Wednesday, November 10, 2004

Matt Continetti--who is, so far as I can tell, the only "rising-young-star journalist" in America who actually does reporting--finally lets go with a rant today. And it's a good one!

Matt does a survey of the crazy left's newest wacky idea: Secession. The new liberal meme is that America is on the brink of civil war. Right. Again, I'll point out that liberal and conservative America are much, much, much closer than the left seems to think. The ideological distance between an average American liberal and an average American conservative can be measured in feet: Should homosexuals be allowed to have marriage, or civil unions? Should city hall be allowed to have a crèche and a menorah on its front lawn, or should those displays be reserved for private property?

What liberals should worry about is the ideological distance between Americans (liberal and conservative) and Islamist radicals, which has to be measured in parsecs. The differing sides in this debate ask: Should homosexuals be allowed civil unions, or should they be jailed and/or executed? Should various religious symbols be allowed civic public expression, or should all non-Muslims be forced to convert and all faiths save Islam be outlawed?

The other key difference: Islamists have demonstrated not only a desire, but an ability to mass-murder American liberals and conservatives.

Why is it that the liberal fringe seems more worried about Red America than they do the Islamist Middle East?

2 comments:

Unknown said...

The "liberal fringe" is worried about the Islamic extremeist that are terrorists. Many see the arguments, rants, movements of conservative Christians as an extremist movement of its own. As a Christian, I think that they may be overreacting, but stories like that coming out of South Carolina, where the newly elected Congressman stated that gays and lesbians should not be able to teach in public schools. This is an example of the slow degrading of rights that Christian Conservatives are working toward.

Your examples of Islamic extremism are the types of things that liberals are afraid of. They are afraid that a woman's right to choose will be taken away, but after that then what will Christian Conservatives want. The concern is that at some point they will force their religion on everyone else like the Islamic extremeist.

59 million people that voted Bush are right here surround the liberal people and they are in control. That is more real than a bunch of people thousands of miles away that might blow you up someday. If they get the chance and if you are in the place they attack. Your odds of dying in a car accident are much greater. So is your risk of dying by a medical mistake. If we focused on the other things that you might die of as much as we did the possibility of dying from an act of terror we would be living in a constant state of fear.

The whole session thing and Civil War, is a cry for attention and help. It is also something to think about how far could this all go. Doesn't going into the Middle East seem a bit like the British going into the
Middle East (destroyed their Empire), USSR going into the Middle East (econonomic destruction), or even the Crusades. You most likely disagree but these are all things to think about.

And "the ability to mass murder Americans" we have killed more Iraqi civilians in this war than terrorist killed Americans, look it up. When we go into these areas we create for terrorist by sturring them up.

Osama bin Laden was our allie in Afghanastan against the USSR and continued to be until we invaded Iraq the first time. What great terrorist will we create against ourselves next? There is a history of people Republican administrations created through training and partnership turning against us and attacking us.

As for the "slaves" like your title. Look at the slave vs. free states map pre-Civil War. Most of the red states were the South and most of the blue were the North. We know who was free, right, and won the war and we know who lost and was wrong.

Anonymous said...

With the possible exception of the fringe left (small and irrelevant, like the armed-insurrectionist fringe right), this is just the Democrats being pissy and ill-tempered. I seem to recall the Repubicans taking Clinton's first election with similar ill grace. Pretty much no one seriously entertains the idea of secession or moving to Canada.

A much funnier idea is the one in today's Salon: "Get back at red America -- with kinky sex, pretentious French movies and a hasty divorce."

http://www.salon.com/mwt/feature/2004/11/11/healing/index.html