[Nick Danger]

Those are questions the rest of the antiwar left never answered categorically before the war, because they didn't have to. Now they do.

But they won't, and one of the reasons they won't is that Sullivan wrote this column.

On the left, Sullivan is now a turncoat; he is no longer one of them, no matter how much he might protest otherwise. To now do as Sullivan suggests is to join him on the Dark Side. Few will dare.

There is a second reason, and it is that so many on the "mainstream left" live their lives in close little circles that admit no dissent. They are totally out of touch with their fellow citizens, but they do not know it. Michael Moore imagines that a majority of Americans agree with him; Howard Dean imagines that he can win the Presidency. Neither has a clue what most Americans really think; everyone they know agrees with them.

And so these mainstream lefists will not recognize how offensive most people found the comments of Professor De Genova. They understand that he stepped over the line, but it does not seem all that offensive to them... not on a gut level. And so they think they can ignore it, not understanding that failure to condemn will be seen as quiet support.

We saw the same thing again tonight. MSNBC imagines that they can "explain away" the behavior of their Baghdad correspondent Peter Arnett, who appeared on Iraqi State Television to denounce the Bush Administration. Peter's future is with the Dixie Chicks, and so is MSNBC's if they do not drop Arnett like a hot rock... but they can't even see it. They tell us he merely performed a "professional courtesy" and that it was no big deal. They are totally out of touch; another bunch of New York liberals like Michael Moore who imagine that everyone thinks the same way they do.

This war is going to bust the chops of the American left, and it is going to do worse to the American press.

[okie01]

James Carroll, Eric Alterman and Nicholas De Genova all hold leadership positions in the Fedayeen Daschle.

[beckett]

On the left, Sullivan is now a turncoat; he is no longer one of them, no matter how much he might protest otherwise.

Despite his aversion to the religious right, Sullivan has been supporting mostly conservative Republican positions for quite a few years, with the exception of his stand on gay marriage and homosexuality in general. He was a vocal supporter of George Bush in 2000.

Sullivan is an Oakeshott conservative, and did his doctoral dissertation on him, conducting some twenty years ago, as I understand it, one of the last interviews the old philosopher ever sat down for.

Even during his brief editorship of The New Republic Sullivan was known for pushing that publication to the right. And Howell Raines declared a few years back, in so many words, that Sullivan's work was too conservative for The New York Times. Temperamentally, intellectually and in most every other way, Sullivan, a practicing Roman Catholic, is a foundationalist, and thus a man of the right on today's political spectrum.