Moral authority and Cindy Sheehan
The other day Maureen Dowd was saying “The moral authority of parents who bury children killed in Iraq is absolute.”

MoDo’s wrong. Morally wrong.

I don’t believe that “The moral authority of parents who bury children killed in [insert war location] is absolute” at all. It would mean, first of all, that you can ascribe “absolute moral authority” on the basis of grief alone. It would also mean that “absolute moral authority” could be granted to all grieving parents of people who die in any war scenario, no matter on which side they fought. All sides of all wars in all of man’s history can play that game.

Maria just sent me this article by Hitchens, where he explains,

What dreary sentimental nonsense this all is, and how much space has been wasted on it. Most irritating is the snide idea that the president is “on vacation” and thus idly ignoring his suffering subjects, when the truth is that the members of the media—not known for their immunity to the charm of Martha’s Vineyard or Cape Cod in the month of August—are themselves lazing away the season with a soft-centered nonstory that practically, as we like to say in the trade, “writes itself.” Anyway, Sheehan now says that if need be she will “follow” the president “to Washington,” so I don’t think the holiday sneer has much life left in it.

Varifrank (via The Anchoress) has an eloquent and moving post titled The Call where he examines the burden of sorrow (please do read the entire post — it does no justice to abridge it), followed by his commentary on agitators, which he concludes by saying,

One day the people of Iraq will look back on their struggle to be free and they will take an accounting of those who helped and those who stood blocking the schoolhouse door. They day will come when the left hangs its head in shame for its empowering of the modern day Klan.

And, thankfully, moral authority is not to be ascribed by the likes of MoDo, as much as she would like to think it is.

Update Baldilocks has more.