The View From Arlen

Posted 10:36 AM by Hank
SHEEHANSTEIN: THE DEMOCRATS’ “MONSTER” RETURNS

BERKELEY, CA--Last summer, the controversial “peace activist” Cindy Sheehan was the toast of the Democratic party when she camped outside of the President’s ranch and all but accused him of murdering her son.

Since then, however, Sheehan has become a growing thorn in the Democrats’ side, as her extremist views and bizarre behavior are increasingly targeted at democrats who, in Sheehan’s opinion, are not sufficiently “anti-war” for the “peace mom.”

First, Sheehan publicly attacked Hillary Clinton for her vote in support of the Iraq war. Since then, Clinton, crisscrossing the country in support of her 2008 presidential ambitions, has faced regular protests and even heckling from her own anti-war “base.”

Now, Sheehan is actually considering a primary run for the Senate against California Senator Diane Feinstein, “to protest what she called the California lawmaker's support for the war in Iraq.”

"She voted for the war. She continues to vote for the funding. She won't call for an immediate withdrawal of the troops…I think our senator needs to be held accountable for her support of George Bush and his war policies.”

During, and after, her protests against the President, Sheehan’s behavior and words became more extreme. And, as long as she was directed such bizarre statements as “my son died to spread the cancer of Pax Americana,” "This country is not worth dying for,” and “the biggest terrorist is [the President]" against George W. Bush, she was treated respectfully, as a “grieving mother” who was above criticism, by democrats and their allies in the media.

That respect is creating the impression, in the minds of both Sheehan and her supporters, that she is a figure of stature and a serious voice in the national debate on the war in Iraq.

Now, however that stature is being used against the very people who created it.

As such, it will be interesting to see whether her mainstream supporters can escape this “peace monster” of their own creation.

Posted 10:00 AM by Hank
FEAR AND LOATHING IN THE WORLD OF LIBERALS

Liberals fear and hate conservative thought and red state values. That’s the message to be gleaned from two guest editorials with opposing political viewpoints.

The Ithaca Journal recently printed a “guest editorial” from Janis Kelly, who complained that “liberal” Ithaca, which claims to celebrate diversity, did not extend that diversity to political or cultural thought:

All around me in Ithaca I see fairly bright people talking and listening only to each other, confident of the superiority of their own ideas, openly contemptuous of those who might not agree.
This provincial, almost tribal, insularity deprives us of a certain social richness, as well as of opportunities to hone our political thinking. As Ann Althouse noted, to many of the true-blue, “(A)dmitting that I don't share every one of their views ... would be tantamount to admitting that I am no longer a good person or a potential friend. ... Deep down, I don't think most of them believe that it is possible for anyone to be a worthwhile person who holds political views different from their own.”

Kelly urged the liberal, or “blue” residents of Ithaca to try and see the “other side” of the political divide, the “red” areas and suggested, somewhat tongue in cheek:

Listen to your local country music station for 20 minutes a day. Watch Brit Hume's nightly “Special Report” on Fox News. Read a Louis L'Amour novel, preferably “Comstock Lode.” Watch a NASCAR race on television. Eat out at one of the all-you-can-eat steak places and think about the feast the average American can buy for the equivalent of two hours work at minimum wage. Once you have prepped, you might actually visit someplace that voted red.

This, Kelly suggested, might help the Democratic party understand the rural areas of the country and bring them greater success at the polls:

I suspect that learning to know and even appreciate the people in the red areas of that shelter will be essential if Democrats are ever to arrest the party's slide into irrelevance. As Sen. Evan Bayh of Indiana noticed after the 2004 election, the Democratic Party “need(s) to be a party that stands for more than the sum of our resentments” rather than a “cultural elite that is condescending at best and contemptuous at worst of the values that Americans hold in their daily lives.”

Kelly’s suggestion, however, did not sit well with at least one Ithaca
resident.

Writing a response in the Journal, Jud Kilgore stated:

I am not Blue because I prefer Mozart and Debussy to Johnny Cash, but because I hate the pig-pen of Tom DeLay's corruption. I am not Blue because I read Shakespeare instead of L'Amour, but because we have the most secretive administration in our national history.
I am proud to be Blue for whatever reason…than to be Red and all that label implies: deception in the highest offices, government sold to the highest corporate bidders; a war on science… economic insanity that allows an Everest of deficit in pursuit of tax relief for the fortunate at the expense of health care and education for the less fortunate…. My fear is of our elected leaders.

Perhaps without realizing it, Kilgore proved Kelly correct. No where in his editorial did he say what he, and his fellow liberals, were for, only what he, and they, “hate” and “fear.” Furthermore, instead attempting to find common ground with his conservative neighbors, even on something as potentially non-controversial as the great Johnny Cash, he belittled them, proving himself every bit as “condescending… and contemptuous” as Kelly worried liberals could be seen as.

As Kelly noted in her original editorial, many Democrats have been trying to find a way to bridge, or at least pay lip service to, the gap between themselves and “red state” America. Fortunately for Republicans, however, if Kilgore, and the rest of Ithaca, speak for the Democrats and liberals of America, that gap will be there for quite some time.