Nothing to See Here, Or Coming to a Commonwealth Near You

Make up your own mind.

I hear it all the time from friends and not-friends, conservatives and liberals alike: terrorism is not a major threat. Or if it is, its not something you can fight. Or if you fight it, you only make it stronger. But what I don't hear is what to do about stuff like the above article. Terrorism is not isolated in some distant land, only occasionally reaching our shores. And terrorists don't attack us out of some animosity over our violation of their Westphalian nation state or their religiously sacred territory.

Something more important must be admitted into the discussion: man is evil. Sure man is good. But man is evil too. These terrorists are evil, the stories of children being cooked and served to Iraqis who went against AQI may be apocryphal - but the fact that the people of Iraq start off believing their truth and would probably not believe proof to the contrary tells you what you need to know.

We can decide to sit it out. It is probably feasible to harden our own country to take the isolationist track pushed by Ron Paul type conservatives. However the result of a walled of US is not a great future, and the more likely scenario is that we give up the initiative, and then the left's policies continue our slide to a European type of surrender through suicidal domestic policies and a growing inability to effect change internationally.

And at some point our perspective will change and the war will be seen in black and white, instead of gray: hopefully we'll still be able to pay the much higher price in blood and treasure of acting late. But there is always the chance it will be too late, and President for Life Obama will decide that "paying the poll tax is a small concession to the multicultural needs of our certain immigrant group who shall hopefully remain nameless."

I suppose it will be a small price to pay for hope: hope you aren't beheaded, hope your church isn't turned into a Mosque, hope your daughter doesn't get raped, and hope your gay son isn't "outted".

Obama

Sounds like a 20th century dictator about a year before he takes over. "I can heal you, unite you, all I need is for you to believe in me and sacrifice for me."

Sorry buddy, I don't want to be with you, I don't trust you or any of your policies, and I'm certainly not sacrificing for you or your moment.

John McCain just locked my vote in for the general, all he had to do was get me to watch an Obama speech and shiver.

(Now he's making up stories about boys throwing rocks... I'm getting nauseas.)

A lame argument

I'm not impressed with this Bainbridge argument for McCain, which essentially boils down to "some people sad bad things about McCain and are idiots, so everyone else who said things about McCain are idiots, and you should vote for McCain since idiots oppose him."

My comment to the post was:

How dare they make substantive criticisms? Hewitt has said he will work as hard as he can for McCain to win the general, he just doesn't see it happening. Coulter? Really she belongs in that group?

The demagoguery against those who challenge McCain's ascendancy is a real negative:

1. Vetting him in the primaries will HELP conservatives support him - it gives them time to get over the visceral reaction to his insults and slanders (accusing those against amnesty of heading toward Jim Crow laws comes to mind) and his other under handed political actions. Then they can think about it rationally and pick the lesser of two evils in Nov. Do you really want this stuff breaking at Halloween?

2. By the by - most of the people you list have substantive criticisms of McCain not "demagoguery". Some jerk clown insults McCain's war record so everyone who doesn't want him to win the nomination gets lumped in? This is like the European hate speech laws "you guys caused it by saying something unacceptable".

3. It's not like the major attacks on Romney have been better. We have normally respectable pundits, like yourself launching ad hominems at him, Huckabees on again, off again, on for the press attack ad, McCain lying about his record on the surge a day or two before the FL primary, and a variety of other insults. And while I'll challenge the arguments made, I don't fear them or try to silence them. Judge those making arguments by the arguments they make.

Stephen Bainbridge and Dan McLaughlin are two of my favorite individual bloggers are both anti-Romney. It's a good test of your candidate to find guys like this and see which arguments against your candidate hold water or not.