Monday, December 6, 2010

No Labels group puts selves in charge of labels

  So-called conservatives who abandon principles, take delight in skewering true conservatives, reach out to the liberal elite socially and politically and yet still claim the label of conservative are really hard to stomach. 
  At least liberals are what they say they are, dislike it as much as we may. 
  But for a so-called conservative like David Frum to run around criticizing the Palins of the world while admiring the crease in the pants of the radical Barack Obama is disgusting and disheartening. 
  Like David Brock and Andrew Sullivan, why doesn't David Frum just abandon the conservative movement and call himself a liberal already. The season of madness is upon him, just as it came on Brock and Sullivan, and now he is beginning to be absorbed by the hate and judging so many liberals are eager to express regarding conservative principles.
  Frum's latest endeavor to control thoughts and speech comes in a project called "No Labels," which will, in combination with liberal William Galston, 'call out" people they think are crossing a line of civility.
  Again, as always, the elites think it is their business to control the conversation and behavior of those beneath them. Frum is one such elite.
  What good does an organization like this do, but condemn the thoughts and words of others? 
  Who gets to decide what's inflammatory and what's not? 
  Why is it okay for Frum and his ilk to criticize others and yet deprive others of the same right?
  Typical of the judgment of individuals like this, while declaring others' behavior unacceptable, they themselves harshly criticize their opponents. 
  Like Joe Scarborough who launched into a tirade against Sarah Palin just before declaring a war on incivility by becoming part of the "No Labels" group, we wait for Frum's latest tirade. And, oddly, somehow the most vicious tirades are directed against conservatives, the liberals' opposition.
  Why not encourage free speech? Why not encourage reasoned debate?
  But no. The elites are always right, after all.
  National Review's Stanley Kurtz describes the situation here, including the biased treatment his book was given by the Frum cartel:
What exactly do Galston and Frum mean when they say they intend to “call out” those who use labels like “racist” and “socialist” in public debate? I think I can answer that question, since a series of attacks engineered by Frum on my then-unpublished book, Radical-in-Chief: Barack Obama and the Untold Story of American Socialism, appears to have been a dress rehearsal of sorts for the operation of No Labels. 
On July 27, 2010, I announced the forthcoming publication of my book at National Review Online’s blog, the Corner. The announcement made it clear that my book was the result of more than two years of empirical and historical research into Barack Obama’s political past, and would marshal “a wide array of never-before-seen evidence to establish that the president of the United States is indeed a socialist.” Frum, however, didn’t wait to consider my evidence or argument, or even bother to read my book. Instead, he invited a self-described Democratic activist who writes under the pseudonym “Eugene Victor Debs” to attack the very idea of my book — before either had read it.

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