The Weekly Standard magazine is always ideological but usually fair, and so I usually end up checking its web site a few times a week. But this little piece of hackwork from Joel Engel falls considerably short of the norm, seemingly taking every wacky statement ever made by any far leftist, and attributing them all to “liberalism.” In Engel’s world, it’s “liberal” to root for the insurgents in Iraq, make excuses for 9/11, and “[praise] the neck-slicing Islamofascists”- nevermind that just about everyone I know is a liberal, and I’ve never heard any of them say any of those things.
Daniel Drezner, luckily, is all over this, invoking “The Princess Bride” while he’s at it. But I’ve been seen a lot of this sort of thing lately, especially from the still-a-Stalinist-in-deed-if-not-politics David Horowitz. Good ol’ Dave has assembled a ludicrous “flow chart” (which he calls “a guide to the political left”), which connects everyone from al-Qaeda to Bruce Springsteen. Nevermind that there’s nothing the slightest bit “liberal” about Islamic fascism, or that Springsteen’s “The Rising” album pretty clearly puts him in the “terrorism is bad” camp.
This is dishonest, small-minded nonsense, which only goes to prove that the same lying, hatred, and ideological extremism that marked David Horowitz back when he was a communist is still quite alive within him today.
Well, it's a longstanding problem of terminology that only appears to be getting worse, and it's caused by people on all points along the political spectrum.
Posted by: Dave J at April 15, 2005 06:54 PM