I’m not a Kos fan (as I wrote here and here and here). I think he’s a destructive force in politics and a disaster for the Democrats. I’ve been saying for a while that the demand for ideological purity is political poison. Jonathan Chait makes that point as well here, in his ongoing TNR feud with Kosistan. But the really delicious part is this:

In good revolutionary style, Kos ends with a ringing declaration that TNR remains dead and victory for people-power is at hand. “It is now beyond clear that the dying New Republic is mortally wounded,” he writes. Where once it was clear, now it is beyond clear, and where once we were dying we are now both dying and mortally wounded.

N.Z. Bear is merciless:

When it was over, the formerly glorious DLC was but a smoking ruin, its leadership having fled into hiding under assumed names to live out the rest of their pathetic existences with heads hung in shame from the ignominious defeat visited upon them by the Power of Kos.

In a TTLB exclusive, I managed to locate one such leader, Hillary C, who agreed to speak with me under condition that I not reveal her location (especially to her estranged husband, who was famously spared by Kos after he pledged fealty to the One True Progressive Cause). I can say that she now resides in a small Midwestern city, earning a humble living as a Traffic Enforcement Officer (meter maid) , having been previously dismissed from her position as a Wal-Mart greeter for being “tempermentally unsuited” to the role.

And he provides a cornucopia of links here.

President Bush in Hungary, honoring those who fell and those who were crushed in 1956:

“They crushed the Hungarian uprising, but not the Hungarian people’s thirst for freedom,” Bush said in a speech on Gellert Hill, overlooking the Danube River and the Hungarian Parliament. “The lesson of the Hungarian experience is clear: Liberty can be delayed, but it cannot be denied.”…

“Many of you lived through the nightmare of fascism, or communism, or both. Yet you never lost hope. You kept faith in freedom,” Bush told his Budapest audience. “And 50 years after you watched Soviet tanks invade your beloved city, you now watch your grandchildren play in the streets of a free Hungary.”

I expect to hear sneers and smears about our president’s photo-op trip to Budapest. Let the sneerers and the smearers have their fun. I wonder how they would have behaved in the face of that tyranny, not to mention those tanks.

Meanwhile, there are plenty of us for whom Bush’s words are deeply moving and meaningful, including yours truly. We are grateful.
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TBW, r.i.p.