Remembering Harry Truman

Look out, Vast Right Wing Conspiracy! Stygius is encouraging some "plain speaking" for the "progressives" here and, shades of HST, suggests "saying what you mean and meaning what you say." For example:

So instead of rooting around finding ways to reconcile progressive values with national security-speak, first embrace a couple of core premises:

1. There are a group of fanatic killers who want to kill as many Americans as they can; and,
2. Dead terrorists can't kill Americans.

Internalize these premises. Believe in them. I have little doubt that progressivism can coexist with them; it's just a question of getting over bad universalizations about human goodness and political cause-and-effect that make one uncomfortable with the notion of killing bad guys...is killing sufficient to solving the world's problems or making America secure? Hell no; which is when all those other bullet points and Top 10 lists come in to the picture. But it's necessary, and a damn fine place to start in communicating where you're coming from. In the end, the objective is annihilating the enemy; one way is by annihilating their existence, the other is by annihilating the relevance -- or salience -- of their religio-political agenda. These are not mutually exclusive.

And, you know, he may just be on to something...

Update: In an older post I noted some Democrats for whom I had some respect...but those were simpler times, I suppose...