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Counterparts)
http://www.deanesmay.com/posts/1160354312.shtml


   Quoted:

     I found your website today, but quickly realized it's not really
     promoting liberal or progressive causes. Lieberman is an enabler
     for the Bush crime family's radical right-wing agenda. And I also
     see you're repeating Lieberman's claim that Lamont is a one-issue
     candidate. This totally ignores the fact that the war in Iraq is
     the sinlge most important issue driving US policy at home and
     abroad, and most all other issues are affected by it either
     directly or indirectly.

     Here's a quote by Paul Krugman, who really IS a liberal:

   I can stop right there. This naif would not know real liberalism if it
   came up and bit him on the ass. But in case you think he's got no more
   to say, he then proceeded to say much more, and then send me an
   additional eleven--count 'em, eleven--emails, composed over a period
   of what looks like over two hours with his Jihadist rant about the
   evils of the Bush administration, the Republicans, and so on. Here's a
   screen shot:

   [1]useful idiot jpeg=20

   Note, please, that I did not obscure his name, but I certainly would
   not publish his email address or any further identifying info. I try
   to never, ever do anything that might result in someone's being
   harassed. My guess is that this is a 19 year old inflamed with passion
   and a desire to make the world a better place, but deeply naive and
   unaware of how much hatred and bile he's swallowed into his politics.
   Although it's just as possible that he's a 40+ year old who just
   hasn't grown up yet and still thinks that guys like Noam Chomsky and
   Howard Zinn are the height of intelligent observers.

   I would not normally reprint this, but, this is far from the first
   time I've been email-pelted by a leftist-in-liberal-clothes like this,
   and this seemed like a good example. It happens to me several times a
   month at least. It merely amuses me when it happens. My response to
   all and sundry:

     LOL. I've been reading and listening to hatemongering irrational
     leftists like you for years. You think you've got anything here
     that I haven't heard before? You naive fool.

     You aren't a liberal in any sense of the word. You're just a
     hate-filled reactionary leftist. You don't even know what "liberal"
     really means.

     Go join Pat Buchanan, Cindy Sheehan, David Duke, and the rest of
     the Axis of Idiots. I have no use for you.

     And here's a news flash for you:

     Paul Krugman is nothing but a left-wing Ann Coulter.

     You stupid sucker.

   Yet, I'll avoid the cheap cliche of claiming that because I've got
   rightists who dislike me, and leftists who dislike me, this means I am
   somehow automatically correct. That is not true at all. Many of my
   critics might be right and I might be wrong about many specific
   things. But real liberalism comes from avoiding making blanket
   assumptions, and listening hard even to arguments you strongly
   disagree with--not to defeat them but to understand them.

   And, as the great liberal philosophere John Stuart Mill once said:

     War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed
     and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that
     nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for
     which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than
     his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance
     of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better
     men than himself.

   Never forget that it was a proud liberal who said that. I don't think
   that Franklin Delano Roosevelt or Harry S Truman would have had any
   great disagreement with such sentiments, and both those men did things
   far more draconian on their watch when faced with war than George W.
   Bush ever has. So, for that matter, did Abraham Lincoln and Thomas
   Jefferson.

   I have had about enough, however, of rightists who call me a sellout
   and a denialist and a useful idiot who just won't recognize that Islam
   is the West's eternal enemy. They disgust me almost as much as this
   paranoid lefty. Furthermore, I don't care who condemns me for any of
   it either way. Come and get me you bastards: my position on all of
   this has not wavered in almost 5 years, and if you doubt it ask anyone
   who has been here on Dean's World from the beginning.

   Not that consistency is the measure of moral rectitude. It is not. But
   please: understand me for who I am versus your presumptions. Of course
   I've learned some things in the last 5 years that have made me change
   my views in some specific cases, but I don't think my view has ever
   changed in any fundamental way.

   I still think the following musical track--which I still fear YouTube
   will take down at some point--expesses my exact feelings on the entire
   subject of terrorism:

   [EMBED]

   If YouTube takes it down (or even if they don't) you should still buy
   [2]this DVD. In my fantasies I'd like to believe the U2 boys are aware
   that this is out there on the Internet and don't want to take it down.
   Whether true or not, this song is exactly how I feel about the whole
   subject.

   You know, if the boys in U2 could [3]befriend Jesse Helms and befriend
   both [4]Pope Benedict and the Muslim community then it's not too much
   to ask my friends on the Right to try to do the same. Is it?

   I mean, really, do you want to open up a dialogue with this people in
   respect and faith and argue with them about why you think their faith
   may be off-base and why you disagree with them theologically? Or did
   you just want to treat them like the Eternal Enemy and Satan's
   minions? The choice is yours, but I think that if you really
   understood the Gospel you'd know what the right answer is.

   You may think me guilty of an artificially "centrist" point of view.
   Yeah, I get that a lot. On the other hand you might consider that I
   myself walked away from Christianity in part due to what I percieved
   as unyielding dogma and intolerance--and every time I think about
   going back, I feel like I get hit in the face with this same
   unyielding hostility.

   I don't think I'm a "centrist" at all. Nor do I think I'm anyone who
   seeks the pablum of easy answers. But I do tire of being told that if
   I won't accept easy answers then this means I am wanting easy answers.
   If anything, it's the easy answers that I am most hostile towards.

References

   1. file://localhost/files/deanesmay-usefulidiot.JPG
   2. http://www.amazon.com/U2-Rattle-Hum-Bono/dp/B000022TT6/sr=3D1-1/qid=
=3D1160355981/ref=3Dpd_bbs_1/104-6292688-3758319?ie=3DUTF8&s=3Ddvd/deanswor=
ld01-20
   3. http://www.avrev.com/news/0601/22.jessehelms.shtml
   4. http://www.nationalcatholicreporter.org/word/word081205.htm