American-Manifesto.com In Defense of American Exceptionalism

The other letter was in response an endorsement of Obama by a Republican columnist. 

This is an open apology to Michael Smerconish. In my faulted view, you were a right-wing zealot and undeserving of the public “power of the pen” you enjoy. Nonetheless, your article last Sunday, “McCain fails the big five tests,” stunned me and I am sure others. It was intelligent, articulate, and balanced with a breath of fresh air in the ad hominem atmosphere of this election.

There’s a lot of pathology packed into one paragraph.  First of all, Smerconish is no right-wing zealot.  He’s strong on national security, liberal on social issues and mixed on economic issues.  He’s a moderate.  But because he clashes with the far left he’s branded a right-winger?  Please.  Only in lefty world.

Notice the closing phrase saying that the original piece was “intelligent, articulate, and balanced with a breath of fresh air in the ad hominem atmosphere of this election”.  So he’s stunned that a someone he thought was a conservative was intelligent and articulate?  It’s not an ad hominem attack to say people who disagree with you are unintelligent bumblers?  Would he be saying that if the piece used the same reasoning to support McCain? 

But by far the most disturbing part is the idea that someone he disagreed with was “undeserving of the public ‘power of the pen’”.  Undeserving of free speech?  Is it not exceedingly dangerous to think the public square should be purged of people you disagree with?  Yet, this is so typical of the left.  They assume people who don’t agree with them are unintelligent, uneducated and should be dismissed. 

And they wonder why conservatives often complain that the left is trying to silence them.