Cross-posted at Stand Down:

As I understood it, the original intent was for it to be place for both left and right to articulate civil, thoughtful arguments against the war with Iraq. But that hasn’t been the case.

Shortly after this site’s launch, I posted an entry entitled “Yuppies for War.” My point: I was at first shocked at how many urban, liberal, upwardly-mobile professionals favored the war, and had migrated to supporting Bush because of it. But upon reflection, it began to make more sense. These were people, I argued, who naturally trusted government for nearly everything else in their lives. Now that we’ve been attacked, they fear for their lives and their security, so they of course would again turn to government to protect them. I was roundly criticized by the left side of this site for daring to ascribe motives to liberal, urban professionals. I was told that my post was not consistent with the mission of Stand Down.

Now comes Matthew Hogan. This post by Mr. Hogan might be the most asinine, thoughtless, ad-hominem, and potentially libelous antiwar screed I’ve ever seen. I’m no fan of neoconservative policies. And I’m certainly no fan of Trent Lott. But to crawl into the head of George W. Bush, the Wall Street Journal and National Review editors and, while there, to question their motives for asking for Trent Lott’s ouster, and then to blindly assert that all of them consider the entire Arab world to be nothing more than a bunch of sandniggers (if you’re going to libel these people, at least have the balls to spell out the damn word), and, if that weren’t enough, to then liken them to the Third Reich — well, I don’t think I could concoct a post that’s further removed from reasoned, intellectually honest debate if someone paid me.

Jesus. Talk about ascribing motives.

I kept waiting for someone to put Mr. Hogan in his place.

It didn’t happen.

That someone with Hogan’s vitriol and blinded-by-hysterics, intellectually bankrupt method of “argument” was even invited to contribute really diminishes his site’s credibility.

That not a single blogger called him out on the post, drains it almost completely.

Keep allowing posts like this to stand unchallenged, and you’ll soon find no one taking Stand Down seriously.

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 14th, 2002 at 10:34 am by Radley Balko and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.