Wednesday, September 1, 2010

Wow: Charles Krauthammer. Really - wow!

The Last Refuge of a Liberal

By Charles KrauthammerFriday, August 27, 2010
*(all emphases mine)

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, (c) 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.

~~

Ouch.

Perfect.

Thank you, God, for Charles Krauthammer!

~~~

9 comments:

Fredd said...

Yeah, ol' Chuck can give them pinkos what fer, cain't he? I knew he was one o' us'n.

Now if'n y'all can 'scuze me, I gots to go clean my shotgun before the revival meetin' down to the holler.

Opus #6 said...

Krauthammer is aptly named. The libs hate his hammer. HA!

Susannah said...

Fredd~ If I didn't know better, I'd think you was my cousin from down in the back woods! (I do have some of those, btw. Fine people! Hearts of gold.)

Opus! And he's so matter of fact in his hammering, no? ;) Glad to see you!

Anonymous said...

Charles really nails it.pun intended.

Z said...

Krauthammer has courage and, if you'll notice, he rarely gets the nasty ire of the liberals.
How do you fight what HE just said!!?

all the best, S..xxx

commoncents said...

Thank You for posting this!!!
Steve
Common Cents
http://www.commoncts.blogspot.com

BetteJo said...

Okay I am completely late to this post. But I did want to agree with Z that Krauthammer rarely gets the ire of the liberals. She's absolutely right. I think there are 2 reasons for that. One is that the man is simply brilliant which is hard to counter. But also - sadly, I believe it's partly because he's disabled. Liberals are forever attacking conservatives personally, we're all a bunch of idiots, teabaggers, racists, etc. They can't separate the message from the person and if they went up against Krauthammer they would be dissing a guy in a wheelchair. Sad commentary but I think there's some validity to it. All these bleeding heart liberals can't separate the man from his disability in order to dispute his viewpoint.
I know I am not articulating this well ... but conservatives are more apt to argue the facts than impugn the character.

Joe said...

Krauthammer's forte is that he unwaveringly knows what he believes and knows how to articulate it in such a way as to cover all the bases.

Brilliant man.

Susannah said...

BetteJo~ Great to see you! Yes CK is a brilliant man. I've never thought about libs deferring to him b/c of his disability. Could be, but imo, he's so searingly articulate that there's simply no way to twist, spin, gnarl his words. His opponents know they'll get highly embarassed when he eats their lunch in an argument...

Joe~ Yes, brilliant, indeed. Glad to see you, sir!