The New Democratic Meme: Self-Immolation
By Captain Ed on National Politics
Captain's Quarters
Markos Moulitsas has lost it -- and the candidates who pay him for his services might have some explaining to do about their views on national security in the future. Kos wrote today that Republicans want to protect the United States out of a sense of cowardice:
<<< When our nation was founded, we had men of real character and courage fighting for their nascent America, one in which liberty and freedom trumped the authorative tendencies of the monarchy. Patrick Henry gave words to those efforts:
"Give me liberty or give me death!" ...
These blowhards pretend they are macho even as they piddle on themselves in abject terror from every "boo!" that comes out of Osama Bin Laden's mouth. They like to speak about how tough they are, even though they send others to fight their battles and couldn't last a day in places like Iraq, or Sudan, or the El Salvador of my youth, or any other war-torn nation....
The breathtaking cowardice of the 101st Fighting Keyboardists knows no bounds. They hide behind the American flag and our genuinely brave men and women in uniform. It's bad enough that they wouldn't deign to join the boots in the ground in Iraq. But now they make a mockery of our Constitution, for the very values that motivated our Founding Fathers to put their lives on the line to combat the unchecked powers of the British monarchy. >>>
Patrick Henry, however, did not utter those words to urge Americans to withdraw from the world or to "redeploy" to a horizon position. He gave us that grand mission by urging Americans to rise up and fight the British to shake off the bonds of the monarchy that held us without representation in Parliament and without recourse to the very liberties Moulitsas accuses us of giving up. Nor did Henry say, "Let any man who agrees with me but does not fire a weapon be called a chickenhawk." Henry believed in civilian control of the government, not a military dictatorship where only soldiers and those who had served could enter the world of self-government.
In other words, the allegory is drizzly Kos bulls**t.
Kos loves freedom of speech when that speech agrees with him. He loves civilian control of the military when those civilians belong to MoveOn, but not when they belong to the Republican Party. In fact, Kos doesn't like American values at all -- he only uses them when convenient to his argument, but in fact would rather have a Starship Troopers (the movie) government made up of military bureaucrats making all of our decisions for us. He has no respect for those who did go to Iraq to help with security -- recalling his infamous "Screw 'em" to the civilians who did believe in the mission enough to go over and help out, smearing them as "mercenaries" -- and then calls those who stay home and support the mission 'cowards'.
I will pray every night that Howard Dean and the rest of the Democrats take Kos' advice and adopt this as their meme, because I'm sure people feel like they would rather not see New York nuked than to take action within the law to defend this nation. Even most of the Democrats in this country would have a problem with candidates adopting the "Let DC Burn As Long As International Calls Don't Get Checked" platform. I, for one, would rather have the NSA checking on valid leads on al-Qaeda terrorists here in the US than to have my granddaughter vaporized by Islamofascists at the Mall of America. And if Markos doesn't like the fact that I use my freedom of speech to make that clear, then Markos can kiss my entire ass. Screw him and anyone who supports him.
UPDATE: Clarified my reference to Starship Troopers, and removed reference to Heinlein -- not quite the same thing.
(h/t: The Corner)
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