Gene Healy at the Cato Institute blog has an absolutely perfect illustration of how partisanship leads to hypocritical howls of outrage. He links to this post at Free Republic from 2000, before Bush took office, about how the FISA court rubber stamps pretty much anything the president wants when it comes to intelligence gathering. The commenters were appalled - absolutely appalled - at this outrageous power grab by the administration. A few samples:
"This is beyond frightening. Thank you for this find."
"This does not bode well for continued freedom."
"Franz Kafka would have judged this to wild to fictionalize. But for us - it's real."
And my personal favorite:
"Any chance of Bush rolling some of this back? It sounds amazing on its face."
Wait, wait, they get better:
"As quietly as possible (although it sometimes breaks out into the open, usually with the sound of gunfire and the death of innocents), a "shadow government" has been set up all around us my friend. It's foundation is not the constitution, but Executive Orders, Presidential Procalamations, Secret Acts, and Emergency Powers.
It has all the tools to be an absolute tyranny and those behind it (on both sides of the aisle) who crave power and their form of "governance" continue to move towards it while we are distracted by so many other goings on."
And...
"This is wherein the danger lies in the precedent set by the Clinton criminal administration. God only knows who will be in power next, but there are no checks and balances anymore. This is exactly the SORT of thing I've been protesting all along. Libs just don't see this!
But when and where do they find this in the major media? They don't even know!"
Isn't it fascinating how when the tables turn, they really turn? When Clinton was in office, this was an unprecedented grab for power, using a secret court to rubber stamp their destruction of our freedoms. Now, that secret court is an obstructionist body that stands in the way of Bush as he tries to protect our freedom, and anyone who questions that is obviously a communist and a lover of terrorists.
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But . . . but . . . but everything changed after 9/11! White's the new black! Combat veterans are cowards! Draft dodgers will save us! Anything starting with I-R-A are the enemy! I'm tellin' ya, there are WMDs in Belfast!
Are we attributing something to a changing hivemind? Attributing hypocrisy to the opinions of a demographically fluid mob?
I used to post on FreeRepublic back when (1998 maybe?), and one day I looked around and found the company I was keeping wasn't the type I wanted to be associated with or even talking to because it was much more hostile than it used to be. Communities change in slow-mo and sometimes became less and less conducive to differences of opinion. Look at the growth of blogrolls -- they're basically an amplified echo chamber.
Some of this I attribute to a different type of poster that got on line at the goading of politicians, preachers and the rise of Fox News, O'Reilley, Hannity and others. Where initially you had to be minimally tech savvy (net, forums, email, list-servers) and politically interested, now it doesn't require that, so there are many more people posting on political forums.
I guess my main point is that the people that have these opinions on FreeRepublic these days may not be the same ones from 1998 and 1999 because online communities change.
I used to post there two at one time. I also noticed how hypocritical they can be be. And I have also notice the same posters changing tunes as the administration changed (actually, I think it was 9/11 that changed everything).
9/11 caused a lot of people to change their views entirely on the balance between liberty and security.
The main reason that I no longer go there, is that the posters there are simply not good people. They are mean-spirited SOBs.
Ted, they haven't changed that much. Just watch once the Democrats get back into power - especially if a Democrat becomes the next president. Any advantage the new president takes of Bush's accretion of presidential powers will become treason of the worst kind, simply because he/she's not a Republican.
While there may be some decent people on FR, they are usually drowned out by ultra-religious, racist, homophobic wingnuts. Free Republic is only useful for entertainment purposes only--especially any debate about evolution. Search for user PatrickHenry (one of the sane ones) to see what I mean.
The last time I was there, I noticed that the majority of them expess a subtle disdain for gay people.
They are right, though, that the media doesn't do nearly enough to shine a light on this sort of thing. I'm starting to think that very few people see the balance of power as an important part of respectable government.
Actually, as someone who's fairly new to the Net, I've been geniunely shocked by how vicous (and frequently borderline illiterate) many of the people who post are.My best friend used to complain about "fanboys" on the Internet, but they've got NOTHING on the political crowd... although there is, I suspect, some overlap (CAPTAIN'S BLOG, anyone?). As a result, I find there's very few places where I'll even click on the "Comments" button, and even fewer where I'll post (as far as politics goes, I've only posted here and on GET RELIGION, which isn't even really a political site per se).
An old friend of mine, who was right there with me condemming the clinton regime for it's abuses of our civil liberties now calls me a traitor of the lowest order for condemming the bush regime for even worse, flagrant abuses. When I pushed him to justify his change of attitude he simply says, "yeah, but I trust this president." This has, to say the least, been a strain on our friendship. Unfortunately, this seems to be a widespread phenom and simply proves the immeasurable danger of partisanship.
I realize that you don't go for nationalism much, Ed, but I do. And it saddens me that such a large percentage of our countries population invest themselves far more into their party than their patriotism. To be clear, this refers more to repubs than dems right now, only because the repubs have the power and therefore a louder voice - the dems are just as culpable in this atrocity of loyalty. My loyalties lay with my country - or at least the country I was raised to believe this is, not some damned party or another.
"The dems are just as culpable in this atrocity of loyalty."
As individuals, of course. But as the makeup of the parties go, I don't think so. Today's GOP has become almost cult-like in its identification of Party with national wellbeing, in its "us vs. them" worldview, in its adherence to message, and in its support for its leader. Today's Democratic Party doesn't seem capable of kind of unity, nor that kind of uncritical support for those they elect to office. When Clinton was president, a broad swathe of civil libertarian Democrats constantly flogged him on civil liberty issues, from FISA to DMCA. When he lied about his affair with Monica, Democrats flogged him on that.
It quite likely is the case that Democratic electoral weakness stems from their disunity, their inability to stay on message, and their lack of loyalty to their own elected leaders. But at least we don't have to worry, in the near term, that they will exhibit the kind of "atrocity of loyalty" that lets the party stand wholeheartedly behind a Nixon or a Bush. (In fairness, the GOP eventually broke with Nixon. That it cannot break with Bush shows how far that party has evolved in the forty years since.)
I had a look at the Freepers/Creepers post on the Schiavo autopsy report: the word is "meltdown." Posting as the findings were announced, the majority of them completely flipped out as soon as they realized their prejudices weren't getting any support. ("Her husband broke her back! How can they cover that up?!!") Not only that, but it had the lamest layout of any Web site I've ever seen, with the possible exception of Myspace. I haven't been back since.
Anyone else chuckle at the reference to Franz Kafka? I wonder how often that happens in the Free Republic - especially now.
Wow, somebody opened the windows at the Cato institiute!
When THEY notice this jarring dissonance between "coservative" reactions then and the ostensibly same bunch of people reacting now, we should all salute the intellectual honesty.
Did anyone beside you take note of this, Ed?
I can't imagine why anyone would be the least bit surprised that the Cato institute would make note of this sort of hypocrisy. Is it because you think that they are somehow allied with conservatives and therefore unlikely to point out their hypocrisies? If you really believe that, you clearly haven't been paying attention to Cato's very consistent position on this issue. They blasted Clinton for his attempts to increase presidential authority, and they've blasted Bush even harder for succeeding at doing so, and going much further than Clinton tried to go.
Read Democratic Underground and DailyKos, too, for a heapin' helping of selective outrage and high-test crazy, too. Mot so much the main posters (though these will curl your hair sometimes) as the commenters. Sheesh. Stupid, inarticulate and evil politicians of both parties can look pretty damned good next to the frothing, raving, and incoherent extremes of either.
Sometimes, when I get upset that the mean tends towards kinda stupid in this country, I take a little, unpalatable comfort that it also tends toward moderate.