The anger directed at people like @MaxBoot is ridiculous and deserves a longer response - and the piece in The Intercept is beneath comment - but for more sane people, here's something to think about: Max calling out the right does not, by default, mean the left is correct. /1
One reason I became a conservative and GOPer in my youth is that I felt we were smarter, more willing to correct errors, have pitched arguments, even change course. One reason I've left is because we are no longer such a movement, at least not in the GOP. So stipulated. /2
What Max is doing, however, is thinking through - in public - whether he was wrong, and about what. Instead of noting how insanely rare that is in American public life now, he's getting blasted from the left for not admitting his crimes before the People and the State. /3
I wish people on the left were *nearly* as introspective as Max is being, because mark my words, leftist friends: Trump saved you from yourselves. His emergence headed off some serious intra-left fights that you're still going to have. And you're not going to enjoy them. /4
I've known Max only cordially, but shared various venues with him for a good 15 years or so. On some things he was more rigid than me; on others, more thoughtful. But we shared the sin, apparently, of thinking that deposing Saddam was a good idea. So did a lot of people. /5
And to this day, I'll say: it was morally a good idea, but yes, executed with horrific hubris and incompetence. But that's not really the point: Max's critics have two other goals here. First, they want to negate all past decisions by every conservative - and not just Iraq. /6
They want a full and complete reversal not just on the GOP, but on every idea it ever had, with Iraq as the first thing on the list. More grandly, they think Trump is the secret weapon against any future conservative idea, ever. They think a final, irrevocable win is in reach. /7
That's just childish and silly wishcasting, but it underlies some of the attacks on Max and other NTers who are failing leftist purity tests. Uh, note: I'm still a conservative, on a *lot* of things. Saying that Max and I were on a bus full of head cases doesn't change that. /8
Trying to mau-mau the Never Trumpers, or the apostates like Max, because we won't repudiate every single thought we ever had is the kind of Stalinism that helped keep people like me (I won't speak for Max) in place for longer than we should have been. /9
And when the crackup of the left comes - as it will - I look forward to the shake-out when good-hearted liberals realize that they, too, are sharing a bus with some cranks, traitors, conspiracy nuts, wanna-be totalitarians, and other creeps they ignored because of Trump. /10x
