and he's apparently got a new witch hunt ready for you.
The TNR editor's lede piece on their website is headlined:
"AN ARGUMENT FOR A NEW LIBERALISM: A Fighting Faith."
So far so good, right? Kossacks are nothing if not fighters.
But no, silly, he doesn't mean fight for liberalism; he means fight alongside BushCo against Al Qaeda.
And if you won't join in, he wants to run you out of the Democratic party as an un-American terrorist-coddling traitor--just like, as he explains in an analogy to Cold War anti-communism, the Democratic party "purged" itself of Henry Wallace and anyone with the faintest taint of pink during the late 1940s.
Today, three years after September 11 brought the United States face-to-face with a new totalitarian threat, liberalism has still not "been fundamentally reshaped" by the experience. On the right, a "historical re-education" has indeed occurred--replacing the isolationism of the Gingrich Congress with George W. Bush and Dick Cheney's near-theological faith in the transformative capacity of U.S. military might. But American liberalism, as defined by its activist organizations, remains largely what it was in the 1990s--a collection of domestic interests and concerns. On health care, gay rights, and the environment, there is a positive vision, articulated with passion. But there is little liberal passion to win the struggle against Al Qaeda--even though totalitarian Islam has killed thousands of Americans and aims to kill millions; and even though, if it gained power, its efforts to force every aspect of life into conformity with a barbaric interpretation of Islam would reign terror upon women, religious minorities, and anyone in the Muslim world with a thirst for modernity or freedom.
For Beinart, the enemy within are the "softs." And who are the "softs"? Back to his anti-communist analogy:
The softs ... were not necessarily communists themselves. But they refused to make anti-communism their guiding principle. For them, the threat to liberal values came entirely from the right--from militarists, from red-baiters, and from the forces of economic reaction. To attack the communists, reliable allies in the fight for civil rights and economic justice, was a distraction from the struggle for progress.
So unless you're willing to make anti-terrorism your "guiding principle," Beinart thinks you don't belong in the Democratic party.
With friends like these, who needs Republicans?
His full idiocy is on display at:
http://www.tnr.com/docprint.mhtml?i=20041213&s=beinart121304