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EDITOR OF REDSTATE

The Liberal Guardian ( @GuardianUS ) Stands Up for Free Speech

By: Erick Erickson (Diary)  |  August 15th, 2012 at 09:01 PM  | 

RESIZE: AAA

This morning the Guardian, a liberal newspaper out of London, announced it was hiring one of RedState’s co-founders, Josh Trevino, as a conservative columnist.

Since the announcement was made, the Guardian has come under withering assault for daring to hire Josh.

I know a thing about that. To this day there are still folks trying to drive me off television. Luckily, CNN was kind enough to give me a chance.

I hope the Guardian will do the same with Josh Trevino. The attacks are not about what Josh has said or tweeted, but about Josh being at a liberal organization to begin with. The attacks are about silencing an alternative opinion, which the Guardian, to its credit, has been willing to hear out and give voice to.

Conservatives do not go out of their way to shut down and silence alternative voices. Conservatives are not out boycotting MSNBC or canceling Comcast subscriptions because of MSNBC. They are not avoiding Avery printing labels because one of the Avery family members funds left wing causes. The Guardian hired the far-left blogger Glenn Greenwald of sock-puppet fame and you don’t see conservatives storming the Guardian to have him fired. Hell, unlike Trevino, Greenwald’s sock puppets actually did violate what most would consider journalistic standards and none of us much care that he’s there.

But time and time again, the left tries to silence the right. They take offense, they scream, and they complain. They want to be the arbiters of acceptable voices and, slowly but surely, will whittle away all opposition in the name of “reasonable dissent.” Arbiters of the opposition rarely want opposition.

Archbishop Chaput of Philadelphia, in a Lenten Letter to his pastoral flock, said that evil preaches tolerance until it is dominant and then tries to silence good. What we are seeing in this organized campaign to get Josh Trevino thrown off the pages of the Guardian, Rush Limbaugh thrown off the airwaves, etc. is an organized campaign by so-called tolerant showing their intolerance.

The majority of Americans are conservatives and the media increasingly does not relate to any of them except Beltway conservatives who are increasingly not like the rest of America’s conservatives. My hat is off to the Guardian for being willing to engage the majority of Americans and have the views of that majority reflected in their pages.

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COMMENTS

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  • jaykali

    I am happy CNN has Erick on, too bad no one watches CNN in the first place. It would be nice if CNN actually had a conservative host. If there is one, I haven’t heard of one.

  • tngal

    ‘Thick skin’ and ‘sterner stuff’ will win out! You’ll need both. Stick it to ‘em. I’ve read a few comments from Guardian posters on their website. There are more than a few who make Pelosi seem almost human.

  • warrior300

    How nice to read how not just a liberal but quite left-wing paper as the Guardian hired a conservative columnist. What a shame the Republicans were opposed to balanced journalism when they approved the moderators for this year’s Presidential debates, which did not include one conservative, nor any representation from Fox News. “Stupid is as stupid does.”

  • jon11

    I’ve been a guardian reader/commenter for years. its makes the daily kos seem down the line.

    Cnn seem like redstate.

    Fox is positively fascist.

    Its a shill for the labour party.

    Many days I’ve been called a RHINO on this sight in the boring and a ‘right winger’ on Cif (the guardians comment section) that evening.

    The main page of the guardian is legit, left leaning but legit. The comment section again makes the daily kos look centrist. No US equivalent.

    Trevino will play nicely into leftist british/european stereotypes of americans…if he lasts. But i can’t imagine he will. IT’ll be a real hoot for readers.

    Erickson would be much more in line ideologically with MSNBC than Trevino will be with guardian readers. Choamsky is frequent Cif contributor….and one of the few americans their readers respect.

  • gekster

    Lean to the left much.

  • sulmak

    The Guardian makes Fox look fascist.

  • http://Blackberrybear.etsy.com knitwit

    in the far Left, which far too many forget. It is not from the Right; Mussolini was a Nationalist Leftist, and was famously the first termed Fascist.

    There really is no comparison from the Right side of the spectrum.

  • jasondeegan

    “Conservatives do not go out of their way to shut down and silence alternative voices. Conservatives are not out boycotting MSNBC or canceling Comcast subscriptions because of MSNBC.”

    I absolutely do, know many other conservatives that do and would encourage ALL conservatives to do the same. I certainly pay attention to where my dollar goes and choose like-minded organizations (Chik-fil-A) over liberal dumps (Progressive Insurance).

  • renl57

    …are met with a storm of hostile commentary and responses from NYT readers.

    Not just along the lines of “We disagree with everything you say,” but also “The New York Times should not be allowing you to publish your garbage.”

    You can see the left-wing intolerance for other points of view in other ways. Conservative speakers are heckled in public forums. Or worse. They can have tomatoes thrown at them or pies thrown in their face in an attempt to shut them down.

    I wish just once, at least one conservative speaker would pay for some security bodyguards. And the next time that speaker is attacked with a pie, he should have his bodyguards beat the attacker’s brains out.

    That’s the only way to put a stop to this type of left-wing hooliganism.

  • justperhaps45

    It is a temptation we must resist as sinners saved by grace.

  • justperhaps45

    Not supporting is very different from proactively working to deny access or eliminate another’s lively hood. I want to hear the opposing point of view as long as it is not a boring repeat, as it is many times. Origional thought seems to evade the liberal lemmings.

    #1 Terrorist saying: ?I?m from the government to help you.?

  • justperhaps45

    Not supporting is very different from proactively working to deny access or eliminate another’s lively hood. I want to hear the opposing point of view as long as it is not a boring repeat, as it is many times. Origional thought seems to evade the liberal lemmings.

    #1 Terrorist saying: ?I?m from the government to help you.?

  • sarg01

    At least, so long as people look at it as a line with only two poles. Hitler, Mussolini, Ayatollahs, etc are only really distinguished from Stalin, Mao and Castro in terms of the language they use to their supporters. Once people think the state has a valid interest in everything, you’re doomed anyway you slice it.

    This isn’t as relevant in America because there isn’t much of an authoritarian right here. In America, only the left has a strong authoritarian component. Every once in a while, you might see an aspiring theocrat, but it’s pretty rare. The right generally respects the First Amendment.

    However, you see it in Europe a lot with the “blame the outsiders” approach to policy. Greeks accusing Germany of their failures, Muslims in France, etc.

  • http://impudent.edublogs.org/ kyle8

    It is only true if you accept that Fascism and Naziism are on the right. But they are not.

    Technically the more you move to the right the more libertarian you become because in today’s world “the right” means limiting government.

    The Fascists were creatures of the left. They had rejected communism but embraced much of the rest of socialism. Mussolini was the foremost Marxist Writer and newspaper publisher in Europe before he created the Fascist party.

  • Joshua Persons

    What did Hitler, Mussolini, or the Ayatollahs ever do to put themselves on the right side of the political spectrum?

  • Repair_Man_Jack

    A Fascist will justify stealing your property in the name of strengthening what is good about our country. Barack Obama and ELizabeth Warren justify the same thievery to “correct historical injustices.” I guess I’m actually agreeing with Sarge’s point that a political radicals converge if they become extreme enough.

  • Joshua Persons

    I don’t believe that the single dominating feature of the left vs right continuum is patriotism vs internationalism.

  • sarg01

    I’m speaking of the global definition. Which is actually why I put the bit in about if we’re forced to discuss it with only two poles.

    If there’s only one line, you have to put the Ayatollahs somewhere on it. Clearly they’re not centrist. Furthermore, they care nothing for “fairness” or “social justice” or “multiculturalism”. Makes it quite hard to put them on the left.

    On the other hand, they do believe quite strongly in preserving their historical culture. They share this trait with the global right.

    The American right would most likely say the culture they’re preserving is one of oppression and understandably rejects that grouping. This is exactly why one line doesn’t cut it. There needs to be another line between anarchy and tyranny.

  • Joshua Persons

    My question was sort of half-trap, half-honestly wanting your perspective on how the global definition could possibly be coherent.

    If measuring on a single pole, how can anyone believe there’s a single more important metric than freedom vs authoritarianism? And if not that, how does it default to, apparently, patriotism vs internationalism? To me, there would still be many metrics more clarifying than that — such as fiscal freedom, or social freedom, or militarism, or even something like industrialism vs pastoralism.

  • acat

    The use of “Left vs. Right” is an example of the durability of a meme.

    The Pournelle Axes are merely one alternate way of explaining why the “Left” and “Right” are a lousy model, but as Dr. Pournelle says in the article I’ve linked (here if the pic doesn’t work) the idea of “Left” and “Right have become ingrained in our discourse, even though the original reality it modeled was no longer valid within a couple years … in 18th century France….

    Mew

  • rightlane1111

    please explain…I get the necessary evil business…I believe that they are offsets in philosophy. Not so sure the difference between Ayn Rand and Libertarians…other than Rand did not believe in religion, per se. If I am wrong…could you explain.

    Dangerous But Good sounds like all of them are the same thing…however, they do have a state sponsored religion which probably professes the same as what the “collective” believes in…or in other words. “Social Justice”. Yes?

    I do understand the Statism charts because each does not allow freedom of thought or deed. Am I right?

  • acat

    Did you click the picture or the link?

    In short, Ayn Rand represents a much higher belief in “rational government” (on the vertical axis) and “necessary evil” (on the horizontal axis) than most of the folks who claim the label Libertarian, including the Libertarian party.

    Note that it’s the view that government should be (or is) rational that divides Libertarians from Anarchists, and the view that government is at best a necessary evil rather than a potential force for good that divides Libertarians from Liberals.

    I’d suggest viewing it as just one potential alternative to the traditional “Left vs. Right” mapping, one Pournelle developed to try to explain some of the apparent contradictions.

    Mew

  • rightlane1111

    And No…I feel like a dope…I did not click on the link…I thought the link was the same as the diagram. Thank You. I guess I showed my arrogance.

  • acat

    Should have emphasized that there was an article a bit more …

    Mew

  • teapartypatriot4ever

    There is no doubt as to the what they, liberals do and do not do, the why of what they do and do not do, which results in their blatant overt hypocrisy, as well as their radical behavior and actions, whether in print, video, cyber internet world, or in the physical world in terms of being vitriolic, abusive, threatening, intimidating, and even physically violent, against good innocent decent patriotic conservative American people, as noted and seen by the recent FRC shooting.

    It’s the indoctrinated belief that the end justifies the means. Their acceptance of not having any personal and or journalistic integrity, honor, respect for the truth, is part of their imbedded deep seeded indoctrination as anti-American liberals.. for to them, the cause is greater than the truth, and with it, the People and America as a Constitutional Republic Nation must be sacrificed for that greater cause.

    This is their cause and agenda, which results in their hypocrisy, which enrages and incenses good and decent people’s sense of consciousness / morality, at the media’s severe lack of professional responsibility to civilized humanity.

    But this does not just apply to the media, it applies to all liberal radicals o the streets, as well as govt, and all leftist hate groups and organizations, whose ll liberal activism, of actual physical violence against good decent innocent conservative people, is now apparent that they have now engaged in full frontal warfare attacks against conservatives, and all people of religious faith and patriotism to America, as well as to all western civilized nations in the world.

    Thus is why they also view the radical hate mongering arab islamic muslim terrorists, rogue dictators and nations like Iran, and all of their affiliated hate organizations like the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, etc, as their Allies.. And in that same agenda level based ideology dimension, they are anti-semitic /anti-Israeli.

    This is also another reason why the anti-American liberal establishment agenda and goal is to rid American Nation and people of the Christianity and Judaism, all religions other than Islam.. Thus rid the nation and people of morality thinking conscientiousness, thus give liberal progressivism,, aka socialist marxism,, that majority base and foundation within society, aka the people, which it needs to thrive in to maintain power and control indefinitely.

  • teapartypatriot4ever

    I also wish to applaud at the very least, the Guardian for trying to at least bring some sense of respect, integrity, and goodness to their leftist paper magazine, by hiring a Conservative writer, Mr Josh Trevino

    But being skeptical and suspicious, and a little cynical, and rightly so, if, what, and how they try to influence his writings to somehow support and legitimize leftwing views, remains to be seen.