"He's an archetype of and from the left"

You know what's really wrong with Joel "I don't support the troops" Klein's LA Times op ed that's been rib-sticking fodder for febrile blog flogging today? It isn't his argument that those -- mostly of the left -- who claim to "support the troops" even as they decry the War on Terror are hypocrites. We agree with the young history-and-civics-challenged mouth breather on that. What's wrong is something we've noticed about many of our fellow citizens from the other side of the aisle, their un-self-aware condescension towards the "little people" whose hard and earnest work makes the world safe for their own irresponsible rantings. We've blogged about the phenomenon here early and often. Hugh Hewitt, interviewer extraordinaire, elicited two awesomely revelatory quotations from Joel Klein on his radio show yesterday. As we emailed him earlier:

The Joel Kleins of this world know nothing of honor. They think material welfare for vets -- like material welfare for poor civilians -- should be enough:

"All I'm asking is that we give our returning soldiers what they need: hospitals, pensions, mental health and a safe, immediate return. But, please, no parades."

Klein's response to your persistent questioning is telling:

"But what do you mean by honor? That's a word you keep using. I'm not entirely . . . maybe that's my problem . . ."

Indeed.

Another classic answer as Hugh tried to get the mewling fool to acknowledge the vast gap between his own salary and that of a private in the armed forces:

Um, I make a significant amount more than them, and I don't think that's fair. But I think that most of capitalism kind of doesn't pay you by the amount of risk you take, whether you're a fireman or a cop, or a construction worker or a miner.

Don't you love it when soft-underbellied elites dismiss the honor of hard-working Americans about whose values they haven't a clue and keen over their unfair monetary compensation from the evil capitalists? We totally agree with Hugh's coda:

Stein isn't an aberration. He's an archetype of and from the left.

Hugh Hewitt skewers the poor fellow. It's a wonder to behold.

Comments

[goomp]

The ignorance of how the world of humans operates is frightening. They have no knowledge of what drove the United States to be the premier democracy of the world. Maybe the commies really won by infiltrating our educational system so that it would no longer teach the amazing history of what made the US the leader of freedom in the post-WW II world. Let us hope that the blogosphere can overcome and lead us back to honor the little people, who are the heart and soul of the United States of America.

[Laura Lee Donoho]

Elegantly expressed Sissy. I totally agree with you.

[Teresa]

When I first read Stein's piece I was planning on blogging something scathing about it, then I read the Hugh Hewitt interview... I realized that the LA Times had hired Stein as part of their all inclusiveness directive. After all, they can proudly point out that they hire the mentally defective to work on their staff, thus giving them much needed jobs.

Poor little Joel - he kinda forgot that if you write such tripe, there will be valid questions about your intelligence. Especially when you are a reporter and can't even answer the simplest questions about an entity you've just tried your best to bash into the ground.

Although I think I still have to pull one of his quotes from Hugh's interview - it was too funny to pass up.

[andophiroxia]

People like Joel Stein further bury the left deeper and deeper into the mire of their own paranoia and Bush-hating syndromes. The majority of people think that they're a bit off to extremely irrational. The ones who laud them, hate everything for what America stands for anyway.

There are honest criticsms and there is sniping. The left has done too much of the latter to be considered good for this country anymore.

[Barry Campbell]

I haven't commented on Stein's article at my blog (country wisdom: when you hear an ass out braying in the field, there's no need to answer back) but you, and Hugh, and so many others have done nicely with it, and said what I would've wanted to say anyway.