"You keep using those terms. I do not think they mean what you think they mean."
MADISON, Wis. — Progressive magazine has a century's worth of battles under its belt.
Through internal disputes, money troubles, a First Amendment clash over nuclear secrets and more, the fixture of the American left celebrates its 100-year anniversary still fighting for peace and social justice.
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Editor Matthew Rothschild promised the magazine would oppose Obama when necessary even if it means alienating its liberal readers. He has already criticized Obama for refusing to nationalize troubled banks.
"We are defenders of a set of progressive principles," Rothschild said in the magazine's small, cluttered office across the street from a Catholic church in downtown Madison. "These are principles of civil liberties and civil rights and preserving the environment, combating corporate power."
We'll leave alone the "peace and social justice" shibboleth. That should have been seen long, long ago for the self-evident horseshit that it is. What really stood out to me was the claim that those cretins are "defenders...of civil liberties and civil rights." Considering the fact that, for example, many of them advocate keeping from my 5 ft. 2 girlfriend the one thing that would best help her defend herself against her 6 ft. 4 ex-boyfriend, I am thinking they have a different definition of "civil rights and civil liberties" than most of the rest of us do. Since the first time I saw her use the term in that legendary column from 1993, I always got a huge kick out of lefty standard-bearer Molly Ivins describing herself as a "civil libertarian," considering how she showed herself to be an authoritarian fascist on the level of, say, Benito Mussolini. Call me crazy, but I didn't think civil libertarians would advocate measures like taking things from people — by force of arms if necessary — for acts they didn't commit. I didn't think civil libertarians would brush off the concerns of other civil libertarians by saying things like "You want protection? Get a dog." But then, maybe that's just the bloodthirsty, warmongering, unenlightened Texan retrosexual in me.
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