Sullivan’s True Colors; Has There Ever been Doubt About Them?

I note Saint Andrew the Incontinent, this morning:

“I do think that comparing Obama’s proposals for voluntary service to the forced labor marches in building the White Sea-Baltic canal by Stalin is absurd. But it is also deeply insulting to the actual victims of Stalinism.”

So, Andrew…your first response is “Obama’s not as bad as all that?”  Seems a rather half-assed attempt to disconnect Obama from socialism, not that I’d expect better from you.  Perhaps it’d be worthwhile noting that back in Stalin’s time there were a lot of folks who thought he, and what he asked people to do, wasn’t all that bad either.  That seems to me a point that apologists for socialism intentionally miss… and fairly regularly, as you have here. You make things sound like a Stalinist propaganda poster. Everything is good so long as we remember socialism is God.

At no point, to my best recollection, did Derbyshire protest when the Bush administration actually did use Communist torture techniques against incarcerated terror suspects.

Oh, please. Mostly, that’s because Bush didn’t. Oh, and should we point out that Stalin’s efforts were against his own citizens? NOW, who’s over-stepping, Sullivan?

But maybe his revulsion at the methods of totalitarians will shortly be revived now that there’s a black man in the White House.

And there it is, gang… the first indication that Sullivan knows his argument is weak as water… the charge that Derb is a racist. The left whips this charge out like Garlic and Crosses as one would protection from Dracula, and seems ample evidence of Sullivan holding a busted flush.  Indeed; this post of Saint Andrew’s is as vacuous as any I’ve ever seen from him… and Obama’s not even in office, yet.

Billy notes the same story, and says:

This is an old lefty ploy, according to which the only people who get to point out the principles that underpin something like Stalinism are the ones who are already members of the club.

It’s not true, and you’d better not fall for it.

Heh.
Yeah, I agree his understanding of it’s principles are distinctly rose-colored. He is able to recite the more agreeable side of it’s principles without much effort, while minimizing the downside, as he does here. Like any confirmed socialist… of which he’s long since become one, it’s become knee-jerk reaction with him.

In fact, Sullivan’s delivery of this crap of his reminds me rather distinctly of Vladimir Posner in all those Ray Bream shows he appeared on, back in the day. (I know; I had the board through most of the ones that went out on that net. I wish, though, the old ABC Talkradio network had archived that stuff, or that I had… it’d have come in handy now.  Given Bream’s handling of the man, it would have brought a bit of reality to the discussion.)

Seems also worth asking… if his defense of the growth of American socialism is this lame now, and this obvious, how bad will he be come next year about this time, or in four years time, for that matter?