Whence Moonbattery?

The fisking of Dick Durbin for his comparison of nasty interrogation tactics at Gitmo to the atrocities of Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot goes on apace. Dicky's non-apology did nothing to dampen the furor.

To the fiskathon I have nothing to add. Dick's a dope, and his misplaced analogy insulted millions, both alive and dead.

The "XXX-is-Hitler/Stalin" meme has grown explosively.

On the Left we have Dicky, doddering old Bob Byrd's comparison of attempts to limit the filibuster to Hitler's tactics, and the Amnesty International comparison of Gitmo to the Gulag. (On the right, admittedly, we have Rush Limbaugh's hyberbolic coinage "feminazis" and Rick Santorum's quickly-repudiated use of the Nazi meme.)

Meanwhile, it's the Left's rhetoric that boils over, especially against Bush & Co. and their policies. The hotter the invective gets, the more devoid of content are the critiques. Whence the moonbat rhetoric?

I've tried to give voice to an anti-Bush critic's view in this post, but I'm still groping explanation of why the escalating rhetoric and the lack of cool heads to stop it or extract apologies.

Here are a few possible explanations:

The Left is out of power in the Executive and Legislative branches, and even in danger of losing the Judiciary, while their MSM are in free fall. They are lashing out in frustration.

You don't get famous for using reason. You get famous for being outrageous. It's a caculated effort to be heard.

There's a reflexive anti-American and anti-military attitutde among certain sectors on the Left, and it's sufficiently corrupted the culture of the Democratic party to overcome any impulse to thought before speech, especially since the most partisan in the party are the furthest left. They like tub-thumping, no matter how inaccurate and irresponsible it is.

The parts of the old Dem coalition—the south, urban ethnics and their political machines, craft unions, Catholics—that would have risen up in outrage against this sort of thing (and thus deterred it in the first place) are largely gone. A party of minorities, trial lawyers, public employee unions, urban singles, and self-regarding sophisticates of various sorts doesn't have a wing left in it to put the brakes on this kind of nuttiness.

It seems to me that along with other factors I've mentioned, the demise of the Soviet Union is a factor here. When the Cold War began, a liberal coalition drove the pro-Stalinist communists out of the Democratic Party and mostly out of the leadership of the unions (Ronald Reagan was part of this fight in Hollwood). When there was no more Soviet threat, and no more Cold War, there was nothing to keep any kind of left-wing kook out of the Democratic Party. Indeed, as true believers on the one hand, and cultural creators on the other, left-wing types have an influence disporportionat to their numbers. Meanwhile, in the name of “free speech,” anti-McCarthyism, and racial pandering, the party tolerates, and allows into its debates, kooks like Kucinich and racist demagogues like Al Sharpton.

Campaign finance reform has further weakened the party structure and strengthened uncontrollable groups like MoveOn.org. There's nobody to stop this stuff, and as legacies like Joe Lieberman and Daniel Patrick Moynihan die off, it will become increasingly common, at least as long as the party is out of power with no opportunistic Clintonian centrists with clout to impose some common sense.

Bad for the party. Tragic for the nation.