knaves – Moe Lane

Fools, Dupes, and Knaves: a quick primer on the modern antiwar movement.

I plan to be using these categories quite often in the next few months – or years! – so I think that I should define my terms, here. It is vitally important that, when you are showing your disapproval for someone, that you be as precise as you can be about why you disapprove. After all, it would never do to let a Knave skate by on an improper Dupe designation, or have a Dupe be mistaken for a Fool. Also, one other note: ‘antiwar movement’ here is defined as being the people who actively march, support, and/or attempt to change public opinion on our current foreign and political policies. Your Aunt Peggy who doesn’t like it when we send troops abroad to places where they’re getting shot at*, and who happens to say so at Thanksgiving dinner, is neither a Fool, a Dupe, nor a Knave. Unless she’s giving money to Code Pink, or something. In which case, I’m sorry to hear that.

Anyway, the designations: Continue reading Fools, Dupes, and Knaves: a quick primer on the modern antiwar movement.

Gee, I wonder how many people who hate GMOs also drink beer?

Which is pretty much equivalent to asking I wonder how many people who hate GMOs are pig-ignorant idiots [that not even beer-drinking can cure**]*? Admittedly, this question is only tangential to these allegations that – shock, surprise! – some strains of perfectly safe genetically modified wheat were likely introduced into an Oregon crop by the very junk science yahoos that think that we’re living in the middle of an Atomic Horror movie. It’s still a fun question to ask.

What’s that? Why do I think that the bio-Luddites did this, too? Well, it’s not like the darn stuff moved on its own, and… oh, let the actual scientists have their moment of scorn: Continue reading Gee, I wonder how many people who hate GMOs also drink beer?

Fools, Dupes, & Knaves: The Antiwar Movement, Unmasked*.

I’m going to be extremely charitable to Nick Gillespie and n0t suggest that he’s any one of those three, though. Because while his bitterness is palpable, he and I do have similar opinions on how nice it would be if we hacked back the government a bit. Or a lot. Anyway, Nick’s aforementioned bitterness starts off by noting that the most vituperative members of the antiwar movement (the knaves) clammed up pretty much the moment the Democrats took power**, then really starts in on a nice, representative sample of all those journalists out there who strained gnats under Bush, and swallow camels under Obama. Nick then concludes:

This isn’t ultimately about ideological hypocrisy – of liberals changing their tune once their guy is in office – but something much more basic and much more disturbing. It reveals that for all their crowing about being watchdogs of all that is good and decent in society, when push comes to shove, too many journalists are ready and willing handmaidens to power – including the power to kill.

Continue reading Fools, Dupes, & Knaves: The Antiwar Movement, Unmasked*.

#rsrh Glenns Greenwalds are whining again.

Instapundit’s Glenn Reynolds notes – not publicly gleefully – that Glenns Greenwalds are very upset. It seems that Greenwalds are bothered by the fact that while it was apparently OK to call Reynolds evil for endorsing a targeted assassination program against Iranian nuclear weapons engineers and terrorist-enabling mullahs, it’s apparently not OK for Obama to be criticized for effectively signing off on such a program. It’s apparently even worse to publicly approve of Ron Paul’s Israel views when compared to Barack Obama’s. Poor Greenwalds are feeling aggrieved. And betrayed. And scorned.

In order: Continue reading #rsrh Glenns Greenwalds are whining again.

#rsrh Donald Rumsfeld ignores yet another antiwar protester. #p2

I love these stories: even through the third-person prose of the news article you can get a taste of the baffled anger and hate that rolls off of these people like a physical funk*. This wasn’t what they signed up for, you understand. The antiwar freaks were promised that their desires would be fulfilled. They were told that they would see Bush administration officials in jail… and now they can’t even do citizen arrests. They get arrested! While THAT MAN walks past them as if they weren’t even there! Like the antiwar movement doesn’t even matter!

Which it doesn’t, of course.

Hey, line of the day:

Police said one protester was arrested outside for assaulting a cop with a bullhorn.

I really hope that just meant that the cop was yelled at through the bullhorn. Actual swinging at a police officer seems a bit… confrontational. Well, maybe the cop wasn’t a Caucasian male; your average antiwar protester has a real problem with seeing nonwhites in the way as being, well, real. And God help you if you’re simultaneously a: nonwhite female; and inconvenient to that crowd…

Via @MarkImpomeni.

Moe Lane

PS: Hey, buy Don’s book!

Left shocked to discover Harold Koh thinks like a stripper.

There’s a reason why dancers usually drive better cars than their customers do, you know.

Executive summary of this NYT article (the Hot Air Headlines title is a thing of beauty, by the way)

Harold Koh used to be opposed to the Bush administration, and was thus all about busily opposing the government, and its ‘undeclared’ (note scare quotes) wars.
Harold Koh is now part of the Obama administration (State Department), and is thus all about busily justifying the government, and its undeclared (note lack of scare quotes) wars.
In other words, Harold Koh went from being a shill for the War Powers Resolution to being a shill against the War Powers Resolution. Without even really trying to hide his lack of shame about the abrupt switch in beliefs.
The antiwar Left is heart-sick about this.

Continue reading Left shocked to discover Harold Koh thinks like a stripper.

#rsrh Shocker: Dems used, abandoned antiwar progressives.

Lord love academics, but they will be long-winded. Twenty pages to express the following three ideas:

The antiwar movement was largely taken over by the Democratic party between 2002 and 2007;
The Democratic party abandoned wholesale the antiwar movement without a qualm just as soon as they were finished using* the antiwar movement; and
The antiwar movement collapsed like the empty suit that it was, just as soon as the elements were removed that made it more than a haven for some of the most vile examples of depraved scum in Western society**.

…which was, of course, already obvious to anybody with a triple-digit IQ. But I suppose that when people give you grant money to do a survey, you should write a paper. If only out of elementary politeness.

Via Instapundit (grinding antiwar progressive’s faces in this) and Megan McArdle (more in sorrow than in anger).

Moe Lane

Continue reading #rsrh Shocker: Dems used, abandoned antiwar progressives.

#rsrh This is why I loathe the Professional Activist Left.

They wound up Cindy Sheehan, put her on a path to intercept George W Bush… and when she didn’t intersect her target and just kept going, they didn’t have the elementary decency to bring her in for – I don’t know. Reeducation, rehabilitation, a frontal lobotomy: anything would have been more merciful than her current delusional state (safe link):

…the oligarchy of this country is clever, they knew that it would take a person of color with an Islamic name who sold his soul many years ago–to fulfill the neocon agenda of planetary dominance (see: Project for a New American Century). So if one criticizes Obama, then we are attacked by War Loving Democrats for being: “divisive fanatics,” “racist,” “Tea B[*]ggers,” “crazy,” etcetera. Could McCain be getting away with bombing North Africa? Or does that take an African-American to give political cover to the war jackals?

The Activist Left: where they let you play with living, breathing toys! And then you can pack them away when they break, and never mind all that screaming from inside the box! Because no-one will ever, ever know. It’ll be just their little secret with you.

Scumbags.

Moe Lane Continue reading #rsrh This is why I loathe the Professional Activist Left.

Blair’s Law in action at the G20.

Blair’s Law™ – The ongoing process by which the world’s multiple idiocies are becoming one giant, useless force.

…and it’s in full view at the G20 protests in London, where we get this report from The New Ledger’s Roger Bate about the eclectic nature of the protesters. Because it’s an antiglobo affair, it is of course dominated by the usual Communist and Israel-hating groups – the latter needing somewhere to go, now that the antiwar movement’s lost losing the war – and Bate suggests that the global warming cause may end up being added to the mix. To which I reply: if only. That’d be the fastist way to discredit the whole movement. Still, the dupes-fools-and-knaves contingent is in full force at London, and they think that they smell blood, so they’re energized.

As long as they stay energized over there. Faux-populist movements are annoying at best, and kind of intolerable at worst.

Crossposted to Moe Lane.