The last refuge of a liberal

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

By Charles Krauthammer

Friday, August 27, 2010

Liberalism under siege is an ugly sight indeed. Just yesterday it was all hope and change and returning power to the people. But the people have proved so disappointing. Their recalcitrance 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."

That's a polite way of saying: clinging to bigotry. And promiscuous charges of bigotry are precisely how our current rulers and their vast media auxiliary react to an obstreperous citizenry that insists on incorrect thinking.

-- Resistance to the vast expansion of government power, intrusiveness and debt, as represented by the Tea Party movement? Why, racist resentment toward a black president.

-- Disgust and alarm with the federal government's unwillingness to curb illegal immigration, as crystallized in the Arizona law? Nativism.

-- Opposition to the most radical redefinition of marriage 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, nativist, homophobic Islamophobes?

Note what connects these issues. In every one, liberals have lost the argument in the court of public opinion. Majorities -- often lopsided majorities -- oppose President Obama's social-democratic agenda (e.g., the stimulus, Obamacare), support the Arizona law, oppose gay marriage and reject a mosque near Ground Zero.

What's a liberal to do? Pull out the bigotry charge, the trump that preempts debate and gives no credit to the seriousness and substance of the contrary argument. The most venerable of these trumps is, of course, the race card. When the Tea Party arose, a spontaneous, leaderless and perfectly natural (and traditionally American) reaction to the vast expansion 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 antipathy to a black president by cleverly speaking in economic terms.

Then came Arizona and S.B. 1070. It seems impossible for the left to believe that people of good will could hold that: (a) illegal immigration should be illegal, (b) the federal government should not hold border enforcement hostage to comprehensive reform, i.e., amnesty, © every country has the right to determine the composition of its immigrant population.

As for Proposition 8, is it so hard to see why people might believe that a single judge overturning the will of 7 million voters is an affront to democracy? And that seeing merit in retaining the structure of the most ancient and fundamental of all social institutions is something other than an alleged hatred of gays -- particularly since the opposite-gender requirement has characterized virtually every society in all the millennia until just a few years ago?

And now the mosque near Ground Zero. The intelligentsia is near unanimous that the only possible grounds for opposition is bigotry toward Muslims. This smug attribution of bigotry to two-thirds of the population hinges on the insistence on a complete lack of connection between Islam and radical Islam, a proposition that dovetails perfectly with the Obama administration's pretense that we are at war with nothing more than "violent extremists" of inscrutable motive and indiscernible belief. Those who reject this as both ridiculous and politically correct (an admitted redundancy) are declared Islamophobes, the ad hominem 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 pitchfork-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, "just downright mean"?

The Democrats are going to get beaten badly in November. Not just because the economy is ailing. And not just because Obama over-read his mandate in governing too far left. But because a comeuppance is due the arrogant elites whose undisguised contempt for the great unwashed prevents them from conceding a modicum of serious thought to those who dare oppose them.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/08/26/AR2010082605233.html

[Usui Takumi 1,562]

When sitting at the center its quite funny to watch. In 2000, the democratic party was damaged. Then from 2006 to 2010 the republicans were on the run. Now its the democrats turn again.

When will people finally catch on that both parties are failures? That our system is a broken.

[Danno 1,228]

When sitting at the center its quite funny to watch. In 2000, the democratic party was damaged. Then from 2006 to 2010 the republicans were on the run. Now its the democrats turn again.

When will people finally catch on that both parties are failures? That our system is a broken.

I wouldn't call it a failure until the will of the voters are circumvented..... so far, we are getting what we vote for, and if a large majority wants something else, they will get it.

[Usui Takumi 1,562]

I wouldn't call it a failure until the will of the voters are circumvented..... so far, we are getting what we vote for, and if a large majority wants something else, they will get it.

Did they?

Most of Obama's platform has never occurred. He isn't more open than Bush, the Patriot Act is up and ticking so on and so forth.

Bush didn't deliver smaller government and conservatism.

[Danno 1,228]

Did they?

Most of Obama's platform has never occurred. He isn't more open than Bush, the Patriot Act is up and ticking so on and so forth.

Bush didn't deliver smaller government and conservatism.

I'm simply referring to people voting for a person and fraudulent elections preventing them from taking office.

Politicians failing to act on promises is a phenomena that will be with us as long as there are politics involved (forever).

[Pooky 3,787]

I'm simply referring to people voting for a person and fraudulent elections preventing them from taking office.

Politicians failing to act on promises is a phenomena that will be with us as long as there are politicians involved (forever).

Just a few small repairs

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

Just a few small repairs

As long as we have a republic, I am afraid we are stuck with politicians. What we do need to make this form of government work is an aware and vigilante electorate. It is not for lack of information that politicians are selling America to loons on the left, and the corporate crooks on the right, but the lack of any depth perception to see they really are two sides of the same old broken record.

[ready4ONE 5,400]

I'm relatively liberal. I think nothing of gay marriage beyond it not being my personal cup of tea. I think the placent of the mosque is innapropriate but if it is built the terrorists haven't "won." I don't see a change in Republicans beyond a highly successful smear campaign. I am neither incredibly enthused nor disheartened by Obama. He's better than his critics claim, but so far not quite lived up to the hype.

[DEDixon 39]

When sitting at the center its quite funny to watch. In 2000, the democratic party was damaged. Then from 2006 to 2010 the republicans were on the run. Now its the democrats turn again.

When will people finally catch on that both parties are failures? That our system is a broken.

[Sofiyya 1,687]

The will of the people isnt being ignored; its just being more effectively manipulated by one side over the other for a while, as usual. As a conservative, it's been dismaying to watch other conservatives bristle at accurate accusations of bigotry leveled at them, as if there is no way that rigid mindsets could possibly be infected with prejudice to the point where the Constitution they wield as a weapon becomes an impediment replaced with vitriol.

Yea, it's not so pleasant when all eyes are on you and you're looking pretty ugly yourself. Makes you want to write a column complaining about what hypocrites liberals are, or whine on Fox about how mean they are. It gives you a few minutes out of the day to deny your own hypocrisy, but, the whole world's watching, and it's not all about you.

Edited August 29, 2010 by Sofiyya

[Gary and Alla 3,694]

I wouldn't call it a failure until the will of the voters are circumvented..... so far, we are getting what we vote for, and if a large majority wants something else, they will get it.

True, it isn't a failure so much as a limited choice between two useless parties that are concerned only with party, not with people. They only want to control different things about our lives. "Pro-choicers" aren't pro-choice, "Pro-lifers" are Pro-life, etc. Until we have a viable CHOICE in politics there will be no change and there is no hope of change.

[Ling Ling 22]

When sitting at the center its quite funny to watch. In 2000, the democratic party was damaged. Then from 2006 to 2010 the republicans were on the run. Now its the democrats turn again.

When will people finally catch on that both parties are failures? That our system is a broken.

Sousuke, you speak VOLUMES.

As long as we have a 2 party system, we only have the ILLUSION of choice. It's like someone asking if you want a Bud or a Bud Light when you want a cold Stella Artois.

Both of these parties are screwing us, and telling us that it's THE OTHER GUY screwing us. Until we abolish the 2 party system, and stop allowing corporations to fund elections,

we're doomed to continue the repeat of blaming one party today, and the other tomorrow. This bickering over the parties works quite well for the politicians, it keeps us from blaming the political system

they've devised.

The definition of a terrorist is "someone who keeps you in a constant state of terror".

Now who really does that...our elected officials and the media, or some guy in the middle-east?

When we figure out who the terrorist are, we'll have a chance at ending terror.