The Oil Drum

I joined The Oil Drum today because I think this is a serious issue.  We are in fact living in a time when popular media figures demand that critics of the President be imprisoned and punished and possibly executed for treason, or drowned in Boston Harbor.  That's getting at the thin edge of incitement.  As bad as things got during the McCarthy era, I don't know of a right-wing vigilante attempting to murder someone for being a leftist.  But when Southern extremists rebranded themselves from racial supremacists to Christian supremacists, the bombings of black churches and murders of black dissidents in the South faded away, and a generation later the bombings of abortion clinics and murders of abortion clinic doctors began.  It is only a matter of time before one of those people takes the incessant pro-dictatorship voices on the radio and cable seriously and pulls a Thomas a'Becket against an administration critic.

And don't believe that the smarmy Internet chickenhawks don't know that's a credible threat when they threaten to "out" the people they debate.  They get a hard-on from spreading fear, yet their hands are as clean as someone who screamed for war with Iraq with no intention of ever enlisting.

I know that Thomas Friedman is often quoted here.  But my contempt for the man turned to active rage when I heard that he wrote an editorial calling for the printing of the names of people who disputed the Administration/Israeli line on the causes of terrorism - an enemies list.  An enemies list for ideological deviance in America.  Being advocated in the Times.  

So I did the only thing a real American could do with that news.  I e-mailed him and volunteered to be the very first name on that list.  Haven't heard back from him yet, though I imagine I'm now on somebody's list.

But if we are not ready en masse to raise our hands to be on a state enemies list like the slaves at the end of "Spartacus", our freedoms will not last long into the era of depletion.

As to the thing that I'm guessing got you stirred up - the fact that someone believes in taking back a political brand...

No, I have no definite political leaning, I can hardly find anything good on whatever side as many as there can be.
Malice in argumentation coupled with anonymity is what stirred me up.

On Republicanism,

FWIW I've been describing myself as a "lapsed Republican" ever since I heard that term (maybe in a Kevin Philips interview?)

I keep hoping and waiting for a pendulum swing in that party, but see little sign of it yet.  Maybe a "postwar" party will need to be different.