Funyuns and Mountain Dew

Jonah Goldberg:

Please read this post by Garance Franke-Ruta over at Tapped on what "movement-building" demands of liberal bloggers. It certainly reads to me like she's upset that liberal bloggers are being too intellectually honest. The upshot of Franke-Ruta's position seems to be that deliberately distorting Bill Bennett's intent and meaning is a small price to pay to villify him unfairly and for the added bonus of angering-up southern blacks in order to get limousine liberals like John Edwards elected. And if Matt Yglesias or Brad DeLong see it differently, they should just be quiet -- for the sake of the movement.

I find this very illuminating. We get a lot of grief around here from time to time for supporting conservative politicians or figures -- including Bennett -- when liberals insist the only intellectually honest position is opposition and outrage. Therefore we must be operating in bad faith. And here we have someone at The American Prospect all but declaring that intellectual honesty is corrupting liberalism and its nakedly partisan ambition to attain political power.

Nice movement she's working on.

If you'll recall, this is the second time in as many weeks that we've seen the "ends justify the means" club used to beat down dissent from within the progressive movement. Last week it was the eminently resonable Mickey Kaus, who caught a world of shit (from Matthew Yglesias, ironically enough) for having the gall to suggest that the Dem's focus should be sound policy, rather than pandering to a specific constituency (a strategy that Kaus rightly notes has spelled electoral disaster for the party).

The American Left - so far removed from electoral success - no longer the party of Bill Clinton, but rather of Marcos Zuniga and Duncan Black - has reverted to it's old tricks: distortion, race-baiting, and pandering. And what's more, they're open about it. After all, they're taking us to a better place, and the ends justify the means. We'll all see that someday.

And while we're somewhere near the subject of Bill Bennett, be sure to check out Jeff Goldstein, who's been on f'n fire. At first I felt that Bennett was guilty only of being impolitic, giving the race baiting left an opening. But after reading Goldstein's comments, I have come to realize that Bennett is guilty of nothing. Any moral code that condemns a man for speaking his mind and stating undeniable facts is a sick and twisted morality. Let the pathetic Left attack - but we should not flagellate ourselves on their behalf.

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