Karl Rove SHOULD Apologize

To hear the conspiracy theorists tell it, Karl Rove can do no wrong; I guess we can put that thought to rest. Rove's comments were stupid; they don't reach the level of Dick Durbin stupid, but they are stupid nonetheless.

If you haven't heard by now, here's the statement in question from a fundraiser in New York:

Al Jazeera now broadcasts the words of Senator Durbin to the Mideast, certainly putting our troops in greater danger. No more needs to be said about the motives of liberals...Conservatives saw the savagery of 9/11 in the attacks and prepared for war; liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers.

Some of my conservative brethren are defending Rove's comments. What's wrong, they ask, with pointing out the idiocy of Durbin, and the calls from the Left to understand 'the root cause' of 9/11, and on and on? The problem is the monolothic versus the specific.

Had Rove said these comments in relation to 'certain elements of the Left', or even 'the Progressive element of the Left', he would have been right on the money and I would applaud him; but the equation 'Liberal=Durbin' has no more validity than the equation 'Conservative=Pat Buchanan'.

We need to get past these idiotic flareups, and remember: the enemy is not Democrats, not Republicans, not even Dick Durbin or Karl Rove. The enemy is those terrorists killing Iraqis and Americans every day. The enemy is al-Qaeda; the enemy is Saddam. One of the greatest Americans had this to say in his inaugural speech:

...Let us reflect that, having banished from our land that religious intolerance under which mankind so long bled and suffered, we have yet gained little if we countenance a political intolerance as despotic, as wicked, and capable of as bitter and bloody persecutions...

...Every difference of opinion is not a difference of principle. We have called by different names brethren of the same principle. We are all republicans, we are all federalists. If there be any among us who would wish to dissolve the Union or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it.

The year was 1801, and the man, of course, was Thomas Jefferson.

I say to you today, we have nothing to fear from the Dick Durbins of the world, nor the Michael Moores, and we have no reason to smear our political opponents; our cause is the right and just one, and it will prevail.