Comments on: The Same Old Lies

By: rawshark

rawshark — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 16:20:08 +0000

‘ just as Commentary is trying to paint TAC as a bunch of closet fascists. ‘

Projection, They’re fascists and know the easiest way to get away with it.

By: jetan

jetan — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 15:53:07 +0000

Mother Jones weren’t declared non-persons or anything. But the self-proclaimed “mainstream” of the left such as New Republic claims to represent tends to give them the “crazy aunt in the attic” treatment. There is a quiet implication that they are a bunch of card-carrying Henry Wallace style Reds, just as Commentary is trying to paint TAC as a bunch of closet fascists. Even The Nation gets a lot of that. If your default position is to prefer peace to war you are a week-kneed,soft minded Quisling. I reckon this is one reason why, irrespective of partisan outcomes our foreign policy hasn’t changed very dramatically throughout my lifetime.

WRW, I haven’t even had the nerve to use the word “Zionist” in decades, since that seems to inspire the full treatment

By: WRW

WRW — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 13:10:13 +0000

Commentary continually conflates “American Jews” with people of their political viewpoint. Commentary, neocons, etc., reflect just a fraction of American Jews. The most vociferous Zionists are similarly a minority. Yet they conveniently usurp the mantle of American Jews when criticized to argue that any criticism of them is an attack on American Jews.

I wonder if this obvious tactic of obfuscation might be running out of steam?

By: kevinjjones

kevinjjones — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 06:45:48 +0000

jetan writes:

“Those who dare disagree are marginalized â€œwith a quicknessâ€ as has been the case with Mother Jones and, now, with TAC”

I’m not up to date on Mother Jones and a brief web search isn’t informative. What happened to them?

By: John Schwenkler

John Schwenkler — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 04:32:40 +0000

On a related matter, does Andrew actually disagree with anything Mr. Buchanan said in his latest column on Freeman?

Seriously. “Truly vile”? WTF?

By: Gordianus

Gordianus — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 04:10:07 +0000

I see no reason why the epithet Un-American should not be applied to the Israel Lobby. To identify with a country not one’s own to the decrement of one’s fellow citizens is unpatriotic and in our case Un-American. We gain nothing from squeamishness in this debate.

By: jetan

jetan — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 01:14:48 +0000

Sorry. I edited my comment even more sloppily than usual. “But, by Golly, my blood was up!”

By: jetan

jetan — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 01:05:07 +0000

E.D. Kain is correct in that, PJB having been the victim here so often, he really should be more alive to the nuance of what he says.

Having said that, it wouldn’t matter anyway. As is often pointed out, but not often enough, there is more actual debate in any mainstream Israeli newspaper as to proper policy than one will find in the pages of Commentary. They sometime seem claim to speak for Israel whereas it appears to me that they speak for only one narrow band of Israeli opinion, never mind for the larger Jewish community. Yet they consider even the mildest cautionary notes to sing of a desire for the complete immolation of Israel…. Isn’t in within the last year that we saw Jeffrey Goldberg accused of being insufficiently pro -Israel?

This junk does serve it’s intended purpose – it intimidates most of us who doubt the wisdom of the U.S.’s lockstep alliance with alleged Israeli interests from expressing our minds lest we be called anti-semite or something a bit worse. And the push is quite bi-partisan extending as it does from National Review to New Republic. Those who dare disagree are marginalized “with a quickness” as has been the case with Mother Jones and, now, with TAC

By: E.D. Kain

E.D. Kain — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 23:08:46 +0000

I’m right with you on this one, Daniel. My problem with Buchanan’s piece was his use of the “un-American” label – something he should know better than to use so lightly. It’s simply always a bad tactic to start labeling your ideological opponents in this manner, unless of course their ideology is overtly anti-American, which, in common discourse is fairly rare (at least internally).