Steyn Logic

To follow up on my previous post, here's Mark Steyn reacting to the outrage expressed by many over his (false) smearing of twelve-year old Graeme Frost and his family:

Sorry, no sale. The Democrats chose to outsource their airtime to a Seventh Grader. If a political party is desperate enough to send a boy to do a man's job, then the boy is fair game. As it is, the Dems do enough cynical and opportunist hiding behind biography and identity, and it's incredibly tedious. And anytime I send my seven-year-old out to argue policy you're welcome to clobber him, too. The alternative is a world in which genuine debate is ended and, as happened with Master Frost, politics dwindles down to professional staffers writing scripts to be mouthed by Equity moppets.

Steyn's response is remarkable on a number of levels. First, how depraved do you have to be to think that the only possible way of responding to a policy argument is to "clobber" a kid who spoke out in favor of it? Steyn makes it like Republicans had no other choice than to attack the Frost family, that there was simply no other way of proceeding. But that's such nonsense. Even if you think your enemy is using a child as a "human shield," as some wingnuts have callously described this situation, that doesn't mean you just open fire on the child. What's the matter with these people?

Moreover, did anyone else's hypocrisy detectors overload when they read this?

As it is, the Dems do enough cynical and opportunist hiding behind biography and identity, and it's incredibly tedious. And anytime I send my seven-year-old out to argue policy you're welcome to clobber him, too.

Two words: General Petraeus. Has there ever been a better example of "hiding behind biography and identity"? The administration made every effort to use Petraeus's credentials and uniform to stifle all substantive policy debate about Iraq. We were told repeatedly that Petraeus's word was gospel and that any attempt to question his wisdom or veracity was despicable. A Moveon ad questioning Petraeus's honesty caused such a stir that Republicans demanded (and received) an official condemnation from both houses of Congress.

But apparently it's okay to "clobber" a twelve-year old kid if advocates of a certain policy decide to use him as a spokesman for the cause. That's so very different.