Mark Your Calendars, Peter Beinart Says Something I Agree With

I'll admit, I found his opening paragraph extremely entertaining:

President Obama is about to nominate someone for the Supreme Court. On the day he or she is unveiled, conservatives will announce that they are approaching the selection with an open mind. Ten minutes later they will declare, more in sadness than anger, that the nominee has the judicial philosophy of Chairman Mao and the temperament of Dennis Rodman. Ten minutes after that, liberals will rise en masse to defend the nominee as wise, brilliant and humane, a person who restores our faith in humankind. And the kabuki theater will continue like that all summer long.

He then goes from entertaining to serious, as well as correct:

I can’t blame my fellow liberals for playing along; if the other side fires, we have to fire back. But there’s one exception. If Solicitor General Elana Kagan gets the nod, conservatives will beat the hell out of her for opposing military recruitment on campus when she was dean of Harvard Law School. And liberals should concede the point; the conservatives will be right.

I get tired of "Don't ask, don't tell" being used as a cudgel against the military. Our military is under civilian control, and that law was passed by Congress and signed by a Democratic president.

I think entirely too many lefties use DADT as a convenient excuse for their hatred of the military and all the good it stands for. If DADT went away tomorrow, they wouldn't immediately be pro-military. Let's look at a few of the comments on Beinart's piece:

I agree with Ms. Kagan, college campuses are no place for the military complex recruiting efforts. If any college student wants to join the military (I can't imagine why) then there are many opportunities for those students to speak to a recruiter off campus.

or

No military organisation should be permitted within the grounds of institutions of learning in any jurisdiction. Kagan's decision was a wise one

or

If they withhold approval of Ms Kagan because of this stand, they are just looking for someway to say NO to an appointee of President Obama's. Her judicial record is the important thing to consider, not something minor like this. ( I know, I know, the conservatives will yell that her stand on recruiting on campus was not minor. )

or

Why would the military seek intelligent, argumentative recruits anyway, what they need are brain-dead automatons that DON'T think.

or

Conservatives have a right to bash someone that was doing the right thing by upholding a generic non-discrimination policy?

That's a fairly representative sampling of the "anti" comments.

These people ignore that the military is an arm of the federal government they love so much, and is directly under the command of President Obama--who, incidentally, has done nothing to end "don't ask, don't tell" even though his political party has overwhelming majorities in both houses of Congress. Clearly these pesky facts are irrelevant to the left.