Jonah:
Your “fair enough” response to this position is very congenial and illustrates a significant difference between conservatives and the left. If a conservative speaks or attends a seminar etc. at a place like Bob Jones University he or she will not be characterized as having a “vague association” with a fundamentalist group by the left.That person will be villified as showing their true colors.etc. Almost every person of the left I have known will tell you sooner or later that disagreement with their point of view means you are either stupid or a bigot. No leftist I have ever met would have been as receptive to an alternative point of view as you were to CALPUNDIT.
By the way all your efforts are a delight to read but this McCarthy
piece is a keeper.
AND:
Jonah,
I have to admit my first reaction to your column was similar to Cal
Pundit’s. Shame on me for not reading more carefully. You are correct that there is nothing wrong in hunting communists, McCarthys’s problem was that he did it with such paranoia and self-serving dishonesty. And you clearly identified him as a lout. Such a marvelous and infrequently used term is lout. You should do more with this. How about an online poll where readers vote for the “Greatest lout of the past” and “Greatest lout of the present”. McCarthy could lead the list of choices from the past and, though my first reaction is to lead the list of the present with Bill Clinton, methinks Chuck Schumer would be far more appropriate (in the vein of McCarthyite dishonesty).