Andrew Breitbart: Mall Cop

Yep, that’s Big Hollywood‘s Steven Crowder throwin’ up the air quotes for

If you believe in the modern concept of “peace,” you might be an idiot.

Definitely one of the more lazy and ridiculous examples of BH’s reliance on putting scare quotes around benign words and phrases to make them sound bad (though not as awesome as the time Crowder put scare quotes around the Virginia Tech shooter’s name).

When you strip away the crazy (and there’s a lot of it this time), the main thrust of Crowder’s argument–that war is sometimes necessary–is one that few people, even on the far left, would disagree with.  I’m so old, in fact, I can remember when Republicans were largely isolationists.  Liberals have spent years advocating for military intervention in a host of troubled regions:  Sudan, Liberia, Rwanda, the Balkans, Somalia, etc.  Not that I personally agree that military intervention would be/would have been/was the right call in all those situations, I’m just sayin’.

But it’s possible, I suppose, that Crowder’s not making his customary strawmanish “YOU LIBERALS…” argument, and that he’s narrowly criticizing the hardcore peace movement that opposes any military action.

If that’s what he wants to do, he goes about it in a bizarre way.  First he does a couple so-bad-they-go-past-good-and-back-to-bad bits lampooning John Lennon (ooooo, burn, guy-who’s-been-dead-for-29-years) and reeling off some quick ad hominem attacks relating to Lennon’s personal life.  That’s weird enough, but then he goes into the tired old John Birch Society conspiracy theory about the origins of the peace symbol.  Next he’ll be freaking out about the pyramid on the $1 bill.  National Treasure 3: Rise of the Lispy Canadian.

Now, if you want to criticize the peace movement, calling them crypto-anti-Christians is a pretty weird tactic, given the modern peace movement’s Christian roots.  Apparently some people take that “love your enemies, do good to those who hate you” thing literally.