For what seems like years we've had the
spectacle of House Speaker Pelosi and Senate Leader Harry Reid, two nutjob leftists, raking anyone associated with the GOP over the coals every chance they got. To them and other leftists, worthy ideas from the right are non-existent, and the country would be a better place if the right would just disappear. To them, people on the right are not just wrong; they're evil. Worth shouting down, and shutting down, however possible. The right is worthy of real hatred, not just respectful disagreement.
Conservative speakers like David Horowitz, Michelle Malkin, Ann Coulter, and others go out to try and speak in traditionally liberal venues like university campuses, and get shouted down in organized campaigns by leftists who don't want the conservative message to be heard. Nary a peep out of anyone on the left when this kind of thing happens, despite these people's First Amendment rights being clearly violated. Liberal congresspeople don't complain, and liberal television outlets don't cover it. And now that the GOP is the minority party in Congress and speaking up against the liberal agenda every day, all we get from the White House and the majority leaders in Congress is pathetic whining about "the party of 'No'" and how conservatives just disagree for the fun of it, because they just want to throw monkey wrenches (i.e. not because their ideas are worth anything). The double standard is really stunning.
The media also haven't been covering anything that might make President Obama, now in the 8th month of his first (and hopefully last) term, look bad. When the huge ACORN scandal broke, no networks lifted a finger to cover it besides Fox News. When the president appoints crazy, potentially dangerous, goons to "czar" positions in his administration, no one says a thing in protest besides Fox News. When Obama's foolish economic advisor Christina Romer talks about "jobs saved or created" and other nonsense, no one challenges her except for Fox News. And when Saturday Night Live runs a mildly funny and critical skit about President Obama's failure to address much of what he promised to do during his campaign (thankfully) to open their show, CNN goes after SNL with a "fact check," rebutting the points made during the skit. Just a week later, as pointed out by conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer, this same CNN refused to investigate blatantly libelous quotes attributed to Rush Limbaugh by Al Sharpton and others in a successful effort to keep him from becoming a minority owner of an NFL football team.
In the past couple of weeks, the White House has pushed this criticism a step further, and has crossed a line, even by the measure of many liberals. In a style many have likened to "Chicago-style politics," the Obama administration has been orchestrating campaigns of destruction against any who would dare to disagree with it. The three most prominent right now are against the U.S. Chamber of Commerce; the entire health insurance industry; and Fox News Channel. The Chamber has found itself arguing with the administration a lot since they took office because of Obama's socialist and anti-business tendencies. The health insurance industry has disagreed on the White House's ideas for nationalizing their industry; and Fox News is regularly critical of the administration on a wide variety of issues (this, by the way, is their job). So all three have found themselves victims of smear campaigns by the White House. Not content to argue their cases on the merits, the Democrats in power have instead resorted to demonizing everyone who disagrees with them in an effort to marginalize them and their viewpoints.
Modus Operandi
The first time I noticed this (and blogged about it) was in the president's last speech to a joint session of Congress. In it, he repeatedly referred to people who disagreed with what he was trying to do as liars, and their ideas intentional misstatements, intended to confuse people, not enlighten them. Lamenting the state of the health care reform debate, the president said, "instead of honest debate, we've seen scare tactics," and, "some of people's concerns have grown out of bogus claims spread by those whose only agenda is to kill reform at any cost." About Sarah Palin's charge that government-run health care would necessitate the creation of bureaucrats deciding against spending money on old people because this is where most of health care costs stem from (commonly referred to as "death panels"), Obama said, "such a charge would be laughable if it weren't so cynical and irresponsible. It is a lie, plain and simple." Harsh words directed at a prior adversary (an adversary who, by the way, had been mercilessly smeared during the campaign and ultimately left office to get away from the leftist lawsuits that threatened to personally bankrupt her).
We see this type of argumentation – if you can call it that – played out by the left over and over again. Al Gore has used this tactic since his movie, "An Inconvenient Truth," came out and people skeptical of its claims blasted it. Instead of debating, or even respecting, the arguments of the opposition, Gore simply vilifies them and tries to marginalize them as not credible. As far as I can tell he has never once debated any knowledgeable skeptic; he even routinely avoids taking reporters' questions at events. At one event earlier this year, an attendee offered to debate Mr. Gore, and his response was, ""The scientific community has gone through this chapter and verse. We have long since passed the time when we should pretend this is a 'on the one hand, on the other hand' issue. It's not a matter of theory or conjecture, for goodness sake." Earlier this month, an Irish filmmaker asked Gore in a Q&A at an event what he had to say about a British court's ruling that his movie could only be shown to schoolchildren if it was balanced by an opposing point of view, due to numerous factual errors in the film. Gore tried to dodge the question, and the questioner's microphone was cut off and he was led away.
The point here isn't so much that liberals refuse to debate or defend their arguments. It's that they believe their philosophy and their arguments are so superior to those of their opposition that they don't think they should bother with debating or defending. To them, debate is not only not necessary, but their opponents are not worthy of the respect that debate would demand. And that's a real problem going forward. If you can't respect those who disagree with you, where does that leave you in a free country like ours? It either leaves you marginalized since you can't "play well with others," or if you have enough of a following, it leaves you working hard to shove your ideas down your opponents' throats, while disrespecting them and trying to appear as though that stance is the reasonable one to those in the middle. That, it seems to me, is where the "progressives" find themselves today.
The Saga Continues Today
Back to the current demonization. The White House, and now leftist congressional leaders, have lately been attacking their opponents directly, accusing them of impure motives and downright evil. The health insurance industry has been savaged by President Obama himself, as he has painted them as greedy, faceless corporations built on the backs of policyholders who they have literally left to die after taking all their money. Apparently not content that enough people support "the public option" of government-run health insurance and that he can actually debate the topic successfully, Obama has instead turned to the familiar tactic of painting his opposition as evil in an effort to make people feel like no right-minded person could possibly side with them. He is "taking them on" as though they were the Mob, rather than a legitimate industry covering 1/6 of our nation's economy. According to BusinessWeek magazine, in his most recently weekly radio address, Obama "harshly attacked insurers for trying to block health care reform efforts, charging the industry with 'filling the airwaves with deceptive and dishonest ads' and 'funding studies designed to mislead the American people.'" This is not honest disagreement being debated; this is a deliberate attempt to vilify your opponent so you don't have to debate the ideas, and it's despicable, especially when you realize it's coming from the President himself.
Now the president is also targeting Fox News directly. Fox is despised by the left because of their perceived right-leaning stance. I think even Fox reporters would generally agree that the network does lean a little to the right. But I also think their reporters, despite their political leanings, try hard to get it right and be fair with every report. I also think that most other news organizations out there do the same thing, except they lean a bit to the left instead. The important point here is that they be up-front about any ideology, and that they try to be fair in every case. When liberal networks ignore important stories (like ACORN) until it becomes obvious that they're willfully doing so, that's a problem. If Fox ignored an important story that painted President Bush or some other conservatives poorly, that would be similarly wrong.
But what the president and his staff are now doing – disparaging Fox News in public by name – is so unbelievably wrong and stupid that I am amazed they have not yet backed off after two weeks of this nonsense. The more they denigrate Fox, the more foolish they look, to the point where they will eventually begin losing support from their base. We've had Anita Dunn, Obama's head of communications; Rahm Emanuel, his Chief of Staff; and David Axelrod, the p.r. guy who ran his campaign and now enjoys some high-ranking advisory position to the president, telling competing news outlets that Fox is not a real news organization like they are, that they shouldn't be treated as a news organization, and that legitimate news organizations shouldn't follow up on any stories coming out of Fox. Besides being outrageous claims and obvious to any honest observer that their goal is to marginalize their only serious media opposition, the fact that this comes from the office of the POTUS himself is stunning and should be scary.
Last week the White House tried to ban Fox from participating in pool interviews with the "pay czar" regarding a big news story where he was going to totally re-vamp the pay structures of executives at companies bailed out by the government. Thankfully (and surprisingly), the other four competing networks actually stood up to the administration and said that if Fox couldn't participate, none of them would, either. The White House quickly caved and allowed Fox in, though as punishment they cut everyone's time with the czar down from 5 minutes to 2 minutes. Even that, it seems to me, is outrageous. And by the way, no news channels covered this story besides Fox. What does that tell you? Think about the gravity of this story (i.e. it's definitely newsworthy) and then consider that those networks accused of leaning and slanting coverage left did not report on this story at all. Why?
It Gets Worse
As if that weren't bad enough, and as if the administration should not have by now learned its lesson, I read this comment last night on several blogs and have been so amazed by its idiocy that I've been trying to track it back to a guaranteed legitimate source. Many blogs are reporting the following:
Nancy Pelosi announced that she would move to bring a vote to the floor of The House of Representatives as early as next week to ban Fox from covering Congress. "That Fox regularly grants access to Republican Congressman to spread their lies and propaganda on their airwaves is a violation of the public trust, and their continued desire to challenge such well documented facts as Global Warming, and the efficacy of single payer health insurance, proves that they are simply doing the work of the special interests. They should thus be stripped of their journalistic access in the halls of Congress," argued Pelosi.
If true, this is beyond incredible. If true, Nancy Pelosi should be censured or removed from her post as Speaker. If true, every news outlet in the country ought to be reporting on this and challenging Pelosi to explain what she is smoking and how on earth she would ever expect to get such legislation through Congress, putting aside the blatant anti-constitutional nature of it and just focusing on its outrageousness.
This is where the Left in this country is today. They cannot defend their ideas and utterly refuse to debate them in any fair venue. They have a majority in Congress and they have the White House, which means they don't have to debate a single thing if they don't want to, so they're getting away with it. And to avoid debate, they routinely vilify their opponents and characterize them as having evil agendas and being dishonest.
What Can We Do?
I believe that whether you live on the left or on the right, you should demand from your politicians that they be honest and debate their opponents when confronted. We're not talking about fringe elements like 9/11 Truthers or people arguing about alien abductions or something. These are legitimately elected politicians and credible news organizations with a mandate to cover important issues and to challenge authorities in the government at every turn. When congresspeople like Obama or Pelosi start striking back against these legitimate critics, it ought to de-legitimize them to some extent each time they do it. They are not God; they do not know all and command power over all. They are people just like you and me, who have opinions on subjects and who have been given the authority (by you and me) to enact laws that we all agree to live under. It's appropriate and necessary that these people and their legislation be challenged, and that they should have to stand up and defend their ideas in a public forum.
I would also stay away from any commentators of any stripe who routinely vilify their opposition. I won't listen to Michael Savage and I don't much enjoy Mark Levin, because they go beyond debate into the area of just insults and disparagement. I may agree with a lot of their opinions, but I don't like the way they conduct themselves or refer to their opponents. I quit listening to Laura Ingraham for the same reasons. She's great on monologues, but when she debates she is rude and very angry with her guests.
I will absolutely commit to holding my conservative icons to that standard. I would ask my liberal friends to do the same for their heroes. If we can all do that, we're a giant step closer to coexisting peacefully again.
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