Know who your friends are.

You have to be careful who your friends are. That’s an old adage but it still applies, especially in the age of blogging. Charles Johnson became an overnight sensation on the Right with his very graphical illustrations showing Dan Rather’s fake letters about George Bush’s National Guard service were composed on a computer using Microsoft Word. A few years he later reverted to form and today is back to being a hate filled Lefty.

I’m afraid that the newest Right-wing darling, Ann Althouse, is also destined to go back to her Liberal roots. She and her husband are famous for their “Army of Davids” photos and videos of the union protests and riots in Madison, Wisconsin. By showing what the MSM is “spiking,” the Right has adopted her as one their own. But she’s not. Anyone who voted for Obama - and before him a long list of Democrats - is a Liberal at heart. She is, after all, a law professor at the University of Wisconsin at Madison; a position and a location that virtually guarantees that you will be a Liberal.

I was brought back to reality by this exchange she had a Bloggingheads video discussion with Robert Wright. In their discussion of the Libyan war this is what Wright said (my transcript begins at 12:00 minutes)

“This intervention was authorized by the UN security council which as a lawyer… you know … in terms of international law is actually lawful … whereas Bush’s was the opposite. The Security Council did not go along. It was .. it was … a … technically in my view an illegal war he was launching. I hope given these two facts alone the magnitude and the illegality he would have a word with the American people …” [Wright then goes on about the Arab League, an assembly of Middle Eastern dictators, asking for the UN to intervene as a way of enhancing the “legality” of Obama’s War.]

Here’s my “aha” moment: Althouse – who frequently interrupts Wright in this discussion – raises no objections. Wright is stating that the American President gets his legal authority to wage war from the United Nations Security Council, not from the American Constitution, Congress or the American people … and Althouse raises no objection.

Althouse implies in the video exchange that she voted for Obama because she approves of his international orientation. Later on in the exchange she said that she voted for Obama because she wanted to draw the Democrats into the things that needed to be done to protect the country. In effect what she’s saying that she figured that Obama was lying when he denounced Bush for the so-called “War on Terror,” Guantanamo, military tribunals, etc.   Or, if he was not lying but deluded, becoming President would make him face reality.  This is a species of logic that appears to be previously undiscovered. It reveals someone who really, really wanted Obama to be President but is unwilling to admit the underlying reason to herself.

This is an academic willing to shoot craps with the safety of the country. Give the country over to those who deny the reality of the war we are in, hoping that they will take it seriously when they control the levers of power.

And if that does not go well, what then? This is not a classroom exercise where the bell rings at the end and everyone goes to another course. This is Krauthammer’s The professor's war in the flesh.

Wright and Althouse both appear to support the subordination of American interests to the United Nations and the use of American troops and American treasure to carry out the mandates of the United nations. Wright believes that Obama has consulted with all the right people and gotten all the right approval. Althouse agrees but thinks that Obama should have given the American people a better explanation.

If Obama’s War turns out to be a success, we can be sure that the Left will become ever more firmly committed to the subordination of the US to the UN as will people like Wright and Althouse who are predisposed to that already.

If the war turns into a failure, the excuses will be like the excuses for Socialism or Communism: that the concept is right but it was just not implemented properly.

Ann Althouse has periods of misalignments with her Liberal impulses, but make no mistake, she is reflexively Liberal. Remember that and be prepared for reversion to form.