What's wrong with the left today?

Yours truly was the author of a post last week which garnered a perfect score of "ten wingnuts" from one Brad R. over at a blog called Sadly, No!

No, wait! My good friend Martin Lindeskog won the award! You see, Brad R. read my cross-post over at Martin's blog and even though the first sentence read, "This also appears at my blog, Gus Van Horn," Brad R. apparently became so angry that he went cross-eyed and spewed his bile at the wrong target. Martin's response, to sic his sleeping cat on Brad R. was a more than adequate rebuttal. In fact, it was arguably, ahem, disproportionate.

I don't normally devote time to insults, but aside from its amusement value, it is worth going into in some detail as an example of the sad state of America's left. While there are a few leftists who can at least remain civil or offer a counterargument (or even both!) here and there, this blogger's entry seems to be a more typical example of what I see when I bother to take a look at the left. I have reproduced the relevant portion of the entry here in its entirety, minus image files.

How he describes his blog: "Reason, egoism, laissez-faire capitalism." Sounds like a Randian to me. And you know what they tend to look like: [Image of overweight Simpson's character pictured. Caption: "Worst. Objectivist blog. Ever."]

His Winning Entry (this one's a doozy):

Will McCain Become a Republican John Kerry?

John F. Kerry had the advantage, having been in the military, of being able to pose as a patriot while actually serving as the Democratic Party's anti-war candidate in the last presidential election. Some recent news about John "F." McCain seems to indicate that this possible 2008 candidate may have an even better cover: He, too, is a veteran, but he is also a member of the supposedly -- based on recent Senate activity -- pro-war Republican Party.

If so, why is he proposing legislation that would make it illegal to torture prisoners of war?

Yes, because opposing torture is the most unpatriotic thing an American can do. In fact, the Founding Fathers were so enamored with cruel and unusual punishment that they expressly condoned it in the Eighth Amendment.

I am personally happy to hear that we have imprisoned 83,000 possible terrorists over the past four years and, unlike this reporter, I am unsurprised that so many are Arab males. That is, not coincidentally, what many terrorists are.

Interestingly, the victims of Islamic terrorism were never mentioned, only being alluded to when the phrase "9/11 attacks" was used late in the article. Some, apparently, are forgetting why we're at war.

Because we want to torture Arabs?

Bonus Points: Does he really need any? The guy just came out an endorsed torture.

Verdict: Everything you could want from an OSM blogger. He gets the max ten wingnuts.

I wouldn't complain too much about the fact that Brad R. left out all the hyperlinks from the second paragraph he quoted since a reader who wanted to could follow the link back to what I actually wrote -- except that Brad R. drops all context and simply attacks me for "want[ing] to torture Arabs".

So, just like Brad R. "knows" I am Martin Lindeskog (I am not.) and that I am overweight (I am not. Quick, call Leonard Peikoff so he can excommunicate me.), so he "knows" I "want to torture Arabs". To his credit, he is half-right and he did at least mention the lynchpin of my argument: "[W]e're at war."

My whole argument on torture is based on the fact that we are at war, and that our side is the moral side. To get down to brass tacks: Torture that has some military value and, for that matter, killing enemy combatants, are perfectly moral acts for the same reason. Both are barbaric acts forced upon a country that is defending itself from a foreign power that has initiated the use of force and that continues to threaten to do so to this very day.

In other words, I "want" to torture Arabs in exactly the same sense that I would "want" to hand my wallet to a mugger or that I'd "want" to shoot a complete stranger I found rummaging around in my house at night, gun in hand, while I had been asleep. All of these things are things I would do only if threatened -- as I am or would be in any of these situations -- by force. When one is so threatened all the normal rules for civilized conduct go out the window in the name of self-preservation. You do whatever you have to do to placate the aggressor, if necessary, and then move as swiftly as possible to remove him as a threat at the first opportunity.

While one can, say, kill in self-defense in an emergency, it is normally the government's job to keep criminals and foreign aggressors from harming us or threatening to do so. This is why I want our government to do whatever it has to do to keep me alive -- be that killing, imprisoning, or torturing enemy combatants, when torture might yield a military advantage.

I do not rehash the gist of my argument here for the benefit of Brad R. He is almost certainly beyond reach. I do so to give some indication of how seriously I consider the issue of torture, to indicate that I don't -- as Brad R. dishonestly implies -- advocate gratuitous mistreatment of prisoners, Arab or otherwise, and to indicate that I have given this issue some thought, contrary to what he implies. In an earlier post referenced within my "ten wingnut post", I point out why I disagree with John McCain's anti-torture arguments and offer my own counterargument for the appropriate use of torture in a war. By contrast, Brad R. does nothing even remotely similar in his post.

Torture is clearly not really a very serious issue to Brad R. He ignores my argument and the fact that our country is at war. He offers no argument of his own against torture, except to simply point to the eighth amendment of the Constitution. (As an aside, this argument is flawed on two counts: (1) The Constitution could simply be amended to allow torture. This is why one needs to make philosophical arguments for one's position. Laws are ultimately based on the consensus philosophy of the governed. (2) If torture were indeed unconstitutional, why would we need to pass a law like McCain's to make it illegal?) Furthermore, Brad R. treats the fact that I make an unequivocal stand on torture as if that ipso facto makes me into a monster -- ignoring the fact that there is currently a national debate going on about whether to make torture illegal. If Brad R. is unaware of this debate, it is because he failed to read or think about my post.

Brad R. thus devotes no effort to "fighting the good fight", that is, to showing how I am wrong for the benefit of anyone I may have led astray, but instead spent considerable emotional energy and time insulting me. He thus offers nothing of intellectual merit. Only childish insults. If he wonders why it is, as he pointed out earlier in his post, that conservatives "control... all three branches of the federal government", despite, I would add, the public's general distaste for the religious right, he might hold up a mirror to begin to understand. Why would anyone not already convinced of whatever it is that Brad R. also believes read his post and leave with a different opinion? I doubt Brad R. really cares about this, but more thoughtful people might.

This childish, unserious display, illustrates why the left is dead as an intellectual force today. Brad R. does not know or care why torture may or may not be wrong, or about the fact that other parts of my post expressed sentiments that he (as a liberal) presumably would agree with, or even which direction he spits in. He just wants to spit. His irrelevant smears against Objectivists are clearly a psychological defense mechanism. The air of petulance in this post resembles that of any (other?) random fan of that non-Randian fat boy, Michael Moore:

Moore, on the other hand, "doesn't trust the government" in the sense that he believes that the US is owned and operated, right now in 2003, by an antidemocratic cabal with imminent plans to enslave the world. Now, I don't have any guns, don't know anyone who does, and don't know offhand if we're even allowed to have them in California, except perhaps in the off-site childproof vaults required for cigarettes, but if I seriously believed even half of what Michael Moore claims to, I'd be stockpiling sniper rifles in a buried strongbox at the park. [Bold added. And I'd try persuading others to join my side rather than alienating them. --ed]

And the same goes for the Moore fans. The best way to infer people's beliefs is to watch their actions, and the people who call Moore's movies "provocative" and "important" are neither fleeing the country nor forming underground resistance cells. They don't believe Moore either. At best, they're choosing to place him in a mental gray area not subject to "truth" or "falsehood" tests.

I think it's time to consider the possibility that Michael Moore is valued specifically because he's making it up and known to be making it up. It's fantasy politics, and deliberately so. So "fighting" it with reality-based tactics isn't going to work -- but if you find yourself opposed by fantasy politics, it's worth wondering whether there's all that much to be fighting about in the first place.

Based on what Brad R. does (insult strangers) and does not do (convince anyone or stand for anything), I'd say he's more interested in building himself up by tearing others down and in making somebody angry, than he is in the fate of a few imprisoned terrorists. And that's too bad. Not for the Arab terrorists, but for himself and anyone else they threaten. (Whether my position is correct or not.)

It is also bad for his fellow liberals. For even though there are a few positions taken by the left which have merit (and with which I agree), people like Brad R., in failing to make coherent arguments for their positions or even to show a modicum of civility, are causing many reasonable people to summarily reject the left and its politicians. This paves the way for the right, and even the religious right, to look civilized and rational by comparison. How many times are secularists dismissed as idiots these days even though the Founding Fathers themselves took great pains to establish a secular republic? (This issue is also alluded to in the same "ten wingnut post" I wrote.)

And, lest anyone accuse me of picking on Brad R. for picking on me, read about how the left gangs up on Michelle Malkin. I have many very significant intellectual differences with Malkin and am often at loggerheads with her on various issues. I pull no punches when I am, but even at my snarkiest, I at least address her arguments. Bubblehead points out yet another example along these lines, of a college professor abusing his position of authority to intimidate making a sound, reasoned case for his views for consideration by a young, conservative student of his.

I will continue to expose your right-wing, anti-people politics until groups like your won't dare show their face on a college campus. Real freedom will come when soldiers in Iraq turn their guns on their superiors....

It is people like Brad R. who are to blame for the fact that the Democratic Party is all but dead as a national party. His behavior, like the behavior of the left as a whole is not merely indicative of significant intellectual rot, it is repugnant to reasonable adults in general.

The left, which in its glory days stood for reason, has abandoned reason and no longer offers anything of value to the American electorate. This is what is wrong with the left today.

-- CAV