Posted on 04/08/2007 5:51:50 PM PDT by TheConservativeCitizen
Writing in USA Today, Sen. Joe Lieberman says this of the latest Democratic plan:
Amazingly, however, just at the moment things are at last beginning to look up in Iraq, a narrow majority in Congress has decided that it’s time to force our military to retreat. Rather than supporting Gen. Petraeus, they are threatening to strip him of the troops he says he needs and sabotage his strategy.
This is outrageous.
Leftist attacks on Lieberman have obscurred the fact that he was one of the triumverate of the Thinking Democrats. The term is my own, of course, premised as it is on the basis that most Democrats are something else. Terms more generally accepted are DLC Democrat, Scoop Jackson Democrat, or (cue scary music) Neoconservative.
The DLC refers to the Democratic Leadership Conference, a group of moderate Democrats who sought to save their party from the excesses of liberalism that had crippled them from the 60’s through the 80’s.
Bill Clinton and Al Gore were prominent members of the group. Clinton’s presidency is owed heavily to the ideas and branding created by the DLC. Today, left-wing netroots writers have managed to make the DLC a cuss word, while incongruously worshipping the presidency of Bill Clinton. They not only fail to realize that Clinton’s greatest achievements were DLC ideas, they also don’t get that his administration never would have happened without that group.
One of the trio of Thinking Democrats was Henry “Scoop” Jackson, whose legacy is closely related to neoconservatism. Scoop Jackson was a Washington state Democrat from 1952-1983. His senate tenure coincided closely with the Cold War, and Sen. Jackson began to emerge as an heroic advocate for US power, freedom for all peoples, and the obvious link between the two.
Jackson’s aborance of evil totalitarianism informed all of his public service, and in this regard he was aided by his experiences in WWII. In 1945, Army Pvt. H. Jackson toured the liberated Nazi death camp Buchenwald.
Thankfully, the “netroots” didn’t exist then, and so he wasn’t inundated with messages from his own party of Allied war crimes, how the Nazi “resistance” was warranted, and what a Jew-whoreing warmonger Pres. Roosevelt was. Ah, those were the days.
Instead, Jackson embarked on a congressional career whose aim it was to aid those in search of freedom and to oppose tyranny everywhere. During this career, Jackson hired Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Elliot Abrams, and Douglas Feith, and today Wolfowitz and others like to call themselves “Scoop Jackson Republicans.”
“Jackson attacked weakness, even among his party’s standard bearer. Despite the fact that John Kennedy’s election had given the Democrats total control of the government, Jackson did not shrink from his criticisms of presidential foreign and defense policies. Between 1961 and 1963 he dissented from President Kennedy’s policies to thaw the Cold War; and in 1962 in a highly publicized speech he denounced the value of the United Nations….”
This passage from Wikipedia sums it up nicely:
Jackson believed that evil should be confronted with power. His support for civil rights and equality at home, married to his opposition to detente, his support for human rights and democratic allies, and his firm belief that the United States could be a force for good in the world inspired a legion of loyal aides who went on to propound Jackson’s philosophy as part of neoconservatism.
The other member of the senate triumverate I referred to earlier, is Daniel Patrick Moynihan.
Like Jackson, Moynihan was a neocon, who valued the idea of moral rectitude backed up by power both at home and abroad. Like other neocons, Moynihan sought to apply empirical data to social policy. As such, he was one of the first men — of either party — to present the idea that welfare policy was hurting the underclass, an idea that was proven to be true, and yet (sadly) was opposed by most of the Democratic party of the day. Alarmingly, this undeniable truth is still dismissed by today’s netroots radicals. ——- TODAY, THE NETROOTS FOLKS have staked out a position that is the embodiement of the pro-Soviet, anti-anti-communists of yesterday. In an expression of just how intellectually shriveled the grapes of their thinking are, they have targeted for political death Joe Lieberman. Lieberman is denounced by the far-left netroots as a conservative. From the following mainstream, representaive conservative groups, Lieberman’s lifetime ratings are between zero and twenty (100 being perfect):
Right to Life Committee, National Taxpayer’s Union, American Family Association, Family Resource Council, American Conservative Union, Christian Coalition, Gun Owners of America, the National Rifle Association, and US Border Control.
His ratings from the lefty groups are these:
Planned Parenthood (100), ACLU (81), Human Rights Campaign (88), NAACP (85), NEA (88), NOW (75), American Immigration Lawyers Association (100).
From this, the netroots conclude that Joe Lieberman is a conservative, warmogering, right-winger. The terrible, horrible, sickening truth is that if Scoop Jackson and Pat Moynihan were in office today, they would be villified by the fanatics of Kos, Atrios, Andrew Sullivan, Think Progress, and many others. There is no question but that they would be run out of the Democratic party, primaried, slandered, and ultimately punished for the depth of their illicit thoughts.
Today’s netroots are the enemy of those like Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Scoop Jackson, Joe Lieberman, and other thinking, intelligent Democrats.
NO THINKING PERMITTED, read the signs.
For if you do — if you advocate what you believe is right while all the rest of us are calculating political odds, if you support freedom even when polls say we’d be better off selling out those miserable schleps, and if you dare to dissent from our focus group-driven, poll-tested, fundraiding-approved, leftist mantra, then we will seek to destroy you and all of the thinkers who harbor your threatening beliefs.
Shockingly, today’s Democratic party is suddenly controlled by a small, nefarious group who brooks no dissent, least of all from some Ivy League intellectuals who love freedom and vote their conscience, and all that bullshit. They infamously supported the vacuous, ignorant, know-nothing Ned Lamont over Lieberman. When it became clear that their beloved candidate was as knowledgable about policy as an orangutan at the zoo, they didn’t miss a beat — vigorously advancing his candidacy over a man who was and is a giant of American politics.
So how could they do this? How could these netroots nutjobs really seek to strip their party of its noble intellectual heritage? Well it’s simple. All of the movers and shakers of the fringe-hugging netroots clique are too young to even know about Daniel Patrick Moynihan. They haven’t the foggiest idea who Scoop Jackson was. They are surprisingly vacant on historical issues. None of them — think about this, NONE OF THEM — are former State Dept. officials, or former CIA officials, or senior fellows at major think tanks. They are as exacting in their idelogical-purity demands as they are ignorant of the alternatives.
The fact that this gang of Bolshevik conspirators has seized control of the Democratic Party is a freak of the times. Like so many other putrid, thought-stifling revolutions of history, they have gained power not by the strength of their ideas, but by their political tactics. They are too young to know better and too foolish to care.
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