Eugene Volokh
From dKosopedia
Eugene Volokh is a conservative blogger.
On August 11, 2005, he attacked a strawman of "Westerners who side with the "Iraqi resistance" against America and its allies." Ted Barlow of Crooked Timber responded on the same day:
Who, may I ask, are all the “Westerners who side with the ‘Iraqi resistance’ against America and its allies”? Generally speaking, the “Iraqi resistance” is killing our troops in the interest of a fundamentalist ideology that liberals find appalling. If our countrymen are actually taking their side as they try to kill coalition troops, that seems like a (conversational, if not legal) accusation of treason. Who are we talking about? Ward Churchill? George Galloway? Michael Moore, for comparing the insurgents to the Minutemen? Some Guy With A Sign Once? Could this vast conspiracy fit into a VW minibus?
Of course, James Taranto carelessly uses this sort of language all the time, and readers know damn well who he’s talking about. It’s not referring to a handful of psychopaths and extremists who hardly need refuting. It’s aimed at opponents of the war in Iraq, who aren’t anti-war, just on the other side. In the past few years, we’ve seen a constant, sickening effort on the part of supporters of the war in Iraq to conflate opposition the war with support for terrorists.
I’ve come to expect this sort of rhetoric from the mainstream conservative media and blogs. I don’t expect it from Eugene Volokh. He has earned the respect and readership of a wide swath of left-leaning readers for his intelligence, his fair-mindedness, and for his ability to express a right-wing viewpoint without displaying contempt for the other side. There are a million places that war opponents can go to get accused of siding against their country. It appears that there’s now one more.
With regard to the last paragraph, commenter "fmguru" replied:
Why not? Wasn’t he the one who posted a long article about the personal satisfaction he derived from the thought of his enemies being tortured?
I’m getting a little tired of reading these posts where liberals are let down by conservatives who they thought were reasonable and respectable and intellectually honest* (“Oh, Tacitus, how could you?”). It’s Year Five of the Second Bush Administration – anyone who hasn’t jumped off the Endless War for Empire bandwagon by now by definition isn’t reasonable or respectable. They’re all wingnuts underneath; some are just better at hiding it than others.
*and their converse, the usually-reliable wingnut who breaks formation for a moment to criticise torture or the Iraq quagmire or Bush’s anti-science policy, and so gathers fulsome praise from the liberal blogosphere before falling back into full attack-dog mode. See Andrew Sullivan or that “Baloon Juice” guy.Meme: Condemning Epsilons
After some prodding, Volokh updated his post -- while still not naming any persons or organizations -- to also say:
Thus was born a new meme, explained by Sean Carroll as "condemnation of groups of people whom, although nobody is claiming that they are numerous or influential, we can nevertheless agree are worthy of our scorn." One of Volokh's commenters provided the first example:
Belle Waring contributes this:
Brad DeLong joined the game with the following: