The middle is unacceptable

As usuual, Publius has some useful insights on treason at the New York Times. Here are some snippets.

…The two parties are not equally bad. Similarly, the two “teams” of pundits nominally aligned with each party are not equally extreme or unhinged or whatever your favorite description of the blogosphere may be. One side is (currently at least) far, far worse and events like the recent “blogswarm for treason” should make people recognize that.
…

What we’re actually seeing is an assault on little-l liberalism — the liberalism of the Enlightenment and of our Constitution and of the CATO Institute. As I've explained before, the core of liberalism is the idea that individuals (by virtue of being humans and having dignity) have a sphere of freedom that should be free from government intrusion. Logically following from this bedrock foundation are the other fundamental rights we know and love such as freedom of religion, democratic voting, rule-by-consent, rule of law, right to property, civil liberties, sexual freedom, and so on. All are rooted in the idea of individual freedom or individual consent.
…

Just look at what we’ve seen just in the past few days. First, we’ve witnessed a wide swath of the right-wing blogosphere, along with elected legislators abetted by the President of the United States, calling for charges of treason and prosecution against the press, essentially for repeating what everyone pretty much knew we already did. Of course, a lot of this anger stems from earlier reports of highly highly anti-liberal conduct such as illegal domestic spying and our black sites/ghost renditions in Eastern Europe. As if that weren’t enough, the Senate came one vote shy of approving a flag-burning amendment that would have put America in the same exclusive club as China, Cuba, and Iran. (The historical regime that shall not be named also banned flag desecration.)

That’s just this week. On top of that, we’ve seen the implementation and cheerleading for torture. We’ve seen signing statements and unitary executive theories and other vast expansions (both practical and theoretical) of presidential power. We’ve seen Gitmo and military tribunals. We’ve seen the relentless assault on the sexual freedom of women regarding not just abortion (even following rape), but the right to contraception. And let’s not forget about the assault on gays and Mr. Schiavo.

All of these are more than just political disagreements about taxes or racial policies. They are different in kind in that they are attacks on liberalism itself — i.e., on the idea of individual freedom and the civil liberties/rule of law principles that logically follow from that foundation.

And here’s what I’m getting at — in the face of what we’ve seen, to treat both sides as equally bad or partisan just doesn’t make sense. I’m no big fan of the modern Democratic Party, but their badness isn’t even in the same solar system. I mean, good Lord, treason. Elected representatives advocating criminal charges and treason. The Weekly Standard asserting that the NYT actively aids al Qaeda, the terrorist group that, oh you know, blew up a big chunk of downtown New York and killed people that those journalists and editors went to school with. Glenn Reynolds suggesting that freedom of the press wasn’t really for the press.

This is pretty scary stuff. And what infuriates modern-day liberals more than anything else is not so much this extremism as the fact that this extremism is portrayed as simply the equal and opposite force to Democratic policies and partisanship. Ann Coulter cancels out Kos. Republican partisanship cancels out Democratic partisanship. But they’re not the same — they’re not anywhere close to the same…

But as loathsome as I find people like Bill Kristol and Glenn Reynolds, they’re actually not the worst. They may be wrong, but they’re certainly not idiots. David Broder and Marshall Wittman, by contrast, are idiots. These guys look at the world and decry the partisanship of both parties and want them to meet in the middle. I don’t, and that’s because the middle is unacceptable when one side is calling for treason. The Moose warns the Democrats not to go weak on national security by opposing the quartering of Bill Keller. The Donkey must support treason and return to a national greatness narrative.