A nauseating image

Via Atrios, Glenn Greenwald astutely limns the characterstics of a growing population in this country: A nation of Jonah Goldbergs. Ugh.

It is truly nauseating to watch the basic principles of our country, which have preserved both liberty and stability with unprecedented brilliance over the last 200 years, be inexorably whittled away and treated like petty nuisances by the depraved Jonah Goldbergs among us. It is a mindset based on a truly toxic brew of glib self-absorption, sickly laziness and profound ignorance, and it is being easily manipulated by an Administration which is demanding -- and acquiring -- more and more power in exchange for coddling and protecting the little Jonah Goldbergs of the world.

It's a tour de force.

The post is in response to Goldberg's moral outrage at the outrage we "rule of law-ers" feel when a 10-year old girl not named in a warrant is strip searched by police.

In response, Goldberg writes what can only be described as classic Goldberg.

I don't want to quote Goldberg in full; although space and time are virtual on the internets, there's already far too much virtual space and time spent arguing with the vapid, lazy, and hypocritical spawn of Lucianne already. Nevertheless, here's a few, select, examples of how the mind of Goldberg works:

...Greenwald uses a lot of scary words to describe my perfectly reasonable observation that as a moral and practical (as opposed to a legal matter) the real outrage...

We'll ignore the syntactically inscrutable nature of that phrase. What I love is Goldberg's use of a brilliant rhetorical tactic, one he uses frequently -- describe your own argument as "perfectly reasonable." Honest folks usually leave others to determine whether an observation is reasonable or, in Goldberg's case, not.

Similarly,

He can get his panties as bunched up over my use of the word "niceties" as he likes, I don't see anything wrong with what I wrote

Of course Lucianne's boy doesn't, the flatulent emissions of his brain obscures the vision. Perhaps instead of throwing his toys to the ground he could respond to what many find "wrong with what [he] wrote."

But it takes a level of obtuseness I cannot adequately summarize briefly...

Because that would take, you know, an attempt at coherent thought and reasoned argument. Goldberg's just too busy for that. Maybe someone will do it for him if he whines incessantly enough.

But here's the kicker:

...to suggest that our criminal law procedures are "the only things" which separate us from dictatorial societies. We have a culture, a heritage and countless institutions which stand opposed to dictatorship. And the wall between dictatorship and liberty does not stand or fall depending on whether or not drug dealers have extra legal manuevering [sic] room to hide drugs in the pants of their ten year old daughters.

If one bothers to read the Constitution's framers, one would understand that they, former subjects of the great "heritage, culture, and countless ['countless?'] institutions" of the British Empire, knew that "heritage and culture" are, in the end, dependent on people. And people, Madison would tell you, are infinitely corruptible. And institutions, no matter how "countless," can be subverted by whomever holds the levers of power. So yes, the wall does stand or fall depending on whether the state security apparati are beholding to the Bill o' Rights. Or whether your president is bound to the legal "niceties" of a Constitution he's taken a vow to protect.

Finally, even if one takes Goldberg's "moral and practical (as opposed to legal matter)" seriously, he can repeat a lie all he wants, it doesn't make it true. No drugs were found on the little girl.

Craven. Deceitful. And, to borrow a word from the wingers when they "discuss" Michael Moore, fat. Goldberg's ignorance is like the ocean: Deep. Wide.

If only William F. Buckley were alive today.