Recents posts like my post on a Seattle school's opposition to having military recruiters on campus and John's story about how liberals have latched on to the latest Star Wars movie as some kind of anti-American diatribe have got me thinking about the nature of modern dissent in America.

Men and women have fought and died to make sure that we have the right to disagree with our government. I thank God for them because, as Ronald Reagan said:

"The best minds are not in government. If any were, business would hire them away."

Let's face it, often times the government is inefficient at best and simply wrong at worst. However, the looney left isn't saying the American government is wrong. They're saying the American government is evil.

To illustrate the difference, consider the following two arguments:

1. "I don't support the war in Iraq. I, like most Americans, originally supported the war because I believed Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction and under a leader like Saddam Hussein, thought it was an imminent threat to the United States. However, we didn't find any big stockpiles of WMDs there, and that made me question our motives for going to war. Bush says he wants to bring democracy to the Middle East, and while that's a noble goal, I don't think it's the best way to fight the War on Terror. I think we're going to radicalize a bunch of Muslims and make the region far worse before it gets better. Wouldn't we be better off getting out of Iraq as soon as possible and concentrating our fight against terrorism on securing our borders with the occasional covert action about specific targets? Bringing democracy to the Middle East would be great, but, in my mind, the risks associated with that goal far outweigh the rewards."

2. "Everybody knows that Bushitler lied about WMDs in Iraq because he wanted to attack Saddam to avenge his father and get oil for Halliburton. America is well on the way to becoming an evil empire to rival the Soviet Union. Just look at what happened at Abu Ghraib and what's going on down in Gitmo. I'm ashamed of this country and I can't blame the insurgents for hating us."

The first argument is one that, while I disagree with it, I can respect. I know many people who oppose the war in Iraq. Some of them even post here. It's worth examining why they feel they way they do.

The second argument has all the gravitas of a drunken baseball fan shouting "Yankees suck!". Uh, no, the Yankees don't suck, you just hate them. They are mistakening passion for facts. It reminds me of these lines from the movie "Dogma":

BETHANY: Having beliefs isn't good?

RUFUS: I think it's better to have ideas. You can change an idea. Changing a belief is trickier. Life should malleable and progressive; working from idea to idea permits that. Beliefs anchor you to certain points and limit growth; new ideas can't generate. Life becomes stagnant.

I don't see any ideas coming out of the looney left these days. All I see is the continued belief that Bush=Hitler, conservatives are fascists and American power is bad. If debate in this country has been stifled, it's not because of any chilling effect on dissent, it's because too many people have nothing to offer but rhymes and rhetoric.