Hugo Chavez viciously derides the president in the pulpit of the United Nations and all liberals can do is remain silent. Is it because Chavez's words so closely echo their own? Shameful. Even uber-liberal Rep. Charles Rangel's defense of the president against Chavez's verbal rampage was a damning with faint praise. "We have problems with our president", Rangel said. Did he mean the 62, 040,606 Americans who voted for President Bush in 2004 - that "we"?

House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi told reporters that Chavez's words "demeaned" himself and his nation. But coming from the same mouth that exclaimed, "America must be a light to the world, not just a missile," her "defense" of the president rings hollow. Shameful.

While zero attacks have occurred in this country since 9/11/2001, liberals whine: "we're not safer." While the U.S. captures terrorists all over the world - from the mastermind of 9/11, Khaled Sheik Mohammed, to arch-killer Abu Musab al Zarqawi, to the terror-supporting dictator Saddam Hussein, to those plotting to blow up American airplanes in England - liberals' suggestions to deal with the ongoing terror threat in Iraq suggest "redeployment," a shorthand euphemism for "cut and run."  Shameful.

While many liberals have seen the values of their homes go through the roof and their portfolios skyrocket, all they can do is call the president - whose fiscal policies brought about our sustained, booming economy, as well as astounding low unemployment - "the worst president in American history." Shameful.

In a long-gone era, liberals stood for "human rights" around the world. Do they not think that freedom and dignity apply to the tens of millions of Iraqis and Afghanis who on numerous occasions risked their lives to vote for a better life? Not if it's Bush's idea they don't. Shameful.

How can liberals call themselves good Americans and constantly root against our president during these clearly dangerous times? Strong, principled opposition to his policies is one thing - obsessive hatred that obfuscates the very real threats against us is another. Is it any wonder then why liberals haven't controlled the House, the Senate, the judgeships, or the White House for years?

Has the president been right in every decision he's made? Of course not. But last I looked, he's a human being, and one completely dedicated to the safety and well-being of this country.

So, instead of the whiny, elite, spoiled, and obnoxious stance taken by liberals these many years, how about just one new idea to help our country defeat the forces coalescing around us, as witnessed this week at the U.N.? How about liberals admitting that it was wrong - and dangerous - for The N.Y. Times to publish our national security secrets? How about liberals openly rooting for our soldiers to rout the insurgency in Iraq? How about the Left cheering when al Zarqawi was killed?

How about other liberals - not just Hillary Clinton - denouncing a movie depicting the assassination of a sitting president? How about some outrage over the not-so veiled threat by the Democratic leadership to revoke the license of ABC-TV if it aired "The Path to 9/11"? All this would be a good start towards reclaiming the lost legitimacy of a once important political ideology.

Are liberals up to that challenge? Or will they continue to be people for whom everything that is good about and for our country - from plunging gas prices to the budding freedom of millions of Iraqis and Afghanis - is derided?

Let me get this straight...You are chastising liberals instead of this administration? You're eye is off the ball sir. This president is a sham...and shameful.
It is shameful not to hold this president who lies, cheats and promotes torture to task. This is not a black and white world. You see the world from a childs eyes like Bush does. An angry child albeit but a child just the same.
Your website shows you to be a very conflicted person. Someone who CRAVES attention but completely turns off anyone who is not a right wing neocon.

"This president is a sham...and shameful. It is shameful not to hold this president who lies, cheats and promotes torture to task."

Ahmadinejad and Chavez couldn't have said it better!

Sorry for all the morons. They are apparently censoring my comments in support of your column in Huff Po. These people are more concerned with being correct in their partisan assessment of world affairs than with seeing the truth about sharia law, castro-style dictatorships, and cutting people's heads off. They were around when Jews were being slaughtered, Britain was begin bombarded, and now when women are buried up to their necks alive and stoned to death, when girls are hanged from cranes in Iran, when writers, homosexuals, agitators for freedom are rounded up and executed or put into brutal labor camps. They love it when a dubious book they read is mentioned by some fascist, instead of reading history and current affairs, as it might make their world views wobble. We ignored them then, but not until many innocent lives were lost. I hope we will ignore them now. They are no better than the right wong hacks they rail against.

Welcome to the light!

"They are apparently censoring my comments in support of your column in Huff Po."

This happens a lot with respect to my articles on The Huffington Post. I get a lot of email saying that their comments just aren't printed on Huffpo because they support my positions. No matter. I think the personal assaults on me in the comments section, help elucidate my points -- that, when all is said and done, the Left is driven and blinded more by anger and less by arguments.

Clinton had such an easy time, didn't he? He managed to keep america from getting attacked by al qaeda for almost 8 years. 5 is not 8 I wrote before, but Righties don't like facts. And the "we" Rangel is referring to could mean the 227,488,621 Americans who didn't vote for president Bush or the 59,612,866 Americans who voted for John Kerry in 2004 (I just made those numbers up, I think they are close, but don't hold me to them; I personally think that Rangel is just speaking for himself. And I think Bush redeployed in Afghanistan (it was called Operation Iraqi Freedom). Did you call that cutting and running?
And as far as the last part of your inane rant I was wondering if those things really occured or are you offering suggestions? I, for one, didn't cheer when Zarqawi was killed (but then again I didn't cheer when Jeffrey Dahmer was bludgeoned in prison either, but I did recognize that he got what he deserved). And I think you are implying that Democrats in Congress want the president to be assassinated.

Seth

Just read your article in ChronWatch. Excellent analysis.

Unfortunately, I don't think most libs have enough intellectual coherence to be ashamed, or even to recognize the (undeniable) fact that while they've spent the last six years Bashing Bush, the new national pastime (I think it used to be baseball), as far as I can recall they have not come up with a single coherent New Idea as an alternative to any of the Bush policies.

John Kerry, their presidential candidate, said of the war "I can do it better and smarter." But he has never been able to explain what "better and smarter" means, or what he would do differently, and how that would produce a better result. It's all just puffery. John Kerry, for instance, who was briefly a 2d Lieutenant in the Navy 30+ years ago, feels that he is a better and smarter stratetician than the generals and admirals, colonels and commanders, who have spent the last 30 years on active duty studying the art and science, history and philosophy, of war. The amateurs among Liberals always feel they are superior to the professionals among Conservatives. They truly feel it, it is "their reality," so how can they be wrong?

The Liberal mind does not analyze - it feels - "I feel, therefore I am." It is unable to truly comprehend the idea that there is an "extrinsic reality," an objective reality, out there beyond its own emotionalism, its own subjectivism, that may be very different from what it feels should be true - it is the projection of the internal emotional state onto the external factual universe - it does not really grasp that extrinsic realities are often incongruent with its internal, subjective realities. The Liberal Mind is the merger of the internal emotional state with its conceptualization of the external world, the reification of its feelings about reality into its conceptions of reality itself. I feel it, therefore It Is.

When the Libs sing "We Are The World" they are, perhaps unwittingly, telling us what they really believe, that they are the world, that they define the world, that the world is what they feel (and therefore think) it is, and that anybody with a different idea is both wrong and bad. It is a kind of arrested development, the inner state of a small child who does not yet fully grasp that there is a big world out there which he does not define and over which he has no control.

The Liberal Mind is the antithesis of the Scientific Mind. The Scientific Mind proposes a hypothesis, then checks it against testable reality, facts, experiments, observations, to see if it fits the evidence. The Liberal Mind proposes a hypothesis, and then leaps to the assumption that the hypothesis is true, whether or not it is congruent with the evidence. I think it, how can I be wrong?

Check out www.WorldCantWait.Org.

The libs plan a "day of protest" on October 5 to "drive Bush out of office now." Ran a full page ad in USA Today to advertise it.

Supported by (among many others) Edward Asner, Harry Belafonte, Steve Earle, Jane Fonda, Jessica Lange, Viggo Mortenson, Sean Penn, Martin Sheen . . .

From the ad and website - " . . . YOUR GOVERNMENT enforces a culture of greed, bigotry, intolerance and ignorance . . . Peole look at all this and think of Hitler - and rightly so. The Bush Regime is setting out to radically remake society very quickly, in a fascist way . . . There is not going to be some savior from the Democratic party. This whole idea of putting our hopes and energies into "leaders" who tell us to seek ground ground with fascists and religious fanatics [Bush, Cheney et al.] is proving every day to be a disaster and actually serves to demobilize people."

Also supported by US Rep John Conyers, Rev Jesse Jackson, Rabbi Michael Lerner, US Rep Cynthia McKinney, US Rep Major Owens, US Rep Bobby Rush, Rev Al Sharpton, US Rep Maxime Waters . . .

So, leading Liberals and Democrats are explicitly comparing Bush to Fascists and Hitler.

R

Dear Seth,

Thank you for your excellent column "Be Ashamed. Be Very Ashamed," which I happened upon at Jewishworldreview.com, and for your defense of the president in his fight to keep America safe from the barbarians that want to obliterate us.

I am a fellow Dartmouth grad, class of '84. We came to know each other in Topliff dorm--you turned me on to the joys of playing guitar in the bathroom for the reverberant effects! I appreciate greatly your voice in support of our president and troops in this war. Keep up the good work. Also, congratulations on your successful music and writing career.

Best wishes,
Ike Schurman '84

hey seth,

I read your latest piece on Huff Post with far more interest and expectation than before -- and I thought cool, new thoughts and opinions from seth...maybe I'll learn something or be exposed to a different mindset that will benefit me...that's honestly how I started reading --and maybe it was the curse of expectation, I don't know man but to call one opposition party to the ruling majority "shameful" over and over again and again -- well let me just say it didn't have your desired effect...it's funny because as I've told you, I stopped believing in the right vs. left paradigm this year, so please don't write this off as some raving liberal...far from, I actually re-registered as an independent this week, had been a democrat (obviously)...

but I'm writing to you not to try and convince you of anything -- I understand that would be a huge waste of time...I guess I just want to know how in the world you can say things "falling gas prices" when the last time I filled up it still cost more than forty bucks and the price per gallon was almost two full dollars HIGHER per gallon than I ever remember...how do you rationalize this administration as being good for the country, this rubber stamp congress as anything but criminally negligent?

why do I have such disdain for these people?

well, you know I think 9/11 needs a new investigation -- but why?

I don't go for all the lunatic fringe arguments of who did what --I simply look at the facts and what the story is...the story is official and outrageous and gigantic thundering incompetence --again and again that day the united states of america got caught --according to the 9/11 report -- as incompetent...we couldn't even protect the president when the country was clearly under attack -- seven hole minutes went by before my pet goat was finally declared to be not as pressing a concern as maybe what was unfolding...

but I don't wanna get off point -- my point is that the government's own excuse is that they weren't up to the job...

and then we had katrina -- and it's the same song and dance...

and let's talk about iraq -- a place that I understand the geopolitical arguments all too well and agree we need to be and should STAY for quite some time...my problem again, is stunning incompetence...I'm terrified that we will have to leave far too soon because the job has been so muddled and so horribly done...

compare it to Kosovo -- and while that's a lousy comparison -- at least the ethnic hatred is in common in both regions...and yet the Balkans did not dissolve into this kind of destructive civil war...why?

BECAUSE THE ENTIRE WORLD WAS THERE!

Like I said, I'm not the typical liberal -- I understand the world is a rough place but why in the world would allow a debate to begin about TORTURE?

If you know anyone in the military, you know this kind of thing scares them more than anything because they wonder what the other governments will dp --governments that we might one day have to fight...

all I know seth is our reputation around the world is at an all-time low -- that in and of itself is indefensible --I might even say shameful...

I don't want to beat a dead horse or sound like other e-mails you might have gotten --because I sense that you care deeply and passionately about what you believe...and even though I disagree with you about as much as possible --I will defend to the death your right to say it...that's ripped off from a founding father --I guess what concerns me about your essay is your demonization of the opposition...like it's really SHAMEFUL to have an opposing view...I know that's not how you see it, and a simplistic cheap shot in many ways -- but there's also truth in it...

I'll stop going round and round on you about this piece -- just know that democrats LOVE america as much as you do or others who share your political views claim too -- but when we get into a shouting match about how loves america more --that's when we stop being americans and the one who shouts the loudest wins...last time I checked, that was fascism....

take care and go padres...

your new friend on the left coast

Jeff

"How can liberals call themselves good Americans and constantly root against our president during these clearly dangerous times? Strong, principled opposition to his policies is one thing - obsessive hatred that obfuscates the very real threats against us is another"

Did you bother to ask this question of conservatives when Clinton was president?
................................................
"How about some outrage over the not-so veiled threat by the Democratic leadership to revoke the license of ABC-TV if it aired "The Path to 9/11"?

Were you outraged over the threats of the GOP to CBS when it tried to air that Reagan biopic? It was eventually cancelled due to pressure from conservatives.

"How can liberals call themselves good Americans and constantly root against our president during these clearly dangerous times? Strong, principled opposition to his policies is one thing - obsessive hatred that obfuscates the very real threats against us is another"

LL's comment:
"Did you bother to ask this question of conservatives when Clinton was president?"

My response:
Republicans SUPPORTED President Clinton when he fired a missile at Bin laden in the August 1998. The House leadership, Gingrich,Trent Lott and others, publicly supported Clinton -- and they meant it. As weak as Clinton's acion was, it was supported.
---------------------------------------
""How about some outrage over the not-so veiled threat by the Democratic leadership to revoke the license of ABC-TV if it aired "The Path to 9/11"?

LL's comment:
"Were you outraged over the threats of the GOP to CBS when it tried to air that Reagan biopic? It was eventually cancelled due to pressure from conservatives."

My response:
The pressure, vis a vis the Reagan biopic came from the Reagan family and people who knew Reagan, who felt the depiction to be unfair -- NOT anyone in the current Republican administration. A huge difference. The Democrats stridently speak of the "McCarthyite tactics" supposedly used by Republicans. Nonsense. The true perpetrators of McCarthyite behavior, as evidenced by their threats towards ABC-TV, are the Democrats. Can you imagine if George W. Bush demanded that ABC's license be "reviewed" if it didn't delete scenes from the 9/11 movie? The Left would justifiably be up in arms. Instead, the incredibly hypocritical Left actually DO everything they profess to hate. Just more evidence of their hypocrisy.

Well, if you consider the intelligene community "the left" I guess then you could validate your ridiculous assertions in this factually-inept post.

Bush wasn't going to classify ANY of the National Intelligence Estimate until word got around that it had been finished and that Bush wanted to keep a lid on it, even simply the generalized "key judgments." So he declassified a small part of it- selective parts of course, and even those contradict many of his assertions about his "success" in the war on terror. Of course, now that Bush has cleaned house in each agency to rid himself of the inconvenience of listening to advice he doesn't want to hear, even if it's from terrorism experts, you have to wonder if any agencies are afraid of delivering ANY bad news, given this administration's history of retribution.

And why don't you look at the assessments of top military with combat experience who were silenced by Bush but whom are now starting to speak out about how poorly the war is being handled, thus resulting in an increased danger to our troops, American interests abroad and the homeland. 5 Previous Joint Chiefs from republican and democratic administrations sent a letter to the President- and it wasn't a thank you note.

But I guess they are all just whiny liberals?

And stop with the straw-man argument that because we have not had another 9/11 that proves Bush has made us safer. I would expect better logic from a six year old.

Were we safe when OBL was planning 9/11 years ago despite an absence of an attack on American soil simply because we may not have known about it? Of course not. How long do you think it takes to plan a well-coordinated attack? When the bomb went off in the WTC in '93 that wasn't even a well-coordinated attack. I honestly don't know how long it takes and either do you but I know one thing, you have to coordinate a lot of terror operatives, which thanks to the Iraq War and the resurgance of the Taliban, we now have a lot more of.

I hope to God there is not another attack on the US, but I am certainly not so far up the ass of a political party to ignore facts and use infantile logic. And the democrats often resort to your sort of dumbed-down talking points and I call them on it. We as Americans are not better off when we allow our leaders to shirk responsibility and white wash the truth.

http://www.dni.gov/press_releases/Declassified_NIE_Key_Judgments.pdf

And keep in mind- only those few select portions were declassified. Under duress.

Makes ya wonder what Bush DIDNT declassify.

Oh yeah, I forgot. The umbrella rationalization is "well, we really wanted to show you all our successes but you know, it would violate national security."

Regarding the post below:

Talk about arguments as simplistic as a 6-year olds: We have to be on the offensive in this war (as we are in Iraq), like we were on the offensive in WWII. I can only imagine if the rationally-challenged Left of todaywere around in 1944 -- they would say "Normandy CREATED more Germans who hate and want to kill us." How inane.

The leaks are despicable and we should immediately prosecute the traitors in our government. Al-Zawahiri cannot believe the allies he has in the American Left.

As Ralph Peters wrote in his piece in the N.Y. Post today "The leak wasn't about some phony "right to know." It was a political stunt performed for political gain. And now our enemies know what our intelligence community thinks. Gee, thanks.

This isn't the first time the Left has leaked information that severly damages our country: The New York Times, on the front page, outted the secret and effective program to disrupt cash flows between terrorists recently. Then the Times said it was "old news." Then why did they print it?

And what is it again that the Left has offered in our fight against Islamic Fascism? Nothing. Oh, forgive me --they offer "redeployment" a fancier word for cutting and running. Standard faire for the visionless and weak Left. I hear words from the Murtha's and Biden's and Feingolds and Kerry's that amount to "we can do better" or "we can peosecute Iraq smarter". I'm still waiting for them to sahre their wisdom with those of us who support the president.

The Pope's words last week "recruited" more terrorists; The Danish cartoons created more terrorists --the 1990s created the most terrorists as Clinton was too busy sorting out his "feelings" with an intern to keep his eye on the ball. The Islamic Facsists want this fight and any reason for them to kill us. We simply cannot sit back and let them take it to us. We must take it to them, as we have in Iraq and Afghanistan. Are their problems? Of course --it's war. The A.D.D. lefties think all you have to do is change the channell and it should all just go away. Silly.

In a Post 9/11 world, after what was done to us that day and many years before, we had no alternative but to take it to the enemy. Even the Democrats voted for it, of course, before they "voted against it."

Seth, you didnt address the fundamental issues here. The war in Iraq has made us LESS safe. More Islamic radicals is a bad thing, not a good thing if we just remain "offensive." bush has been counterprofuctive, just like most on the Left were saying in 2003. The sad thing is that infantile Right still doesn't get it. You say that we need to be offensive in this war. You say that we need to "fight them there so we don't fight them here." I guess we should invade Ecuador because that would be offensive (although counterproductive like Iraq) and "someone elses backyard" (which is also counterproductive). And please, please stop this childish Clinton-bashing obsession.

One more thing. As far as the Normandy comparison is concerned, I know you are smarter than that. That is not even remotely relevant in this context or on any level. We're not stupid Seth. I realize that you have to resort to such simple minded and inane arguments, but please try to stick to something of significance (unlike your obsession with the size of the mole on Clintons penis).

It's interesting that most on the Right (although many are now coming around because they are traditional conservatives, not just mindless ideologues filled with hatred for the opposite viewpoint) consider "support for our President and the trooops" to be synonomous with "blindly allowing our President to mishandle a war and put our troops in harms way unecessasarily" in addition to scapegoating our troops for things that happened at Abu Gharib despite the obvious fact that the administration has ok'd torture (wink wink) but ensured that it would never be held responsible for that- they prefer to hide behind their legalese that they claim to detest so much- and the little guy out to dry in the process.

And when do I hear you guys advocating for better pay, healthcare etc. for our troops once they come home without legs and arms? Should those troops you claim to love so much really have to hold a bakesale to buy prosthetic limbs from the VA? Or how about having enough troops and equipment to get the job done? Isn't that pro-troop? But instead, we get Donald Rumsfeld and other incompetent paper-pushers with zero military experience saying to the troops "you work with the military you have, not the military you wish you had" or some version of the same.

And if you guys are soooooooo patriotic, why have you sat by silently enabling your God-like President and GOP Congress to quietly cut funds for first responders in the cities and states most likely to be attacked(and which were obviously attacked on Sept. 11th)? Even republicans in those areas have cried fowl. I guess first responders in blue states dont deserve the funds.

And why did the government lie to all the firemen, medics, police and others about the seriously and possibly deadly air quality on sept. 11th and during the rescue efforts in the following weeks? If you havent read up on that, perhaps you should educate yourselves with something other than each others drivel.

Is that really how a Patriot acts?

Our founding fathers and greatest presidents of the past have cautioned against stifling dissent and giving the govt cart blanche to do whatever it damn well pleases simply by waving a flag and labeling everyone else "traitor."

I also love how whenever this administration is caught with its pants down (ie. having lied about one thing or another) they simply resort to the defense used by cowards and ill-behaved children- they always blame everything on everyone else- nothing is EVER their fault despite it all being THEIR responsibility. Not exactly a characteristic one lauds in a great leader,whether democrat or republican, but I realize seth (and his neocon, liberal-hating following here) has never been too good looking at things with any objectivity or sincerity. He's too busy doing what he slams the dems and the left for- mindlessly bashing people with whom he disagrees and putting ideology above the truth. Not to mention making ridiculous claims and generalizations that are too immature and insulting to respond too.

Bush could learn a great deal from Truman and Roosevelt, who understood that if anything went wrong, even on the battlefield, they would ultimately not only be found responsible by the citizens of this nation, but they knew it was incumbent upon them to TAKE responsibility. You know, step up to the plate and be a leader, not just when things are swell.

Like most on the Left, you don't understand the meaning of "9/11". Clinton clearly didn't understand it either. Bush does.

9/11 was s symptom of an Islamic fascist philiosophy that doesn't want to negotiate with you: it wants your head. Literally. Tell that to your ACLU friends who are so busy trying to make life cozy at Guantanemo that they don't understand that we are in a serious war. They must think we are.

Tell it to your friends in the clearly leftist mainstream media who treat national security issues like games of "gotcha'. How nice and patriotic. Tell it your friends who share the same America-trashing hero, Noam Chomsky, with Hugo Chavez.

Iraq is difficult, no doubt. But, it was necessary to A) give the people of the region an alternative to Islamic fascism and B) rid the area of another proven mass murderer. Oh, but that's right, the Left thinks it would be better if Saddam were still in power, funding suicide bombers in the Palestinian territories and welcoming nice guys like al-Zarqawi to his country or gassing his own people or starting the Gulf War or...

Jeff Jacoby, of The Boston Globe summed it up well in a piece today:

After 9/11, the United States went to war against Islamic totalitarianism; since 2003 that war has focused most dramatically on Iraq. It stands to reason that Iraq is therefore the focal point in the jihadis' war against the West. President Bush has made that point repeatedly, quoting Osama bin Laden's declaration that the war in Iraq is ``the most serious issue today for the whole world " and will end in ``victory and glory or misery and humiliation." Has US military action in Iraq inflamed the global jihad? Undoubtedly. But just imagine how galvanized it would be by a US retreat.

This much we do know: There has been no successful terrorist attack on the United States in the years since 9/11, whereas the years leading up to 9/11 saw one act of terrorism after another, including the bombing of the World Trade Center, the destruction of the US embassies in Africa, and the attack on the USS Cole. The Bush administration must be doing something right -- something the Clinton administration, on whose watch bin Laden and Al Qaeda launched and escalated their terror war, failed to do.