Trimming around the edges (UPDATED)

(please scroll to bottom for update)

So, why doesn’t the liberal-Left have nearly the image problem that the conservative-Right does with its disreputable fringe elements? Because the liberal Left doesn’t have any.

While the mainstream Right fights a constant battle to marginalize and otherwise disassociate themselves from the more unsavory elements that are rightly or wrongly ascribed to the conservative movement be they the Birchers back in the 50s and early 60s to the current crop of Birthers , the Left effectively marginalizes their own unsavory elements by… accepting them into the fold.

It’s a brilliant strategy, really. How can one be outside of the mainstream of the left when one is a tenured professor, a respected inner-city pastor, a political action group favored by the speaker of the House or even a registered Democratic poll-watcher?

B-Daddy, who has been blogging up a storm lately, has some thoughts on extremism and the paranoid style of the opposition, here.

Quick side note: Our brief flirtation with greenism (hey, beach chicks dug it) was dealt a mortal blow when some such HMFIC of the Surfrider Foundation admitted without any sense of remorse that we could detect to exaggerating and fudging on claims of damage to the environment in order to be heard above the din.

Sometimes you got to do some digging and perform a little homework of your own to rise above the din of demagoguery and lies.

(UPDATE #1):

Predictable.

Recall how the tea party movement was smeared in an ad hominem fashion with the presence of a few Birthers at rallies and townhalls. And recall how every reputable conservative outlet, including this one, worked to disavow themselves of this tinfoil hat brigade.

Now that the liberal establishment had an anti-government conspiracy kook, themselves, working in the White House, what has been the response? Since hypocrisy appears to be the only sin among the liberal-Left, disavowal is out of the picture. So, it’s bop-bop, co-opt ‘til you drop, baby.

From the New Republic:

Jones was wrong, actually, in disavowing his support for 9/11 conspiracy theory. He signed the document, which can only mean that he supports the idea that 9/11 was planned, or that the Bushies knew something more than they have said, or at least that the charge is plausible enough to require investigation.

But support for that idea is hardly unknown among people of the left – and often gestural in its own way; look one of these types in the eye and ask “Do you really think George Bush and his cabinet engineered the murder of thousands and have kept the secret for eight years?” and watch the nervous pause and the look off into the distance. Speculations in this vein hardly meant that Jones was not sincerely committed to working within the government to do good.

Awesome. Let's toss the Truthers now into the mainstream of the liberal political movement.

If it's Good enough for Grandma Pt. II

We’re fairly confident that this dude won’t be invited to guest-preach at the Trinity medicine show anytime soon.

Manning is completely insane… and we mean that in the most complimentary of ways.



H/T: 'Dawg

Ironic?

While Obama confronts (or perhaps more accurately, America would want Obama to confront) his suspect associations with a racist, anti-American pastor and domestic terrorists, Arianna Huffington knows who the real wackos are. (Sorry, no embed. Gotta Click here... tell you what, we'll spare you the trouble - she is of the belief that Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly are part and parcel to the fringe Right and therefore the true threats to the Republic.)

“They will not be as powerful when we are done dealing with them.” Why does the creepy factor go up when spoken in that Euro-accent?

Article here claims its high noon for the American Left. For over 40 years now decent patriotic FDR/Kennedy liberals have had to share the big (D) tent with the likes of Reverend Wright and William Ayres who are held far more in “mainstream” regard than “fringe” in the Party structure.

From the last paragraph of the article:

“So the entire American body politic has a festering sore on its hands. This will not go away by itself. It will not be bought off by more money. It must be repudiated by the sensible Left, if it is still there. Just as William F. Buckley denounced the anti-Semites on the right, and sensible Americans rejected segregation and the Klan, just as American unions expelled Stalinist unions from the AFL-CIO, the time has come for the decent Left to draw a bright line in the sand, and keep the hate mongers out.”

(Referenced but unnamed, Samuel Gompers is the man singularly responsible for keeping American unions free of Communist influence and a man on our list of most underrated Americans.)

That quote “I didn’t leave the Democratic Party, the Democratic Party left me” attributed to Ronald Reagan comes to mind here.

The challenge offered for the Democratic Party will be far more daunting though than the convulsed birthing of the conservative movement within the Republican Party in the 60s as the defeatism, anti-Americanism and relativism that informs and guides much of Party policy, legislative agenda and rhetoric is far more engrained even than the “me-too”, Rockefeller country-club vibe of the 50s and 60s Republican Party.

Pragmatically speaking, the good liberals’ dreams of universal healthcare, a “living wage”, affordable housing and the like suffer because of these associations. And contrary to the claims that Republican demagogueing of “wedge” issues is responsible for middle America voting against their own best economic interests, its these associations that are at the core of what’s (really) the matter with Kansas.

Update #1: Wright’s speech at the National Press Club earlier today. For the most part, he refrains from tottering off the beam. Click here if embed is inop.




And round-up of his speech yesterday at the NAACP can be found at Gateway Pundit, including some interesting parallels between Wright’s reasoning on the differences between African and European brains and those of the KKK.