Attacking Rand Paul, Progressives Demonstrate Their Ridiculousness

In Bro-gressive Values Revealed: Attacking the Messenger By Any Means Necessary Adele Stan criticizes Salon’s David Sirota for giving kudos to Rand Paul because Rand Paul has also stood up for things she doesn’t like.

So Rand Paul shouldn’t be praised for standing up for civil liberties because he hasn’t stood up for some progressive values in the past?

The easily-accessible irony here is simply divine. I found no fewer than 6 stories praising Obama on Stan’s Alternet bio page. Yet Obama has consistently not only failed to stand up for progressive values but actually worked hard in stark contradiction to those values.

By Stan’s own logic she should be “horrified” to see herself “lauding as courageous and ‘heroic’” a murdering, secretive, civil-liberties-violating president.

She says:

Never mind that to stand with Rand is to stand for a man who sponsored “fetal personhood” amendment that would “ end abortion on demand once and for all,” in Paul’s words, even for rape victims. Try not to notice that to stand with Rand is to exalt a guy who opposes the section of the 1964 Civil Rights Act that desegregated restaurants, lunch counters and housing. He’s also opposed to the Americans With Disabilities Act, preferring the specter of people in wheelchairs barred from full participation in public life to an inconvenient demand on proprietors of establishments otherwise open to the public.

Well, then to praise Obama, Stan must be standing for a man who

• Assassinates American citizens without trial.
• Perpetrates policy of secret drone strikes with horrifying collateral damage, including the killing of a 16-year-old boy and many other documented child killings.
• Has utterly failed to advocate for gay marriage in any useful way.
• Perpetrates armed raids of state-legal marijuana dispensaries. One entrepreneur actually died in jail after being denied medical care.
• Has and continues to prosecute more whistleblowers under the Espionage Act than all previous presidents combined.
• Has and continues to deport more immigrants in his first term than George W. Bush did in two.

I would have thought this would be too obvious to need to be stated, but here it is anyway: You can stand with a person on one issue with which you agree with this person without advocating all their positions.

adele stanblogCathy ReisenwitzCivil RightsGeorge W. BushobamaprogressivesRand Paulstand with rand