I'm not perfect, I'm a filthy sinner myself, but just as I would speak out against drunkeness, lust, porn, adultery, etc etc.,

The point is that I really don't care about your private sins -- at all -- and would never go around preaching against them or expressing my moral views about them because it's really none of my concern.

I actually think as many people as possible should read the answer given by Rudy Giuliani when asked on CNN whether he agrees with Pete Pace's view that homosexuality is immoral:

GIULIANI: This is — we are getting — we are in the Easter season, and my view of Christianity — and Christianity is very important to me, the teachings of Jesus are very important to me. I kind think of when Jesus drew the line and said, you know, he who hasn't sinned cast the first stone.

So I don't go around judging other people. It isn't my role todetermine what is a sin, what isn't a sin. What my role is, what is legal, what is illegal, I have been really clear on that role throughout my life. I have done a pretty good job of putting people in jail who did things that were illegal.

And the rest of it I leave to the priests, the ministers, the rabbis, the imams and to your personal conscience. I think that's what Thomas Jefferson had in mind, and I think it's gotten America to being the greatest country in the world.

It never ceases to baffle why so many people have trouble with that self-evidently true claim. Why you think your views on the morality of homosexuality are of interest to anyone is equally baffling.

Glenn, I'd agree that Reynolds fits into the authoritarian worshiping mindset. But I don't think Ledeen does. He is a smart and slippery operator, a proponent of PNAC, "destructive chaos" and Israel uber alles (even when, in a rational world, his actions and goals are clearly against Israel's interests).

No doubt. The mind of the right-wing follower on display here is Reynolds. They are share the same authoritarian warmongering mindset, but some do play different roles in how it's shaped, propagagted and consumed.

So I think Glenn is very aware of what you're saying, and that's the basis of the essay's irony: i.e., Ledeen makes the usual silly right wing suggestion that because liberals and leftists don't rush to advocate blowing some country up, it means they're racists or hierarchalists or something.

Yet the right wingers quoted below Ledeen very explicitly describe those countries' residents as inferior and as targets for genocide.

So, the argument on the right is that because liberals & leftists oppose blowing certain 3rd world peoples up, they're racists, but when right wingers explicitly call for genocide etc. against certain 3rd world peoples, this is somehow not racist & discriminatory.

Thank you, El Cid, for answering that perfectly. I thought the point was clear. Ledeen is claiming that those opposed to Middle East wars (i.e. the "Left") are opposed because they see Arabs and Muslims as sub-human, i.e, not worth fighting to democratize.

As others have pointed out, the idea is that if you don't favor invading and bombing a certain country, destroying its infrastructure, slaughtering hundreds of thousdands of its citizens, and then brutally occupying it, it must mean that you consider them sub-human. The only way to show you think they're equal is by bombing and killing them.

What's odd about that, in addition to the obvious, is that it contradicts so completely the standard right-wing critique of "the Left." Usually, we hear that the Left is incapable of making distinctions between cultures, that the grave error of the Left is its failure to recognize that some cultures are superior to others, that the Left foolishly sees them all as equivalent.

Yet here, the same people make the exact opposite claim - that the problem with the Left is that they DO make such distinctions, that they DO think the West is superior, that they DO see third-world Middle Eastern countries as inferior. It's hard to keep track of their cliches.

It's just bizarre to hear the people who want to kill larger and larger numbers of Population X complain that opponents of such slaughter view Population X as "untermenschen." But then it's not bizarre if you read Paul Rosenberg's summary of Altemeyer's analysis.

Where is that, please?

The last word of the original post (before the first update) is "this." It is linked to Paul's essay on MyDD.

I use Rosie O'Donnell as the example of all the liberal viewpoints out there? Would that be reasonable Glenn?

I obviously don't think and did not say or imply that these individuals represent "all" right-wing adherents. But the four individuals I chose do happen to be the (a) the author of the most-read right-wing blog on the Internet (Reynolds); (b) a Senior Fellow at the think tank with, by far, the most influence in the Bush administration (Ledeen/AEI); (c) the long-time Editor-in-Chief of the most establishment-boosting publication in the Beltway (Peretz/The New Republic), and (d) a contributor the most influential conservative magazine and son of the Father of Neoconservatism (Podhoretz/National Review/son of Norman).

So while they certainly don't represent all of those on the Right, it's not as if I chose some daytime talk show host whose career consists only of expressing political views on the side. These are all, for better or worse, "conservatives" of substantial influence, with a following, among other conservatives.