Here’s a story of importance, via Matthew Yglesias, who doesn’t seem to appreciate the gravity of what he’s discovered. Francis Fukuyama, the apostate neoconservative, says that in the 1990s, neocons tried to manufacture an enemy, because they felt tha…

- the Curtis James ‘50 Cent’ Jacksonian base, who are just looking for a reason to “ride up wit tha toast and bust slugs”

- the Shoeless Joe Jacksonian base, who follow their hero even when he is clearly implicated in a Black Sox-sized scandal

- the Jermaine Jacksonian base, who assume that some vague association with a very famous person makes them important, too

Is Patrick Bateman alive and well and living in Colorado? Maybe. If so, he’s changed his name to Stephen Green and he’s no longer content with petty things, like allowing his envy of friends’ superior business cards drive him…

Therefore, to legitimise it is to legitimise the problems that stem from it today.

Man, Glenn is scum.

It’s almost enough to make you believe in God – an evil, evil god. It has all the moral irony that finding out that the National Socialist movement had been founded by some guy named Herschel Finkelstein would have.

Helps to explain why the Republicans like to sell themselves as “the party of Lincoln”, too – because that was the last time they actually did anything for a minority group in the U.S.

I give up. I’m gonna go dye my hair blond and buy one of those “88″ ballcaps or something. After all, I’m a liberal moral relativist, aren’t I?

Glenn Reynolds, you’re supposed to be a respectable academic. You’re dining off Steven den Beste’s intellectual droppings. Isn’t it time to check yourself?

Trent Telenko argued that, in an election against Dean, Bush could put New York in play by playing the anti-Semitism card. That’s Howard “Mr. Judith Steinberg” Dean. Note also the racism of that comment, which suggests that urban blacks are the Enemies of America.

Telenko is a pseudo-intellectual fraud of the first order. Any idea that he introduces into the right-blogosphere has had all the worth sucked out of it, if it had any worth to start with.

Also, Brad’s mention of treaties is crucial, and I’m kicking myself that I didnt mention it. Morals have not only evolved, but so too has their enforcement through law. While the Romans had law and primitive sorts of treaties, the American republic was founded by men who’d read the whole of Lord Gibbon and who therefore deeply loathed the Caesarian impulse to shitcan law and treaty at will or whim — which, it turned out, is exactly what we did.

I suggest in addition to these points that Reynolds refuses to acknowledge his moral position in excusing genocide because if he admitted the moral and historical facts of the matter it would crush his idea of American Exceptionalism and moral superiority: if it’s true that the US was a genocidal conqueror, then it’s an original sin and the United States is just another country with a bloody history, the only thing making it morally unique is its constitution and bill of rights Reynolds’s idols delight in shredding.

A few years ago at the Volokh Degeneracy there was a long meditation on the uniqueness of the Shoah, which every wingnut linked to. Some did commend the argument in good faith, but for others, I think there’s bias. The Shoah was perpetrated by Germans whom everyone decent should agree were concentrated evil then but whom wingnuts think are bad *now*. And the Shoah was finally halted by the US, which is also true and a good thing, but serves as well the wingnut idea of America Always The White Knight In Shining Armor. OTOH, the US’s genocide of the native americans must be minimalised, deprecated, or, in Reynolds’s case, outright excused. And our genocide of the Filipinos resides in history’s memory hole, where they’d like it to stay. If the genocide was by people we dont like now, or was stopped by US, then it’s the worst genocide ever. But if it’s a genocide that we actually prosecuted, then, well, what genocide? and didnt they have it coming?

Not that the Shoah isnt unique — but it’s unique with regard to the process and thoroughness and rate of the killing, not in the intent. I have no doubt that if Custer, Sherman, Sheridan, Jackson et al had the technological infrastructure (the sociological infrastructure — the racist, exterminationist attitude of the American masses, was up to the challenge) the Nazis had, the result would have been identical to the Shoah because the american government’s intent (at least speaking for Sheridan and Sherman, and Sherman was commander of the US Army) was to wipe the red man from the earth. As it was they did their best with what they had to exterminate the plains indians, and they nearly accomplished their goal. Goody goody, says Glenn Reynolds. Sweet Jesus I hate that sonofabitch. Oh wait, I’m engaging in the Left’s Victim Fetish! Sorry!