Reply #52: One Or Two Small Points, Sir [View All]

[The Magistrate]

Sen. Kerry has a lifetime rating in the mid-ninties for his voting record in the Senate from the Americans For Democratic Action, the most solidly established and long-lived liberal group in the nation. Yet persons here routinely denounce him as a creature of the right. A person who does this can only be viewed as on the extreme left of the political spectrum, or the term makes no sense at all.

The exaltaion of personal conscience is mere self-indulgence in national affairs: the effect of splinter factionalism is to divide the fire of the left, and leave the field to the more cohesive reactionaries. This is a damned odd way to vindicate personal adherence to left principles. It is not as if there are grades passed out afterwards for moral worth on a personal level: there are elections won or lost, offices held or not, laws passed and enforced or not. That is what matters.

The idea that the enemy's strength indicates impending demise is unfounded. This country is not tending towards its demise; it is tending toward a reactionary consolidation of power that will reduce the mass of the people to penury, and erase much political liberty in consequence, but that is hardly the demise of the nation. To divide the forces of the left is to collaborate in that reactionary triumph, by reducing the forces available to oppose it.

"LET'S GO GET THOSE BUSH BASTARDS!"