Egomaniacal Bloggers

Why does ... [Justin Raimondo] even bother mentioning these bloggers? They're not worth it. By dedicating a whole column to their egomaniacal websites, you honor them, give them recognition, even glorify them. The country is filled with people like this, who think only of themselves, know nothing about suffering, and have never developed empathetic feelings. They're so self-involved that they sit in front of their computers and think the rest of the country is waiting for and hanging on their every "clever" word. In the scope of humanity, they aren't worth sh*t.

Today, I was hoping instead to read an impassioned column decrying the continued 'round-the-clock bombing of Afghanistan. Areas of the country are being terrorized. Villagers don't know where to flee. "The camps are empty," wailed one of them, "yet the Americans are dropping the bombs." Another said, "The mountains are shaking." What kind of insane crap is this? What the hell is wrong with this country?

I am 71 years old, a mother of five grown children, and I sit in my house and wring my hands with despair. Why aren't people massing in the streets protesting this insanity?

~ Sonja Coryat, Clearlake, California

Sensitive

Who would have thought that David Horowitz, veteran laptop bombardier and sanguinary hater of all things Islamic, was so ... sensitive (some might say, wimpy)? When Horowitz laments the fact ("In Reply to Scott McConnell") that Pat Buchanan "couldn't find it in himself to make one gesture towards those who felt the sting of his words" I got positively weepy for poor Horowitz, and for the other tenderhearted warmongering neo-conservatives who undoubtedly were also horribly stung by the words of that nasty isolationist Pat Buchanan. How dare that horrible Buchanan, whose personal and familial ties to the American Right only go all the way back to the days of the America First Committee and Westbrook Pegler, fail to be solicitous of the feelings of the newly – some might say, barely – reformed Trotskyites (including Horowitz) who deigned to grace the conservative movement with their esteemed presences under the rubric of "neo-conservatism"?! Prima facie evidence of Buchanan's anti-Semitism, I say!

~ Fred Godinez

How disappointed I was to read David Horowitz's article of January 16 "In Reply to Scott McConnell." For the second time and, despite Scott McConnell's urging, he fails to address the grievances of the Palestinians against the growing and illegal occupation of their land by extreme Zionists bent on ejecting them from all that remains of their homeland. Horowitz's sad but predictable conclusion is to exhort the Bush White House to tell Arafat: "Behave or you are history". Is that it? Can Horowitz do no better than: "I'm good. You're bad. I'm big. You're small. I'm strong. You're weak"? And how does this exhortation work? The entire Arab (and most of the Muslim) world just rolls over and meekly complies with US imperialism until Kingdom come? Does he have any understanding of the fury and rage against the United States that continues to build within the Arab and Muslim worlds? The Founding Fathers warned against the dangers of empire. Yet they would surely never have imagined how great these dangers could be in a world which has the rapidly growing capacity to destroy itself. The Ancient Greeks used to say that the Gods gave people power in order to destroy them. Never was this maxim truer than in the history of empires. And never did an empire have the power that America possesses today. Horowitz would have America ignore the lessons of the past and rush headlong to worship the false idols of hubris and vainglory. Thanks to Antiwar.com Americans are provided with an alternative understanding of their history, its legacy and their responsibility to the future.

~ MGB

Genesis