IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH. If you're interested in getting a taste of the burgeoning grass-roots support for a quasi-fascist understanding of American politics, take a gander at this email sent to Jonah Goldberg. It starts with the sentiment that "Analyzing a war, especially publicly, right in the middle of the fight is a terrible thing to do," and continues from there. Can you imagine that -- analyzing a war, and not just analyzing it, but doing so in public not after the fight, but while the war is happening! Why, it's almost as if we're living in some kind of "democracy" wherein policy decisions are subject to criticism and debate. He'll have none of that; after all "Our enemies see our own pop culture criticize the war. Our enemies see Senators, Congressmen, and politicians question why we are still there and if it is still worth it." Yes, it's true, not only conservative pundits but cultural figures and even the people's elected representatives in Congress and aspirants to political office are commenting, sometimes critically, on the conduct of the incumbent administration.
In some ways more distressing than the email itself is Jonah's response in which he correctly stands up for his right to write columns about the war but feels compelled to include the qualification that "I think it's pretty clear I still support the effort in Iraq," as if to concede the point that the mere existence of actual detractors of current policies is an urgent threat to the Republic. We can expect this to get much, much worse when, inevitably, we do wind up leaving Iraq.
--Matthew Yglesias
