Decency

According to Matt Welch, there are wingers feeling nothing but elation at the kidnapping and imminent murder of French journalists. Specifically:

Her site [that of one of the journalists' wives], which has never been political (she's not an opinion journalist), has become the latest magnet for the PaveFrance crowd. Today, some guy apparently wrote something about how he hoped the two journalists' heads were shaved, to facilitate the sawing-off process.

To adapt a phrase, these people aren't pro-war, they're on the other side. Of basic human decency. By all means, give Chirac the rhetorical hell he deserves. But is it asking too much of the Terror Tuffies to stop openly and anonymously rooting for the murder of Emmanuelle's friends � on her own personal website? [Emphasis in original]

Yeah, these creeps are on the other side. But it gets worse. One can only surmise what Matt was responding to in this comment:

OK! That's one deleted comment & banned IP address! Insulting my wife is a "conversation" that we are not going to be having here (or at her site either; the comments have now been disabled). Especially by people who use the name "Coward" while appropriating the e-mail address "team@usa.com."

Team USA is NOT filled with cowards, thank you very much, and little fuckwits who hide behind pseudonyms to pester French journalists they've never met have as much to do with being American as Benedict fucking Arnold.

The left has its own demons to exorcise, no doubt about it (and more on that in a bit). But any glance at liberal opinion pages, websites, and intellectual journals (like Dissent, my old stomping ground) will demonstrate at the very least an earnest commitment to self-criticism, whereas their counterparts on the right are far more interested in closing ranks and making excuses. Glenn? Jonah? Please.