Why do people hate Liberals?

[Foxfyre]

Lol, you can say what you want, but you libtards never DEMONSTRATE you can keep more than one thought in your head at a time, much less actually prove the facts are on your side.

That's my main complaint with the modern American liberal. With extremely few exceptions, they are unable to focus on a concept and discuss it. They will invariably veer off into straw men, non sequitur, throw in red herrings, and will attack the messenger and getting them to actually address a topic is much much worse than herding cats. If I (or anybody else) tries to keep them on a topic they don't like, I/you can count on:

1. Being called a whole bunch of unattractive names
2. Being accused of all sorts of thoughts, ideas, beliefs, and wants that hadn't occured to me/us
3. Having the discussion immediately diverted to something totally unrelated
4. Being accused of statements I/we didn't make and having statements I/we did make, and that cannot be refuted, ignored. And then later on in the thread we will be accused of saying what we didn't say and we will be accused of not saying what we have already said. (I think there's something in the water they drink that causes selective reading or cognitive reading dysfunction.)
5. Never having the actual concept of the OP addressed head on with any kind of objective or comprehensive argument expressed.
6. Plus a whole lot of accusations of 'you do it too' or 'others do it too' that is intended to totally excuse them from all sins.

(I wish we could just all memorize the list and throw out a number each time it becomes pertinent. Sure would save a lot of typing.)

I am of course writing this in the wake of a good deal of frustration and resignation due to recent experience that it is impossible to have a reasoned discussion with a very high percentage of the leftists/liberals/progressives/statists/political class at USMB.

At the same time I have a lot of liberal friends here at USMB that I adore and count among my closest friends here. So it isn't a blanket condemnation. But for the rest, it makes them damn hard to like, much less love.

I agree. My use of 'bad' language has a lot to do with my time in the infantry and also reflects the lack of patience I have with these embiciles.

I swear George Soros must pay these idjits by the post.

But there are some good liberals, classic liberals, that will discuss things and engage with reason and supported fact. But they are far too influenced by the Jacobin trolls and either leave in frustration at a ruined thread or apparently feel that they are betraying their own side in some way.

Bob Beckel, Juan Williams and Alan Colmes are good examples of classic liberals who have strayed way off to the leftward fringe as has the whole Democratic Party. While Beckel remains a Christian, (dunno about Williams) and I pray for his soul, Colmes seems to have swallowed the whole anti-Christian playbook. But all three men will use reason and bring facts to the table. Beckel is one of the reasons I will actually watch the Five, Williams seems to rarely be on it, as I do like the others too especially Gutfeld, but they engage in more discussion than most shows of that sort.

I like Beckel too. Colmes not so much as I find him far too strident and prejudicial against anybody who disagrees with him, but that is based on my experience with him and his radio program from years past, not so much in his role on Fox News. Be careful about characterizing these guys as classical liberals though as classical liberals are what the Founders were: a people who believed in a nation in which the federal government would be small, limited, and restricted and the people would govern themselves and form themselves into whatever sort of societies they wished to have.

Among some of my favorite modern liberals have been Michael Kinsley, Molly Ivans, William Raspberry, Camille Paglia, and even Maureen Dowd has had her moments. I have regularly read them all because though they all support/supported concepts and principles I can't agree with or endorse, all are brutally honest, fair minded, and non partisan in a way that is very rare among liberals. They all have made me think, re-evaluate my position on this or that, and see things through a different perspective.

 

[JimBowie1958]

That's my main complaint with the modern American liberal. With extremely few exceptions, they are unable to focus on a concept and discuss it. They will invariably veer off into straw men, non sequitur, throw in red herrings, and will attack the messenger and getting them to actually address a topic is much much worse than herding cats. If I (or anybody else) tries to keep them on a topic they don't like, I/you can count on:

1. Being called a whole bunch of unattractive names
2. Being accused of all sorts of thoughts, ideas, beliefs, and wants that hadn't occured to me/us
3. Having the discussion immediately diverted to something totally unrelated
4. Being accused of statements I/we didn't make and having statements I/we did make, and that cannot be refuted, ignored. And then later on in the thread we will be accused of saying what we didn't say and we will be accused of not saying what we have already said. (I think there's something in the water they drink that causes selective reading or cognitive reading dysfunction.)
5. Never having the actual concept of the OP addressed head on with any kind of objective or comprehensive argument expressed.
6. Plus a whole lot of accusations of 'you do it too' or 'others do it too' that is intended to totally excuse them from all sins.

(I wish we could just all memorize the list and throw out a number each time it becomes pertinent. Sure would save a lot of typing.)

I am of course writing this in the wake of a good deal of frustration and resignation due to recent experience that it is impossible to have a reasoned discussion with a very high percentage of the leftists/liberals/progressives/statists/political class at USMB.

At the same time I have a lot of liberal friends here at USMB that I adore and count among my closest friends here. So it isn't a blanket condemnation. But for the rest, it makes them damn hard to like, much less love.

I agree. My use of 'bad' language has a lot to do with my time in the infantry and also reflects the lack of patience I have with these embiciles.

I swear George Soros must pay these idjits by the post.

But there are some good liberals, classic liberals, that will discuss things and engage with reason and supported fact. But they are far too influenced by the Jacobin trolls and either leave in frustration at a ruined thread or apparently feel that they are betraying their own side in some way.

Bob Beckel, Juan Williams and Alan Colmes are good examples of classic liberals who have strayed way off to the leftward fringe as has the whole Democratic Party. While Beckel remains a Christian, (dunno about Williams) and I pray for his soul, Colmes seems to have swallowed the whole anti-Christian playbook. But all three men will use reason and bring facts to the table. Beckel is one of the reasons I will actually watch the Five, Williams seems to rarely be on it, as I do like the others too especially Gutfeld, but they engage in more discussion than most shows of that sort.

I like Beckel too. Colmes not so much as I find him far too strident and prejudicial against anybody who disagrees with him, but that is based on my experience with him and his radio program from years past, not so much in his role on Fox News. Be careful about characterizing these guys as classical liberals though as classical liberals are what the Founders were: a people who believed in a nation in which the federal government would be small, limited, and restricted and the people would govern themselves and form themselves into whatever sort of societies they wished to have.

Among some of my favorite modern liberals have been Michael Kinsley, Molly Ivans, William Raspberry, Camille Paglia, and even Maureen Dowd has had her moments. I have regularly read them all because though they all support/supported concepts and principles I can't agree with or endorse, all are brutally honest, fair minded, and non partisan in a way that is very rare among liberals. They all have made me think, re-evaluate my position on this or that, and see things through a different perspective.

Yeah, by 'classic liberal' I mean the Galbraith, Schlessinger, Russel type who are good to get you to think about what you believe and maybe reassess things from time to time.

Some of Galbraith's debates with William F. Buckley were classics and well worth watching.

So you passed on Juan Williams; got issues with him or just an over sight?

 

[Foxfyre]

I agree. My use of 'bad' language has a lot to do with my time in the infantry and also reflects the lack of patience I have with these embiciles.

I swear George Soros must pay these idjits by the post.

But there are some good liberals, classic liberals, that will discuss things and engage with reason and supported fact. But they are far too influenced by the Jacobin trolls and either leave in frustration at a ruined thread or apparently feel that they are betraying their own side in some way.

Bob Beckel, Juan Williams and Alan Colmes are good examples of classic liberals who have strayed way off to the leftward fringe as has the whole Democratic Party. While Beckel remains a Christian, (dunno about Williams) and I pray for his soul, Colmes seems to have swallowed the whole anti-Christian playbook. But all three men will use reason and bring facts to the table. Beckel is one of the reasons I will actually watch the Five, Williams seems to rarely be on it, as I do like the others too especially Gutfeld, but they engage in more discussion than most shows of that sort.

I like Beckel too. Colmes not so much as I find him far too strident and prejudicial against anybody who disagrees with him, but that is based on my experience with him and his radio program from years past, not so much in his role on Fox News. Be careful about characterizing these guys as classical liberals though as classical liberals are what the Founders were: a people who believed in a nation in which the federal government would be small, limited, and restricted and the people would govern themselves and form themselves into whatever sort of societies they wished to have.

Among some of my favorite modern liberals have been Michael Kinsley, Molly Ivans, William Raspberry, Camille Paglia, and even Maureen Dowd has had her moments. I have regularly read them all because though they all support/supported concepts and principles I can't agree with or endorse, all are brutally honest, fair minded, and non partisan in a way that is very rare among liberals. They all have made me think, re-evaluate my position on this or that, and see things through a different perspective.

Yeah, by 'classic liberal' I mean the Galbraith, Schlessinger, Russel type who are good to get you to think about what you believe and maybe reassess things from time to time.

Some of Galbraith's debates with William F. Buckley were classics and well worth watching.

So you passed on Juan Williams; got issues with him or just an over sight?

An oversight. I do like Juan Williams. And there are others I could have added to my list. I respect any liberal who can provide a reasoned rationale for why they hold the opinions they do and who can articulate a reasoned argument for a concept or point of view without trashing somebody else, and most especially I appreciate those who apply the same standards to everybody and not just their ideologically aligned colleagues. Alas such liberals are very rare these days.

 

[JimBowie1958]

I like Beckel too. Colmes not so much as I find him far too strident and prejudicial against anybody who disagrees with him, but that is based on my experience with him and his radio program from years past, not so much in his role on Fox News. Be careful about characterizing these guys as classical liberals though as classical liberals are what the Founders were: a people who believed in a nation in which the federal government would be small, limited, and restricted and the people would govern themselves and form themselves into whatever sort of societies they wished to have.

Among some of my favorite modern liberals have been Michael Kinsley, Molly Ivans, William Raspberry, Camille Paglia, and even Maureen Dowd has had her moments. I have regularly read them all because though they all support/supported concepts and principles I can't agree with or endorse, all are brutally honest, fair minded, and non partisan in a way that is very rare among liberals. They all have made me think, re-evaluate my position on this or that, and see things through a different perspective.

Yeah, by 'classic liberal' I mean the Galbraith, Schlessinger, Russel type who are good to get you to think about what you believe and maybe reassess things from time to time.

Some of Galbraith's debates with William F. Buckley were classics and well worth watching.

So you passed on Juan Williams; got issues with him or just an over sight?

An oversight. I do like Juan Williams. And there are others I could have added to my list. I respect any liberal who can provide a reasoned rationale for why they hold the opinions they do and who can articulate a reasoned argument for a concept or point of view without trashing somebody else, and most especially I appreciate those who apply the same standards to everybody and not just their ideologically aligned colleagues. Alas such liberals are very rare these days.

Very, and despite appearances not all of them work at FOX, lol.

 

[American_Jihad]

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vkePZUhUiWQ]The Best Of Left-Wing Hate From 2010 - YouTube[/ame]

 

[American_Jihad]

The Left’s Disdain for the Will to Live

January 15, 2014 by Arnold Ahlert

Lisa Bonchek Adams is a 43-year-old woman with three children and Stage IV metastatic breast cancer. In the seven years since she was first diagnosed, Adams has dedicated an enormous amount of time and energy to chronicling her battle with the disease, via hundreds of thousands of tweets and a blog. In two columns that offer great insight into the progressive mindset, former New York Times executive editor Bill Keller, and his wife, Emma Gilbey Keller, have taken Adams to task for having the audacity to prolong her own life, and publicly write about her efforts to do so. As far as these two are concerned, Adams isn’t dying quickly enough, or privately enough, to suit their sensibilities.

In a column titled “Heroic Measures,” Bill Keller acknowledges that Adams has an audience of several thousand who are caught up in her “unsparing narrative of mastectomy, chemotherapy, radiation, biopsies and scans, pumps and drains and catheters, grueling drug trials and grim side effects, along with her posts on how to tell the children, potshots at the breast cancer lobby, poetry and resolute calls to ‘persevere.’” Bill further notes that lately, due to the fact that the cancer has “colonized” just about every part of Adams’ body with the exception of her brain, “her optimism has become a little less unassailable.”

One might be tempted to wonder what purpose might be served by any criticism of any cancer patient’s optimism, but Keller is more than up to the task:

...

Few Americans these days take issue with the idea that people should be allowed to die with dignity if they close to do so. Yet as the Liverpool Pathway scandal has shown, such euphemisms can become extremely flexible — especially when such flexibility is tied to cash incentives. “In America, nothing happens without a cost-benefit analysis,” writes Bill Keller. That is exactly the future ObamaCare, replete with its Independent Payment Advisory Board, portends.

The Left?s Disdain for the Will to Live | FrontPage Magazine

 

[JimBowie1958]

The Left’s Disdain for the Will to Live

January 15, 2014 by Arnold Ahlert

Lisa Bonchek Adams is a 43-year-old woman with three children and Stage IV metastatic breast cancer. In the seven years since she was first diagnosed, Adams has dedicated an enormous amount of time and energy to chronicling her battle with the disease, via hundreds of thousands of tweets and a blog. In two columns that offer great insight into the progressive mindset, former New York Times executive editor Bill Keller, and his wife, Emma Gilbey Keller, have taken Adams to task for having the audacity to prolong her own life, and publicly write about her efforts to do so. As far as these two are concerned, Adams isn’t dying quickly enough, or privately enough, to suit their sensibilities.

In a column titled “Heroic Measures,” Bill Keller acknowledges that Adams has an audience of several thousand who are caught up in her “unsparing narrative of mastectomy, chemotherapy, radiation, biopsies and scans, pumps and drains and catheters, grueling drug trials and grim side effects, along with her posts on how to tell the children, potshots at the breast cancer lobby, poetry and resolute calls to ‘persevere.’” Bill further notes that lately, due to the fact that the cancer has “colonized” just about every part of Adams’ body with the exception of her brain, “her optimism has become a little less unassailable.”

One might be tempted to wonder what purpose might be served by any criticism of any cancer patient’s optimism, but Keller is more than up to the task:

...

Few Americans these days take issue with the idea that people should be allowed to die with dignity if they close to do so. Yet as the Liverpool Pathway scandal has shown, such euphemisms can become extremely flexible — especially when such flexibility is tied to cash incentives. “In America, nothing happens without a cost-benefit analysis,” writes Bill Keller. That is exactly the future ObamaCare, replete with its Independent Payment Advisory Board, portends.

The Left?s Disdain for the Will to Live | FrontPage Magazine

George Bernard Shaw, a classic 1930's libtard

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBZsTf6oLfY]George Bernard Shaw Justify Yourself.mpg - YouTube[/ame]

 

[JimBowie1958]

Too many people have had to live and flee from under libtard rule for no one to hate them.

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m0fHMljbvLE&list=PLC6514882D640F457]Fabian Socialist George Bernard Shaw Praises Mussolini, other dictators - YouTube[/ame]

 

[JimBowie1958]

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4R7jL0_JANY&list=PLC6514882D640F457]George Bernard Shaw says to abolish the Constitution (INFOWARS) - YouTube[/ame]

 

[Foxfyre]

Jim Bowie, find another term to describe what you call 'classic liberals'. It is too easy to confuse that with 'classical liberals' who were, as the Founders were, and are now the 180 degree antithesis of what you describe as 'classic liberals'.

 

[Uncensored2008]

Jim Bowie, find another term to describe what you call 'classic liberals'. It is too easy to confuse that with 'classical liberals' who were, as the Founders were, and are now the 180 degree antithesis of what you describe as 'classic liberals'.

Communists are the polar opposite of classic liberals. George Bernard Shaw was a Communist, and an evil SOB.

 

[Foxfyre]

Jim Bowie, find another term to describe what you call 'classic liberals'. It is too easy to confuse that with 'classical liberals' who were, as the Founders were, and are now the 180 degree antithesis of what you describe as 'classic liberals'.

Communists are the polar opposite of classic liberals. George Bernard Shaw was a Communist, and an evil SOB.

Socialism, totalitarianism, and other authoritative political opportunisim evenmoreso. At least Marxist communism claims a goal of arriving at a utopian existence in which no formal government is necessary. That is closer to classical liberalsim and its concept of self governance than those who promote an all-powerful authoritarian central government. Of course pure communism is absurd on the face of it because human nature just isn't wired that way and no nation striving for communism ever got past the brutal, authoritarian stage of government. Government via social contract as promoted in classical liberalism has proved its value. Unfortunately modern liberalism hates that concept because they can't have absolute power over everybody else.

 

[bigrebnc1775]

their's a cloud over the land! But liberals made the weather and then they stand in the rain and say, ‘Shit, it’s raining!”

 

[RKMBrown]

Jim Bowie, find another term to describe what you call 'classic liberals'. It is too easy to confuse that with 'classical liberals' who were, as the Founders were, and are now the 180 degree antithesis of what you describe as 'classic liberals'.

Communists are the polar opposite of classic liberals. George Bernard Shaw was a Communist, and an evil SOB.

Socialism, totalitarianism, and other authoritative political opportunisim evenmoreso. At least Marxist communism claims a goal of arriving at a utopian existence in which no formal government is necessary. That is closer to classical liberalsim and its concept of self governance than those who promote an all-powerful authoritarian central government. Of course pure communism is absurd on the face of it because human nature just isn't wired that way and no nation striving for communism ever got past the brutal, authoritarian stage of government. Government via social contract as promoted in classical liberalism has proved its value. Unfortunately modern liberalism hates that concept because they can't have absolute power over everybody else.

Well said Fox... your move to the libertarian party way of thinking appears to be accelerating.

 

[Foxfyre]

Communists are the polar opposite of classic liberals. George Bernard Shaw was a Communist, and an evil SOB.

Socialism, totalitarianism, and other authoritative political opportunisim evenmoreso. At least Marxist communism claims a goal of arriving at a utopian existence in which no formal government is necessary. That is closer to classical liberalsim and its concept of self governance than those who promote an all-powerful authoritarian central government. Of course pure communism is absurd on the face of it because human nature just isn't wired that way and no nation striving for communism ever got past the brutal, authoritarian stage of government. Government via social contract as promoted in classical liberalism has proved its value. Unfortunately modern liberalism hates that concept because they can't have absolute power over everybody else.

Well said Fox... your move to the libertarian party way of thinking appears to be accelerating.

Sorry to burst your bubble, but I am not at all closer to the Libertarian Party way of thinking, nor do I intend to be when it itself often doesn't understand the principles of classical liberalism which is true libertarianism.

 

[RKMBrown]

Socialism, totalitarianism, and other authoritative political opportunisim evenmoreso. At least Marxist communism claims a goal of arriving at a utopian existence in which no formal government is necessary. That is closer to classical liberalsim and its concept of self governance than those who promote an all-powerful authoritarian central government. Of course pure communism is absurd on the face of it because human nature just isn't wired that way and no nation striving for communism ever got past the brutal, authoritarian stage of government. Government via social contract as promoted in classical liberalism has proved its value. Unfortunately modern liberalism hates that concept because they can't have absolute power over everybody else.

Well said Fox... your move to the libertarian party way of thinking appears to be accelerating.

Sorry to burst your bubble, but I am not at all closer to the Libertarian Party way of thinking, nor do I intend to be when it itself often doesn't understand the principles of classical liberalism which is true libertarianism.

Can you name one, just one, portion of the libertarian platform that is not based entirely on classical liberalism? If so I'll eat my hat.

 

[Foxfyre]

Well said Fox... your move to the libertarian party way of thinking appears to be accelerating.

Sorry to burst your bubble, but I am not at all closer to the Libertarian Party way of thinking, nor do I intend to be when it itself often doesn't understand the principles of classical liberalism which is true libertarianism.

Can you name one, just one, portion of the libertarian platform that is not based entirely on classical liberalism? If so I'll eat my hat.

Go down the list of the Libertarian Party 2012 platform. On issue after issue it assumes that the federal government is the agent to demand liberty and if we elect Bob Barr, he'll make it happen. That is as wrong as the GOP or Democratic Party assuming the federal government is the agent to promise or accomplish much of anything.

The classical liberal sees the federal government as having Constitutional Authority to secure our rights, implement just enough regulation to facilitate us operating as one nation, and then leave us alone to form whatever sort of societies we wish to have, however we wish to do that.

The Libertarian Party philosophy pretty much opposes that concept as it would have all people being required to have a society that the Libertarians (large L) want to have. Which is why the Libertarian Party mostly opposes those communities who want to regulate guns or allow a creche on the courthouse lawn or put crosses on the graves of fallen warriors or ban drugs. Liberty must include the ability to be 'narrow minded' and/or organize a religious or restrictive society as much as a society in which every person decides for himself/herself and there is little or no law at all. Unless we are free to organize the society we want to live in--whether we think that is good or bad-- there is no liberty at all. You still have a despot or monarch or dictator or totalitarianism dictating who and what we are and how we are required to live.

 

[American_Jihad]

The Left’s Disdain for the Will to Live

January 15, 2014 by Arnold Ahlert

Lisa Bonchek Adams is a 43-year-old woman with three children and Stage IV metastatic breast cancer. In the seven years since she was first diagnosed, Adams has dedicated an enormous amount of time and energy to chronicling her battle with the disease, via hundreds of thousands of tweets and a blog. In two columns that offer great insight into the progressive mindset, former New York Times executive editor Bill Keller, and his wife, Emma Gilbey Keller, have taken Adams to task for having the audacity to prolong her own life, and publicly write about her efforts to do so. As far as these two are concerned, Adams isn’t dying quickly enough, or privately enough, to suit their sensibilities.

In a column titled “Heroic Measures,” Bill Keller acknowledges that Adams has an audience of several thousand who are caught up in her “unsparing narrative of mastectomy, chemotherapy, radiation, biopsies and scans, pumps and drains and catheters, grueling drug trials and grim side effects, along with her posts on how to tell the children, potshots at the breast cancer lobby, poetry and resolute calls to ‘persevere.’” Bill further notes that lately, due to the fact that the cancer has “colonized” just about every part of Adams’ body with the exception of her brain, “her optimism has become a little less unassailable.”

One might be tempted to wonder what purpose might be served by any criticism of any cancer patient’s optimism, but Keller is more than up to the task:

...

Few Americans these days take issue with the idea that people should be allowed to die with dignity if they close to do so. Yet as the Liverpool Pathway scandal has shown, such euphemisms can become extremely flexible — especially when such flexibility is tied to cash incentives. “In America, nothing happens without a cost-benefit analysis,” writes Bill Keller. That is exactly the future ObamaCare, replete with its Independent Payment Advisory Board, portends.

The Left?s Disdain for the Will to Live | FrontPage Magazine

George Bernard Shaw, a classic 1930's libtard

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBZsTf6oLfY]George Bernard Shaw Justify Yourself.mpg - YouTube[/ame]

Let's not forget... https://www.google.com/search?q=mar...14D4BQ&ved=0CAsQ_AUoAw&biw=1024&bih=588&dpr=1

...

 

[RKMBrown]

Sorry to burst your bubble, but I am not at all closer to the Libertarian Party way of thinking, nor do I intend to be when it itself often doesn't understand the principles of classical liberalism which is true libertarianism.

Can you name one, just one, portion of the libertarian platform that is not based entirely on classical liberalism? If so I'll eat my hat.

Go down the list of the Libertarian Party 2012 platform. On issue after issue it assumes that the federal government is the agent to demand liberty and if we elect Bob Barr, he'll make it happen. That is as wrong as the GOP or Democratic Party assuming the federal government is the agent to promise or accomplish much of anything.

The classical liberal sees the federal government as having Constitutional Authority to secure our rights, implement just enough regulation to facilitate us operating as one nation, and then leave us alone to form whatever sort of societies we wish to have, however we wish to do that.

The Libertarian Party philosophy pretty much opposes that concept as it would have all people being required to have a society that the Libertarians (large L) want to have. Which is why the Libertarian Party mostly opposes those communities who want to regulate guns or allow a creche on the courthouse lawn or put crosses on the graves of fallen warriors or ban drugs. Liberty must include the ability to be 'narrow minded' and/or organize a religious or restrictive society as much as a society in which every person decides for himself/herself and there is little or no law at all. Unless we are free to organize the society we want to live in--whether we think that is good or bad-- there is no liberty at all. You still have a despot or monarch or dictator or totalitarianism dictating who and what we are and how we are required to live.

HUH? The only way to be classical libertarian is to not vote for government that agrees with classical libertarian views? The only way to have liberty is to not demand liberty? WTH are you on? Acid?

 

[American_Jihad]

Glenn Greenwald: Raving Leftist

March 6, 2014 by Matthew Vadum

An unabashed partisan Democrat, Wilentz is known for his televised histrionics on the eve of President Clinton’s impeachment. He warned House members that if they voted to impeach Clinton, “history will track you down and condemn you for your cravenness.” The New York Times ridiculed him for his outburst, editorializing that his “gratuitously patronizing presentation … marred the Democratic experts’ argument that Mr. Clinton’s misconduct did not meet the constitutional tests for impeachment.”

In the article on Greenwald, whom Rachel Maddow calls “the American left’s most fearless political commentator,” Wilentz artfully suggests that Greenwald might be a right-wing crypto-critic of the president and the Left because he is a zealot on so-called privacy issues and has ferociously attacked the Obama administration for its NSA spying abuses. Instead of making a clear accusation of ideological infidelity against Greenwald, Wilentz cherry-picks statements from Greenwald’s past to put him in the same ideological camp as Ron Paul “paleoconservatives,” who support income tax abolition, isolationism, among other things.

...

Greenwald’s radical left-wing credentials are further burnished by his repeated condemnations of Israel and its supporters — e.g., the notion that “large and extremely influential Jewish donor groups” secretly manipulate American foreign policy; the claim that most American politicians feel compelled to “pledge their uncritical, absolute loyalty” to Israel, lest their careers be ruined; the charge that “Israeli aggression [against Gaza] is possible only because” of America’s “diplomatic, financial and military support for Israel and everything it does”; and the stunning suggestion that it makes little sense to criminalize “anything that is deemed to be support for Hezbollah and Hamas,” given that those groups are “devoted to protecting their citizens against the state of Israel” and are “not in any way devoted to harming Americans.”

...

Contrary to Wilentz’s claims, Greenwald is not unlike many others on the far left who find ready allies on the fringes of the Republican Party due to a shared worldview that puts America at the center of their hatred. This is the niche that Greenwald has occupied throughout most of his public career, and he has made the appropriate connections on the way. But time after time Greenwald has returned to the mantras of supporting massive wealth redistribution and maligning the U.S. as the source of the world’s ills. His commitment to Trotskyists and other totalitarian socialists is no accident, but an expression of his inner core.

Glenn Greenwald: Raving Leftist | FrontPage Magazine