April 2nd, 2007

Michelle Malkin has put together her "John Doe Manifesto". Caution: extreme helpings of smarmy self-righteous national socialism and jingoism contained in the following:

...

I will act when homeland security officials ask me to "report suspicious activity."

I will embrace my local police department's admonition: "If you see something, say something."

I am John Doe.

...

Remember: now that the Right is in power (they are not the victims they portray themselves to be) they have made themselves the convenient movement of fascism, nationalism, and the unencumbered authoritarian government. As Greenwald explained, the Left is now the movement that necessarily opposes the state - at least, for the moment. If you don't agree with a corporate state that sees no limits on its power, you are the enemy of these John Does by their own admission, and if we're all the enemy, we might as well pool our efforts to resist these Barney Fifes.

Incidentally, I'd like to think that left libertarians have no enemies save those who seek to use state privilege to impose conditions on their fellow men and women which they would otherwise not accept, and even then only to the extent that they do so. The current political climate requires the solidarity of individuals, not the hive-mind tribalism of political grandstanding and labeling. Malkin and her ilk, though contemptible, are not my enemies - the system they support is.

And our allies are all those on the Left (and maybe some disgruntled paleoconservatives) who work to confound the Right's totalitarian plans for a surveillance society - even if we don't always agree on the alternative. After all, any theoretical differences we may have with one another pale in comparison to the immediate threat posed by the leviathan state and it's corporate complex. It's time for action!