I saw a segment on MSNBC today in which the host could not believe Ron Paul was unimpressed with Obama’s extraordinary magnanimity in electing to consult Congress before bombing Syria. Obama’s move was “unprecedented,” the host inanely claimed. Not unprecedented at all. George H.W. Bush took exactly the same line in 1991: I’ll consult Congress to shut you peons up, but I don’t need to, and can still do whatever I want. John Kerry holds that precise view, and can’t give a simple answer to the question of what the President will do if Congress votes no.

Yet this deeply impresses an MSNBC host. What great progressives these are!

When Dr. Paul was on the screen, they had at the bottom the words “Father of the Fringe?” This is typical, of course. MSNBC might make occasional fun of, say, John McCain, but he is much too close to them politically for them to call his views “fringe,” even though he sings about bombing people and wouldn’t rule out staying in Iraq for 100 years. That’s mainstream and respectable, you understand. Fringe is when, instead of consistently supporting war, as McCain does, you consistently support peace, and refuse to believe White House propaganda that the rest of the world is laughing at. That’s fringe, man.

I can’t improve on Glenn Greenwald’s beautiful takedown of people who throw “fringe” and “crazy” at people who think maybe — maybe! — all possible views one might wish to hold are not contained within the spectrum that runs all five inches from Mitt Romney to Joe Biden:

Conor Friedersdorf had similar things to say: