Good point(s) Ramesh. Greenwald might also consider the possibility that some people started calling Sullivan a liberal when he started demonizing Christian conservatives as the American equivalent of the Taliban, when he became a “creative thinker” on taxes, when gay marriage seemed to eclipse other concerns (yes, yes, I know this sounds like a monumental understatement), and when he repeatedly referred to other conservatives as lacking in intellectual and moral integroty whenever they disagreed with him and — oh yeah — when he vociferously backed John Kerry for President.

Now, intellectual honesty requires me to concede that it is possible to ground these positions in a conservative outlook, albeit a profoundly idiosyncratic one. But, one should not be stunned when people who are not not privy to, or interested in, Jesuitcal conservative debates (or who are not tuned into Andrew’s obviously rich interior philosophical symphony) simply go with Occam’s razor and assume the guy is a liberal or has become one. I still like Sullivan personally and I’m still interested in what he has to say (much to the chagrin of countless emailers), but there’s no denying the perplexing drift of his rhetoric and his thinking over the last few years, at least as evidenced in his blog. After all, not too long ago he was celebrating me for my fair-mindedness. Now I’m an “authoritarian cultist.” I think most fair minded observers would conclude that between the two of us, I’m the one who’s stayed in the same place while he did the drifting.

Addendum: Some readers think I’ve misread Sullivan’s post. It’s possible, since it’s fairly sparse on details. But, he did approvingly post Greenwald’s quote discussed earlier. He could always explain himself. But I think the substance of what I wrote stands regardless.