Richard Cohen: Bush-hating goes haywire

New York Daily News - Ideas & Opinions - Richard Cohen: Bush-hating goes haywire I usually skip Cohen. He claims to be a "purple" moderate but he's still much more liberal than centrist

It's hard to know whom to loathe more - religious zealots who would censor my reading and deny me the fruits of stem-cell research or fervid hallucinators who belittle Saddam Hussein's crimes (or even 9/11) and wonder, in the throes of perpetual adolescence, whether the assassination of the President would not amount to a political mercy killing. It's all pretty repugnant.

Of course, real "religious zealots who would censor" his reading are pretty darn few and far between, unless you believe that parents not wanting their children to be exposed to sex with animals at the public library is "censorship." Likewise, barring federal funding for some fetal stem-cell research doesn't stop privately-funded research. And if the promise of stem-cell cures is so great, there should be plenty of private investor money, right? So Cohen is clearly a liberal, not a moderate. But he makes some telling points that agree with what those of us in the center-right have been saying for a long time.

[Bush-haters] are infected with a corrosive doubt about their own country. A recent Pew poll found, for instance, that 51% of Democrats agreed with the proposition that "U.S. wrongdoing" contributed to the attacks of 9/11. (Only 17% of Republicans agreed.) Those are astounding numbers, an indictment not really of America (for what?) but of those people who compulsively blame their own country for the faults of others. You can believe that America's support of Israel and the stationing of troops in Saudi Arabia played a role in the 9/11 attacks, but the term Pew used was "wrongdoing." In this respect, these people and Bin Laden are in agreement. (emphasis mine)

Refreshingly honest, and coming from Cohen, a devastating indictment of the Modern American Left.