THROES OF DESPERATION
Re: Brendan Conway’s A Test for “Fighting Dems”:

If James Webb is rejected by Virginia voters, it will have been Webb’s courageous stand on racial preferences that did him in. Webb’s first non-fiction book, Born Fighting, reveals that his ancestors in the south share the socio-economic status of African Americans from the region; hence, Webb’s question, why racial preferences for all but whites who are presumed by the nation’s elite to be rich? That is too much for those Democrats who make a profession out of their race; Jim has been reviled for his truth telling. More than the rejection of an anti-Iraq war hero, a Webb loss will demonstrate that pander politics remains the essence of the Democratic Party.
— William Perry Pendley
Evergreen, Colorado

Wow! What an oxymoron! The party of Franklin D. Roosevelt would disown these loonies. Agree or disagree, Mr. Roosevelt’s Democratic Party was one of ideas, service and determination. Today’s democrats (they are not deserving of capitalization) are the party of surrender, victimhood and subservience to government. They have a generational solution to the almost complete lack of service performed by their ilk (remember Donna Shalala — We can be glad our best and brightest did not serve in Vietnam) they run the only two or three veterans young enough not to be drooling in their stool softener. Mr. Dean, you are indeed in the insane throes of desperation to win an election. That’s not democracy. Democracy somewhere must resonate with “for the people,” not just for the Democrat Party.
— Jay W. Molyneaux
Wellington, Florida

EVICTION NOTICE
Re: Jed Babbin’s Brownie, You’re Doing a Heck of a Job:

I’m not prone to rash statements, but we should kick the UN out of this country, like tomorrow and take ourselves out of it. It would cease to exist, which would be a GOOD thing. Why not an organization of the six or eight most powerful western economies? Excluding France and Germany of course. Just a thought. Always love your stuff…have a good day.
— Gene Hauber
Meshoppen, Pennsylvania

Jed Babbin’s suggests that the United States build a U.N. headquarters anywhere outside the United States. This is a good start. I suggest that best solution would be a UN building in Magadan, Russia) the gateway to the Kolyma, which was the worst part of the Gulag). This would be the best place for the UN, which is a club for assorted despots and tyrants.
— Edward Martin
New Kensington, Pennsylvania

No! Nitti didn’t “leave” when Capone went to prison in 1932, but stayed on as head of the Chicago “Outfit” until his death in 1943…
— Ron Humble

Jed Babbin replies: Mr. Humble is right, sorta. Nitti was out of action for quite a while after an argument with a couple of Chicago cops in 1932 in which he absorbed a few bullets. Lousy aim, those guys. Nitti recovered.

FLOWER POWER RECOILS
Re: Jeffrey Lord’s From God to Godless: The Real Liberal Terror:

Former Reagan White House political director Jeffrey Lord deftly wields a carboy full of acid from which he lovingly dispenses — drop by exquisite drop — a delightful measure of torment on the moldering, smoldering Cry Baby Boom elite.

One can almost hear the pitiful shrieks of the wilting flower children as they read with growing horror: “Piece by piece, trench by trench, the empire that was once American liberalism is under assault by men and women of all ages, incomes, faiths, races and professions. From academia to politics to religion, the media and the law, the liberal Humpty Dumpty has fallen from its once dominant perch. No matter how hard they try, liberals will never be able to put it back together again. … No wonder they’re terrified.”

I’ve waited patiently since Goldwater savaging of 1964 for these wretched venomous toads to face their long overdue day of reckoning. Now it is the turn of the senescent, infantile, gray haired, pony tailed, tattooed, dope smoking, foul mouthed, tantrum throwing, body pierced, well to do white trash, endlessly yapping victim wannabes to see if they have what it takes to suck it up and drive on.

From the evidence at hand, the smart money is on “no.” The day of the monumentally ungrateful Blame America First hypocrites of the Cry Baby Boom persuasion is O*V*E*R.

Watching them unravel slowly… ever so slowly… in the gathering winds of change that will soon deposit them, unlamented, on the ash heap of history as befits so trivial a waste of protoplasm, one is tempted to shout: HOW SWEET IT IS!

Thanks to the “greatest” WWII generation, these post war cry babies were given the very best of everything… UNEARNED… including unparalleled opportunity to grow up and make something of themselves — which they booted. Having been born between third base and home plate these trivial ninnies have spent their so-called “lives” bragging about their stand up triple. Literally given the stars, they picked up a mirror instead and found the view captivating. The cornucopia of opportunity given to these ungrateful parasites by heroic parents who risked all and sacrificed much has now gone a-glimmering.

When the last of these silly inconsequential slugs achieves room temperature, no one will even notice. Indeed when one ponders their “legacy,” one is reminded of the legendary Pacific island bird that is reputed to have flown in circles of ever decreasing radius until it finally disappeared up into its own feathery backside with a slightly disgusting “pop.”

Like a distressed boa that has swallowed an over-nourished pig, America is now in the painful process of SURVIVING the oversized Cry Baby Boom bolus which, like the pig, will soon be excreted as solid waste. At which point the crybabies will finally achieve their true destiny: COMPOST. Environmentalists everywhere will doubtless be overjoyed to learn that Mother Earth can indeed recapture her temporarily wasted hydrocarbon compounds.
— Thomas E. Stuart
Kapa’au, Hawaii

One thing for sure is that Ann Coulter is not dull. However, she is also not persuasive. For the last four years, I served on the Resolutions Committee for the Texas Republican Party. The members are all conservatives, but some want to use our Resolutions to vent about an issue and others, myself included, want to persuade about an issue. I usually even agreed with the venters about the issue, but I spent a lot of my efforts revising the cold pricklies they offered in their writing. One lady would call me “politically correct” for try to use civil language. My goal was to help the conservative cause and that requires writing in a non-polemic manner. Coulter does a disservice to conservatism by her acidic writing.
— Mike Bergsma

MORE JUDGEMENTS
Re: Mark Gauvreau Judge’s Doubting Coulter — At First:

What a god-awful article. It’s a waste of server space; my only hope is that Judge wasn’t actually paid to write it. That would make it a waste of money, too. Surely your organization can do better, hmm?
— G. Chase

Mark Gauvreau Judge and I do not see eye to eye very often. More than once in the Spectator‘s Reader Mail I have attacked him mercilessly for what I call effete conservatism, and by-passed other occasions to belabor him for wimpy opinions. So it is all the more delight to read his defense of Ann Coulter, one of the most insightful defenses of her on the web. While too many established conservatives have run for the tall grass, Mr. Judge has proven himself to be one of the real men after all. I won’t disown any former criticism on other topics, but now a sharp salute, and a “Man, how you have grown! I may disagree with you again, but henceforth, it will be with greater respect.”

And no, Mr. Judge does not stand entirely alone. Joining Mr. Judge are a few brave blog-souls, who also have stepped forward, Bill and myself at Smalltownveteran, Tigerhawk, Big Lizards, Misha at the Anti-idiotarian Rottweiler, and perhaps some others.
— George Mellinger
Sioux Falls, South Dakota

Late one night 36 years ago between Christmas and New Year’s, I got the call that informed me my first cousin on my mother’s side had been murdered. He was the youngest of 5 children my mother’s sister had. We were close and he died at 23 years old as the result of premeditated senseless violence. The way he died, or means, is really moot in the big picture scheme of things but many have made the means the centerpiece of their political careers throughout my life. No such concern has ever been given the first thought by any of my extended family on this subject nor has anyone in my family felt the need to share our pain with anyone outside our private world or put the blame for his death anywhere but where it belongs, on the murderer. Needless to say, his father and mother never fully recovered from the loss of the first and only child that had the capacity and means to deliver himself out of the hardship of a coal miner’s life in South Central West Virginia. The Criminal Justice system added particular punctuation to this affair by turning the appearance of justice into a circus. Not only had the murderer killed my cousin in cold blood but his girl friend and maimed another girl that same night. For his efforts, he didn’t even get life in prison without possibility of parole. He couldn’t get the death penalty thanks to the wisdom of the Supreme Court but that was moot anyway. From this affair I came to one overwhelming conclusion that has guided me through the rest of my life. The ultimate responsibility for one’s safety and care rests with one’s self. If you give up that responsibility to some other entity, real or imagined, your relatives and friends will bear the burden of your decisions.

I would not suggest for one moment that either my cousin or the victims of 9/11 are responsible for their deaths. Their murderers are and always will be. Never the less, the victims of such senseless acts of violence enable the perpetrators of such crimes in far too many cases. My cousin or anyone of the other three people with him could have prevented the acts of the would be murderer. All of them chose to put their faith in the inherit goodness of their fellow man. They didn’t die from a random act of violence either. There was some pre event “intel” here that would have raised my red flags. My cousin was more interested in going along to get along. I draw a line for such things now. We as a Nation collectively, did a lot to make the events of 9/11 not just possible but probable in the eyes of the murderers on that day.

Once the planes left the ground on 9/11 the ultimate fate of the passengers was in their hands. One plane’s passengers had time and “intel” to determine that their faith in government and the goodness of man was their undoing and they acted to save themselves (and others) to their credit. One plane’s passengers probably didn’t have time and the other two, well we will never know. That all four planes were easily taken is the really important lesson to draw from this. I take it as a matter of “faith” that all the plane’s crews and passengers put their faith in the wisdom of government regulations and corporate lawyer advice on how to handle what they thought was simply a hijacking. Had I been on one of those planes on that day, I would not have been a team player in such thinking. I choose to limit my exposure to the goodness of my fellow man in situations where I have absolutely no means to defend myself.

I view the death of my cousin and the events of 9/11 in the same light. Murderers plotted to do murder and chose as their intended vehicle a mode of commercial transportation where all the right enablers were present and predictable. Many things had to go right for the murderers to accomplish their mission, many things could have gone against them had individuals at various points taken action to prevent them. The government has a role to play in our collective security but no government can protect us from ourselves. My cousin could have prevented his death; the government could not have.

I can’t speak to how Ann Coulter chooses to light a fuse under some issues she engages in but I can speak to the general tendency for everything in this country to have a political slant to it. Politics had nothing to do with my cousin’s death or any possible means of preventing it. Some people have invested vast political capital in trying to make this otherwise. Politics has little if anything to do with stopping 9/11 from the constitutionally mandated point of view outlined for the Federal Government. No government, not even ours can read what is in a person’s mind when they board an aircraft and short of that or the passengers flying naked and there being no carry on luggage of any type, those on the plane are the ultimate safeguards in place to prevent such acts. On the other hand, Government as well as Cooperate policy had a lot to do with making 9/11 highly probable as a terrorist operation. WE THE PEOPLE, voted for the elected representatives that put these polices in place so WE THE PEOPLE are ultimately responsible for the chains we put around our government’s resources and actions. The government could have shot one or of more of the planes down and should have on 9/11 but couldn’t for reasons too complex to go into here. Had they shot all four down does anyone think there would not have been and still be a political controversy over just that?

To the Pity Industry that has grown out of 9/11, I simple say I’ve shared enough of your pain, please move on with your life. You aren’t the first persons to lose someone dear to you but you do seem to want to make a career out of not putting the blame for 9/11 where it actually belongs rather than where you think you can gain political points. My family moved on in life without blaming the government for what someone else did (or didn’t do). Your actions are ultimately dishonoring the memory of those you lost by trying to “profit” from their death. You are only deepening your wounds.
— Thom Bateman
Newport News, Virginia

DO MANNERS MATTER?
Re: “Judgments” letters in Reader Mail’s Enjoying Ann Coulter and “Annie Got Her Gun” letters in Reader Mail’s Fearful Liberalism:

The reactions to Ms. Coulter’s cutting, but right on the mark, comments about the “Jersey Girls” are just another manifestation of mindless liberal sophistry disguised as intelligent discourse. Thanks to their high priestess, Maureen Dowd, “absolute moral authority”, a.k.a. “victimology,” is bestowed upon hack leftist political charlatans with egos in desperate need for more than 15 minutes of fame. With their cause celebre sanctified by the moralists on the left, there are no areas in which the Sheehans and the Breitweisers are not deemed to have significant insights for the rest of us to ponder. Not even an appearance on the Jerry Springer show could satisfy to such an extent. But just how exactly the death of a loved one mysteriously transforms these people into Sir Thomas Moore’s, is never really questioned nor doubted by those on the left.

But let an Ann Coulter strip this canard to its bare essence and all hell breaks loose. Sadly, some TAS readers have fallen for this contemptible slight of hand completely with no reservations what so ever. To a letter, each critic of Coulter, (and by implication, Bush or any of us who refuse Dowd’s Kool-Aid) demands some sacrifice as the price of admission to the national discussion. What an ingenuous way to limit those who may participate in the debate. Just where was this demand for sacrifice when the Left, and Ms. Dowd in particular, were in full vitriolic trashing of the “Swift Boat Veterans for Truth”? Were their sacrifices not worthy enough? Or were they just too damn inconvenient to qualify for this protection? Fortunately for the draft dodging Bill Clinton, this demand for legitimacy through sacrifice, mysteriously failed to materialize when running against two WWII war heroes, complete with wounds and medals. No, what we have here is moral authority that flows one way; the intellectual bankruptcy of the Left is almost complete.
— A. DiPentima

James Jenkins, “100% Disabled U.S. Navy Veteran,” wrote that, “There are enemies of democracy-as-we-know-it out there, and they are not these four women (the Jersey Girls).”

I disagree, even at the risk of perhaps being judged by Mr. Jenkins as insensitive to his ordeal. I’m not insensitive to it; I thank him for his service and sacrifice. I just think all of that is irrelevant to his argument, in which he is mistaken.

The point that Ms. Coulter makes, at least to me, is that political discourse is perverted when objective debate is forbidden. That’s the whole point of political correctness, in whatever guise it rears its ugly head. Those who lack the rational basis to carry the day on any issue seek to prevent its discussion from being encumbered by rationality. Instead, they seek to occupy a moral high ground from which they may make specious pronouncements and consider the matter closed. If anyone dare challenge the pronouncements by means of reasoned thought, the challenger is dismissed as rude or insensitive, and the rational challenge goes unaddressed, which is the goal from go.

It dismays me to see so many letter writers take Ms. Coulter to task for re-stating in her tart way this simple and obvious truth. After so many years of having the political forum in this country defined by whether or not any given argument is “insensitive” to minorities or women or whomever, it’s no surprise that the intellectually bankrupt left can now set up Cindy Sheehan and the Jersey Girls as sacred cows whose pronouncements have the gravamen of revelations from Olympus. Hey, Jesse Jackson has made a great living at it for decades and all he did was be black (discounting his claimed role at the death of Martin Luther King). Hillary Clinton, who suffered so at the hands of her cad of a husband, despite herself being a vicious political in-fighter and all around meanie, still reaps the political benefits of Bill’s indiscretions.

Is it any wonder that conservative principles can’t seem to get any traction in Washington? Even many readers of TAS, who presumably harbor and even cultivate rational thoughts, can’t seem to bear to see the delicate sensibilities of these sacred cows offended by challenges to their vacuousness. These women have no more bona fides with regard to the war on terror (of the conduct of which I am no fan, by the way) than any other soccer mom or dad (or me), but they trade on their celebrity to gain a bully pulpit, with the essential connivance of the glaringly socialist MSM. The Democrats and the MSM trot these women out like tanks ahead of infantry to effectively disarm the thoughtful but politically correct, who won’t fire on them at all, even in these safe pages. Ann Coulter is vilified for bringing to bear a laser guided, hypocrisy-seeking rocket launcher against these tanks. That conservatives not only allow this travesty of debate to go on, but try to frag Ms. Coulter doesn’t speak well for the future of the conservative cause.

These four women are indeed the enemies of democracy as we have known it. They and others like them daily dumb down political debate by substituting subjectivity for objectivity. This nation was not founded, nor did it rise to greatness, by elevating feelings above thinking. Feelings are capable of being addressed by the thoughtful, as thought is a synthetic process, but feelings lack this encompassing quality, being utterly personal. Now that the PC police have been allowed to stake out the moral high ground and invalidate those whose feelings purportedly fail to meet their claimed lofty standards, it’s impossible to challenge anyone whose feelings have been put in play without being vilified as Ms. Coulter now is.

If someone wants to put their feelings in play, I say let them be in play for all purposes. If someone chooses to hold their grief privately and experience it according to their own lights, let them do so unmolested. As far as I can see, the thousands of people brought to grief by 9/11 and the war in Iraq who have chosen the latter course remain safe from assault by Ann Coulter.

I suggest that conservatives not surrender the moral high ground to politically correct charlatans based upon their bleatings and blusterings of hurt feelings and indignation. Don’t let them define the parameters of the debate, or we’ll see even more of our elected leaders tucking tail and running from principled but hard positions. The road will be smoothed for the ascendance of more John Kerrys, and John McCain will find yet more common ground with Ted Kennedy on the road to national destruction.

Demand accountability from those who enter public debates or dismiss them as frauds. All of this can be done without damage to the legitimate sensibilities of those who’ve endured hardship or suffering.
— Mark Fallert
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

VIETNAM REFOUGHT
Re: Andrew Cline’s Withdrawn Democrats:

It is my own personal belief that the Democratic Party, and specifically, Ted Kennedy, Schumer, Pelosi, Kerry, John McCain (RINO), et al., have no other goal than the establishment of a totalitarian government through exploitation of the people’s worst fears. In pursuing that goal, they are not supportive of our armed forces, but rather see them as a convenient political tool presented to them by the Republicans. Their responses are reminiscent of the Vietnam era, particularly in view of the recent events at Haditha, which are still not completely clear. They are making that situation into another My Lai. The death of Zarqawi will not end the conflict with Al Qaeda, nor is it a reason to bring home the U.S. armed forces. It is only a significant milestone on a long, rough road. I’d rather fight ’em over there than here, because that’s where they’ll be if we withdraw as the Dems demand.
— Buzz Gunning
Grants Pass, Oregon

VESTAL VIRGINIANS
Re: Stephen Foulard’s letter (“Don’t Mess With Virginia”) in Reader Mail’s Fearful Liberalism:

Targeted responses are my specialty, Mr. Foulard. You see, my family moved to Texas after the war (Mr. Lincoln’s war, that is) from, you guessed it, Virginia! My family’s “Old Dominion” roots predate Madison, when Jefferson was just a lad, and Washington was just learning how to survey, so welcome to the deep end of the pool. Glad to have provided you some excitement, and I’m sure your hat size is just fine, whatever it is. However, Robin Williams, whose humor I cheerfully outgrew, should tread more lightly.

George Allen in ’08!
— Mike Showalter
Austin, Texas