Misplaced Indignation

"There's a certain line that you should not cross, and last night, Karl Rove crossed that line. He didn't just put his toe over the line; he jumped way over," said Sen. Charles E. Schumer of New York.

An interesting comment for a Democrat to make about a staffer in a Republican administration, given the deafening silence with which Mr. Schumer and his fellow Democrats responded to the truly outrageous absurdities of his Senate colleague, Richard Durbin.

Mr. Schumer’s indignation arose from this statement by Mr. Rove, speaking to the annual dinner of the New York State Conservative Party: “Conservatives saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and prepared for war; liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers,” Mr. Rove said.

What is particularly interesting about this is that Karl Rove is exactly right. While Democrats and Republicans joined together in support of America’s response, liberals and liberal organizations frequently did exactly what Mr. Rove said. Liberals, not Democrats, were the objects of Mr. Rove’s comment. Democrats more and more try to distance themselves from the “liberal” tag. Why, then, are they so upset with Karl Rove’s criticism of a group they want not to be associated with?

For example, liberals think detainees at Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere ought to be brought into the American judicial system, instead of treating them as what they are, enemy combatants captured in a war. Other liberals think that instead of fighting back, we should try to understand the killers of 9/11, and go through self-examination to discover what America did to deserve the 9/11 attacks.

"Conservatives saw the United States as a great nation involved in a noble cause of self-defense," Mr. Rove said. "Liberals are concerned about what our enemies think of us, whether every government approves of our actions." There is a cadre of people on the Left in America who are always ready to assume this country is guilty of any and all things people accuse us of. The foolish and dangerously inaccurate comments of Richard Durbin perfectly illustrate this phenomenon. Blaming America is an automatic reaction among these people. Their reaction is similar to the reaction of America’s enemies to accusations against us. When American Leftists respond in the same fashion as America’s enemies, what are we to think of them?