the dredges of political discourse
Somebody at redstate.com linked to the entry about the Ron Paul — Rudy Giuliani debate skiffadle. It was probably not a “front pager”, and it was a quick hit of a few links, not deeply dissecting any of the three blog posts, with the title “Far Left Self Parody”.
Which is within anybody’s purview.
Robert Schrank wrote a good book about life in the “Far Left” — Wasn’t That A Time? He shifted away from his dogmatic past at some point in time, no longer a Communist.
Another interesting book about life in the “Far Left”: The Prophet’s Child, which ends up describing a mess of sectionalism as groups of a few dozen peoples argue over which of them is the rightful heir to the intellectual movement of Trotsky.
In a gray areas between a line dissecting “Left” and petty liberal is I.F. Stone. In a sense, the definition depended on who was his foil: if confronting Adlai Stevenson and the Democratic Party hierarchy — LEFT; if having to argue against 1960s Student Radicals besieging an anti Vietnam war Senator — Liberal.
Our language is bastardized a bit, and I am forced to work this way forward with the divisions we have been handed. There are two types of Americans, you see, and we proceed accordingly.
Then there’s the opening salvo to a quasi-defense of the Scooter Libby commutation:
Like all good liberals you’re a day late and a dollar short.
To his credit, he swerved off the script and didn’t land at Marc Rich. But his focus might as well run toward a pissing match between the virtues of Clinton’s pardons of an assortment of unknown convicts and Bush’s pardon of a bootlegger, which almost would be a refreshing change of pace.
But he loses ground at sentence #1. “Like all good liberal”.
Save that line for when public approval is not with liberals. Polling date from American Research Group: Democrats: 76 percent disapprove; 13 percent approve. Independents: 80 percent disapprove; 19 percent approve. Republicans: 47 percent disapprove, 50 percent disapprove.
I have evolved my response of “BUT Clinton” with the retort of referring to him as the “17th Greatest President in American History,” which is as much a response regarding one of those dregs of the two party system that I was wandering around on with that post on Libby. I can quite easily thread that needle of why Bush’s commutation — in lieu of what will be the 11th hour pardon — aggravates me where I have no strong interest in the pardon of Marc Rich (Or Eisenhower’s record thousand pardons, for that matter) — which is… you know… what lies at the center of the periphery journey out toward the investigations that lead to the obstruction of justice verdict on Scooter Libby… um… THE IRAQ WAR.
… currently enjoying the approval of probably the same percentage as the approval for Libby’s commutation… and eventual 11th hour pardon (and there will be plenty of Marc Rich types I will have no choice but to shrug at lest I feel the wrath of cries of HYPOCRISY for not treating it the same manner as the 17th Greatest President in American History).