With all the garbage and personal insults spewed on this web site every day about government, Democrats and progressives, accusing me of not engaging in a reasonable discussion is kind of a joke.

There are damn few of us with the guts to take the abuse day after day and try to express a point-of-view that is contrary to the majority belief here that government is the root of all evil.

I congratulate you on not being a partisan hack (neither am I) and having a contrary view to the neo-cons on the recent wars. My criticism of your piece stemmed from my frustration that the column seemed to turn Filner’s courageous efforts in the civil rights movement into a negative. And I also knew it would bring forth the usual venom that any Democrat gets on this blog.

I did not mean to make it personal; I apologize if you took it that way.

Brian, I guess you never went to a McCain or Romney campaign rally. The stuff said about President Obama’s background as an “activist” and “community organizer” made it sound as if he were one step above a felon.

For the record, you will look far and wide in my columns and blogs and you will never see me praising the Republican Party in a partisan hack style. I’m a libertarian who likes the pro-free market part of the GOP platform and not much else. I’ve been published twice by antiwar.com, for example. I’ve voted for the GOP presidential nominee twice in the past 24 years.

Yes, I do occasionally praise Dems. See Saturday’s post. But why do I criticize them so much more than GOPers? Because they have power.

Who in the heck is saying that the term is pejorative? Activists however, do not good executives make. I found myself agreeing with Filner’s criticism of the Tourism Marketing deal but he sold out when his response to crony capitalism was…more crony capitalism.

I generally disagree with Filner politically but he brings an abrasive and confrontational, DC-centric skill set to a position which mostly rewards consensus and coalition building. He has little or no respect for people with whom he disagrees. He hates to be questioned, bullies when critiqued, and gets very little done because of his demeanor.

He’d be a great radio talk show host

But thanks for the history lesson. Should we call Bob Dornan an “activist” also?

Don’t know what Dornan’s views were back in the Sixties. He may have believed in slashing government agencies back then, although I don’t think he would have wanted the Justice Department to butt out of his efforts to register voters. But it is more likely that the only governments he wanted off of people’s backs were the governments in places like Mississippi and Alabama that were denying people their civil rights and that he saw the federal government as an ally, not an enemy.

He may well have changed his ideology over time, just as Reagan did. But my point is that his service in the civil rights movement–just like Filner’s–deserves praise, not ridicule.

http://www.angelfire.com/il/Dornan/dornbio.html

Did you ever support Dornan?

Because if Filner’s civil rights record makes him always right, as you imply, then doesn’t the same hold for Dornan?

Dornan, of course, favored helping blacks, Latinos and others by getting government off their backs through tax cuts and slashing government agencies. So that now must be Steve Mehlman’s position too, yes?

To paraphrase you, “If [Dornan] was wrong, does that mean that George Wallace, Bull Connor and the Klan were right?”

— John Seiler

As Filner himself noted, when the Republican business interests of San Diego were pushing for a “strong Mayor” form of city government under Jerry Sanders a few years ago, they most certainly never stopped to consider what that would look like under someone they hadn’t picked for the office themselves.

It’s a good thing.

Again, Steve-o? That’s strange, coming from someone whose party uses a playbook with “1938” written on it. Every Big Government solution the Dems champion has been around since my mother was in a baby carriage.