My irony meter just pegged

I guess I don't drink enough Starbucks and debate these issues with politically correct hipster friends who think that everyone who isn't like them is some kind of backwoods bigot.

If you spend enough time over at Lew Rockwell you eventually get a feel for who is in fact arguing from principle and who is in fact a bigot. The downside is that that takes work so you end up with people like Ezra (or LWM) who insist that they all are bigots or our friend Chris who insists that none of them are but that anybody who disagrees is.

PS: For a baseline, I can assure you that Pat Buchannan is a bigot.

They're the same re-treaded far-right, state rights garbage that's been shoveled out since the enactment of the New Deal and the Federal take over of once state issues.

The problem with far-right, state rights garbage is that if you strip away the racism that motivates much of it, you still end up with some pretty good arguments that rely on the actual words of our actual Constitution for their support.

Not only did our founders envision individual states with greater autonomy than what has since evolved, they also envisioned that the citizenry would be directly involved in their own defense and that an Army would only be raised in a time of War as declared by Congress.

The opportunity to remind everyone that our standing army and permanent state of war was not only anticipated by our founders but stronly warned against, can only be regarded as a positive development and if it takes a racist who panders to the religious right in order to raise that argument, then thats the fault of the Democrats who don't have the courage to raise those arguments themselves.

even when compared only with Glenn's other output.

Some of his other posts have either been prefaced with or modified in comments with "I know there are people who are going to misunderstand or misconstrue this but:" followed by the sort of argument Glenn does best.

In this case on the other hand the appropraite lead in would be, "I've been severly misunderstood and misconstrued by a specific person and this is why he's wrong.."

If nothing else it motivated the actual enunciation of the viewpoint that everyoine with a brain could understand but anyone with an agenda will not:

I highly doubt that Paul will be the GOP nominee. And personally, I don't think there's any more important political priority than completely removing from power the Bush/Cheney-type Republicans, whom the GOP nominee will almost surely embody.

The left/right boundary in this country is a rather twisted meandering curve rather than a straight line and those of us who try to come to our viewpoint by deduction from first principles will frequently find that we're struggling to select the least atrocious choice.

I personally feel that it is nevertheless worth the effort and, as always urge Glenn to just keep at it - you're doing great!

I just now reread the post and was struck by the same thing:

The very fact that his actions lead to political gain is pretty much the basis of our form of government

Lost in the conversation over whether Dodd did it to bolster his campaign is the questtion "Why would it bolster his campaign?" The answer of course is because there are millions of Americans who actually care about this issue deeply and are willing to reward people for addressing it. No wonder the dinosaurs are nervous!

can it be as simple as telecom campaign donations?

I doubt it....

I don't think forty thousand would even by you a Chicago alderman for more than one vote.

along this thread that seem to assume that politicians operate in a vacuum and that public opinion is irrelevant. The good news is that public opinion does indeed affect politician's behavior. The bad news is that this helps explain all the behavior that we're finding so objectional. The drug war, for instance remains in place because a large plurality of Americans think its a good idea. As long as the people getting shot up in no-knock raids or being sentenced to serious time because the cops didn't like them anyway are Somebody Else, then the politicians themselves can simply say their tough on criminals and get an extra boost of support as a result.

If were going to get out of this quandary then some serious education is needed. Simply noting that all the candidates suck isn't going to get us very far.

Do you disagree with my position that anyone who votes for a politician who supports the drug war is assisting the continuing slide of the US of A into a form of fascism?

There, I've answered the question. Insofar as the question is related to illegal wiretapping, it's on-topic.

To the degree its couched with "I dare you to answer" then it seems design to pick a fight and derail the thread.

Shall we discuss, who's most responsible for damaging the CIA and dismantling the vetting procedures that insure the accuracy of our intelligence?

I can assure you that the results would reflect rather poorly on the Cheney administration.

But of course since we've established that shooter only exists to contradict and that his actual arguments are content free, we can rest assured that no actual discussion will take place.