Liberal extremism

Eschaton on “liberal extremism”:

The wingnuts run the Republican party. The center runs the Democratic Party. The ‘liberal extremists’ only hurt the center because people like CalPundit keep apologizing for them. It’s a great way to get a Fox News gig – you know, “Even the liberal CalPundit doesn’t like those icky Gay Rights parades. Not because there’s anything wrong with that, but because they’re hurting their cause which he cares so deeply about.” Calpundit might want to look into the recent history of the gay rights movement, particularly ACT-UP. They realized quickly that the only way to get media attention to the fact that people were dying was to Make a Big Noise. They did, it worked.

Tapped: not too bright

There’s a reason Tapped is not my blogroll: posts like this:

WHAT NEXT? CONT’D. So now that the war is begun, what do liberals turn their energy towards? The University of Illinois’ Michael Bérubé suggests, for starters, taking to task the Bushies for their apparent consideration of rehabilitating the Iraqi Ba’ath Party once the war is over.

I wonder whether the sane left couldn’t start agitating now for a fairly simple but critical postwar position: No Ba’ath Party officials in a post-Saddam government. This is supposed to be a war of national liberation? Saddam is supposed to be Hitler, and antiwar liberals are being likened to Chamberlain? Fine, let’s run with the stupid analogy: Imagine Allied officials in June 1945 saying, “Hitler is dead and Germany has been defeated, but you know, a lot of these here Nazis know a great deal about running the country, they have over a decade of experience, we think they’re the people to work with in this crucial time of rebuilding.”

The point of this position, of course, is to hoist the Bush imperium by its own petard, and — incidentally — to get the antiwar left to be serious about coming up with a postwar agenda more plausible and cogent than “US Out of Everywhere.” I’m now in the process of printing up 500,000 “Peace-Loving Americans for de-Ba’athification” buttons and bumper stickers– a really catchy slogan, I think, even better than “No Blood for Oil.”

Sounds good to us.

“Get the antiwar left to be serious”? Mate, we’re more fucking serious than an ivory tower nitwit like you. At least we know this is about people being killed in a cynical attempt to built an empire, not bloody party politics. The point is to stop the suffering in Iraq, not to “host Bush by his own petard”.

The point is to stop this:

An Iraqi man carrying an injured child

If you have a strong stomach and want to see how Bush and co are liberating Iraq, take a look here. Not pretty pictures, not pictures you want to see, but pictures you should see at least once, just to remind yourself why we still need to stop this war.