Let's be clear about why we want him gone

I would imagine there will be some discussion of Kevin Williamson's piece at NRO today about the divide on the right about the Most Equal Comrade's motives for governing as he has.

I generally like Williamson's work. He's a great writer and generally a thinker of great clarity and precision. Still, he sets up a juxtaposition in this piece that is based on faulty terminology. He says that one group on the right basically sides with Romney's view that the MEC is "not a bad guy, just in over his head." Accurate enough so far, but then he says the other group "hates" the MEC and thinks he's "evil." I contend that this group's common view is that the MEC is a radical socialist without a patriotic bone in his body. Some might hate him for that, but most probably don't attach that degree of vitriol to their alarm over him. They just want him removed from his current office and his ability to exert influence on the direction of America.

What makes Williamson's article so frustrating is that he does acknowledge what the left, as enshrined by the Democratic party, is all about. He examines its cultural, economic and national-security biases and draws accurate conclusions: the left is driven by a deep and visceral hatred of basic human freedom and dignity.

But then he advises what he sees as the prudent course: electing a vanilla president (Romney; Williamson's characterization) and keeping mum about just how abrupt a reversal of America's current course the right intends to orchestrate. It's an oddly sterile type of splitting the difference. Proceed politically because you are driven by alarm at the peril in which Western civilization has been placed, but then govern as if it's just another session of Congress and executive administration, replete with all the routine deal-making and hedging one's words and actions with an eye toward "realistically" possible floor votes.

In short, I don't really accept his premise. To say that the MEC is just a garden-variety liberal Democrat and not a hate-worthy evil figure is to obscure the reality that liberal Democrats, at least going back to the early 70s, when the radicals came back into the fold (and infiltrated such fields as law, education, journalism and the arts), but in some ways going back to the era of Herbert Croly and Woodrow Wilson, have been freedom-hating radicals.

The disease has been present for decades. It's now in an advanced stage, not different in kind from what it had been. And the remedy is championing freedom, not in a technocratic, everything-will-be-okay-by-the-way-where-are-you-going-for-lunch kind of way, but with the sense of alarm appropriate to our current juncture.