Careful, Mr. Hogberg. Though you may smell a rat, and not a coincidence, where Mr. Sullivan grabs the standard against Bush on the war, his argument about Christians and Christianism is not wrong because of that coincidence — nor wrong because of his “desperate” support for candidate Kerry nor for any of the other reasons external to the argument itself.

When elements of the conservative base are assaulted as bigots and indeed as anti-conservatives, I think the thing to do is dare to take the salvo at face value and see whether the charges stick. (I have tried to do so here and here.) An adherence to that sort of bravery strikes me as fairly acquitting not just itself but the wrongly accused, too. This is all to the better for the reason that attacking complete straw men is somewhat beneath Sullivan intellectually. It should be beneath us as well.