Once again, James Taranto shows himself to be little more than an ideological tool in his The Best of the Web Today column, again for bigotry against gays. Writing on this article from the Boston Globe on a minor Democratic push to revisit “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”, Mr. Taranto writes:
Meanwhile, a pair of Massachusetts Democrats are tackling another pressing national-security issue…
It seems unlikely that [Rep. Martin] Meehan will succeed in changing the law; the Globe says Rep. Ike Skelton, who will be chairman of the Armed Services Committee, supports “don’t ask, don’t tell.” The likely result, as when Bill Clinton made this his first priority on taking office 14 years ago, is to suggest that Democrats are less interested in national security than in esoteric ideas of equality.
Condescension is a wonderful instrument; I’ve used it myself in this blog. But in reference to this story, Mr. Taranto shows little connection to reality, favoring the party line of hatred above all else.
Of course Democrats aren’t going to reverse “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”. They’re chickens uninterested in leading. Big deal. But this has the potential to address a pressing national security issue, no matter how much Mr. Taranto wishes to mock the service of gays in defense of America. Given that current policy resulted in the dismissal of qualified translators where there is a military shortage, I’d say this absolutely has something to do with national security. Unless Mr. Taranto wants to posit that gay translators hurt morale more than dead soldiers and civilians because we couldn’t decipher intelligence clues. As long as the dead soldiers are straight, that outcome is better? Brilliant.
Of course, we could just set aside irrational bigotry and permit gays to serve openly. Maybe it’s an esoteric idea of equality, but it’s an equality that opens the military to skilled people in an ongoing war. That should be reason enough, unless you’re a hack partisan journalist.