Barone was prime fighting age during Vietnam. I did not see anything in his bio about serving in the armed forces.

It’s also noteworthy which party vets of this godforsaken war who are running for office have chosen. I guess they’re “covert enemies” too. And they don’t have make themselves heroes. Their actions have already done that.

Let’s see…
– Of military age during the Vietnam War: check
– Elite: check (graduate of Harvard & Yale )
– Declined to serve in the military during the Vietnam War: check

Say, that’s Michael Barone he’s talking about. Guess he’s one of our covert enemies, too.
(BTW, Barone has been a conservative for at least the last 40 years. Hinderaker is butt-spelunking bullshit as usual.)

Hinderaker is butt-spelunking bullshit as usual.

Y’think? I thought Barone was Townhall’s token lefty columnist all this time…

Not like we need to see any more of this shit, but the comments to Barone’s column are typically depraved and hateful. Here’s just a snippet from one called PearlGirl:

We need to be MEAN. We need to HATE. We NEED strong, DEADLY emotions- and we NEED to act on them. We are dealing with a thought system – IS-SLIME – (not “Islam” – because this is a proper noun. The correct name. This betokens respect. I do NOT respect sand n!ggers. I HATE them – and I want them DEAD. ALL of them – as I’ve stated before – any little sand n!glet blown to bits, today, means some little human child – Jewish, Christian, Hindu, Rastafari, whatever – gets to NOT be blown to bits, tomorrow) – a thought system that is PURE hatred, and annihilation.

Ahh, those civil conservatives.

That’s quite some logic. We must hate and annihilate every Muslim to get rid of a thought system that is pure hatred and annihilation.

Y’think? I thought Barone was Townhall’s token lefty columnist all this time…

Sorry, didn’t mean to point out the patently obvious for any reason other than that there is simply nothing Hinderaker won’t lie about. Which I suppose is also obvious.

Shorter PearlGirl: Wir mussen die Muslimen VERNICHTEN!

These are the people who to this day think that Hugh Thompson was a traitor for positioning his helicopter between William Calley’s platoon and what remained of the villagers of My Lai. They’ll never admit that Little Boots was anything less than a great war hero.

the piece is even worse than that. here’s the whole last paragraph:

We have always had our covert enemies, but their numbers were few until the 1960s. But then the elite young men who declined to serve in the military during the Vietnam War set out to write a narrative in which they, rather than those who obeyed the call to duty, were the heroes. They have propagated their ideas through the universities, the schools and mainstream media to the point that they are the default assumptions of millions. Our covert enemies don’t want the Islamo-fascists to win. But in some corner of their hearts, they would like us to lose.

yes, that’s right. not only does he just make shit up, but based of that made up shit implies that in some corner of our hearts well golly we just love it when US soldiers get blown up. why do u think we opposed the war in the first place you asshole. and this guy is totally mainstream conservative and gets taken seriously. unf*ckingbelievable.

http://www.workingforchange.com/comic.cfm?itemid=20528

…. and Cheech Marin …

Hey, my father and two uncles fought in World War II, and I’m a pinko lefty. And one of those uncles sired my cousin — a lesbian! So it’s true — if those guys weren’t all dying off, we should throw ’em all in Gitmo!

The returning vets pampered their offspring and mollyucoddled and spoiled them and this is what we got. God bless ‘em, they won a war but the war cost them their good political judgment.

To the extent that the 1950s were the Leave It to Beaver idyll that conservatives are often wont to claim they were and to which reactionaries ostensibly want to return, wasn’t it because of purposeful mollycoddling by and the political judgment of the returning vets and their commanders (e.g. Eisenhower maintaining the New Deal)?

Meanwhile “covert enemies”: Barone is considered mainstream and he sounds like a Bircher. How and why has our political discourse degenerated so? Perhaps the Birch associated Koch family (speaking of covert enemies — before becoming “anti-communist” Daddy Koch made his money helping out Stalin … I guess, though, you can still be anti-Communist and make a buck off of them so long as they are getting fleeced, eh?) has something to do with it?

The WW II vets were a bunch of peaceniks who were ultimately responsible for the anti-war protests? Then who in the name of the Spaghetti Monster voted for Nixon? It just makes me nuts when people make up history!

Yeah, sure. The returning WW II vets were all Democrats. That’s why Congress went “R” before FDR’s body was cold. Right.

It constantly amazes me how the righties pull facts out of their ass to reinforce their prejudices. Until this moment, I don’t believe I’ve seen a single word on the political affiliations of the men who faught in WWII. I do know the returning vets included Bob Dole, Richard Nixon, and some flyboy by the name of Bush, as well as JFK and George McGovern. (No combat for Nixon, as I recall, but he did serve.) Oh, and a couple of McCarthys, if I’m not mistaken.

In fact, it seems to me that most of the men who rose to prominence in Congress in the fifties had served during the war, though not always in combat. That applied to members of both parties.

While it’s disputable (to say the least) that the experience of war led that generation to mollycoddle their offspring, that might have to do more with being exposed to the horrors of war than any political leanings of the returning soldiers. Maybe if you see enough dead children, you place more value on your own.

Unless you’re a conservative, of course…

PearlGirl MUST be a lefty troll, cuz we know that only the left are angry and uncivil. No-one in Right Wingnuttia would spout this kind of racist hate-speech, and if they did they’re just reacting to years of excessively PC speech foisted on them by the left….

I wonder how Prof TinyPundit would analyze her outburst?

@DAS:

You said: “Meanwhile “covert enemiesâ€?: Barone is considered mainstream and he sounds like a Bircher. How and why has our political discourse degenerated so?”

That’s an easy one. I have, in the last few months, re-read a book called “The Silent Brotherhood”, a recounting of the exploits of the Neo-Nazi group that killed Denver radio host and robbed lots of armored cars, among other things. It is a rather exhaustive look into the right-wing militia movement and its associated charicters, back around 1985.

There is not a dime’s worth of difference between the verbiage used by these organizations and what is generally considered SOP rant fodder on the right. Winess the shy and mysterious flower PearlGirl. Oh, they clean it up here and there, usually, but the content is pretty much the same.

So what happened? Back then, the Republicans took a look at all these people who were committed to these views: Christian Identity, Covenant, Sword and Arm of The Lord types, Militia members and various right-wing rabble. They all gained their provenance from the Birchers. They saw committment. They saw action. They saw, with some reaching-out, their base in the future. So they sent people like Helen Chenowith, who could talk their talk, to reach out.

The rest is the mess we have today. In the bargain, the Bircher, neo-nazi-code-word opinions, the red-baiting, the gay-hating, the racism ad nauseaum, is what we get in the bargain.

Gotta keep the base happy.

I suggest you read the book mentioned above. It’s an eye opener.

Michael Barone gets up every goddamn day, walks out to his balcony, faces the terrorists, extends his thumb and forefinger, and crushes their tiny heads. Typical of the smear merchants at this site to leave that out.

Other than the senior officers, most of the vets from WWII would not have been running for office until the 60s. I remember my Dad, a boomer, once told me that one big issue of the time was the fear of being caught with our pants down like Pearl Harbor. So in the 50s & 60s, the big defense issues were the arms race and anti-communism.

Dr. T said,

August 22, 2006 at 16:14

The WW II vets were a bunch of peaceniks who were ultimately responsible for the anti-war protests? Then who in the name of the Spaghetti Monster voted for Nixon? It just makes me nuts when people make up history!

You were fooled, fooled badly my friend, by all their peace marches in thousands of American towns, disguised as veterans’ parades.

[…] think people were smarter than this, but sadly, no! Permalink| […]

Actually, it took a lot more personal courage to go to canada than it did to go to vietnam. I know many guys who will say they wish they would have had the courage to stay out of the war. Hell, it was easy to shut up and do what you were told…

mikey

Onward the Fighting Feathermerchants of the 101st!

I infer ‘Greatest Generation’ to mean in terms of numbers. Once we boomers have shuffled off things should improve!

Actually, it took a lot more personal courage to go to canada than it did to go to vietnam. I know many guys who will say they wish they would have had the courage to stay out of the war. Hell, it was easy to shut up and do what you were told… – mikey

Actually, the key issue in Vietnam was class — and Vietnam was what allowed the GOP to wage a divide and conquer strategy and win the class war for the rich.

Poor and working class stiffs generally had no choice but to fight in ‘Nam. They didn’t have the resources to make it to Canada, get student deferments, or what not (that is why Bill Clinton should get a total pass on his Vietnam war activities — for someone of his socio-economic class to have pulled off what he pulled off required extreme smarts and chutzpah … and why what he did in ‘Nam is so different than GW “Skipping out even on TANG” Bush). The middle class had a choice: they could risk Vietnam or risk protesting it. Of course, the middle/professional classes take great risk in avoiding the war, but they still had a choice, whereas the poor/working classes did not. It was resentment of the working classes of the large scale professional class sitting out of the war and protesting it that the GOP was able to use with such skill to sour those working classes on the liberalism both they and the professional classes had previously espoused — and this resentment is why so many who would benefit even from social liberal policies tend to view us “effete, latte sipping liberals” with suspicion: because our class allowed us to protest a war we didn’t believe in.

Of course the irony, as people note, is that those who so resent the upper-middle classes for their ability to sit out ‘Nam end up voting for rich folk who didn’t even have to take risks and protest to sit out ‘Nam.

But at the heart of the “effete, latte sipping liberal” meme lies a class divide and jeolousy over what the upper-middle class was able to do w.r.t. ‘Nam while the grunts got shipped off to die — a divide exploited ever since by the GOP and their lackies in the media who start shouting “don’t play at a class war” whenever class, the real third rail of American politics, is even brought up.

Oh man… I just read the Barone column comments, and now my brain feels dirty. Quick, someone say something uproariously funny. PLEASE!

Those green items located beside that handful of Cheetos – are they pickles??? Ewwwwww!

buck’s comment to the Barone piece is the strangest reframing of the Dolchstosslegende I have yet seen.

Gotta keep the base happy. – T Scheisskopf

And yet it would be politically disastrous for the Dems. to pay any attention to the Dem. base?

Talk about IOKIYAR!

The returning vets also were mostly Democrats.
Do you know why? Because the REPUBLICANS were the ones DYING FOR YOUR FREEDOM!

Dirty hippies.

Dan Someone,
According to my morning paper (or website, as I wouldn’t pay for a piece of shit like the Atlanta Journal-Constipation), Osama bin Laden has a great desire for…Whitney Houston.

For some reason, that struck me funny as hell.

This is the column that says that we learn more about WWII American atrocities and the fact that some Founding Fathers had slaves than we do about D-Day, the “Greatest Generation”, the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights, correct?

Well, I think we’ve reached a threshold here friends. It’s the perfect construction of pure stupidity. It’s flawless. It holds a nonsensical-on-its-face premise, argues it poorly and comes to a completely unsupportable conclusion while wholly ignoring the obvious. It’s a shiny marvel of mendacity and paranoia. Barone should feel proud.

He broke the speed of dumb.

I’ll try, Dan Someone.

“… so I go into the school’s psychologist office, and boy, those guys are tricky. They give me a chocolate easter bunny, but after a few bites, I realize its nowhere near Easter.

“Is this some kind of test?”

“Yes”, the psychologist said.

“What’s it mean?”

“Well, if you had eaten the ears first, you would have been normal. If you had ate the chest first you would have had a latent oedipal complex. If you had eaten the feet first you would have had inferiority issues, and if you ate the tail first, you would have had homosexual tendencies.”

“Well, go on” I said, “What does it mean when I bite out it’s eyes and scream “STOP STARING AT ME!””

-Emo Phillips

Sean: actually the WWII vets started running in 1946 and 48, including Nixon, JFK, Ford, etc. They didn’t reach the highest offices until the late 50s, early 60s for the most part, but they certainly were in Congress, the State legislatures, etc.

Actually, it took a lot more personal courage to go to canada than it did to go to vietnam. I know many guys who will say they wish they would have had the courage to stay out of the war. Hell, it was easy to shut up and do what you were told…

Mikey,

From Gore Vidal (via ‘Tardo):

Give a sissy a gun and he will kill everything in sight. TR’s slaughter of the animals in the Badlands outdoes in spades the butcheries of that sissy of a later era, Ernest Hemingway. Elks, grizzly bears, blacktail bucks are killed joyously while a bear cub is shot, TR reports proudly, “clean through . . . from end to end� (the Teddy bear was yet to be invented). “By Godfrey, but this is fun!� TR was still very much the prig, at least in speech: “He immortalized himself along the Little Missouri by calling to one of his cowboys, ‘Hasten forward quickly here!’� Years later he wrote: “There were all kinds of things of which I was afraid at first, ranging from grizzly bears to ‘mean’ horses and gunfighters; but by acting as if I was not afraid I gradually ceased to be afraid.�

There is something strangely infantile in this obsession with dice-loaded physical courage when the only courage that matters in political or even “real� life is moral.

Word.

yea really people. go read those comments. its an alternate universe, where liberals control everything and hate america, and every other childish argument you could possibliy imagine, that we all like to pretend is perhaps only a sorry debate strategy, but no, people actually believe this shit. anyway enjoy.

reminds me of a joke: 2 Jews sitting on a bench when one notices the other reading a neo-Nazi newsletter. “Why are you reading that?” he asks. “It’s great,” the other responds, “according to this we run the world.”

Shame on those Frenchmen for not occupying Lebanon again at Bush’s request. Why, if he didn’t have so much brush to clear, he’d be personally leading the brigade to bring Freedom Fries to Beirut.

Now, watch this drive!

And shame on Kola Boof, Osama’s former sex slave, for revealing Whitney Houston’s secret identity as an Administration deep cover operative.

I’m glad someone else spotted that niffy Barone article.

Not only is he a wanker, he’s the most beautiful example so far of the conservative “stab in the back” and blame-the-liberals-for-everything-since-Reagan effect.

> Every state must have its enemies. Great powers must have especially monstrous foes. Above all, these foes must arise from within, for national pride does not admit that a great nation can be defeated by any outside force. That is why, though its origins are elsewhere, the stab in the back has become the sustaining myth of modern American nationalism. Since the end of World War II it has been the device by which the American right wing has both revitalized itself and repeatedly avoided responsibility for its own worst blunders. Indeed, the right has distilled its tale of betrayal into a formula: Advocate some momentarily popular but reckless policy. Deny culpability when that policy is exposed as disastrous. Blame the disaster on internal enemies who hate America. Repeat, always making sure to increase the number of internal enemies.

See: http://www.harpers.org/StabbedInTheBack.html

Walking- yeah, that’s the first thing I thought of. He’s playing to type perfectly.

Greatest Generation?

Sept ’39 – War Starts
Sept ’43 – Patton lands in Italy
June ’44 – Eisenhower lands in France & races Soviet to Berlin
May ’45 – VE Day

US war dead = 350,000. Soviet war dead 12 million.

Smartest generation, for sure.

God bless ‘em, they won a war but the war cost them their good political judgment.

Yeah, cause God knows that only someone with bad political judgement would consider good, clean, patriotic fun like war “hell” and “a tragedy” and “a last resort”.

What kind of loonies were the Greatest Generations to think that war actually, has consequences and shouldn’t be undertaken lightly?

total Soviet war dead was actually somewhere around 25-7 million, including civilians. The lower figure is just military personnel.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_patriotic_war#Casualties

He broke the speed of dumb.

Ha. Haha. Dare I? Why not? Bwa-haha!

Barone made sonic boom. He hit Mock-2.

Woodrowfan ~

Well, yes, obvoiusly folks could run at any point. I was thinking that the bulk of WWII vets would’ve been younger (average age was 28 I believe) and done other things when they got home like finish college, return to a job, make babies. The vets who were older at the conclusion of hostilities (mostly the senior officers hence my qualifier) would’ve run sooner. I’m pulling a Jonah here as I don’t have the demographics. So basically, other than a few eager younger vets, the first decade or so after the war would’ve been the men who were older and fewer in number. As the younger vets aged then they would enter politics. And with the number of younger vets being a lot greater than older vets, the greatest influx of WWII vets would’ve been after some time had past.

With the Iraq war, the demographics of the modern military & ability to enter politics younger would not result in us having to wait 20 years to see large numbers of Iraqi war vets running for office.

The baby boomers are the children of the returning WWII Veterans. These Vets all came home so tired and disgusted with war that they vowed that their children would never have to go to war like they.

I think someone misspelled “the entire world”.

“The baby boomers are the children of the returning WWII veterans. The entire world was so tired and disgusted with war that they vowed that their children would never have to go to war like they.”

No, still doesn’t work, even if you correct the miscapitalization.

Nevertheless, it’s true. After World War II, the world took a step back, and said “holy fucking shit! War sucks ass!” (I know, you don’t hear that in history books, but that’s what really happened. I think diplomats prettied the language up a bit.) The ultimate crime, the most horrible thing a nation could do, it was decided, was to start a war of aggression.

Like, say, the invasion of Iraq.

Not because there might not seem to be an awfully good reason to fight a war… because modern warfare is so terrible that there can’t be a reason *other than defense* that can justify it.

#
jrm78 said,

Shorter PearlGirl: Wir mussen die Muslimen VERNICHTEN!

Or more in the spirit of the Third Reich and its linguistic usage (see Victor Klemperer’s diaries):

Wir müssen die Muslime AUSRADIEREN.

Is my kiester wrinkly?I can’t seem to be able to turn my head around that far to look anymore, even in the mirror. Would you check it for me? And while you’re down there, why don’t you kiss it ? There’s a good lad.

PearlGirl MUST be a lefty troll, cuz we know that only the left are angry and uncivil. No-one in Right Wingnuttia would spout this kind of racist hate-speech, and if they did they’re just reacting to years of excessively PC speech foisted on them by the left….

No, it’s called tough love or compassionate conservatism.

Jumping Jesus.. now I know why I never go over to the right side of the blogosphere. I’d be more likely to read coherent arguments on some 9 year old’s live journal site.

Although I love the internet, sometimes the realization of just how many raging lunatics live in this country scares the daylights out of me.

The Nazis Wehrmacht, for the most part, was destroyed on the Eastern Front by the Red Army. The U.S. was on the winning side in WWII, but the Soviets did most of the fighting by far and won the war.

See Glantz and House, “When Titans Clashed: How the Red Army Stopped Hitler,” University Press of Kansas, 1995.

Shorter Buck: Those war vets are such pussies.

the REPUBLICANS were the ones DYING FOR YOUR FREEDOM!
If only it were so simple: our freedom = dead Republicans

The Devils Advocate got half of the story when he asked above “Those Green items located beside that handful of Cheetos – are they pickles?”

But it’s far worse than simply an aberrant vegetable: that picture was photoshopped!! Barones never, ever, eat a balogna and cheese without either mayo or butter, or both, And those aren’t just any pickles – they are cornichons!! It’s a Freedom Pickle that actually has a real taste – Barones not only never eat them, they never even admit to knowing what they are.

The returning vets also were mostly Democrats.

Dirty hippies.

Perhaps if they’d have worked more on their avoiding bullets skill….

Don’t worry, Bush, Limbaugh and the 101st Fighting Keyboarders know how to avoid bullets pretty damn well nowadays.

Bbbustard beat me to it! Cornichons!

What is this about covert?

buy me a beer, I’m your friend.

Shit on other people for fun or gain, and I’m your enemy.

The returning vets also were mostly Democrats.

Do you know why? Because the REPUBLICANS were the ones DYING FOR YOUR FREEDOM!

Dirty hippies.

>>Perhaps if they’d have worked more on their avoiding bullets skill….

I found this similarly confusing. The point seems to be that if a particular soldier died, they were more likely than not to be republican. Coming out of the depression I doubt that there were too many combat grunts with a membership in the elitist, anti-semitic, isolationist, country-club republican party of Herbert Hoover, Robert Taft and Wendell Willkie.

some 9 year old’s live journal site.

I know. My husband and I laughed for about one hour after we came across a goth high schooler’s my space page, with all of these goth photos and drawings, and then her favorite tv show was “Two and a Half Men”. Seriously, I am laughing again just thinking about it.

That still makes more sense than the rightwingnutosphere.

It endlessly depresses me to see such pandering to the masses. What depresses me further is the sheer numbers the ignorant have on their side.

I just can’t stop imagining Orwell’s sheep, being coached to scream “Islamofacists, islamofascists! Hate our freedom! Hate our freedom!” ad infinitum.

Way too many Americans have been brought up in a culture that preaches ignorance is bliss. And from that bliss will bring perpetual war.

Aside from the obvious, however, a main complaint with the testically-challenged like Barone is their unwillingness to just say the word “Genocide.” Because that is what they are preaching. Genocide to the Arabs. Because no matter how much they want there to be, there is no country of Terrorista to invade. They are preaching genocide, and Orwell’s sheep are eating it up and regurgitating it.

If they could just start screaming “Genocide!” maybe then enough will turn against the neo-con way, before it the word neo-con takes its rightful place alongside nazi and fascist in the world’s dictionary.

–WKW

Sometimes, when I’m feeling hopeful, I think that the Republican’s teaming up with genuine thugs and white supremicists and skinheads may turn out to be like the story of the sorcerer’s apprentice, who knew enough to set the brooms in motion but not enough to get them to stop. They can’t control them… And out of their mouths comes batshit crazy stuff that will really turn away anyone with any pretensions of moderation. Coulter is like that. And maybe it will destroy the right.

But that’s when I’m feeling hopeful. When I’m not, I think that all the thugs will just end up destroying us.

But surely, most people out there, Republicans, especially Jaycee types, don’t really believe we should slay every Muslim on the face of the earth? Hell, it isn’t even good business. I’m waiting hopefully for the truly ‘conservative’ wing of the Republican party, the party of Barry Goldwater, to stand up and put a stop to this Neocon nonsense. For practical reasons, if not for moral or ethical reasons. For fuck’s sake, they’re not all crazy.

Let’s make things easier for Buck and friends by reducing that WWII bogeyman to one individual and giving him a name and a face. This way, all the vilification can be concentrated on one, synecdochic traitor. I’m thinking of Austrian-born academic Eric Wolf, who served in the U.S. Army during WWII and who, as a professor of anthropology at the University of Michigan, organized the first teach-ins about Vietnam. There’s you culprit! All of today’s covert enemies are his progeny.

As I recall, Michael Barone was one of Ray Romano’s part-of-the-scenery twin sons on his late sitcom “Everybody Loves Raymond.” Who else sees the irony of a right-wing shill possessing the same name as a useless character on a dead T.V. show that tanked to begin with?

“Returning vets from WWI were mostly Democrats”???

If memory serves, the first President elected after Truman/WW2 was Eisenhower, a Republican. JFK beat VP Nixon by the skin of his teeth. Sympathy for JFK gave us Johnson who served only one elected term, followed by Nixon.

If “returning vets were mostly Democrats”, their voting patterns sure as hell didn’t show it. What then is the basis for Barone’s “accusation”?

“None”, I hear you say? Who’da’thunk’it?

[…] Right wing pundits striking unintended irony are always good for a laugh. […]

But they have also been working, over many years, to undermine faith in our society and confidence in its goodness.

You’ve missed this small bit of irony.

The Nazis Wehrmacht, for the most part, was destroyed on the Eastern Front by the Red Army. The U.S. was on the winning side in WWII, but the Soviets did most of the fighting by far and won the war.

THANK YOU! Fuck – it’s difficult as hell to drive this fact home when talking to someone who believes America won the Second World War.

The Russians – they fled ahead of the Wehrmacht, burning their homes; killing their livestock and torching the carcasses so invaders wouldn’t find anything to eat. They poisoned village wells so there’d be no water fit to drink.

Their acts made the Eastern Front – freezing in winter; wet ground above hard ground in spring; hot, damp, and bug infested in summer – even more hellacious. And don’t even get me started on the Soviet citizen-soldiers who booby-trapped their rubble; and, when they ran low on ammunition, attacked German soldiers with rocks, knives, and teeth.

All that time, most of these politicians’ parents – most women, and men too young or old to fight – were back in the US collecting scrap metal for the effort overseas and buying war bonds. That ‘home front’ sacrifice is hardly comparable to what the Russians did – the terrible nightmare they inflicted upon their enemies.

Maybe if there’d been some fight on American soil back then, these idiots now wouldn’t be so quick to vomit their war fantasies all over the Middle East.

Well I can’t add anything to that. Colin?

Can I just say that this is the first time I’ve been on television?

Did anyone else notice that if you cross your eyes just right, that the lines on the cheese look just like baby Jesus looking down and crying??

Jeff, I see somthing very similar. It’s baby Jesus looking down and crying, while being gently mollyucoddled by Dubya. That sandwich is truely devine!!!!

What Longhairedweirdo said about “the entire world”: exactly right.

WWI was 8 million military dead, and almost insignificant civilian deaths.

WWII – some 20 million military dead, roughly the same in civilian deaths.

Since that time “collateral” deaths far exceed military deaths.

But the Conservative ability to be completely uncompassionate is nothing new. Someone in the Churchill circle (don’t recall the name) expressed delight that the Geneva conventions preserved “the right to bomb n-gg-rs”, and Churchill himself said that if it would save one Englishman, he would happily kill all in Afghanistan.

Barone’s piece reads like early Nazi-era anti-Jewry propaganda.

So does anyone know if logic is the first thing you lose in Wingnuttia or is it the final throes of the disease?

[…] Sadly No scours for unintended irony so I don’t have to, like this nugget from Michael Barone: We have always had our covert enemies, but their numbers were few until the 1960s. But then the elite young men who declined to serve in the military during the Vietnam War set out to write a narrative in which they, rather than those who obeyed the call to duty, were the heroes. […]

This website has some of the choicest dialogue I’ve seen yet. These comments are great.

I’m a little older than the boomers, just having turned 65. I was judged 4-F by Army doctors when I was drafted, not by my own like Rush Limbaugh’s. I went to work for a large company and took on as much defense work as I could handle. My feet are still flat as an aircraft carrier’s deck and I wear trifocals and pay taxes. Is that patrioyic enough?

I am a Christian with strong values and beliefs. I belive women should be seen and never heard. When my girlfriend gets out of line, I beat her. Sure, she goes away for awhile, but she always comes back. She knows she will never get anyone near as good as me. She really shouldn’t have pissed me off in the first place. GO GEORGE BUSH.

[…] And yet, conservatives don’t get it. Spurred on by the foiled plot (that the Bushies, in their eagerness to use the issue as a club against Democrats, rolled up too quickly to create an open-and-shut case against the plotters in a court of law), anti-Muslim bigotry has reached new heights here and in Europe. Shortly after the code brown alert, this appeared in the comments section of Michael Barone’s piece of excrement entitled “Our covert enemies” over at TownHall.com, attributed to a user named PearlGirl: We need to be MEAN. We need to HATE. We NEED strong, DEADLY emotions- and we NEED to act on them. We are dealing with a thought system – IS-SLIME – (not “Islamâ€? – because this is a proper noun. The correct name. This betokens respect. I do NOT respect sand n!ggers. I HATE them – and I want them DEAD. ALL of them – as I’ve stated before – any little sand n!glet blown to bits, today, means some little human child – Jewish, Christian, Hindu, Rastafari, whatever – gets to NOT be blown to bits, tomorrow) – a thought system that is PURE hatred, and annihilation. […]