And I notice that you didn't cop to the fact that you didn't know about the straw poll. You seem obsessed with high level nation wide organizations, so its no wonder that you don't understand that the history of the left is made up of small organizations that number in the hundreds, and are unnoticed in the mobilizations that we see. I'm not going to enumerate the dozens of ad hoc organizations I've been involved in over the past two decades, often recycling the same activists uncomfortable with national level organizations. When you saw those huge demos, you saw them. And if you're at all interested, you'll do a little research in your community to find out who they are and what they're doing. I defy you to do it. Log on to an Indymedia site, it should be fairly simple.

As for Jefferson. Just a slave owner who enslaved his own children. I didn't call him a racist.

And it's no surprise that you end your missive with evocations of political correctness: I'm "racist" and an advocate of "anti-Semitism." You provide no evidence for these charges, but, then again, a sectarian leftist like yourself needs no evidence, except, perhaps,that I "support" Pat Buchanan -- although since he isn't running for anything, I'm not clear as to what this means.

Those 252 conference attendees are a fair sampling of the attendees in general. Are you saying they aren't?

Read carefully, because I'm not going to write this again. a) the sample is representative of the 2000 people who call themselves Netroots. The fact that you extrapolate that to include everyone in the left means you don't know what you're talking about. You simply don't. You're like those cranks pointing the finger at the "govament". There are organizations on the left that encompass thousands of people that no one has ever heard of. They do their work tirelessly, ignored through the eighties and nineties and now overshadowed by useless internet blowhards like you

b) You didn't know that it was only 200 people, because you didn't check your source.

And it's no surprise that you end your missive with evocations of political correctness: I'm "racist" and an advocate of "anti-Semitism." You provide no evidence for these charges, but, then again, a sectarian leftist like yourself needs no evidence, except, perhaps,that I "support" Pat Buchanan -- although since he isn't running for anything, I'm not clear as to what this means.

Are you saying you didn't support Buchanan through three campaigns?

I don't support Obama. I don't care what color he is. I made that clear several times, but its the prism with which you want to view everyone but yourself. What I do know is that the left organized those marches, leftist organizations, not libertarian ones. They organized them, the same way they've organized demonstrations for decades. And Libertarians have just never been there in any significant numbers. The marches didn't work, because they didn't stop the war. That's why they ended by 2006--trust me, I went to every single one, and after a while there just weren't any. That happened long before Obama got into office.

Lindbergh is hailed as a hero even today,

So is Bush, so is Jefferson.

Excuse me, but the left -- except for the Spartacist League -- VOTED for Obama.
You just proved you know absolutely nothing about this. You have no idea what you're talking about. You don't know what the left is.

NO, the poll I cite is not less than 200 people:

Now you're lying.
Right at the top of the straw poll referenced by you, you'll find the phrase "252 Conference Attendees"
Look it up for yourself: http://www.democracycorps.com/wp-content/files/nn...

Finally, I think Christopher Hitchens is a complete idiot. And after reading your response to me, I think you are too.

As for this:

June-->

Nope, you won't get out of it that easy. I didn't claim that the anti semitism derived from criticizing Israel. Far from it. You people do more damage to those of us who criticize Israel BECAUSE OF THE OTHER ANTI SEMITIC CAUSES YOU GET INVOLVED IN! Like, calling Charles Lindburgh a great man, as Raimondo did. Lindbergh was an outrageous anti semite.

Look, you'll get no argument from me that many supporters of Obama have fallen asleep on the war since Obama became president. But you seem to be completely clueless that the "left"" includes thousands of people who don't support the wars in Afghanistan or Iraq. I'm not sure what you would have those people do--they never posted on the netroots blogs, they've been political for decades. They, like me, opposed the invasion of Panama, the first Gulf War, the wars in Eastern Europe, the continued bombings of Iraq throughout the nineties, the invasion of Afghanistan and of Iraq.

We've been protesting for two decades, and its never worked. In fact, the demonstrations against the war ended years before Obama took office, not because people lost interest, but because they were demonstrably ineffective--and even more so because they were of unprecedented size and mobilization. What would you have us do Justin Raimondo? And just what is it that you're doing that's so amazing to stop the wars? I talk about stopping the wars every day, big whoop.

Frankly, I think the most intellectually lazy thing a political commentator can do is choose a high profile group of people, label them as representative of millions of people collectively known as the left, and then highlight every fault of that group as if you somehow have an encyclopedic knowledge of them. Did you tell your readers that the straw poll you quote consisted of 200 and some odd people, and that by any stretch of the imagination, the netroots--meaning those people who only became activists after the invasion of Iraq--are in no way indicative of a left that's been in toiling in obscurity from one generation to another since the seventies. Some of us have spent time in jail—and not just an hour or two, either—some of us have given up more. Your disrespect for that is insulting in its ignorance.

In fact, I wouldn't expect you to know any of this. Your support for the unctuous Pat Buchanan, who, if he'd had his way would interpret the 14th amendment in such a way to rob many of us who are the children of foreign-born parents of our citizenship, has probably made sure that most people on the left would never come close to you. You can be as anti war as you like, but the racist undertones of the mobilizations you're involved in make sure that none of us really feel comfortable having anything to do with you. There are tens of thousands on the left who don't support Obama or the Democrats, but they'd never be able to tolerate the rank anti-Semitism, racism and libertarian dogma that you represent.