Friday, September 11, 2009

The Problem of 9-11 "Truthers"

Today, Jonah Goldberg and Dr. Krauthammer nail the left and the "mainstream" media on their 9-11 "truther" hypocrisy.

First, here's Goldberg writing at National Review:
Truthers vs. birthers.

By Jonah Goldberg

... which one is more believable [the "truther" scenario or the "birther scenario]? For the record, I don’t believe either. But it seems to me the “birther” hypothesis is vastly more plausible than the “truther” hypothesis. Politicians lie to advance their careers. You can look it up. Whole governments rarely orchestrate incredibly complex acts of physics, logistics, and mass murder all the while pinning guilt on others (who boast that they acted alone).

***
The question of which scenario is more plausible is neither academic nor trivial. This summer, a host of columnists, commentators, and activists, seemingly taking their cues from a White House and DNC public-relations offensive, declared that the rise of the “birthers” was a fatal indictment of modern conservatism and the Republican party. The refusal of the birthers to give up their cockamamie theory was proof that the GOP had succumbed to the “paranoid style.” Indeed, according to some liberal commentators, the birthers were the potential wellspring for a nascent Nazi movement in America. Never mind that the vast majority of leading Republicans and conservatives — from Newt Gingrich to Ann Coulter — rejected the birthers categorically.

***
In July, the popular left-wing website FiredogLake couldn’t let go of the birther bit. One post — titled “The Republican Party is the Birther Party, and it’s dragging them down” — made much of the fact that 28 percent of Republicans, according to one poll, do not believe that Obama is a natural-born citizen. This week, the site’s founder, Jane Hamsher, was disgusted that [now-resigned "Green Jobs Czar" Van] Jones was “thrown under the bus,” even though he subscribed to trutherism, a view that “35 (percent) of Democrats believed as of 2007.”

Got that? Belief in an implausible conspiracy is a cancer on the GOP. Even greater belief in an even more implausible conspiracy [by the Democrats] is proof that it’s mainstream.

Apologies for Jones and trutherism appeared instantly on the sites of the left-wing flagship magazines The Nation, The New Republic, and elsewhere. The New York Times and Newsweek deliberately distorted what the truthers believe in order to make Jones look more reasonable and his critics more unreasonable...
And now for Dr. Krauthammer:
... In the White House no more. Why? He's gone for one reason and one reason only. You can't sign a petition demanding not one but four investigations of the charge that the Bush administration deliberately allowed Sept. 11, 2001 -- i.e., collaborated in the worst massacre ever perpetrated on American soil -- and be permitted in polite society, let alone have a high-level job in the White House.

Unlike the other stuff (see above), this is no trivial matter. It's beyond radicalism, beyond partisanship. It takes us into the realm of political psychosis, a malignant paranoia that, unlike the Marxist posturing, is not amusing. It's dangerous. In America, movements and parties are required to police their extremes. Bill Buckley did that with Birchers. Liberals need to do that with "truthers."

You can no more have a truther in the White House than you can have a Holocaust denier -- a person who creates a hallucinatory alternative reality in the service of a fathomless malice.

***
No need to worry about Jones, however. Great career move. He's gone from marginal loon to liberal martyr. His speaking fees have just doubled. It's only a matter of time before he gets his own show on MSNBC.

But on the eighth anniversary of 9/11 -- a day when there were no truthers among us, just Americans struck dumb by the savagery of what had been perpetrated on their innocent fellow citizens -- a decent respect for the memory of that day requires that truthers, who derangedly desecrate it, be asked politely to leave. By everyone.
Amen.

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4 Comments:

At 9/11/2009 12:54 PM, Blogger Paul Zummo said...

It's hard to put my finger on why I find the truthers to be so despicable, even compared to other conspiracy mongers. Perhaps it's because they cheapen what happened and try to turn the murder of nearly 3,000 people into some kind of joke. And why? Because their lives are otherwise empty and meaningless, so at least for a few moments they get to have some notoriety and attention.

They disgust me, and Krauthammer is right on the money in his final paragraph.

 
At 9/11/2009 1:43 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

 
At 9/11/2009 2:23 PM, Blogger Pro Ecclesia said...

WARNING: Anyone coming here to post truther bullshit will have their post deleted. Save your keystrokes, and don't go there.

 
At 9/11/2009 2:25 PM, Blogger Pro Ecclesia said...

And, by the way, "I'm not a 'truther', but ..." qualifies as truther bullshit.

 

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