Ann Coulter, runaway PC and the rise of morality based politics

Great article, touches on a few angles I've thought of myself in recent years, the main one being morality based politics and guilt by political association.

THE HATRED OF ANN COULTER.
Trash Talk
by Michelle Cottle
Only at TNR Online

I especialy liked the line about how that some of the authors friends honestly and sincerly believes that anything "Democrats/liberals/lefties do/believe/advocate by definition must be either irredeemably wicked or irretrievably stupid." For no other reason than that it coems from "the left" it's already discounted, already debunked, already unbelievable, for no other reason that it comes from people that are moraly, intelectualy and spiritualy less of a person than they are.

The sanctamonious, self-righteous hypocricy from the right has been instiutionalized as accepted fact by the party faithfull. Never mind the fact that the Republicans control every single aspect of federal government, or that 10 out of 13 federal courts have solid Republican appointed majorities on them, and the USSC is now 7-2 Republican appointed. Never mind that, it's *still* the liberals/democrats/leftists fault about everything.

To be able to simply discount everything you disagree with as coming from moraly shallow, inept, and simply plain bad people must be a singularly freeing feeling. To free yourself of all doubt, to never have to explain or justify, let alone support your opinions because simply by questioning them the person is questioning God, it just has to be liberating.

God is not on your side, people. Nor is He on our side. God is on no ones side. You are on His side, or not. It is not the same thing. It's more than semantics, in fact it's the most relavent point of the discussion.

By no means do I lay this legacy on the feet of conservatives alone. Political correctness ran amok in this country for too long, and the left pushed it too hard. People shouldn't not call other people names because it's "politicaly incorrect,", they should not call other people names simply because it's the polite thing to do.

But rather than pointing that out, the right threw a fit of backlash, striking out at their own reluctance to simply treat people the way they would like to be treated, and here we are, hating each other based on differing ideals and politics, the very differences that should bring us together in discussion and compromise.

But how can you compromise your morals? You can't, and, again, here we are.

Declare victory and bring them home

We've passed the trheshold of anything that happens in IRaq that results in civilian casualties, no matter the truth or circumstances, is going to automaticaly be not only seen negatively by the Iraqi people, but will be increasingly endorsed and pushed by the elected government. With democracy comes pandering, and boy will they pander.

If we stay in Iraq one more year or five more years, I don't see a whole lot of difference between the two timelines except less US and Iraqi civilian casualties. For one, with us gone, there's that much fewer 'collateral damage' simply because we're no longer there to be attacked. We're also no longer there to cause damage by our actions against insurgents.

Elected Iraqi officials are proclaiming that "resistance" against the occupation is a legitimate action uner international law. I could look for the quote, but I posted it in another thread before. Was some parlamintarian knob. The point being, members of the elected government are saying reissitance to our occupation is legitimate. It's time to leave.

The Iraqi's won't be any better prepared than we can make them if we aren't patriling the streets. Bush has already said he won't spend anymore on reconstruction, so they're screwed on that. When they're forced to rebuild their own country, which they should have had the chance to do form the start, then they'll start protecting it more when it's theirs that they're fighting for, not Haliburtons.

The claimed security we provide by being there does not, IMO, outwiegh the downside of increased attacks against us and the inevitable splash damage we do on our own, not to mention simple traffic accidents in an operational war zone.

We leave, and the vast majority of targets for the insurgents leave. The main reason for their even being there leaves with us. We're too far in debt, we're too overdrawn, we're crippling our military, and it's going to take decades to build our fighting strength back up to pre-war levels in both hardware and manpower. We won, Saddams gone, let's go home.

Why no riots in the US?

Seems like every other country in the world with a sizable Muslim/Islamic population, and even a few that are a majority, have had major if not violent riots over the 'war' on terror the US is almost unilaterally waging.

The biggest protest, let alone a riot of any kind, was over Mexican illegals.

Why has the US, the country that declared and is largely waging alone the 'war' on terror that, no matter how you slice it, still targets primarily Muslims and Islamists, why have we not had any riots of our own? We haven't even had any real major protests, not of Muslims or Islamists anyway. More white yuppies in California have protested the war that Muslims and Islamists combined, I'd feel pretty safe in saying.

There's only a few explanations for the lack of similar action here in the US. Some on the left will say they're too scared, that they're terrified of being labeled 'enemy combatants' or arbitrarily arrested, beaten or tortured, but I find that explanation too pat.

Some on the right, believe it or not I had one person somewhere, can't remember who or where, but some right of center soul actually told me that Muslims/Islamists don't have to riot or protest because they've scared the American people, media and government into leaving them alone lest they become suicide bombers en mass, but I find that explanation to be stupid.

So they aren't scared of us and we aren’t scared of them. Make no mistake that I believe there is more than a little intimidation, real or imagined, in the US Muslims/Islamic population, I just don't think it rises to the level of why we've not had any riots or major protests.

They certainly wouldn't be unorganized, any group of people of any similarity worth their salt have a frickin' lobby in this country, certainly any ethnic or racial minority is going to have some kind of social network. If they wanted to be organized they easily can be.

I would count out laziness as not a relevant choice. So I can't think of much more than my opinion on it, which is that the US does a very good job of integrating people into our society, no matter the perception that we're separate or different.

France has an "official" language. It pretty much fosters bitterness and resentment in their minority populations. Not that they have to learn French, but that it's written in law and religiously enforced. They're also largely alienated by the French born population. They pretty much park them out in slums on the outskirts of cities, I mean, who wants to look at a bunch of poor slobs, am I right?, where they get more bitter and pissed off until the throw a freakin' riot and burn shit down.

As much as some people might want to pack up the poor and ship 'em out of town, that would be a bad thing, just as France and most European countries that operate largely the same are finding out too late.

As well, despite the whining some do over our perceived overly generous welfare system, you really do need to work to get anywhere in our system. In this way, capitalism is a dynamic that forces people to interoperate with the general population on their level, and are thus integrated into society. While I firmly believe that government can do more but it needs to be targeted, I in no way want an overly comprehensive system that doesn't require any interaction or effort what so ever with the general society like in most European countries. There is a happy ground between the two extremes, and for the most part, we do hit it.

While America was founded largely along a certain racial and ethnic/religious line, the diversity we required over the generations has turned into our greatest strength. Everybody has a different perception of what America is and stands for, but the one commonality has been that everyone counts.

And I have no illusions over government abuse of power or how bad government can be when it wants to be or people let it be, but in the end we correct it together. When you start restricting access, when you start limiting opportunities, you start limiting our growth and diversity and strength. We lose cohesion, we lose that commonality that binds us. We lose that thread, and it all comes unraveled.

Anyway, that's what I think.