Pundit Country

What we are witnessing right now is an anti-Christian programmatic pogrom. What is a ‘pogrom’ it’s the word that describes anti-Jewish raids by Cossacks and others in czarist Russia, but a programmatic pogrom best describes what is happening right now. These are not isolated attacks. And while we no longer have Cossacks to threaten, we now have left-wing bloggers who actually call themselves Kossacks.

-Ken Blackwell, former Republican Secretary of State for Ohio in an opinion piece for FOX News.

Sir, I realize FOX distorts the news but I don’t think even they can manufacture a mass murder in America’s streets and they be the only ones who notice. I would suggest locating a dictionary ASAP. That word (pogrom) doesn’t mean what you think it means. Also, Christians are not an ethnic group.

“[The New York Times reports that Glenn Beck, in his closing speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference described “progressivism” as a cancer, “the disease in America.” Let there be no doubt that this is nothing more than the stench of fascism, which relies on treating one’s political opponents as what Carl Schmitt, the great (I use that word advisedly) Weimar political theorist (who ended up supporting Hitler’s takeover in 1933), termed “enemies” who were viewed ultimately as subhuman (as “cancers” are), ulutimately fit to be eradicated “by any means necessary….

It is past time for Republicans to be called on whether or not they tolerate millions of their fellow citizens being called “cancers” and “diseases.” We are indeed in a true moment of cultural and political warfare, in which Glenn Beck has made very clear that he has no regard whatsoever for the most basic notions of civility (which begin by granting the possibility that one’s opponents simply disagree rather than are “cancers” to be ripped out of the body politic).

What “Beckism” presages is more terrorist violence like that conducted in Austin, Texas, where a demented citizen flew into an IRS building and killed a true American “hero” a/k/a known as a public servant who had dedicated his life to tax collection. One might remember that Justice Holmes called taxes “the price we pay for civilization.” Part of our move toward fascism is to view as “heroes” only those who carry guns and are prepared to risk their lives while preparing to inflict fatal violence on others. We must recognize that all public servants are, in their own ways, “heroes.” The Republican Party for the past generation has systematically viewed all public servants, save for the military, as chumps, who if they had any real talent, would be working in the private sector (perhaps in Goldman Sachs, etc.). I truly fear for our country.”

-UT Law Professor Sandy Levinson (h/t Open Left)

“Yeah, I will always have an asterisk after my name, but I hope I’ll have two asterisks: one is ‘they impeached him,’ and the other is ‘He stood up to them and beat them. And he beat them like a yard dog.’”

-former President Bill Clinton, during an interview for Ken Gormley’s new book The Death of American Virtue: Clinton vs. Starr.

You need only reflect that one of the best ways to get yourself a reputation as a dangerous citizen these days is to go about repeating the very phrases which our founding fathers used in the struggle for independence.
- Charles Austin Beard

Or go about misquoting and misinterpreting them intentionally for your own political ends (ala Beck and the Tea Party clan).

From this morning’s E.J. Dionne’s opinion piece about why Obama is still having some trouble getting ahead of the poor economic numbers and the nation’s increasingly dour attitude of those in Washington.

The president’s supporters comfort themselves that Obama’s numbers will improve as the economy gets better. This is a form of intellectual complacency. Ronald Reagan’s numbers went down during a slump, too. But even when he was in the doldrums, Reagan was laying the groundwork for a critique of liberalism that held sway in American politics long after he left office.

Progressives will never reach their own Morning in America unless they use the Gipper’s method to offer their own critique of the conservatism he helped make dominant. It is still more powerful in our politics, as we are learning in Massachusetts, than it ought to be.