Hines Calls Me a Neander-Blogger!

Cragg Hines, a political columnist for the Houston Chronicle, wrote an opinion piece that appeared in today's paper. I was going to say that I haven't read enough of Hines to say whether he is liberal, but he provides enough evidence that he "leans left" there anyway. Okay. Maybe I'm being a little unfair. After all, when the typical leftist says someone "leans left," he usually means "to the left of Che Guevara."

Well! I, with my protruding brow, feel much better now!

Steam-blowing aside, I wonder just how constructive Hines can really expect to be -- or how prejudiced against nonliberals he happens to be -- when I hear him on the one hand complaining that what he calls "hard-right" bloggers should issue "explanations" for daring to question the validity of the Terri Schiavo "talking points" memo (never mind that this was on the heels of Rathergate), and on the other, calling us (I'll get to that in a moment.) "neander-bloggers?"

Until now, I have had nothing to say about the memos. I would have been only a little surprised had the memo turned out to be a fake. I would have also been very angry: For once, I found myself on the same side as MSM on a major issue. For MSM to have pulled another Rathergate stunt would have unfairly discredited the secular side. I was on the sidelines in this one, hoping the memos were real, and not particularly happy with the Republicans as a whole....

For the record, let me restate my positions on the important points of the Schiavo mess. First, I had no problem with the Florida law that granted Michael Schiavo custody of his brain-dead wife. (In short: "You chose your spouse, not your parents.") Second, I regarded Terri Schiavo as being brain-dead already. I also do not believe that man has a soul that is independent of his body, for that matter. Third, I hold that removing the feeding tube was legal and moral. Fourth, I am greatly alarmed at the legislative and executive efforts to override the meticulous and carefully-considered decision of that third branch of our government, the judiciary, which is supposed to be free from the interference of the other two. And yes, I wholeheartedly agree with Hines that the point of the Republican "talking points" memo in question -- that the Schiavo case was "a great political issue" -- was "supremely ghoulish and distasteful."

So why am I unhappy with Hines? First of all, he is wrong, even about those bloggers interested in this memo who supported reinserting the tube and all the worst actions taken by the Republicans! Take Michelle Malkin. She followed the story on the "talking points" memo and chided the MSM for not paying it much attention, but when the memo was found to be authentic, she did admit it. Hines starts off his column with the lament: "Perhaps to anticipate a properly obsequious note of regret would have been expecting too much. Well then, what about a modest mea culpa? Or even a straightforward explanation? But, no, hardly a word." Well, Malkin actually has quite a few "words" -- concerning some bad tips given to other bloggers -- about how the questions got started. I found myself diametrically opposed to Malkin on this one, but I'll attack her for her stands on the issues in this case and for her real deficiencies rather than doing what Hines did: Make a sweeping claim of stonewalling on the part of a nebulous conspiracy of "hard-right" bloggers. For one thing, it took just a single counterexample to prick that balloon. Malkin is, by at least one measure I know of, one of the top ten bloggers -- liberal or conservative.

My second reason for being unhappy with Hines is precisely because he seems to lump together nonliberal bloggers and call them "hard-right." How can I say this? Easily. The man makes absolutely no distinction between the religious right -- for whom the Terri Schiavo case was such a "great political issue" -- and the secular right, who were, sadly, largely AWOL (along with the left) in this battle. Although I do not regard myself as being conservative, I "look conservative" to most liberals (e.g., the notation in this roundup), so I will count myself as one now, for the sake of argument. Phrases like "religious right," "social conservatives," and "religious conservatives" are absent from the piece. The monolithic vision of "the right" that this implies on Hines's part reminds me of a piece by E. J. Dionne awhile back which is an excellent read by a man I almost never agree with. Dionne starts out this way (hat tip: TIA Daily):

Liberals have so little respect for conservatives these days that people on the left are genuinely astonished when people on the right have principled disagreements with each other. The left assumes the right marches in lock step under orders from the White House.

Later, he adds this.

The right is widely assumed to have more coherence and discipline than it does. That means its dominance in our politics is exaggerated while its intellectual energy is insufficiently appreciated. Few outside its ranks acknowledge how many philosophical streams feed the conservative movement [italics added].

Were he to read this, Mr. Hines might notice that I have refrained from calling him a socialist. Honestly, I don't know that much about his political views except that they must be from the left. Otherwise, he would know or acknowledge the difference between religious and fiscal conservatives. He would also know or account for the fact that many of his readers would need to have that distinction pointed out. His unwieldy use of the term "right" marks him as a liberal as surely as the term "hoagie" would tell a New Orleansian that the gentleman who means to order a "po-boy" hails from the North.

But if I am not "really" a conservative, why do I object so much? I have pointed out numerous times in this blog that the religious right and the left both buy the myth that the religious right won the last presidential election. On the strength of that myth, the religious right is demanding more of their agenda (as witness the jihad against the judiciary that began in earnest with Schiavo), and some figures on the left, like Hillary Clinton and Howard Dean, are making overtures to the religionists. Both of these things put the secular right and the civil libertarian left at a disadvantage already, without these two portions of the electorate remaining ignorant of each other and thus unable to consider an alliance.

I have pointed out before that it's time for the secular right to stop acting like the battered housewife of the religious right and seek alliances elsewhere. Not only that, the genuinely secular portion of the left needs to do the same thing. Both parties are taking secularists for granted. Ignorance of -- or parochialism about -- the actual political landscape, as shown by Hines in this piece, is not the way to begin the search for the allies you will need to stop the ghouls from gutting our Constitution and sinking their teeth into Lady Liberty.

Nor, for that matter, is insulting said potential allies, as Hines does when he calls his lumped-together conservative bloggers, "neander-bloggers." So, Mr. Hines, let me lay a civil rights analogy you might understand on you to drive the point home. I remember seeing a Star Trek episode awhile back in which Abraham Lincoln was transported through time and met the crew of the Enterprise. Upon meeting Lt. Uhuru, Lincoln calls her a "charming Negress." Rather than taking offense, Uhuru takes the great man's context into account. So here's what I'll do. I'm emailing a link of this to you and to your editor, as a relatively unknown member of the "Houston-area coven" of "conservative" bloggers. If you read nothing else, look at Dionne's article. I do agree that certain conservative bloggers -- the theocratic ones -- have "commented little ... on the condition within their movement that allows a woman's suffering to be reduced to political capital." But this secular conservative blogger has commented on this issue. In fact, he has even proposed a concrete first step towards a remedy.

So, you seem like a good man. I'm going to assume that, had you known more about the conservative movement -- and its lookalikes -- you wouldn't have called me a "neander-blogger" or wondered why I was silent on the talking points memo. (I was far more worried about the fact that the religious right seems to have swallowed up the entire Republican party.) We secularists have bigger fish to fry than to nitpick about inadvertent insults.

-- CAV