Joe Klein
ere’s a fun one I found via Atrios: Since You Asked. — A left-wing extremist exhibits many, but not necessarily all, of the following attributes . . .
I don’t know much about this Joe Klein guy. Apparently he’s some sort of pundit who was for the war before he was against it, that kind of thing. I do know that a lot of political, “left-wing” bloggers link to him and complain about him, so I’ve read a bit of his writing. From what I’ve read of his, he’s kind of a — well, kind of a whiner, really. I mean, he certainly doesn’t rank up there with, say, Glenn Beck, or anything, but there’s nothing particularly impressive about him.
But then he wrote this post, and it’s pretty choice. I would expect a guy who’s writing for Times/CNN to be better educated than this. Check it out — talk about building up a strawman to knock down. He wrote this “list” of things that make up a “left-wing extremist”. While I’ve no doubt that there is such a thing as a left-wing extremist — some fool somewhere will manage to take damn near anything one step too far — I get the feeling from the tone of his post that he feels all “liberals” fall into this category.
Two of the list particularly annoyed me: believes that America isn’t really a democracy and regularly uses harsh, vulgar, intolerant language to attack moderates or conservatives.
The first one annoyed me due to semantics. The United States of America is not, strictly speaking, a “democracy”. It’s a republic. The meanings of both words have gotten mixed together over the centuries, but a democracy is a majority rule form of government, where the people directly elect their leaders and vote on their laws, with, in theory, very few or no intervening bodies. A republic is a very similar form of government where in the people elect representatives, and the representatives go on to make laws and so forth. The primary difference is that, without the intervening bodies, such as state and federal congresses, a democracy actually is majority rule. Whereas, in a republic, with all those elected intermediaries, it’s much, much easier for a loud minority to sway the vote. Also, a democracy is designed to work on a small scale — say, the size of a town, and doesn’t work out very well for anything larger. A republic still works on a large scale.
Yes, yes, I know. It’s semantics, but I’m an English major, and we tend to be fussy about that sort of thing. Pay attention and get it right.
The second one irritated me far more, due to the “right” having people like, oh, Ann Coulter, who basically just called John Edwards a faggot on TV, or Rush Limbaugh, who spews hatred and intolerance all over the radio waves on a regular basis. If I, as a “liberal”, use the word “fuck”, ooooo, I’m bad. If some lying, cum-guzzling, festering, oozing, infected twat like Ann Coulter goes on TV and calls someone a fag, nobody says a word. What the fuck. Seriously. The right-wingers whine, especially in regards to bloggers, about bad language and incivility, and then shut right the hell up when their own people get up on TV and spout hatred, intolerance, and all manner of vitriol. Or, you know, when the VP tells somebody in Congress, “Fuck you!”
Please. Who the hell are you people trying to kid? If it’s good for the goose, people, it’s good for the gander. If Ann Coulter can go be the keynote speaker for a major Republican get-together, and during her speech insinuate that John Edwards is a “faggot”, then I can call her a cum-guzzling twat, and if no one says a word to her, then no one can say a word to me, and I should be taken just as seriously. That’s the way it works, folks. Maybe when the media and the Republicans start jumping on their own folks for the “dirty words” and incivility, then the rest of us will clean up our potty mouths.
But, you know, at least in my case, probably not.
