By Charles Krauthammer, Troy Record, 8/27/10
Liberalism under siege is an ugly site indeed. Just yesterday it was all hope and change and returning power to the people. But the people have proved so disappointing. Their recalciantrance has in only 19 months, turned the predicted 40-year liberal ascendancy (James Carville) into a full retreat. Ah, the people, the little people, the
small-town people, the "bitter'" people, as Barack Obama in an unguarded moment once memorably called them, clinging."to guns or religion or"--this part is less remembered--"antipathy toward people who aren't like them." Thats a polite way of saying: clinging to bigotry. And promiscuous charges of bigotry are precisely how our current rulers and their vast media auxiuliary react to an obstreperous citizenry that insists on incorrect thinking.
Resistance to the vast expanison of Government power, intrusiveness and debt, as represented by the tea party movement? Why? racis tresentment toward a black president.
Disguest and alarm with the federal government's unwillingness to curb illegal immigration, as crystallized in the arazona law? nativism.
Opposition to the most radical redefinition of marrage in human history, as expressed in proposition 8 in California? Homophobia.
opposition to a 15 story Islamic center and mosque near Ground Zero? Islamophobia.
Now we know why the country has become "ungovernable," last year's excuse for the Democrats' failure of governance: Who can possibly govern a nation of racist, nativst, homophobbic islamophobes? Note what connects these issues. In every one, liberals have lost the arugment in the court of public opinion. Majorities--often lopsided majorities--oppose PresidentObama's social-democratic agenda(e.g.the stimulus, Obamacare), support for Arazona law, oppose gay marrage and reject a ground zero mosque.
What's a liberal to do/ Pull out the bigotry charge, the trump that pre-empt debate and gives no credit to the seriousness and substance of the contrary argument.
The venerable of these trumps is the race card. When the tea party arose, a spontaneous,leaderless and natural (and traditionally American) reaction to the vast expanison of government intrinsic to the president's proudly proclaimed transformational agenda, the liberal commentariat cast it as a mob of angry white yahoos disguising their antipathyto a black President by cleverly speaking in economic terms. Then came Arazona and SB 1070. It seems imposiable for the left to believe that people of good will could hold that:(a) illeagle immigration should be illeagle, (b) the federal government should not hold border enforcement hostage to comprehensive reform,ie'amnesty, (c) every country has the right to determine the composition of it's immigrant population.
As for proposition 8, it is so hard to see why people might believe that a single judge overturning the will of seven million voters is an afront to democracy? and seeing merit in retaining the structure of the most ancient and fundamential of all social institutions is something other then an alleged hatred of gays--particularly since the oppisite gender requirement has characterized virtually every society in all the mellennia until just a few years ago.
And now the ground zero mosque. The entelligentsia is near unanimous that the only possiable grounds for opposition is bigotry towards moslims. This smug attribution of bigotry to two-thirds of the population hinges on the insistence on a complete lack ofconnection between Islam and and radical Islam, a proposition that dovetails perfectly withthe Obama administration's pretnse that we are at war with nothing more then "violent extremists" of inserutable motive and indiscernible belief.
Those who reject this as both ridiculous and politically correct(an admitted redundancy) are declaired islamophobes, the ad hominiem du jour. It is a measure of the corruption of liberal thought and the collapse of its self confidence that finding itself so widely repudiated, it resorts reflexively to the cheapest race-baiting (in a colorful variety of forms.) Indeed, how can one reason with a nation of pitchforks wielding mobs brimming with "antipathy toward people who aren't like them."---Blacks, hispanics, gays and muslims--a nation that is, as Michelle Obama once put it succinctly "downright mean?"
The Democrats are going to get beaten badly in november. Not just because the economy is ailing. And not just because Obama overread his mandate in governing to far left. But because a comeuppiance is due the arrogant elites whoes undisguised contempt for the great unwashed prevents them from conceding a modicum of serious thought to those who dare to oppose them.
Charles Krauthammer's e-mail address is
letters@charleskrauthammer.com
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