I post stuff like this once a week or so just so readers aren't confused about the nature of contemporary conservatism. Don't be fooled by the Right Wing Noise Machine and the definitions that were around when you grew up. Contemporary conservatism is an outright rejection of modernity, and contemporary conservatives really, really hate your guts.
T. A. Frank, who isn't exactly a raving liberal, writes about his trip to CPAC:
Spend an hour at CPAC and it's fun and strange. Linger on and it curdles a bit. I didn't start longing for Trotsky, exactly, but I did begin to feel a bit isolated and, even, grimy. Maybe it was the audience reaction to the immigration panel, when applause followed every variant of the word "deportation." Or perhaps it was conservatism-on-campus panelist Stephen Klugewicz, who joked that controversial professor Ward Churchill is not just a white man but "pretty soon, maybe a dead white man--who knows?" Or maybe it was gay bashing so thinly disguised (terms like "radical homosexual lobby" etc) that I had to wonder why people were even bothering to try hiding it.
Dave Johnson writes about a growing nervousness:
Is there enough going on to make you nervous yet? The Vice President of the United States was the
keynote speaker at a conference where
other speakers called for "a new McCarthyism" to bring "terror" to intellectuals, saying "let's oppress them [liberals]," and "the entire Harvard faculty" are "traitors." A
Congressman
said, "America's Operation Iraqi Freedom is still producing shock and awe, this time among the blame-America-first crowd." Then he said, "We continue to discover biological and chemical weapons and facilities to make them inside Iraq."
Meanwhile, right-wing commentators talk about
killing American journalists, their premier blogs talk about former president Carter as being
on the side of the
enemy and leftists have
"seamlessly taken up the cause of Islamic fascism". I have provided only a few examples.
When you hear threatening talk like this,
in the company of the country's leadership, you know that whatever comes next isn't going to be pleasant.
No, not pleasant at all, especially since they are now
directly equating our congressional leadership to terrorists:
David Horowitz, champion of
political balance on America's college campuses, has posted an interesting
"lesson" on his new website, Discoverthenetwork.org. It turns out, according to Horowitz's dogged research, that most of America's progressive leaders, Hollywood entertainers and civil rights advocates are closely aligned with radical Islamic terrorists known for killing Americans, such as Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Mohammed Atta and Ayatollah Khomeini. And you thought
Roger Ebert was just a bad film critic!
Lest you think it's all just a big joke, Horowitz cautions: "This database reflects links that are not merely caricatures by political enemies but are legitimate indices of a political reality." It should yield a "new understanding of the forces that define our social reality."
Check out a few of our favorites pairings -
Sen. Barack Obama appears on the same row as terrorist leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi:
Mohammad Atta, the lead terrorist in the 9/11 attacks, shares space with Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi:
John Walker Lindh, the American Taliban, appears next to American Progress's very own John Podesta:
Visit
Think Progress for the photos. Personally, I am disappointed that no blogger made Horowitz's list.
