Even though I often disagree with his politics and his opinions, I am happy to say that I remain a devoted reader of Glenn "Instapundit" Reynolds. And, one thing that is coloring my perceptions of those bloggers who are Democratic-leaning (do the words "left" and "right" mean anything nowadays?) is the method they use to criticise him. He's demonstrated fairly well that accusing him of "McCarthyism" is nothing more than name-calling - and that it contributes nothing more to reasoned debate than, say, spewing the word "liberal" like it's a racial slur. Yet so many partisan Democratic bloggers quite happily use him as a target for insults that aren't even well thought-out - they just consist of political-hindbrain slurs like "McCarthyite."
My old dad used to say that classifications such as "left," "right," "conservative," and "liberal" were meaningless. Glenn is the personification of this observation. I've known him longer than either of us likes to admit, and he's basically an impossible-to-pigeonhole renaissance man. Mostly, he always has been. Maybe that's why I and those of us who know him just grin and scratch our heads at the world-wide response to Instapundit. We're used to it; he's always been like this.
No comments:
Post a Comment