So Glenn Greenwald, responding to a post of mine on Twitter in his column at Salon, refers to me as a “right-wing warrior-blogger”. If I was unfamiliar with Greenwald’s work, I might think perhaps that he had confused me with one of RedState’s resident warriors, Jeff Emanuel or streiff or Caleb Howe; I’m a lawyer, not a warrior, and the closest I have been to a war zone was the day terrorists flew an airplane into my office, an experience I’m not in any hurry to relive or to see anyone else subjected to.
As it happens, this is of a piece with the typical Greenwald style:
Right-wing super-tough-guy warriors project some frightened, adolescent, neurotic fantasy onto the world — either because they are really petrified by it or because they want others to be.
I won’t call this an argument, in the sense of being a connected series of statements intended to establish a definite proposition; it’s just shtick. Rather than bother trying to persuade, Greenwald is content to pander to his simple-minded audience’s desire to see his adversaries insulted. And the choice of the “fear” taunt is tied to one of the lingering obsessions in Greenwald’s writing, his fixation on masculinity.
But let’s take up the ad hominem on its terms, not so much to defend myself as to explain why people like me do not think like people like Greenwald. Is it irrational or somehow unmanly of me to “fear” that terrorists could cause harm if brought into this country? Would I be better to adopt Greenwald’s pose that terrorism is a “frightened, adolescent, neurotic fantasy”? Let me put it this way. First, I think I have, personally, a very rational basis for considering veterans of Al Qaeda training camps to be dangerous people. But you don’t need to have been personally affected by the September 11 attacks to want to prevent terrorists from causing physical harm to yourself or others. To keep this on a personal level, I have a home in a community, New York City, which happens to be Al Qaeda’s top target. I feel a special sense of attachment to and responsibility for the community I live in, and wish to see it protected (they even used to have a word for this feeling, it began with “p”). It’s easy for Greenwald to be cavalier about terrorist threats to the United States, since last I heard, he does not live here; he’s been living in Brazil for years. I also have a family, a wife and children. And it’s true: no man, no matter how brave or cowardly, can know true fear until he has responsibility for the lives of his children. Greenwald, so far as I know, has no wife to worry about and no offspring other than the multiple internet personalities he created to sing his own praises. If we must humor Greenwald’s dreary obsession with masculinity, perhaps he could learn something: what manhood is really about is using what strength we have to protect those entrusted to our care. And the first obligation of a man since time immemorial is also the first obligation we entrust to our government: to protect and defend against physical threats, especially from those who mean us and ours harm. Worrying about those threats is a sign of responsibility.
Let us proceed then to the merits of the argument.
short story “Unnatural Causes” (found in his first 
story collection, known as, well, 
