN to promote a war?

Posted by: Roger Bigod at November 14, 2003 05:21 PM | PERMALINK

Californio, I'm a woman and therefore in a position to point out -- from experience -- that "men" like you, constantly yakking about how important it is not to be "pussies" or "pussified," are almost always terrified that someone will think their dicks are too small ... and hardly ever worried about anyone noticing that their brains are actually the small organs they should be worrying about! If you don't like Democratic policies, vote Rethuglican, but stop the b.s. about whose is bigger -- an argument of no value whatsoever outside a junior high school playground.

Posted by: Temperance at November 14, 2003 05:24 PM | PERMALINK

Says who? Does the GC define "tribunal" to preclude a deterination such as Bush's?

Yes, it does. A tribunal is required to be of an equivalent standard such as would be accorded a soldier of the detaining power's own forces.

Nope. You should pay attention next time you read it, Jesurgislac. A detainee is only entitled to a tribunal if there is doubt as to his status. Which, as I said, there isn't.

Wrong. A detainee is entitled to be treated as a prisoner of war until the detaining power proves he isn't, by means of a tribunal. The detaining power isn't allowed just to have someone say "That one isn't a PoW!" which is effectively what you're arguing.

What were these 9 doing? Is there a (reasonable) doubt that they are combatants?

They certainly were none of them captured in a war zone, and none of them were captured in Afghanistan - which was your original question. Thanks for acknowledging your ignorance and admitting you were wrong. /irony

Is there (reasonable) doubt as to whether they fit into any of the 4 categories pursuant to which their combatant status would be lawful?

There is no evidence whatsoever that any of them are anything but civilians. Trying to claim that anyone can suddenly be designated an "enemy combatant" and locked up indefinitely without any judicial or legal procedure is, well, the kind of thing we expect dictators like Saddam Hussein to do.

Posted by: Jesurgislac at November 14, 2003 05:27 PM | PERMALINK

Jesurgislac:

Clearly, you are articulate and intelligent. I think you have made a number of points that are worth pondering. I happen to disagree with some (well most) of your points, but oh well I don't think I know everything and you may be right. But an arrogant, smug disdainful attitude to those on the other side of an argument doesn't help you win friends and influence people.

Exhibit A: "As you will discover if you take the trouble to read the Geneva Convention"--Jesurgislac.

Look, as I said at least twice, I ain't read the damn thing. My comments on this site, as I suspect the comments of others on this site, are my gut-level reactions at a particular moment in time based on my general background knowledge and my life experiences. Given that I am going back and forth between this site and that thing I do to put food on the table, I am not likely to have time to read the full text of the Geneva Convention. Will I at some point? Probably, just not now.

Moreover, whether I am familiar with the Geneva Convention is somewhat irrelevent to my points. What are those points you may ask:

1. An angry, disdainful, better-than-thou attitude to an office holder, and his supporters, who represent a substantially plurarilty, if not an outright majority of the American people, is not terribly bright politics. Constructive criticism-fine and necessary. But in American politics continually taking the attitude that your opponents are at best stupid neanderthals and at worst evil nazis, is self-defeating. Those stupid neanderthals vote.

2. Gitmo is not in your wildest nightmares a Nazi concentration camp or a Stalinist Gulag.

3. Is the continued detention of the Gitmo detainees legally questionable. Probably. Would releasing those detainees increase the liklihood of future incidents of terror (note I used the phrase "increase the liklihood" and not the word "guarantee")? Almost certainly.

4. (a) Detaining combatants w/o trial=bad
(b) planes flying into buildings=badder

5. Being somewhat familar with law myself, I have a sneaky feeling that the Geneva Convention, like many other laws and treaties, is not as self-evidently clear as you say, but then again thats just a hunch, and I am more than willing to be corrected on that point.

Posted by: nc at November 14, 2003 05:34 PM | PERMALINK

But an arrogant, smug disdainful attitude to those on the other side of an argument doesn't help you win friends and influence people.

No, I agree. But then, you have an arrogant, smug, disdainful attitude too: and it gets my back up, which is why I come back this way.

Also, I have been arguing the point about the US being in breach of the Geneva Convention now for nearly two years - ever since the first illegal detention camp at Guantanamo Bay was opened. Every time, right-wingers come back with the same idea, the same idea you're presenting here in points 3. and 4.:

"All we should have to do is just say that someone is a terrorist. After that, no trial is necessary: just lock all alleged terrorists up, forever if necessary."

I've never got an honest answer out of someone with that point of view about whether they'd agree to submit to the same "justice": someone says you're a terrorist, NC. So, on no other basis that your being allegedly a terrorist, do you support your indefinite detention in a prison camp on Cuba? Feel free to take your time about answering.

Bluntly, I doubt if Bush and Co will ever acknowledge their crimes and close down Guantanamo Bay. The solution is to vote Bush & Co out, then get to work on the next administration, who can't be held responsible for the crimes of the previous one. They'll have less face to lose in shutting down those illegal detention centers.

2. Gitmo is not in your wildest nightmares a Nazi concentration camp or a Stalinist Gulag.

No, it's not: is that the standard to which you wish the US to be compared? "Oh, well, of course we're international criminals, but we're not as bad as Hitler or Stalin!"

Posted by: Jesurgislac at November 14, 2003 05:50 PM | PERMALINK

californio-
it goes both ways. the purpose of the republican party is to oppose democrats. my point in that post is that we shouldnt be ashamed of fighting each other.
im not even going to start on your yammering about getting linebackers on your side and then giving me shit for playing defense.

weell, ok. i'll start

Posted by: Olaf, glad and big at November 14, 2003 06:06 PM | PERMALINK

Naw, there's something truly meanspirited and blackhearted on the con side, see, from Philip Roth's The Human Stain:: Clickety Click

No, if you haven't lived through 1998, you don't know what sanctimony is. The syndicated conservative newspaper columnist William F. Buckley wrote, "When Abelard did it, it was possible to prevent its happening again," insinuating that the president's malfeasance--what Buckley elsewhere called Clinton's "incontinent carnality"--might best be remedied with nothing so bloodless as impeachment but, rather, by the twelfth-century punishment meted out to Canon Abelard by the knife-wielding associates of Abelard's ecclesiastical colleague, Canon Fulbert, for Abelard's secret seduction of and marriage to Fulbert's niece, the virgin Heloise. Unlike Khomeini's fatwa condemning to death Salman Rushdie, Buckley's wistful longing for the corrective retribution of castration carried with it no financial incentive for any prospective perpetrator. It was prompted by a spirit no less exacting than the ayatollah's, however, and in behalf of no less exalted ideals.

Corrective retribution indeed.

Posted by: degustibus at November 14, 2003 06:14 PM | PERMALINK

"Wrong. A detainee is entitled to be treated as a prisoner of war until the detaining power proves he isn't, by means of a tribunal. The detaining power isn't allowed just to have someone say "That one isn't a PoW!" which is effectively what you're arguing."

Nope, you're wrong. Read Section 5 again. The detaining power IS allowed to say "That one isn't a PoW". A tribunal is required only if there is doubt.

Or do you have some other section of the GC to cite for the proposition?

Posted by: Al at November 14, 2003 06:19 PM | PERMALINK

"Yes, it does. A tribunal is required to be of an equivalent standard such as would be accorded a soldier of the detaining power's own forces."

And, given that question involved -- whether Al Qaeda and Taliban forces could be accorded PoW status based on the criteria set forth in the GC -- the determination by Bush is exactly what should be would be accorded a soldier of the US's own forces. I would expect any force that captured our soldiers to provide a general determination as to whether they meet the criteria for "lawful combatants" -- that is, I wouldn't expect such a force to have to make individualized decisions.

Posted by: Al at November 14, 2003 06:26 PM | PERMALINK

William F. Buckley wrote, "When Abelard did it, it was possible to prevent its happening again,"...

In the early days of AIDS, Buckley suggested branding or tattooing the butt of any HIV positive individual with a warning sign.

Posted by: Roger Bigod at November 14, 2003 06:38 PM | PERMALINK

To get back to the topic of the original post: these previous figures of ?hatred? for the left (Reagan, Bork, Nixon) were objectively bad actors. That is, each of them conducted themselves in a way as to disgrace the office they held or were seeking. Reagan?s malfeasance in trading arms for hostages, his tax increases on the working class coupled with cuts for the investor class, the litany goes on for quite some time; Bork was a bad judge, a bad Solicitor General (Saturday Night Massacre anyone?), and unsuited to any judicial position; Nixon?s crimes are apparent to all but his most ardent defenders. These figures are despised not for who they are, but for what they did. Compare that with the insane, gratuitous Clinton hating and we see not, as apologists on the right would have it, a ?he started it, no he did? situation, but one where legitimate grievances are held up as somehow equivalent with loony accusations of murder.

Posted by: Lori Thantos at November 14, 2003 06:51 PM | PERMALINK

H'mmm - the level of discourse is degenerating.
Unfortunate.

Maybe I shouldn't have bought beers for the house.

Posted by: Granmere at November 14, 2003 07:25 PM | PERMALINK

Nixon was hated by the left decades prior to Watergate. Elite liberals - the WASP establishment and New Dealers - hated Nixon for making them look foolish for defending Soviet spy Alger Hiss and rank and file Democrats hated Nixon for his " Pink Lady " attacks on Helen Douglas in the Senate race. Nixon also had a brilliant intellect but that was less noticeable than his socially awkward, somewhat alienating and paranoid personality and forced manner which came across rather poorly on television.

Bork was an excellent Judge who was respected by even the liberal Justices who did not agree with his philosophy. I don't agree with Bork on a wide swath of 1st amendment issues but essentially the organized Left mounted a vile campaign of character assassination against the man instead of arguing his points honestly. As Solicitor-General, had Bork resigned or been fired instead of carrying out Nixon's order to fire Archibald Cox, the Department of Justice would have shut down as the Attorney-General and his deputy ( Ruckleshaus I believe) had both already resigned. This might in fact, have been the result more to Nixon's liking and Nixon, not Bork, has the legal and moral responsibility for firing Cox.

Reagan wasn't even remotely comparable to Nixon in personality,philosophy policies or record.

Posted by: mark safranski at November 14, 2003 08:53 PM | PERMALINK

Bork's "look" is enough to discredit him for me. Just let him slouch off to Gommorah and die. We need absolutely more vitriol against the conservatives. These people are scum and liars.

Posted by: Cal at November 14, 2003 09:31 PM | PERMALINK

Al: I don't believe it. you seriously think that your personal confidence in the guilt of the Gitmo detainees qualifies as an "absence of doubt" under international law. the whole point of the GC is to protect everybody, even idiots like you who do not wish to be protected. every hair you're splitting here not only confirms that Americans only care about the rules when it's convenient, but also discourages anybody from giving a shit when it's our guys who are being held forever in little cages in the sun.

it won't be you in that little cage, but I'm sure whoever it is will be happy that you protected the body politic by arguing so forcefully for the 'Al's personal confidence in GW Bush' definition of doubt.

his supporters, who represent a substantially plurarilty

factually wrong. if you don't want to be accused of lying don't make shit up.

Posted by: radish at November 14, 2003 09:35 PM | PERMALINK

NYT's Brooks devotes ANOTHER column to pleading with the Democrats to stop fighting!

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/15/opinion/15BROO.html

Posted by: grytpype at November 14, 2003 09:39 PM | PERMALINK

Interesting piece by Brooks. He seems unaware that we don't need to hold an election put someone in the White House. There's someone there right now.

If Brooks wants to end "swords", he should be directing his comments to the current occupant. Or maybe Brooks is holding out hope for something 5, 10, or 20 elections from now.

What a blind man.

Posted by: Spinning Tops at November 14, 2003 09:55 PM | PERMALINK

Al: An executive determination is not a tribunal, since the captive was not allowed to present a defense. A tribunal is an adversarial proceeding with a neutral arbiter. The issuance of the lettres-cachet under which these men are held is a completely unilateral process. Perhaps you have confused the standard: the tribunal should be like those held by the US Armed Forces for their own members (I am sure you realized soldiers can not be punished on the unilateral determination of Pres. Bush), not like whatever tribunal the Taliban would have offered American soldiers.

Ron and Al both: Quite aside from my belief that you are misreading the provisions of the GC, I can not understand why you wish to make a positive defense of the Administration's policy. Even assuming, for the sake of argument, that they are not sweeping people up randomly now, and that they have not made a single mistake (which is a very hard assumption to accept), there is absolutely no check on the powers the Administration claims to authorize indefinite detention, so they may do so in the future. Such mistakes cannot be corrected by any legal process; the President's designation is completely unreviewable elsewhere. I could not imagine a clearer example of "Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." Laws like this arise in tyrannies, not democracies.

Posted by: Andrew Lazarus at November 14, 2003 10:51 PM | PERMALINK

Al said: In addition, Jesurgislac, I would request you address the point about Section 132 of the GC, in which I argue that we are following the Convention TO THE LETTER.

Huh? Not even to the paragraph. Article 132 of the Geneva Convention says:

"Article 132

At the request of a Party to the conflict, an enquiry shall be instituted, in a manner to be decided between the interested Parties, concerning any alleged violation of the Convention."

The UK and other countries have protested about the US's violation of the Convention in detaining prisoners in Guantanamo Bay.

"If agreement has not been reached concerning the procedure for the enquiry, the Parties should agree on the choice of an umpire who will decide upon the procedure to be followed.

Once the violation has been established, the Parties to the conflict shall put an end to it and shall repress it with the least possible delay."

That hasn't happened. So the US is breaking the Geneva Convention.

Al, if you're happy to be locked up indefinitely on President Bush's sayso, without ever being allowed to present a contradictory case, then I'm happy for you. Enjoy your time in Guantanamo Bay.

Posted by: Jesurgislac at November 15, 2003 01:32 AM | PERMALINK

This was a family gathering made possible only by a promise on all sides to leave politics away from the table

This was not a doddering housefrau, but a still quick-witted and active party activists

And I gave her the same respect I would give a twenty year old or forty year old....she made a promise, and deliberately and provocatively broke that promise, and I reacted--

Bob, I don't know all of the particulars (though I am a liberal with conservative inlaws, very conservative, somewhat southern inlaws) but I think the problem might have to do with the fact that you are an asshole.

I don't know how politics became such a hot button issue in your family, that a) You (yes you, interloper) pushed it to the point that the two sides weren't talking (hey wife, its my politics or your family, take it or leave it) b)someone felt that wearing a button when you had expressly forbidden it was an act of rebellion. But the fact that you are an asshole surely had something to do with it.

You know, fact is your inlaws' views are likely to be pretty calcified (especially when they are, um, 80). Getting worked up over those views is like getting worked up over the color of the ocean on a particular day. Sure, it could change, but you won't have anything to do with it.

Rather than learning the lesson that your political opponents are human, you dehumanize your in-law relations. You walk away from the table when your 80 year old grand-mother in law comes to your table.

Because you are an asshole.

Posted by: Ccarpbasman at November 15, 2003 03:27 AM | PERMALINK

Nixon also had a brilliant intellect but that was less noticeable than his socially awkward, somewhat alienating and paranoid personality ...

The early episodes with Hiss and Helen Douglas were irrelevant. Lots of politicians have atypical periods early in their careers (Reagan's liberalism, Robert Kennedy's assochation with Roy Cohn).

For raw IQ-type intelligence, Nixon was in the top tier of Presidents. And he was effective and creative as President in many ways. But he had no sense of the lines between acceptable hard-ball benavior, gratuitous nastiness and outright crime.

Bork was an excellent Judge who was respected by even the liberal Justices who did not agree with his philosophy.

His intellect is way overrated. He can play little law-professor games with some facility, but that's about it. He should have been rejected for the law review article on the First Amendment, all by itself. It's dumb, mischievous and inflammatory. Plus it violates his own theory of Original Intent jurispridence. I read "Tempting of America" and it's a big shell game. By his theory, the case that's most illegitimately activist isn't Griswold or Roe. It's Brown. And he wouldn't touch Brown with a ten foot pole.

And I've never seen any serios criticism of him for performing in the Saturday Night Massacre, even at the time of the confirmation. The consensus is that the damage had been done and somebody had to fire the special prosecutor to make the Constitutional machinery work.

Posted by: Roger Bigod at November 15, 2003 06:38 AM | PERMALINK

Because you are an asshole.

Even within families, there are limits to nice. Asshole behavior is sometimes appropriate and should be applauded. The grandmother sounds like a common type of Southern socialite bitch, who thinks of herself as above social norms such as the taboo on bringing controversial matters to the dinner table.

There used to be a ritual connected with "Skill and Bones", W's club at Yale. Membership was such a awesome matter that it was never to be discussed with outsiders. If someone said the name of the club in the presence of a member, he was supposed to politely excuse himself and leave the room. This included family dinner if a wife or daughter innocently mentioned it. It was considered a very restrained and classy way of expressing disapproval.

Posted by: Roger Bigod at November 15, 2003 06:54 AM | PERMALINK

Bork was an idiot, as his subsequent writings showed.

Posted by: raj at November 15, 2003 06:54 AM | PERMALINK

Watched Ed Markey last night on C-Span talk about the energy bill about to be passed. No Democrat has been allowed to read it in the Senate. In 1992, during the last "markup" Phil Gramm was in the room with the Democrats for 72 straight hours.
Markey was nearly inarticulate with rage, nearly crying.

Asshole? You betcha, rather an ashole than a pussy, these people cannot be dealt with in any form. Period. They are beyond the pale and the Democratic party has to realize that. There have to constant fistfights on the Senate floor, so that this country realizes there is something wrong here, and it ain't the Dem's fault

Posted by: bob mcmanus at November 15, 2003 07:15 AM | PERMALINK

And everyone wonders why voters don't turn out to the polls. Politicians are caught up in their own little world of name-calling and power-grabbing. Meanwhile, regular citizens struggle with their daily lives. The political process in this country is just so out of touch with what regular citizens want and need. The voting numbers prove it.

Posted by: Steve Lindquist at November 15, 2003 07:38 AM | PERMALINK

Perhaps the best way of dealing with vitriol is to use the weapons of your opponent. Are you pro-choice? skewer a pro-lifer on funding prenatal care for everyone (hey, protect the unborn!!)And fully fund childcare, headstart, etc. for the children! Conservative Grandma comes over with a Bush pin on? Greet her warmly, have her sit at your right hand, as your guest. clap you hands and have your wife serve you. Why, I am the MAN after all! Shssh! (gently) Grandma! I am speaking! I am the MAN after all. [I predict grandma will either make nice or have a stroke.]

Oh, and Ms. Temperance? You missed the point. It is about standing up for what you believe in unambiguously. Do you respect men who will suck up to a woman ( and lie) just to have sex with her? I consider such a man to be a pussy. So too, a husband who lets his wife viciously berate him in public for a minor matter. Or the man who beats his wife, because he can. While some men may act this way, this is not Manly behavior in my book. The term "pussy" referring to someone lacking the courage of their convictions is probably coarse - yet it is an effective code word for what I understood it to mean. Your experience cited, well, um, best of luck to you in future endeavors.

Posted by: Californio at November 16, 2003 02:19 AM | PERMALINK

Jesurgislac

We x-posted, the comment that I would holler if people were merely being picked off the street was mine, it was your previous reply that was not replying to my post. If you're now confused, I got you right where I want you :-)

I Googled the names you supplied, and I believe one was picked up in Afghanistan (one of the Brits, I believe) so that one is questionalble. The rest were indeed "picked up off the street" and a judge needs to decide their status. I was not aware that was happening, thank you for pointing it out.

Your link to the Geneva Convention about POWs is not the relevant section. This link points out the difference between POWs and unlawful combatants. Other than the standard "humane treatment" there are no requirements for unlawful combatants. There were, however, more requirements to make a lawful combatant than I remembered.

And having had the weekend to think this over, I find myself more in agreement with the lack of rights for unlawful combatants. The basic purpose of requiring uniforms, etc is so that the opposing army knows which persons are combatants and which persons are civilians. If the opposing army cannot tell the difference, it then becomes impossible to protect civilians to the degree they could be protected if the difference was known.

Blending with civilians is not an army tactic that can be allowed.

Picking people off the street and holding them as if they were unlawful combatants is also not something that can be allowed.

Posted by: Ron at November 17, 2003 06:55 AM | PERMALINK