{"id":92,"date":"2010-06-01T20:25:04","date_gmt":"2010-06-02T00:25:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mdlake.net\/?p=92"},"modified":"2010-07-27T20:34:29","modified_gmt":"2010-07-28T00:34:29","slug":"not-one-of-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.mdlake.net\/?p=92","title":{"rendered":"Not One of Us"},"content":{"rendered":"

Wow. Valerie Plame and Joe Wilson once again demonstrate actual political principles<\/a> in returning their \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Political Courage\u00e2\u20ac\u009d award and asking they no longer be named in connection with it. Which is more than the PPDCC demonstrated in withdrawing the award after\u00e2\u20ac\u201doops!–offering it to someone who\u00e2\u20ac\u201dgasp!–worked in the Reagan administraion.<\/p>\n

To be sure, Reagan’s stable\u00e2\u20ac\u201dincluding Reagan himself\u00e2\u20ac\u201dhad a lot of scumbags willing to place party loyalty before truth, Constituional freedoms, and basic human decency. The staff chosen to redefine the consumer price index was an egregious example. So was Ed Meese, appointed while under felony indictment. And whoever came up with the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153welfare mother\u00e2\u20ac\u009d meme. The list goes on.<\/p>\n

Which marks those few in the administration who stood up against the rising tide of ideology, and especially right-wing Christian ideology, as truly courageous. C. Everett Coop was one of these. He bucked party interests, and even his own history of anti-abortionist crusading, to serve his office with honest resolve. Mikey Weinstein is less famous, but no less deserving of approbation, fighting efforts to pack the highest ranks of the American armed forces with fundamentalists. He was not wholly successful, but judging by some of the outrages we’ve seen since, whatever he could do to undermine that subornation was desperately needed.<\/p>\n

Condemnation by association is a popular tool for the hate-filled right wing. It’s a sad day when liberals\u00e2\u20ac\u201dwho are supposed to value a fuller perspective\u00e2\u20ac\u201dsuccumb to simple tribalism, denouncing the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153other\u00e2\u20ac\u009d not for what he does, but merely for what he is.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

integrity award withdrawn<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-92","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mdlake.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mdlake.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mdlake.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mdlake.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mdlake.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=92"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.mdlake.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mdlake.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=92"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mdlake.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=92"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mdlake.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=92"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}