True North

When I was a wee lad, I viewed people in high school as paragons of wisdom, wizened models of maturity, founts of wordliness dispensed with a twinkle in the eye and a far-off knowing look. Bask we now in the radiance of their brilliance.

Of course, nowadays, I look at high schoolers and think, yeesh, what a bunch of skinny young immature punks.

I went through a similar transformation when it comes to politics. I came to realize that not every grown-up has learned the same lessons.

Take for instance newspaper columnists. Pick one at random. Say, Nick Coleman. I didn’t have the gumption to go through his column on the Forest Lake snub of Vets for Freedom because I didn’t want to work myself into an emotional state where I might end up beating my kids.

However, the MOB’s SEAL team of Shot in the Dark, KAR, Anti-Strib and a few others are fearless about coming ashore on a quiet beach in Komrade Nikolai Kountry, collecting a few scalps and returning to the sub.

Mitch points out this gem,

There would not have been much outrage if that big bus, instead of saying “Heroes Tour,” had been painted to say “Republican Tour to Shore Up the Pro-War Vote.” But that would have been an honest paint job.

If there’s any annoying Lefty tic, (or is that Tic tic?), it’s this penchant for smearing black and white into a dull greasy gray.

The definition of “Hero” does not depend on your political orientation. Can we agree on that?

True, Coleman does say,

Permit me to say something: Vets for Freedom are real vets, their heroics are authentic (but not all heroes support the war) and their right to their opinion is unquestioned.

Fine. But that should have been the first and only paragraph in his column. He says in the next breath, though,

But uniforms and valor should not hide a political agenda. On that, they must be questioned. Even in a school. Especially in a school.

Clearly Coleman thinks “support for war” is a bad thing. I can only guess at what he thinks it means. Maybe he thinks it means wanting to take an Abrams tank for a joyride to run over and smear cute little children into paste.

Whatever it is, he obviously doesn’t think it means a veteran talking about the necessity for war, and discussing the discipline and courage it takes to fight an enemy who uses murder and torture as tactics of coercion and fear.

This is from the Vets for Freedom mission statement,

Our mission is to educate the American public about the importance of achieving success in these conflicts by applying our first-hand knowledge to issues of American strategy and tactics in Iraq.

We support policymakers from both sides of the aisle who have stood behind our great generation of American warriors on the battlefield, and who have put long-term national security before short-term partisan political gain.

Coleman, this model of maturity, when confronted with someone who has an opinion about the dangers in not standing in front of a bloody medieval ideology that wants to spread, and is trying to spread, he puts his hands over his ears and says “La la la la la I can’t hear you, demagogue, la la la la.”

Take us out here, Mitch.

Speaking of politicizing things.

Spare us the phony concern.

Nick Coleman, who became the doormat of the Twin Cities center-right alt-media for politicizing schools, is only “concerned” because students might see a message that disagrees with him and the party whose monkey he is.

Cross-posted at Truth Vs. The Machine. Comments welcome.