Who is this guy?

Before this morning, I had never heard of Justin Gardner. Now, he’s marginalizing me.

Come on, let’s debate for real without all of this extra bs. I’m more than willing to admit I’m wrong, but give me reasons to respect you instead of giving me reasons to marginalize you.

God, I hate being marginalized by people I don’t know from Adam.

The core of the dispute here seems to be our assessment of Glenn Reynolds centrism, or lack thereof. We here at LGM have been joined by Thad, Paperwight, and a host of sensible people in suggesting that Glenn Reynolds is a right wing hack. When pressed for evidence by avowed centrist Justin, we presented. Justin responded by insisting that, in fact, Ward Churchill is the face of the left. When we asked him to present evidence that any significant liberal would give Ward Churchill the time of day, the silence was, I think, deafening.

Now, Justin has called for a debate. Fine. What are we debating? Justin has asserted that people at LGM questioned his relationship with reality and called him names. I can find no evidence to support this in the comment string in question, although it’s fair to say that his assertions aroused a bit of surprise and indignation here at LGM. But, hey, we’re an indignant bunch, so whatever, no problem.

But now, after I’ve perused Justin’s blog a bit, I do have some questions. Well, really one big question.

Justin, precisely what do you think it means to be a centrist?

Because, you really like calling yourself one. You also really like the word “moderate”, and the word “ideas”, and the word “debate”. But I’m rather at a loss regarding what you think those things are. Case in point, this post on the entirely unsurprising 1996 memo regarding Bin Laden moving to Afghanistan. Now, this memo is not really news, as it is well established that the Clinton administration knew Bin Laden was a threat while he lived in Sudan and while he lived in Afghanistan. The administration, after all, ineffectually launched some missiles at Bin Laden’s camps in Afghanistan, so it’s not as if the Clintons were entirely unaware.

Now, in the post you want to set up a patently absurd equivalence between this memo and the “Bin Laden Determined to Attack US” memo:

A bunch of right-wing blogs are jumping on this one, and I can’t say that I blame them. The liberal blogs definitely trumpeted memos like the amazingly accurately titled, “Osama Bin Laden Deteremined To Strike In US”, so turnabout is fair play.

But let’s all remember, that while we can keep focusing on the past and pointing fingers at this person and that, it seems that everybody dropped the ball on this one, otherwise those planes never would have hit the towers.

If the two memos were equivalent in weight and impact (and I’d like to see a plausible argument that they were, much as I’d like to see the Mariners in the World Series this year), then this argument might even be reasonable. However, in the comments section of your own post, you say the following:

I think the memo that Rice got was much more damning, but the memos still serve the same purpose when you look at them from a certain partisan POV, which is the point I’m trying to make.

In other words, both sides use distractions like these to make you think somebody was asleep at the wheel. Let’s just get past this nonsense and deal with the simple fact that if either President really knew that this was going to happen, they would have moved mountains to stop it.

I’m sorry.

I’m squinting really, really hard, and this still doesn’t make a bit of sense. The memo to Rice was more damning, yet “from a certain partisan POV” they both look the same. Okay. . . . .

I mean, a sensible person might read the first part and think “Hey, the 2001 memo is much worse than the 1996 memo. Those who try to draw an equivalence between them are really off their collective rocker”. You then follow that up by saying that they are, nonetheless, equivalent, because partisans on either side could use them for political gain.

I’d love it if you could clear this up for me. In the meantime, let me suggest to you that centrism means a bit more than simply splitting the difference between right and left, which is what you seem to be wanting to do. Really, I don’t think you’re succeeding even at that, because you appear to be falling more often on the right side than the left. But, I should also relieve you of the concern that you might be marginalizing us, because, really, nobody here cares about being marginalized by you. So, rest easy.