Philosopher of disgrace

A member of the Yale faculty read Little Trunk’s FrontPage piece and forwarded the following message to her. In homage to Bob Dylan’s great song “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll,” let’s refer to Little Trunk’s correspondent as the “philosopher of disgrace.” Because his message is illlustrative of the smugness, ignorance and incoherence of the antiwar left, we thought it might be of interest to our readers. We swear we’re not making this stuff up:
“Congratulations on being published. I was a little distracted from your piece by the McCarthyite ad on the margin, enlisting volunteers to root out America’s ‘fifth column,’ the peace movement. But here are some thoughts.
“Does it make one an anti-Semite to point out that the neo-conservatives mentioned keep israel’s security in mind when advocating policy, and they have been influential in this campaign? Do they have exclusive influence on the adminsitration? Of course not. The president, VP, and Rove have to answer to Halliburton and Bechtel first and foremost. Did the speaker say that Israel was behind the war (which it’s not) OR that policy-advocates who care about Israel have influenced its prosecution? Those, it seems to me, [are] two different things.
“Do people who are pro-war feel ‘vindicated’ by 100+ American deaths and 1000+ iraqi deaths? I can’t help but think that these people were alive 6 weeks ago. Then, indeed, you are all much tougher than those who oppose the war.
“Why call Saddam’s regime ‘Stalinist’? Did he have some large-scale program redistributing oil money to the iraqi people, that I don’t know about? I’m always amused about how the adjective ‘fascist’ is never used comfortably if at all by conservatives, even when its appropriate.
“Pointing out that the speaker’s charge that Bush was not-elected was a ‘predictable’ charge, does not make it an untrue charge.
“These are some points that might have been finessed in the piece that would have made it veer less toward the kind of gangsta-right polemics that have come to dominate the print, tv and radio media over the past fifteen years. But maybe that’s what you’re aspiring to. I hope not.”