Update on The New Republic Scandal

Accusations and counter-accusations continue to fly in the ongoing scandal surrounding the New Republic's "fake but accurate" account of our awful, savage soldiers in Iraq as told by one of them, initially under the comfy cloak of anonymity.

According to John Tabin's brilliant synopsis of this running battle in The American Spectator, TNR's editor, in an astonishing reprise of the Rathergate scandal, blames his periodical's sloppy fact-checking on the bloggers and legitimate writers who've actually done enough fact-checking to uncover the scandal:

On Friday, TNR editor Franklin Foer appeared on Left, Right and Center, a weekly radio show on KCRW in Los Angeles. He accused TNR's critics of smearing the magazine, saying that they "move from one reckless allegation to another reckless allegation" and should "for once apologize when they get something wrong."

Even as Foer was speaking, though, it was being reported that the Army's investigation had concluded that all of Beauchamp's claims were false.

Note here the classic Stalinist approach: deflect criticism of the party and its leadership by smearing and slandering the critics. As always, the aim of this cheap-shot tactic, if it's pursued long enough and loudly enough, is to entirely turn the tables, persuading uncritical readers that "reckless allegations" have been made by the critics rather than the other way around. The validity of the opponent's criticism itself is never addressed, but his credibility is often ruined. Rather than mounting a convincing rebuttal, it is sufficient to demonize the critic to the point where people will no longer give any credibility to what the critic said. In this way, an unexamined falsehood is magically transformed into historical and documented truth.

On a larger scale, the shrill voice of the party apologist consistently creates an envelope of perceived truth for the party's lies while excluding the logic and reason of his rational opponent. The objective: remove your more convincing opponent from the arena via the carefully applied and consistently enforced smear, allowing your own lies to stand unchallenged. It's easy to win an argument if you don't have an opponent.

Note: You are not likely to see TNR's shameless liars ultimately fess up and "apologize" for their malevolent fictions. Rather, they demand that their well-informed critics to apologize for speaking the truth. How nuts is that? Then again, the Marxist dialectic is not rational. It is meant to override rationality rather than overcome it, which it cannot.

The conclusion here is quite clear. It is, in fact, Franklin Foer, along with his now-discredited fabulist, Beauchamp, who is guilty of spreading "reckless allegations" to be used against our heroic troops in Iraq. And of course, against President Bush, the ultimate target of all lefty lies and propaganda. It is Franklin Foer who needs to "apologize." But he won't, since leftists are, by definition, incapable of doing anything they have to apologize for.

Leftists unerringly tar their rational opponents with those "thoughtcrimes" that they, themselves, are guilty of. You're watching this cheap-shot tactic unfold once again. It's pure propaganda. Just another crime of convenience with the ultimate aim of weakening our capitalistic democracy one little cut at a time, the better to conceal the cumulative magnitude of the damage to our national traditions.

We are calling on Franklin Foer, right here and now, to save his tattered and discredited magazine by resigning from TNR along with the rest of his Marxist minions. When "fake but accurate" becomes the order of the day for any publication, it's time for management to go. Along with their "reckless allegations."