6 Lessons Progressives Should Take Away From the Underpants Bomber Incident

6 Lessons Progressives Should Take Away From the Underpants Bomber Incident

Posted by Chris Bowers, Open Left at 1:30 PM on December 29, 2009.

What a foiled terrorist plot can tell us about bankrupt GOP thinking.

There are a few lessons to be learned about the bathroom bomber incident. Here are six lessons that come to mind:

1. It is pretty easy for single, incompetent individuals to change United States federal policy through the threat of violence.
2. Many Republicans believe that unions are a greater threat to national security than terrorists.
3. Quite a few conservatives don't believe any criminal suspects are entitled to due process.
4. Many conservatives believe that we should institute an apartheid state against Muslims in America.
5. If Al Gore had been President on September 11, 2001, there would have been no bi-partisan, United We Stand language coming from conservatives. The aggressive, partisan response we have seen to even this failed attack would have almost certainly meant impeachment proceedings against President Gore sometime in late 2001 or early 2002.
6. A substantial minority of elected officials in the Democratic Party is willing to go along, or at least keep silent on with #3 and #4, either because they believe it or because they don't have core values and think those positions are electoral winners. For the same reasons, a smaller minority of elected officials the Democratic Party would even be willing to go along with #2 and #5.

Although, since these are not the first examples of these outcomes, beliefs or counterfactuals, I guess all of these are actually reminders, not lessons.

Tagged as: terrorism, conservatives, underpants bomber

Chris Bowers was a full-time editor at MyDD from May 2004 until June 2007. Some of his projects have included the creation of the Liberal Blog Advertising Network, the first scientifically random poll of progressive netroots activists, the Use It Or Lose It campaign, the nation's most accurate forecast of Democratic house pickups in 2006, and the 2006 Googlebomb the Elections campaign.