Defining Dissent Down
Over the last few days, I’ve seen a couple of columns by moderate/centrist columnists I otherwise respect expressing distaste for the harsh quality of criticism coming from the Left. Nick Kristoff at the New York Times doesn’t like the word “liar” applied to Bush, even though he says in his own piece that “Mr. Bush did stretch the truth. The run-up to Iraq was all about exaggerations…” Richard Cohen in the Washington Post essentially suggests that Michael Moore shut up because he’s doing more to alienate moderates than make a reasonable case. Even Ellen Goodman accepts the idea that Moore is the “Rush Limbaugh of the Left” so that she can express some discomfort at this thought.
Both Cohen and Goodman, discussing Moore, find Fahrenheit 911 too conspiracy-minded for their taste. Cohen writes:
The case against Bush is too hard and too serious to turn into some sort of joke, as Moore has done. The danger of that is twofold: It can send fence-sitters moving, either out of revulsion or sympathy, the other way, and it leads to an easy and facile dismissal of arguments critical of Bush. During the Vietnam War, it seemed to me that some people supported Richard Nixon not because they thought he was right but because they loathed the war protesters. Beware history repeating itself.
Moore's depiction of why Bush went to war is so silly and so incomprehensible that it is easily dismissed. As far as I can tell, it is a farrago of conspiracy theories.
For the record, this was also my impression of this part of the film, although at this point I don’t have as much confidence dismissing even Moore’s looniest-sounding ideas because the actual behavior of the Bush gang has consistently exceeded my most dire expectations on practically every front. I don’t take Moore as a prophet or even as a serious political commentator, but I respect his right to express his opinion and am willing to say he’s doing more good than harm even if Fahrenheit 911 isn’t exactly the film I would have made.
We live in a time when liberal values are under sustained and merciless attack. Our opponents are not interested in reasoning with us or compromising. They don’t give a damn what anyone to the left of Colin Powell (if that) thinks about anything and are so convinced of their own rightness that they seize every opportunity to cut opponents out of the conversation. They lie, mislead, withhold important information, shout down and belittle critics rather than engage their ideas, and respond with dark threats when their authority is challenged. If it takes someone like Michael Moore to answer fire with fire, so be it. This is not the time to be splitting intellectual hairs, when the entire conception of the liberal state is at risk.
Every time the center-left has extended Bush and the Republicans the benefit of the doubt, from failing to vigorously contest the election outcome to the Patriot Act to the authorizing resolution on Iraq, they have been made to look like fools and dupes. Daschle and Gephardt tried to play ball after 9/11 and got rolled over. The conservatism of Democrats like Mary Landrieu, Max Cleland and Martin Frost didn’t buy them a whit of slack from the Republican attack machine, which pulled out all the stops to slime and defeat them by fair means and foul.
OK, message received: this is hardball. The only principle at stake is the maintenance of conservative power in government, and toward that end, any means is permissible. Those are the ethics of our opponents. So why are liberal-leaning opinion leaders still hemming and hawing, taking Republican spin-points about Moore and “leftist rage” seriously? How many times do we have to get played before we realize that it’s time to close ranks and quit giving cover to people who have no use for the least of our values?
I understand the impulse to be fair and reasonable, but really, trusting that Bush’s motives are anything but completely alien to moderate and liberal American values is an abdication of responsibility by the loyal opposition. Civility is a two-way street: you give in order to get. In today’s climate of fear and loathing fostered by right-wing extremists, the only purpose served by civility on the left is to keep the truth from being spoken too loudly or too honestly. Sorry, that’s not an agenda I buy into. Moore might be wrong about a few little things, but he’s right about the big thing: the threat that Bushism represents to the freedoms, value and aspirations of Americans.
Al Gore, that raving lunatic, said it best last week:
Having painstakingly created the intricate design of America, our founders knew intimately both its strengths and weaknesses, and during their debates they not only identified the accumulation of power in the hands of the executive as the long-term threat which they considered to be the most serious, but they also worried aloud about one specific scenario in which this threat might become particularly potent - that is, when war transformed America's president into our commander in chief, they worried that his suddenly increased power might somehow spill over its normal constitutional boundaries and upset the delicate checks and balances they deemed so crucial to the maintenance of liberty.
My goodness, how shrill, how crazy – accusing Bush of wanting to usurp the powers of our democracy! How offensive to the delicate sensibilities of the American people. Funny, the Supreme Court pretty much agreed with Gore on almost every point. But, of course, they were polite about it.
4:50:15 PM 
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