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D-Square Digest on hypocrisy and
politics:

In general, one of the biggest problems with the psychological politics of left and right is the need that people feel to think of themselves as not just having made what looks like on balance the best decision given the things they regard as important, but as morally good people themselves. People in general seem to be horribly uncomfortable with the idea that, by the standards they use to judge political situations, they themselves don’t come out as moral heroes. At base, this is a fairly childish and decidedly illiberal attitude; childish because it demands a sort of moral perfection which everyone intellectually knows can’t exist outside fairy stories (unless you count the way that parents appear to their children) and illiberal because it suggests that you’re only prepared to have normal social interactions with people who pass your own personal moral examination (a rather prominent political philosopher has told me to my face on a couple of occasions that he regards me as morally beyond the pale because of the job I do; I’ve nonetheless been made to feel very welcome at his house).

Counterspin on
Democractic president candidates finally attacking Bush:

There is the Bob Graham [Bush is covering up screw ups prior to 9/11] theme.

There is the John Kerry [Bush is in “disarray” on fighting terror because of being sidetracked by Iraq] theme.

And there is the Howard Dean [I told you the Iraq war was a bad idea–what about North Korea?] theme.

Note how EACH of those themes are complementary, and not mutually exclusive? I predict that EACH narrative thread will be part of the general election campaign. With Graham and Kerry’s themes being the dominant ones.

Note, however, that Bob Graham is probably the ONLY one who can effectively make all three arguments. Unlike Kerry, he voted against the Iraq war resolution. And unlike Howard Dean, he has been front and center in battling terrorism since 9/11 as Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

The sideshow on glass houses and the people who live in them:

Atrios brings up a very important point when he suggests that these journalists, having turned themselves into celebrities rather than principled purveyors of information to the public, can no longer claim the territory of disinterested parties who should be kept out of the limelight. These guys aren’t just bylines anymore, they are players, and they are players who have created the environment under which players get the spotlight when they are even so much as suspected of screwing up. But we all know that if Fund were a liberal pundit, he’d be getting hammered by the So-Called Liberal Media (SCLM) all over the airwaves. The new rule is that it’s open season on all Democrats and all liberals, but we’re supposed to pretend that the Republicans are “good” people and therefore not deserving of the same contemptuous treatment. MWO has made the point about Fund in the past precisely because this double-standard, which has actually infested the public discourse in a big way (e.g., Gore forgets who he was with on one trip to a fire site and he’s a “liar”, Bush lies about everything up to and including his own policies and he’s an “honest, plainspoken” guy), has so corrupted the way even liberals perceive their own fellow-travellers. It needs to be counteracted, especially when the sins of the right are so much more profound than those on the left. There is nothing wrong with expressing our disgust when a guy like Fund goes all moralistic over a few blow-jobs and then turns out to be a worse man than those he attacks (just as we should be repelled when serial adulterer-divorcer Newt Gingrich pretends to sufficient purity to throw the first stone).

And, most of all, it’s a good idea to remind people that if they are accusing us of something, they’re doing it. Make them live in the glass house they built.

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Build a Meme Project

“Let’s build a meme that’ll win our country back!!!”

Ampersand on why it matters what intentions Iraq’s
“liberators” had/have:

Before the war on Iraq, some pro-war liberals were asking why it mattered if the Bush administration’s heart was in the right place; what’s important is that Iraq be “liberated,” not what’s in the hearts of the liberators. But what’s happened in Afghanistan shows that sincerity does count for something. Liberation – if it can be imposed from outside at all – is a long, tedious process, requiring a genuine commitment, not just pretty words. In Afghanistan and now in Iraq, it’s become clear that the United States lacks that commitment.