Watch: Jon Stewart Just Nailed Mark Kelly Twice in 60 Seconds on ‘Illegal Orders’ Video

As odd as it is to write this out, I miss honest-to-goodness liberals.

Before you close this story in disgust, bear with me. True, actual liberals are the ones who used to champion, “I disagree with what you have to say, but will defend to the death your right to say it.”

There used to be a level of conviction and intellectual honesty among liberals, where, even when you disagreed with them, you could at least have an intelligible conversation with them.

Now, the vile leftists that eventually spawned from classical liberalism? I could do without them seven days a week, and twice on Sundays.

Comedian-turned-faux-news-host Jon Stewart, for all of his warts, is about as close to classical liberalism as you’ll find in the mainstream these days.

(He and Bill Maher may be the last of a dying breed.)

Case in point: Whether he meant to or not, Stewart caught leftist Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly rather flat-footed with a pair of barbed points that the Democratic senator simply did not know how to answer during Monday’s appearance on “The Daily Show.”

Check it out for yourself below:

WARNING: The following clip features content that viewers may find offensive

As is often the case on “The Daily Show,” the show ended with a one-on-one interview with Stewart, and Kelly came on to thump his chest about a variety of topics — most of which were hyper-critical of President Donald Trump.

Kelly wanted to make the point that the military should defy the commander in chief when they felt that orders were illegal, a point often repeated by fellow Democrats.

Naturally, Trump’s ongoing war with narcotics-transporting boats was broached as part of that conversation, and Stewart pressed Kelly with a rather simple question.

“So are the boat strikes illegal?” Stewart asked Kelly.

“Well, so, I’ve been asking this question for a long time,” Kelly hemmed. “I’m on the Armed Services and the Intelligence Committee. They have some complicated legal rationale — 40 pages — of why these are legal.

“It’s questionable, at best.”

That’s a lot of words to say, “I don’t know,” Mr. Senator.

But if that wasn’t embarrassing enough, Stewart tripped up Kelly even worse when he brought up the “extrajudicial killings” of Americans under the regime of former President Barack Obama between 2011 and 2015 just a minute later.

“Under the Obama administration, they did extrajudicial killings of American citizens through drone strikes — like, we criticized that — but that’s, my point is, there’s enough gray area in some of these actions,” Stewart said.

At this point, Kelly went dead still, and Stewart just rambled on for another minute.

And that response — or lack thereof — is the point.

Stewart wasn’t grandstanding or protecting Trump; he was doing what liberals used to do instinctively: applying the same moral and legal standards, regardless of whose team was in power.

Kelly didn’t freeze because the question was unfair. He froze because modern Democratic politics has trained its leaders to criticize outcomes, not principles — and often only when the outcomes involve Republicans.

That’s why figures like Stewart and Maher stand out now — not because they’re perfect, but because they still remember how to argue in good faith.

They remember that “gray areas” don’t magically appear or disappear based on party labels.

If Democrats can’t even acknowledge the uncomfortable parallels between Trump’s actions and Obama’s without short-circuiting, then the problem isn’t conservatism. The far grander problem is that the left has forgotten how to think without a script.

And that’s why, strange as it sounds, honest liberals are missed: not because they always got it right, but because they were at least willing to answer the question.

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