There are no more moderates

Jeff Fecke posts a call to action:

But [is the AARP] a piece of the liberal puzzle, right in lockstep with Ted Kennedy, Hillary Clinton, Willie Horton, and Noam Chomsky? Don't make me laugh.

So why are [the Republicans sliming them]? Why would Rove and Co. go after a large, nonpartisan interest group that was supporting his policies as recently as two years ago?

Simple. They're doing it because the AARP is in their way. And they will do anything they have to do to get their way.

They will destroy the AARP if they have to. They will call John Kerry insane. They will stab Ted Kennedy in the back. They will compare Max Cleland to Osama bin Laden. They will declare Jimmy Carter a traitor. And they will not hide what they are doing.

They are doing it so that their agenda becomes law. Period. It is not about what is good for the country--not even on a Reaganesqe level, where I could disagree with the man and still see that from his point of view, he was doing what he thought was best.

They are not doing this to make things better. They are doing this to cement power.

This is why I went back to the Democratic party. Because people willing to lie to advance their agenda must be opposed. I was right to back Kerry in 2004, and I am right to oppose Bush now.

The Democratic party has tried moderation. I say this now, and I mean it: it is time to fight.

We may lose some battles along the way. There is no guarantee that standing on principle will win us Congress in 2006, or the White House in 2008.

But we must stand and fight anyway. We must stand in the way of the Bush attack on Social Security. We must stand steadfast against making permanent the profligate Bush tax cuts. And--yes--with Iraq on the way to peace and prosperity and liberal democracy (or so say the neocons), it is time for us to stand up and demand that the administration tell us when our troops are coming home.

We can work on framing these issues all we want. But it is time to believe in ourselves. We are not wrong, they are not right, and if we try to meet them in the middle they will only roll us. That's been proven time and again.

I am a moderate, by temperament and ideology. But there is no moderation in Karl Rove's world. And so I close with a quote from the man who started the revolution on the right--a man who would be aghast as what passes for conservatism today: Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice; moderation in the defense of justice no virtue.