Glenn Greenwald completely demolished former Senator Fred Thompson’s (R-Tennessee) mischaracterization of the liberal blogosphere in a column for Salon yesterday. Quoting an unmasked “Digby” from the Take Back America conference on Tuesday, Greenwald points to the real “extremists” and “fringe.”
We may argue about tactics and strategies, or the extent to which we are partisans versus ideologues. And believe me, we do.
But there’s no disagreement among us that the modern conservative movement of Newt and Grover and Karl and Rush has proven to be a dangerous cultural and political cancer on the body politic.
You will not find anyone amongst us who believes that the Bush administration’s executive power grab and flagrant partisan use of the federal government is anything less than an assault on the Constitution.
We stand together against the dissolution of habeas corpus, and the atrocities of Abu Grahib and Guantanamo.
And we all agree that Islamic terrorism is a threat, but one that we cannot meet with military power alone.
And yes, a vast majority of us were against this mindless invasion of Iraq from the beginning, or at least saw the writing on the wall long before Peggy Noonan discovered that George W. Bush wasn’t the second coming of Winston Churchill.
Sadly, we also all agree that the mainstream media is part of the problem. Democracy sufferes when not being held accountable by a vigorous press.
Greenwald writes:
Beyond that, are the views Digby described really accurately characterized as “liberal,” at least in the sense that the term was understood prior to the advent of Bush radicalism? There are large numbers of individuals who have never considered themselves to be “liberal” in the past — and certainly not anywhere near the “Far Left” — who would vigorously embrace every one of these propositions. Indeed, large percentages of Americans — if not clear majorities — embrace each of these beliefs.
Only in the true fringe — what Digby calls “the modern conservative movement of Newt and Grover and Karl and Rush,” as well as their establishment media enablers — does opposition to the Iraq War, or Guantanamo and torture, or the abolition of habeas corpus, or the grotesque deceit of the Limbaugh Right make one a “leftist” or fringe liberal, as those terms are used in their pejorative sense. The reality is that the views Digby identifies as the crux of the “progressive blogosphere” are entirely mainstream American views. “Extremism” is marked by those who reject those beliefs, not by those who embrace them.
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June 21, 2007 at 6:53pm