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Digg.com and a couple of other websites? Wow, and all I have is 30 years of dedicated pol-watching. I feel outgunned,,,

About the climate of debate. Did you know that George McGovern and Barry Goldwater were good friends? There was a time when Libs and Cons had debate without hating one another. The change in the dialogue started with Nixon, was furthered by Lee Atwater, and perfected by Karl Rove.

I would remind you that Conservatism has a thriving cottage industry in Liberal-hatred. Here’s a list – Limbaugh, Coulter, O’Reilly, Malkin, Hannity, Beck. Please publish a similar list of Liberals…

So who coarsened the level of debate?

You mentioned “a few far left professors at Berkeley,” as the only ones who are anti-western civilization. I hope you are correct. I also hope that the greater numbers don’t buy into things that sound good but have the effect of destroying Western Civilization.

ThirstyJon

P.S. I don’t think Rove, Cheney, etc. created the current climate by themselves. A little bit of time on Digg.com shows me that the negative, cynical atmosphere is all around and doesn’t need their help. Read the DailyKos or Moveon.org. These sites have huge followings!

The writer is not a Liberal, and he does not know us, and this is going too far. If he had said “I believe Liberal thought is…” or “It appears that the Liberal position is…”, or even “Some Liberals believe…” he’d be stating an arguable theory. But instead, this is a hatchet job that paints with an awfully broad brush.

Rejection of Judeo-Christian ethics? A disbelief in the base tenets of Western Civilization? No no, these are the positions of a few far left professors at Berkeley. The rest of us are not nearly so radical. This is O’reilly’s “War on Christmas” writ small.

If I look around, I can probably find a editorial about how all conservatives believe that war casualties are Gods punishment for the USA tolerating homosexuals (or I could write one). Would you call that a fair statement? I know of at least one hyper conservative organization that preaches exactly that.

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“”anti-war rhetoric that strikes many average Americans as unpatriotic”".

The average american is now against this war, and the polls prove it. You’re going to need much bigger prisons to handle 180,000,000 traitors.

The climate of politics in America is what Rove and Cheney and DeLay and Limbaugh et al, ad nauseum made it. As you said in a long ago blog post – “Somebody’s going to pay for this,,,”.

The entire paragraph that you quoted goes like this:

“Listen closely to Osama bin Laden’s recorded monologues, and you will detect at least some subtle similarities to the diatribes of the Democratic Congressional leadership. This is not a coincidence, for the core beliefs that Judeo-Christian truths and Western values are passé, and that Western civilization is therefore a sham, are to some degree shared by both camps. This leads to Democratic anti-war rhetoric that strikes many average Americans as unpatriotic.”

It appears to me that the author’s intention is to explain an appearance of being “unpatriotic.” He is not equating “all democrats” with “radical muslim terrorists.” The article is about how some liberal thought is anti-western civilization, as is Osama bin Laden.

Although, with the current climate of politics often found in America I am not surprised that you would take issue with that statement.

ThirstyJon

Too far, peace, out.