Lileks has two good reviews today, one of a protest march, one of a movie:

Let me be clear: There are serious, reasonable critics of the war whose arguments deserve attention and consideration. You generally don’t find them at protest rallies. There are people on the left who are concerned about, say, losing the values of the Enlightenment in order to accommodate misogyny in the name of cultural tolerance; they promote different responses to the problem than those offered by the right, but are unlikely to march next to a fellow wearing a Hamas T-shirt or a Truther who thinks the Jews got advance warning on 9/11 so they could move their tanks of Gentile blood out of the giant Zionist Abbatoir on the 94th floor. So I don’t think that the march spoke for all critics of the war. It spoke for those who think that “Halliburton” and “Mission Accomplished” represent piercing arguments that dispense with the need to even consider the matter of radical Islam and its enablers, or the possible downside of ceding the battleground. No, the world is a garden of flowers and lambs, with one bad wolf. (Who is also a racist wolf.) Remove it, and peace can only flourish...

...this is something many people cannot bring themselves to do: draw inspiration from a particular culture at a particular time without glossing over the defects. The people who can’t do that are, in my limited experience, the ones most likely to excuse evil in other cultures, and exaggerate evil in their own.

And on a related note, Michael Barone has some thoughts about the "blame America first" crowd. So does Gerard Vanderleun:

Four years in and the foolish and credulous among us yearn to get out. Their feelings require it. The power of their Holy Gospel of "Imagine" compels them. Their overflowing pools of compassion for the enslavers of women, the killers of homosexuals, the beheaders of reporters, and the incinerators of men and women working quietly at their desks, rise and flood their minds until their eyes flow with crocodile tears while their mouths emit slogans made of cardboard. They believe the world is run on wishes and that they will always have three more...

...Four years into the most gentle war ever fought, a war fought on the cheap at every level, a war fought to avoid civilian harm rather than maximize it. Picnic on the grass at Shiloh. Walk the Western Front. Speak to the smoke of Dresden. Kneel down and peek into the ovens of Auschwitz. Sit on the stones near ground zero at Hiroshima and converse with the shadows singed into the wall. Listen to those ghost whisperers of war.

Four years in and the people of the Perfect World ramble through the avenues of Washington, stamping their feet and holding their breath, having their tantrums, and telling all who cannot avoid listening that "War is bad for children and other living things." They have flowers painted on their cheeks. For emphasis. Just in case you thought that war was good for children and other living things.

"a fellow wearing a Hamas T-shirt or a Truther who thinks the Jews got advance warning on 9/11"

Those are the only people you or Lileks can argue with, so it should come as no surprise that you keep portraying the protesters in those terms. Does he honestly think he's making a damaging observation noting that nuanced arguments can't be stated on protest placards? Perhaps Dr. King should have just gone home and written a few newspaper editorials, instead of "aligning himself with Communists, beatniks, and other undesirable elements who hate this country," as those of Lileks' disposition said at the time.

People take to the streets precisely because those in power have insulated themselves from reality, ignore reasoned debate, and have reduced the discussion to a struggle for power and volume. Bush and his supporters did that, not the Americans peacefully standing up for their country and freedom against its violent domestic enemies.

I was, however, quite amused at Lileks' pictures and descriptions of the "counter-demonstration." A tiny handful of Fox-News-believing, talk-radio-nodding, Bush-admiring, middle-aged RWN "men" accustomed to having their views expressed through military proxies awkwardly experimenting with peaceful protest...it was almost cute in a way.

> People take to the streets precisely because those in power have insulated themselves from reality, ignore reasoned debate, and have reduced the discussion to a struggle for power and volume.

And I thought that Swiderski liked Pelosi and Murtha.

"And I thought that Swiderski liked Pelosi and Murtha."

Why would I like Pelosi and Murtha? Am I supposed to admire a Speaker who avoids confrontation at all costs, pledges not to allow the impeachment of a treasonous criminal, and plays softball with her own deposed persecutors because she states the obvious about Iraq?

Should I have oodles of respect for a Congressman who voted for the war like an ignorant lemming, because he discovered, to his surprise, three years after the fact that maybe it wasn't such a good idea? I don't hold people up as heroes for finally, at long last, permitting themselves to acknowledge the simple truth and do the bare minimum to uphold what's right.

The people who deserve our respect most are those who were against it from the beginning, risked jobs and family relationships to say so, endured the petty terrorism of cowardly Bushist quislings, and persevered while the "liberal media" became virtual auxiliaries of the White House Press Office. Most of all, soldiers like Lt. Watada, who take their oath seriously and are not afraid to defend their country when it's most in danger. That's called an American, and his SHADOW is more of an American and more of a man than Toby Keith.