The irony goes deeper still. As any careful reader of my blog about ALEC will probably have noticed--though I get the feeling that Mr. Thompson and his colleagues may not be such careful readers--I did not raise the questions I did about ALEC from a partisan point of view. Quite the contrary. I tried to write with real respect about the history of the conservative movement in the United States, because I genuinely do respect that movement and believe it has made many important contributions to our political life. Although I do have serious criticisms of the role ALEC has played in our politics, my concerns have to do with threats to core American notions of due process and transparent governance. I worked hard to avoid partisan criticism, enough so that I'm pretty sure many readers to my left thought that I wasn't nearly critical enough in what I wrote.
My situation is filled with irony, too. Like Cronon, I am not a member of, or an activist for, either party. My political leanings have been progressive over the past 18-20 years, but I have voted for members of both parties. My blog primarily is about corruption in our justice system, not politics--and I've criticized lawyers and judges from both political persuasions.
There is at least one major difference in my situation and that of Prof. Cronon. UAB currently has a corrupt and inept administration, and it appears GOP operatives successfully lobbied weak-kneed officials to fire me. The University of Wisconsin, thankfully, appears to actually be run by ethical people. We've see no signs that Republicans will get very far in trying to harm Prof. Cronon's career.
In fact, all the Wisconsin GOP has managed to do so far is to bring its under-handed tactics to national attention. Paul Krugman, of The New York Times, tackles the story in a Sunday op-ed piece titled "American Thought Police." Krugman said the effort to go after Cronon's e-mails is the latest example of what has become a common GOP tactic:
If this action strikes you as no big deal, you're missing the point. The hard right -- which these days is more or less synonymous with the Republican Party -- has a modus operandi when it comes to scholars expressing views it dislikes: never mind the substance, go for the smear. And that demand for copies of e-mails is obviously motivated by no more than a hope that it will provide something, anything, that can be used to subject Mr. Cronon to the usual treatment.
The Cronon affair, then, is one more indicator of just how reflexively vindictive, how un-American, one of our two great political parties has become.
I'm pleased to see Krugman use the term "un-American," because that's exactly how many modern conservatives behave--even though they are quick to wave the flag and employ patriotic rhetoric.
Like me, Krugman expects Prof. Cronon to survive this skirmish in good shape. But, Krugman says, there is a larger point to be made:
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