Anti-Climacus

LINK: In the spirit of not reflexively bashing Nation-types, I should mention that Marc Cooper makes quite the series of good arguments, to wit:

"But all this got me wondering… that the political litmus test that Leftists often apply to those around them reminds me of the racial purity tests favored by the old South African apartheid regime. There were all sort of official categories of “colored” or “black” depending on what percentage of impure blood one possessed.

But to be “white” – you had to be 100% white—the old One Drop Rule. So, sorry, Hitch. It seems that your opposition to capital punishment, to racism and to fascism is all outweighed by your other heretical views in the eyes of thousands of self-satisfied leftists. Whatever you have to say lacks relevance, why bother to even read you, as you have betrayed the cause? You’re but a drunken, celebrity-crazed traitor.

The truly disconcerting part of all this, to borrow a descriptor from Hari, is that lefties rarely apply this purity test to those who stand to their purported left (but who, in reality, are reactionary enemies of democracy).

Example: Hitchens is drummed out of the left because his interpretation of anti-fascism brings him to support certain U.S. government policies and even the President. But what consequences among leftists does, say, Ramsey Clark reap for joining, literally, in the defense of Milosevic and Saddam? Anybody call him a traitor to the left recently?"