One of the liberal criticisms of some realpolitik during the Cold War was the United States’ support of some pretty nasty strongmen and their regimes under the logic that we needed them on our side against the Soviets and they may be bastards, but they were “our bastards.”

Similar logic seems to be becoming the norm on the political left when it comes to the hate-filled, eliminationist rhetoric on display at a Common Cause-sponsored rally against Koch brothers. For those who are unfamiliar with them, they’re apparently the political right’s equivalent of George Soros. The fact that I was completely unfamiliar with them until a few months ago should tell you just how influential they are.

The response from the mainstream media and those on the left (but I repeat myself) who were more than happy to lecture the tea party over the use of racial slurs (a charge that was proved false) and blame conservatives for the murderous actions of an insane man, have excused the evil in their own camp.

The NAACP isn’t interested in condemning their liberal brethren for wishing that the Supreme Court’s second black justice be lynched, sent back to the fields or have his toes cut off and fed to him.

The New York Times editorial page got behind Common Cause’s attack in a misleading editorial (see James Taranto’s takedown of it here) without ever mentioning the vile epithets uttered by attendees.

And Common Cause itself dismissed the comments by people they bused into the event under the old “everybody does it” excuse. This excuse is false, as Taranto noted last week.

Everybody does it? Think it through and you will see that this is a stunning indictment of the American left.

To begin with, it is not true that everybody does it. As we noted yesterday, the formerly mainstream media have spent the past two years trying to depict the Tea Party as precisely the sort of racist, hateful, violent political movement that Common Cause appears in the video to be. That media effort has failed, not for lack of will but for lack of evidence. If everybody did it, the Tea Party would do it, and if the Tea Party did it, you would have read about it in the New York Times.

Remember what all these calls for civility are really all about – shutting the right up. You never saw the Times editorial page calling on Code Pink to cool down their rhetoric during the Bush 43 administration. The media made a saint out of poor Cindy Sheehan (the military is still in Iraq and Afghanistan and when was the last time you saw her quoted in a major newspaper? About the time Bush left office?) only because of her absolute hatred of Bush.

I’m all for taking a civil and respectful tone in politics. But I’d be more amenable to the left’s pleas if they were the least bit interested in policing their own side first.