Arthur Silber contrasts the organized conservative outcry that stopped the immigration bill with progressive fecklessness, especially on Iran:
Over the last few years, I have never heard anything similar on the liberal shows. Never. Not about the Military Commissions Act (see both “‘Thus the World Was Lost'” and “America, Now Without the Revolution”), not about the Roberts, Alito or Gonzales nominations, not about ending the immoral and criminal occupation of Iraq — and not about preventing an attack on Iran.
Not on any of these issues. Never. Nor have I ever seen a similar kind of effort on the liberal and progressive blogs. Never. Every once in a while, the liberal blogs will urge action on perhaps on a single day, maybe two — and then the issue vanishes until some new development (not brought about by the bloggers themselves) might catapult it into public consciousness again. Such tactics are sporadic, severely limited in time and scope, very infrequent, and completely ineffective.
I hesitate to say that the conservatives who worked so hard to defeat the immigration bill are “serious” about their ideas. That word grants them a stature that is entirely undeserved, particularly since the reasons for their opposition are so viciously ignorant. But I will acknowledge that they care about their ideas and that they are committed to them, in a way that it appears liberals and progressives are not.