Dobbs' Delusions of Grandeur

It's funny, I've despised Lou Dobbs more and more lately, yet his latest column sounds like any that a globalization protester might have made to Davos or the G-8. Read it, you can see he's got some points, and yet.... and yet.... Dobbs bugs me for the same reason that great populists from Juan Peron to Father Charles Coughlin to Patrick Buchanan (maybe to Hugo Chavez) have always bugged me. The demagoguery, the hyper-nationalism, the "it's all about me" syndrome lurks just below the surface. The great thing about the 1999 WTO protesters in Seattle was that there were few media stars, few larger-than-life personalities. But populists always want to tell you that "I saved you from those rapacious owners of capital!" (hmm, sounds kinda neo-Nazi here), and often they want to tell you how great the nation is and how we have to keep the borders pure, which is about where Lou Dobbs is at. Yes, I like his pre-Thanksgiving column, but no, I do not think that anyone who calls themselves a progressive should say they like Lou Dobbs.