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One of the most remarkable things about the rise of the conservative media is the success of the strategy of attacking strength, despite the obvious, staggering hypocrisy of such attacks. John Kerry is a war hero, so right-wingers attack him by calling him a coward, ignoring the contrast between Kerry's career and Bush's (or Cheney's or Wolfowitz', or . . .) Most recently, Al Gore got attacked for not caring enough about the environment in his electrical usage. This is amazing when the comparison is made between his work and the planet-destroying oil obsessions of Bush and Cheney, et al.
Malkin and Kurtz' attack is on this same pattern, I believe, and the strength that they are trying to neutralize is precisely the fact that a core value of liberalism is reasoned and civil discourse. Obviously liberals blow it sometimes, but as a matter of principle that is our commitment. That's what the possibility of an open, liberal society requires. Straussian neoconservatism, by contrast (which has taken over the conservative movement in this country), has no principled commitment to civil discourse. Quite the reverse. As the Bush White House so graphically illustrates, neoconservatives are happy with the idea that real decisions are made behind closed doors and then sold to the public, of whom nothing is required but silence, loyalty, and continuing support for war.
The great strength of the liberal dream of an open society is civil, public discourse. The right wing strategy for neutralizing that liberal value is the same strategy they used against Kerry and Gore. The venues where civil public discourse is taking place must be attacked, belittled, lied about and made to look like they are accomplishing the opposite of what they are in fact achieving.
The ratcheting up of the right wings complaints proves to me what I have long, quietly dared to hope was true--the internet is the best thing to happen to the hope of the open society since the invention of the printing press.
