On Monday, March 1, Steve Benen took note of the craziness involved in a Politico story about the GOP trying to purge itself of extremists quoting Erick Erickson of Red State as one of the anti-extremists:
The problem is, some of those who want to keep the extremists at bay are themselves extremists.
The attempt "to clean up our own house," as Erick Erickson, founder of the influential conservative blog RedState, puts it, is necessary "because traditional press outlets have decided to spotlight these fringe elements that get attracted to the movement, and focus on them as if they're a large part of this tea party movement. And I don't think they are." [...]
Erickson has advised new tea party organizers on how to avoid affiliations with extremists and this month banned birthers -- conservatives who believe that Obama was not born in the United States and is, therefore, ineligible to be president -- from his blog. (He has long blacklisted truthers, those who believe that the U.S. government was complicit in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks -- a conspiracy theory with devotees across the political spectrum.)
"At some point, you have to use the word 'crazy,'" said Erickson.
Yes, Erick Erickson wants to help rid conservatives of the extremist. As Simon Maloy explained, "That's the same Erick Erickson who called retiring Supreme Court Justice David Souter a 'goat f--king child molester,' who called two sitting U.S. senators 'healthcare suicide bombers,' who praised protesters for 'tell[ing] Nancy Pelosi and the Congress to send Obama to a death panel' (before furiously backtracking), and attacked President Obama's Nobel Prize as 'an affirmative action quota.'"
From Hitler to Mao to Lenin to Stalin to Chavez to Castro to Guevera to Arafat to Pol Pot to Mugabe to [insert your favorite American union] to Margaret Sanger the left and its heroes have used death, violence, and murder to advance their agenda.
Ah yes, that violent sociopathic thug, Margaret Sanger! How did Martin Luther King get left off that list, I wonder?)
Steve totally gets the kabuki nature of this exercise:
William F. Buckley died this week, at the age of 82. Which makes it as good a time as any to recall just what the "father of modern conservatism" stood for--which is pretty simple, really: making the Middle Ages acceptable to modern minds. Or, in the alternative, turning modern minds into Medieval ones.
Case in point: racism. In 1957, Buckley's National Review came out squarely on the side of the "civilized" white minority in whatever portions of the South where whites were outnumbered by blacks. It's a remarkable piece of writing that starts off rather slowly, but gathers steam as it rolls along, full of the characteristic tangle of asides, lies and appeals to higher virtue. (Aristotle aveered that masters knew their slaves' desires better than the slaves themselves--such knowledge was a part of their superior virtue.)
Thus, the clarion call, where the editorial really hits its stride:
National Review believes that the South's premises are correct. If the majority wills what is socially atavistic, then to thwart the majority may be, though undemocratic, enlightened. It is more important for any community, anywhere in the world, to affirm and live by civilized standards, than to bow to the demands of the numerical majority.
The editorial was unsigned, but it's widely assumed that Buckley wrote it--it certainly sounds like him--and if not, he most certainly approved it.
So, without further ado--drawing on the version that Brad DeLong published on his blog in recognition of the National Review's 50th Anniversary in 2005--the editorial in its entirety begins on the flip, followed by a brief commentary.
