If you haven't already done so, check out Lileks today (01JUL2004) for his list of cynical reactions to the upcoming trial of Saddam Hussein.

I think he got them all.

I don't know why you find the term "liberal media" remarkable. How about "enemy media"? That may be in fact more descriptive.

Mike: Good catch, noted.

Megapotamus: I cringe every time someone uses that phrase. First, because "liberal" means "open minded and open to all points of view," and second, because many decent people who self-identify as liberals feel attacked whenever they see that phrase.

I consider myself a liberal. I am a liberal in countless ways. It's not a label I'm ashamed of. I'm liberal on democracy, human rights, human sexuality, philosophy, theology, all sorts of things.

Constantly beating drums with the word "liberal" tends to alienate some people who would otherwise listen with an open mind. I simply hate the way we've allowed the left to claim exclusive right to the word, and allowed the right to make it an epithet. Can't we find something else to describe the moonbats and the establishment media culture?

Wow, great response Dean, thanks. As I have demonstrated myself to be an "idiot" in your view so many times I didn't really expect it. I also, once upon a time described myself as a liberal. That's someone who believes in liberty, right? Well, after two or three decades of being denounced as a fascist by "Liberals" I decided on a tactical stipulation on the nomenclature. It is the Democrats and other leftists that have debased the term, sad to say and to see. Now, to free themselves of the historical baggage that is so weighty with blood and poverty the collectivist totalitarians are "Progressive". I always ask, "Towards what do you progress? The perfection of the hive?" Seems like it. So maybe we can call it the Progressive Media but I do think Enemy Media captures the mindset nicely.

Dean and Megapotamus:

That's the problem with labeling. I am a liberal: I believe in free expression, equality of opportunity, equality before the law, free markets, etc.

Therefore, in the present climate I am a conservative, because I want to protect and sustain those ideals.

Crazy, eh?

Dean Esmay has shown time and time again that he is a true liberal in the historic sense of that word. So am I, since, like the noble Pim Fortuyn, I stand for individual freedom, including freedom of worship, freedom of thought, expression, and association, equal rights for women and for homosexuals, private property, and the right to keep and bear arms.

And, like Pim Fortuyn, who was smeared as a "fascist" and then murdered for his views, I am also a conservative, since I want to _conserve_ individual freedom, our Western high culture in which that freedom thrives, individual moral responsibility as a necessary correlary of that freedom, and an eternal and transcendent order of values as the theological foundation of that freedom.

I call the enemies of freedom what they are: radicals, subversives, totalitarians, collectivists, Communists, Nazis, and terrorists.

Oh, and, by the way, they can have "progressive", too. I've never liked that word, and Communists always have. As Megapotamus put it so well, they are "progressing" toward the perfection of the hive.

Oh, and for the "Stalinist Left" and the "Hitlerite Right" (as if there is a difference other than whether to spell "death camp" in Cyrillic or Roman letters) I propose a better term than "Right" and "Left".

How about Liberty Loathing Authoritarian Wannabes?

Gee, Mega, I don't remember calling you an idiot. Then again I've been cranky lately....

I still have to repeat that there are people who think of themselves as liberals who don't match the generalizations you make. The rest is up to you I guess.

I understand why true liberals may cringe, but the authoritarian left has stolen the label. The message was in a language the audience understood.

I agree with Dean. The word "liberal" is too good and has too honorable a history to surrender to the radicals. Same as with "conservative". It's as if the likes of Falwell and Robertson were to be allowed a monopoly on "Christian". My Christian friends will never allow that!

This is activism? Where's the tough jumping the fence and taking Matt Lauer hostage?

I don't get it - Spider Man is a liberal?

These networks are the same ones that attacked Moore and his film! Didn't you see his interview on, on, on...what the hell is it again? Good Morning Today?

The "liberal media" is vanilla to the nth degree. They wanna keep the Jones' watching and the ad revenue coming in.

And as far "liberal" becoming a four-letter word - it started with Carter's bungling, was picked up by Reagan and has been kept alive by the radio demagogues.

In the political sphere, I believe it was none other than Hubert Humphrey who first made use of the term "liberal" as a pejorative, when he was running for President in 1968. I believe he specifically ridiculed the "pointy-headed liberals" who were unrealistic about public policy.

Before that, we can probably cast the blame at William F. Buckley Jr., who in his book "Up From Liberalism" in the 1950s specifically took issue with what he saw as "Liberalism" with a capital L. Notably, in that same book he took pains to say he considered himself a "liberal" with a lower-case "l", and defined "Liberalism" with the capital L as a sort of Marxist-leaning, socialist, anti-religion, anti-tradition person.

The funny thing is, 50 years later and he still makes that distinction, criticizing what he calls Liberals but making defense of liberal ideas. An interesting fellow, Buckley, and more influential on our politics than perhaps any other pundit of the 20th century.

Yeah? Well, he never blinks.

Actually, as I remember that 1968 election, it was George Wallace who spoke of "pointy-headed intellectuals" in his appeal to poor and blue-collar white voters -- many of whom had supported Robert F. Kennedy before he was assassinated (by a "Palestinian" terrorist who hated him for his stand on Israel.)

You are right that Hubert Humphrey was a quintessential liberal, one of the very first, in the late 1940s, to lead the Democratic party "out of the shadow of 'states' rights' [which at that time was a code word for segregation] and into the sunlight of human rights". He was a valiant champion of the Negro, of the poor, and of working people, the kind of New Deal liberal I can respect even if I disagree with that position.

But in 1968, he was _hated_ by the radical Left for his support for the Viet Nam War. He had always been a strong anti-Communist. Given what he said in some of his speeches, I can imagine that if he was living today he might very well be for protecting the lives of the unborn -- and, therefore, he would _still_ hated by many. He certainly would not be allowed to speak at a Democratic convention today!

William F. Buckley was and is very interesting. I don't like some of the things he has said about Ayn Rand (and Ayn Rand and Leonard Peikoff, in turn, said some harsh things about him), but I still like the man. He has always had an interesting _style_. He was always strongly anti-Communist.

Dean is right about his influence. He probably did more than any other man to build up the conservative intellectual movement in America. With Frank S. Meyer, he endeavored, partly successfully, to integrate the traditionalist and the libertarian elements of American conservative thought.

Funny that he founded his "National Review" in 1955, the year I was born. I love his famous defiant statement "standing athwart history yelling 'Stop!'...." That's my stand also, although I may be even more reactionary.

He is and was a deeply religious man, a devout Catholic. In his book "God and Man at Yale" he wrote:
I myself believe that the duel between Christianity and atheism is the most important in the world. I further believe that the struggle between individualism and collectivism is the same struggle reproduced on another level."

The _style_ of that! Reminds me of the duel between Thor and Hrungnir. While I myself would say "polytheism" rather than "Christianity", I am in fundamental agreement with that statement. It is profoundly true.

He once described the racist scientist William Shockley (who argued that Negroes are genetically inferior) as "ultra-liberal...scientistic, anti-spiritual."

Again, profoundly true.

Commenting on support for the Communist-inspired nuclear freeze movement within certain Christian churches, he remarked:
"There is something subversive in contemporary Christianity, something objectively on the side of slavery...Mr. Nietzsche, you are wanted at your office."

The _style_ of that! And, again, profoundly true.

Buckley is basically a Christian libertarian. While he has supported censorship of pornography, he never like "sodomy" laws, he has long held that gambling and prostitution should be legal, he has come to oppose the government's "war on drugs", and he has even recently raised some questions about the Catholic church's prohibition on homosexuality. He is a very interesting man. I like him.