Who ever called for an ideological purity test?

[Bjorn Against]

A common attack used by Lieberman supporters and the DLC is that the left is calling for ideological purity and has no room for differences of opinion.

Such a claim is false, and I would like to challenge those making such a claim to back it up.

If there were an ideological purity test Ned Lamont would most certainly fail it. He is a multi-millionaire businessman who does not support Single-Payer Universal Health Care, but does support Israel's actions in Lebanon. To many of us on the left these positions are dead wrong, but we are supporting Lamont anyways.

Lamont does not represent me all that well, but he comes closer to representing me than Lieberman does. While I hope Lamont listens to our disagreements with his positions, we are not going to end our support of him based off these issues even though they are issues that are very important to us.

The bottom line is that Lamont comes closer to representing our values than Lieberman does, and in a democracy we are supposed to be able to support the candidate who comes closest to representing our values.

If we had an ideological purity test, then we would have virtually no major politician we could support. I could point out some positions that I find to be dead wrong in virtually every member of Congress.

To say we have an ideological purity test is dishonest to say the least, and coming from Lieberman supporters it is downright hypocritical. These are people who are supporting a candidate who did not allow certain people who disagreed with him into the campaign event he held with Clinton. Lamont's campaign events have been open to people of all ideologies, Lieberman's have not.

It is time to stop the false smears, there is no ideological purity test and there never has been.