Slapping Lefties With Their Own Arguments

James Taranto takes some familiar lefty refrains and slaps the Wacko Woodstock protesters right upside the head with them:

A Teachable Moment
A local insurgent attacked a settlement near Crawford, Texas, yesterday, Reuters reports:

"Some 800 white wooden crosses, bearing the names of soldiers killed in Iraq like her son, have lined the road near the area where [Cindy] Sheehan has pitched a tent. Witnesses said they saw a truck dragging a pipe and chains drive over some of the crosses on Monday night.

Larry Northern, 46, of nearby Waco, Texas, was arrested and charged with criminal mischief in connection with the incident, Crawford Police Chief Donnie Tidmore said. "

Now, we have no truck with mischievous criminals, but at the same time it's important to understand what motivates people to do things like this. After all, one man's vandal is another's freedom-fighter. The Sheehanoids should be asking: Why do they hate us?

Think about it: If outside settlers were occupying your land, demonizing your leaders and slandering your country, wouldn't you have feelings of rage and hopelessness? Again, we're not condoning what Larry Northern allegedly did. Our point is that only by understanding what drove him to this desperate act can we put an end to the cycle of recrimination.

Mr. Taranto's article is a thing of beauty...

James Lileks also chimes in with an opinion piece on the Crawford Circus:

Might as well get it out of the way: This is a cruel, false, chicken-hearted attempt to smear Cindy Sheehan, the protesting mother who lost a son in Iraq.

That's not the intent, but that's how some will respond. Some people think that any time you argue back, you're Stifling Dissent. For them, merely discussing Ms. Sheehan's views is the rhetorical equivalent of sending her to Abu Ghraib.

Just for the record, then: She has the right to her opinions, she certainly has the right to her grief, and she has the right to say provocative things. She even has the right to ask for a second conference with the president in order to accuse him of killing her son. This is not about that. No one is suggesting she be stripped of the First Amendment and forced to sing patriotic Irving Berlin tunes.

Now that the preambles are done, a question: Is anything she says subject to criticism at all?

Your first response might be a wince and a shrug: Who are we to judge, the woman's clearly in pain, best to leave it be, please change the channel. But if she wants to be a spokesman for the anti-war cause, is it beyond the pale to examine her remarks? If she blames the war on, say, Zionist fiends, ought not one wonder why the anti-war crowd seems deaf or indifferent to the loathsome underpinnings of her remarks? Perhaps they agree with her when she says this is a war for Israel. David Duke certainly does.

[...]

The hard left in America needs to realize a bald, cruel fact: Anyone who sees no moral distinction between Israel and the mullahs of Iran, or sees the U.S. attempt to set up a constitutional republic in Iraq as equivalent to the Syrian occupation of Lebanon, suffers from incurable moral cretinism. The more the fervent anti-war base embraces these ideas, the more they ensure that no one will trust the left with national security. Ever.

Will they learn the lesson? Even money says Sheehan will be sitting in the Michael Moore seat next to Jimmy Carter at the '08 Democratic convention.

Again, a thing of beauty.