Why does theLeft feel it necessary to protest people who have differing opinions?

Kochs and Soros, again

This Sunday, Common Cause and some folks from the Center for American Progress will be in Palm Springs protesting the gathering, organized by libertarian billionaire business owners Charles & David Koch, of pro-free market businessmen and major Republican donors.

I will be there, too -- not because I'm wealthy (I'm not), or a Republican donor (I've never contributed a dime to politics and hope never to do so), or a businessman. I will be there, at the invitation of the Kochs, to speak to some of these businessmen about the evils of bailouts, subsidies, and regulatory robbery. I've given the same speech to part of this group before. As I wrote in September:

My topic was what it always is: the evils of corporate welfare and bailouts, and the destructive influence of the Big Business lobby in Washington. In my talk, I blasted "regulatory robber barons" and "subsidy sucklers."

But if you follow the Left's talking points, my talk was part of Koch's "pro-corporate movement."

While the event organizers will control access to all events, my presentation won't be secret or confidential: I'll post the content on this blog afterwards, so that you can hear from me exactly what these businessmen hear from me.

But regarding the protests: they seem a bit silly to me. For starters, the groups protesting -- CAP and Common Cause -- are both funded by George Soros, who hosts his own gathering of rich people who share his politics and work together to advance their agenda.

Politico reported today:

Democracy Alliance, which kicked a POLITICO reporter out of its November meeting, was patterned after the Kochs’ efforts to steer major donor funding to a set of permanent think tanks and policy-based non-profits that aren’t directly linked to elections.

This comment apparently spurred CAP's Koch-watcher Lee Fang to tweet at Politico reporter Ken Vogel:

dont u think theres a very serious difference between donors who help the poor vs donors who fund ppl to kill gov, taxes on rich?

That's the baseless premise behind nearly every liberal attack on the Kochs -- that conservative money is evil and liberal money is good. That's why Obama's campaign can raise funds by attacking money in politics, saying lamely "Our donations are different."

We can have arguments about money in politics, fine. But then it should be about liberal money and conservative money. The hypocrisy here shows what's really going on: CAP and Common Cause don't like the Kochs' free-market agenda.

That's fine, too. There are honest policy debates to have here.

But CAP (Fang, particularly) and the Obama administration conflate the two. If you point out their hypocrisy on money, they retreat to attack your policy. If you defend your policy, they slide back to impugning your motives by pointing to the money trail -- and so on. It's silly at best, dishonest at worst.