In an arti­cle posted this morn­ing the Daily Kos quote Washington Post writer David Ignatius who wrote:

Obama’s speech showed us, once again, that the new pres­i­dent really means it when he says that he wants to cre­ate a new kind of pol­i­tics for a “post­par­ti­san” America. This has been dif­fi­cult for some of his sup­port­ers to accept, in their rage against the Bush pres­i­dency and their under­stand­able desire to set­tle scores with those who took the coun­try into a dark and painful time. But Obama wants none of it. “On this day, we come to pro­claim an end to the petty griev­ances and false promises, the recrim­i­na­tions and worn-out dog­mas that for far too long have stran­gled our pol­i­tics.” Did that cause a moment of self-reflection at Rush Limbaugh’s offices, or at the Daily Kos? I doubt it, but one can always hope.

Hunter at the Daily Kos then pre­ceded to rail against Ignatius and wrote that:

I would feel bet­ter about these pointed words towards us (and by direct exten­sion, me) if I knew which things counted as the “petty griev­ances” that a rad­i­cal voice like mine should be “reflect­ing” upon. Which were they? Was it speak­ing too loudly of the devo­lu­tion of the United States into unapolo­getic tor­ture? Was it com­plain­ing of the lives lost in Iraq, or mak­ing petty noises that even the pres­i­dent should fol­low the Constitution when it came to spy­ing upon cer­tain Americans, or mak­ing the case for their internment?

It’s views like this that make me sick to con­sider myself a lib­eral, or a Democrat. Hunter here seized on the phrase “petty griev­ances” and yet some­how largely ignored that which came after. As part of that Obama quote he talks about “the recrim­i­na­tions and worn-out dog­mas that for far too long have stran­gled our pol­i­tics.” I’m sorry Hunter, you’re a great writer and your blog has some great con­tent, but here you’re sim­ply per­pet­u­at­ing those dog­mas that have cre­ated such a par­ti­san divide and cre­ated the con­text in which it has become exceed­ingly dif­fi­cult to actu­ally accom­plish anything.

I will not dis­agree with you nor try to argue that your stances on tor­ture, the Iraq War, etc. are wrong or mis­guided; in fact, I agree with you whole­heart­edly. What I dis­agree with is you pre­sump­tion that these views are mod­er­ate, cor­rect, and ought to be put into prac­tice as they are. The fact is that these are the views of a sig­nif­i­cantly lib­eral blog­ger and rep­re­sent just one world­view. Now, granted, your world­view is prob­a­bly a lit­tle more encom­pass­ing than Limbaugh’s, O’Reily’s, or Hannity’s but that doesn’t give you or your ideas the power to sim­ply be the unques­tioned proper way of han­dling some­thing. What you and other lib­eral and con­ser­v­a­tive blog­gers fail to real­ize is that the views and opin­ions that the other side hold are just as appar­ent, nat­ural, and “right” as you believe yours to be. By believ­ing that you are the voice of rea­son and logic you are push­ing the oppos­ing pop­u­la­tion out of the polit­i­cal arena. By dele­git­i­ma­tiz­ing the pol­i­tics of the Limbaugh’s, O’Reily’s, and Hannity’s of the nation you are strength­en­ing their con­vic­tion to stand up for what they see as right and nat­ural too.

If you, and your oppo­sites on the right, can­not set aside your ideals and work to incor­po­rate the views and peo­ple of the oppo­si­tion, then it will be expo­nen­tially more dif­fi­cult to accom­plish any­thing of sub­stance in these next four years. President Obama desires to move past party pol­i­tics in order to incor­po­rate the entire pop­u­la­tion of the nation. Yes, he prob­a­bly does believe that the ideas of Limbaugh are ludi­crous, but he does not sim­ply write them off as such. He gives the appear­ance of thought­ful­ness and chal­lenges those who dis­agree to speak up and present their ideas to him (notably, Krugman with the stim­u­lus pack­age). By acknowl­edg­ing that the oppos­ing views are legit­i­mate and work­ing toward incor­po­rat­ing the entire pop­u­la­tion of the United States into the polit­i­cal arena President Obama is putting this nation first. I would only like to see the polit­i­cal com­men­ta­tors on each side do the same.