Say what you will about Alec Baldwin -- "obnoxious" frequently comes to mind -- when it comes to politics he certainly doesn't hold anything back.
"I know that's a harsh thing to say, perhaps, but I believe that what happened in 2000 did as much damage to the pillars of democracy as terrorists did to the pillars of commerce in New York City," Baldwin told students at Florida A&M University recently, referring to the election recount fiasco.
Then -- really playing with fire -- he added: "When Donald Rumsfeld and the Pentagon spokespeople say to you, 'Well, this is going to be a long war, we're going to be in Afghanistan for the long haul,' what that euphemism means is that the moratorium on criticizing the government must be extended longer and longer and longer -- ideally, beyond the 2002 election."
Baldwin is a celebrity activist -- a type of liberal that gives conservative media hounds apoplectic fits. So it should surprise no one that these comments unleashed a wave of Baldwin-bashing. John Gibson of Fox News encouraged Baldwin to leave the country on a recent episode of "The Big Story" (this was apparently a rejoinder to Baldwin's empty threat to emigrate should George W. Bush get elected). National Review dug up a story about Baldwin's bid for office in high school (he lost after an apparent recount). The New York Post called his comparison between 9/11 and 11/2000 an "insult."
Still, there really was no Bill Maher-type torching of Baldwin for a lack of patriotism. Maybe that's because Maher had to deal with the intense emotions swirling around in the immediate aftermath of the World Trade Center attack, while Baldwin only had to deal with the event's recent semi-anniversary.
Or maybe it's because, for all the talk of "fifth columns," the right hasn't really yet put in place much of a cohesive plan to crack down on anti-war dissenters (thank goodness). But Bill Bennett is trying hard to fill the void. On Tuesday, the former secretary of education introduced his new think tank, Americans for Victory over Terrorism (AVOT) at the National Press Club. The point of AVOT, to paraphrase Bennett, is to sustain the war on terrorism through research and advocacy. A glance at the group's Web site reveals standard Reaganite preoccupations with national defense. However, Bennett added in a letter to The New York Times that the group will also stage a series of "teach-ins" on college campuses to articulate "American ideals" and "answer those who seek to erode our nation's resolve and commitment to fight and defeat the evil of terrorism." In case you still don't get what that means, Bennett elaborates:
The threats we face today are both external and internal: external in that there are groups and states that want to attack the United States; internal in that there are those who are attempting to use this opportunity to promulgate their agenda of 'blame America first.' Both threats stem from either a hatred for the American ideals of freedom and equality or a misunderstanding of those ideals and their practice. Our goal is to address the present threats so as to eradicate future terrorism and defeat ideologies that support it.
In other words, Bennett seems to have gone and created an anti-fifth column organization (or perhaps, taking after Ari Fleischer, a watch-what-you-say watchdog). If the plan works, at the very least we can hope to see a better job of discrediting Baldwin the next time he opens his mouth.
How to prevent him from doing so in the first place, however, might be beyond even Bill Bennett.
