Burnt Orange Report

The New Republicans strike again

By Jim Dallas

I was pretty revved up about the newest edition of TNR, which has a cover story on health care.

It also sports an otherwise commendable review of Roy Moore's new book by Richard Just, which comes to an enlightening conclusion:

Admittedly, among the reasons to bring freedom to the Muslim world, disproving Roy Moore ranks low, to say the least. But Moore, however zany a character, does speak for a well-organized, if extreme, wing of American politics. Alan Keyes, Zell Miller, Richard Shelby, Oliver North, James Dobson, and Ann Coulter all endorsed his book; one can assume they accept Moore's central argument about the necessary link between Christianity and American freedom. As Moore himself points out, a statewide poll taken at the height of the Ten Commandments controversy showed that 77 percent of Alabama residents supported his decision. Presumably many, if not most, of those 77 percent accept the underlying logic of Moore's argument. We liberals can deride Moore as a nut; but we cannot pretend that he is an isolated nut. An empirical blow to the logic of his view that America is a Christian country would not end the debate over separation of church and state. But neither would it be irrelevant to that debate.

But just as it looks like we're going to get through more or less free of wankery, Just goes and takes an un-necessary gratuitous swipe:

There's a larger point to be made here. It's no coincidence that the spread of freedom in the Muslim world would undermine the arguments of right-wing Christians here at home. The struggle to spread freedom isn't a theological crusade, as the illiberal denizens of the Democratic Party's left-wing have convinced themselves; it is a liberal fight, and it always has been and always will be, no matter the party or the considerable shortcomings of the president who at the moment has managed to make it his own. The success of that fight will undercut the logic of religious fanatics everywhere--in the Middle East, in other regions of the world, and, yes, even at home. Is Roy Moore concerned about the prospect of a liberal, democratic Iraq? Somehow I doubt it. Should he be? If he believes what he argues in So Help Me God, then yes.

There really is no end to this nonsense, is there? For the last time, most everybody on the anti-war left is in favor of more freedom in the Middle East. The only person, of the hundreds of people on the left I've ever met who would be against that proposition is an avowed Maoist, an he hates Democrats for being part of the "capitalist system."

What left-wing Democrats are against is military acion for which "expanding freedom" is only a pathetic post hoc justification.

It is sad that the writers of a national magazine take so much pleasure in beating up straw-men. Maybe when The New Republic is "liberated" by a new editorial staff (one that can make a simple point without trying to knive the "democratic wing of the Democratic Party"), I'll reconsider my animus towards that publication.