Lew, the attacks on Judge Andrew Napolitano speak volumes about the enforcer-commissar strain of the Left (which in my own experience is practically the whole Left, with a few anomalies here and there like Glenn Greenwald and my co-editor Murray Polner).  A normal progressive, of whom there are all too few, would say something like this: “I do not agree with much of what the Judge says, but at least he introduces some level of serious thought into the jingoist, anti-intellectual neocon right.  He is a champion of peace and civil liberties against the imperialists and police-staters.  Whatever my differences with the Judge, his support for peace alone redeems him in my mind, for this is the most important moral issue of the day.”

Instead, without even acknowledging any of this — I mean, isn’t it at least slightly interesting that a rising star on the right holds these views?  just slightly? — we get the enforcer routine.  “Citizen, this man doesn’t believe what the government tells him.  Never mind that hardly anyone, ourselves excepted, has the kind of naive confidence in the regime that would make him think we’ve heard the whole truth about 9/11.  This man must be crushed.  No more Question Authority.  The new motto is Shut Your _____ Mouth.”

Scratch a “progressive” and you find a neocon with sandals.  The attacks on the Judge tell you all you need to know: they prefer the neocons to a consistent advocate of liberty.  They attack the neocons now and again, to be sure, but not in the career-destroying mode they reserve for actual dissidents.

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