For too many years the left has used the charge of racism to put opponents on the defensive and deflect from serious debate on the issues. This practice also gets used across the spectrum of demagoguery. Are you against laws that lead to grammar school children being taught about gay marriage or religious adoption agencies being forced to close because they won’t place children with gay couples? You’re homophobic. Are you against laws that support federally funded abortions for 13 year old girls without parental notification? Sexist. Suggest that a presidential candidate who happens to be black with no meaningful life experience or any demonstration of leadership ability might be right for the job because he’s inexperienced and unqualified? Racist. You get the idea.
The left also extends these lazy straw man arguments to other various movements in our history. Establishing the 40 hour work week makes the unions infallible, while the civil rights movement makes any racial grandstanding (or anything remotely close to it) also beyond question. To some degree the right has been guilty of this as well with the “Besides slavery, fascism and communism war never solved anything” argument to justify military actions. I remember when a past job had me listening to Sean Hannity on my ride home he seemed to lead this charge with this straw man. And no, I am not arguing that the statement about what war solved is incorrect nor am I making light of the sacrifices everyone made to achieve victory, but there are times when talking or at least the threat of war is enough. A good example would be with what Dubya accomplished in getting cooperation from Pakistan and Libya in the early days of the War on Terror.
But back to the point at hand, why do people on the left rely on such heavy demagoguery, whether as simple as labeling any dissenting opinion as extremist up to the outright intellectual dishonesty that was just outlined? And why the bizarre title for this blog post? The answer is simple. When a debate with any leftist causes them to say “Racist!” what they are really trying to say is “I have very strong views on this subject, and when you present me with facts that contradict my beliefs it hurts my feelings.” This was why throughout the 2008 presidential campaign rather than question the paper thin resume, questionable friendships, lack of legislative record or overall lack of any substantive reason to vote for their teenage puppy love crush it was easier for leftists to simply throw out charges of racism and force the adults in the room to the defensive rather than debate the substance of their chosen messiah.
The perfect example of this came with the passage of Obamacare and the stunt pulled by the Congressional Black Caucus. To quickly recap, after the passage of the bill the Democrats needed something to divert the country from the legislative date-rape that had just occurred. If that analogy seems over the top how many times and ways did the American people scream “No!” and “Stop!” while the Democrats bent us over and shoved this law up into us. And then afterward Obama had the nerve and gall to crow, “They should be thanking me!” coming off like he was asking, “was it good for you?” But I digress. The Democrats couldn’t have the focus be on how they used every disgusting legislative trick in the book to run roughshod over the minority party and the wishes of the American people, whether it was the Louisiana Purchase or the Cornhusker Kickback. So they needed a diversion to dominate the headlines and the Congressional Black Caucus provided the means to do it.
This will go down in history as one of the most disgusting episodes of race baiting and outright lies being told both by our elected leaders and (to steal a great term from Mark Steyn) the court eunuchs better known as the mainstream media. The members of the Congressional Black Caucus, rather than leave the floor by the underground route that is more commonly used, decided to taunt all of the Tea Partiers who came out to voice their displeasure. As the CBC walked by and sneered at the members of the public, Jesse Jackson Jr. followed closely with a camera to capture some example of a racial taunt they could use to help their friends run another headline to distract from what they did. Naturally this did not happen, but reality never gets in the way of leftist objectives or many journalists. Alcee Hastings reported that the N-Word had been shouted at him at least 15 times, while another member said he was spat on by one person in the crowd. The former turned out to be completely false, as every piece of video evidence had nothing in the audio to support the lie, while the latter turned out to be more of a “Say it don’t spray it” incident.
How did the press react? Like perfect leftist lap dogs they ran with the story, blasting the headline everywhere because it perfectly fit their own beliefs about the Tea Party. Never ones to let pesky details like facts or the truth get in the way of their narrative, the press helped this lie made it all the way around the world before it got challenged and the damage had been done. Even though Andrew Breitbart’s unmet challenge perfectly exposed this lie the follow up in the mainstream press was minimal. Just like they were made fools of by leftists who tried to crash Tea Party rallies with offensive signs they let themselves fall into the same trap of following an untrue narrative that fit their beliefs, and there was no way the palace guards were going to expose their own lack of credibility by properly following up on this viscous example of race baiting and dishonest journalism. Even worse was the unasked question in the aftermath of “Why would they do this?” The answer is quite simple – because they could. And in the end it was successful. You know what was the hot topic of conversation in the bill’s aftermath? The lie that the media passed off as truth. You know what wasn’t? The legislative date rape that had just occurred. Mission accomplished.
All too often leftist arguments are based on feelings, not facts. Talk about raising taxes on the “wealthy” always focuses around leftist judgment and pabulum like “social justice.” Ask for numbers on how much additional revenue would actually get and what impact it would have on our budget and you get more empty platitudes. Ask a global warm monger to quantify their issue, like what our baseline year or global temperature would be, how many degrees of change we’ll get per unit of CO2 emission reduced, and most importantly, what the cost will be, and you get pictures of tree rings. And of course, if you push too hard with facts or reality in criticism of President Obama, they fall to their only defense of calling you a racist. The sad part is that it’s the Obama supporters who are racist.
Wait a minute, did I just really say that? Yes I did. But unlike leftists I can back up my claim. Remember those ancient times when George W. Bush was president? Remember when the left told us that 6% unemployment was a “where are the jobs” recovery? Remember how three years into his presidency George W. Bush was whining about the dot.com bubble mess that he inherited or how events like 9/11 were preventing recovery? Or not. Remember when there was no such thing as “angry partisanship”, only dissent being the highest form of patriotism? And remember when federal debt measured in billions was considered irresponsible? I actually do.
So let’s try an exercise here. Let’s say in 2008 a Republican was elected president. We’ll hypothetically refer to this Republican as Sarah Limbaugh. Under President Limbaugh unemployment above 8% becomes a way of life, despite the fact that early in her presidency she assured us that unemployment would never go above 8% if her stimulus bill was passed. Not only did it pass, but this massive one time stimulus has now become our new baseline for federal spending, and where during her campaign then Senator Limbaugh would denounce Bush’s budget deficits as “irresponsible and unpatriotic”, trillion dollar deficits were now benevolent genius. Unfortunately Sarah has never had a real job in her life and may or may not have ever had an economics class, as her school records are sealed. Her economic illiteracy has led to ballooning regulation and new government spending that has federal debt now measured in the trillions. Even worse, unemployment among black and hispanic Americans is even higher than the general population, as is the same reality for young people, all of whom have suffered the worst under president Limbaugh.
Even three and a half years into her presidency our mainstream press still can not let go of its infatuation with our first female president. After a few years of various gaffes that prove her economic illiteracy, such as “spreading the wealth” or “If you like your plan you can keep it. Your insurance rates will not increase”, and culminating with her “You didn’t build that” remark show not only her lack of understanding of the private sector, but also her contempt for it. One would think that there would be more disenchantment in the press who got so drunk off of Sarah’s Kool-aid, such as Chris Matthews’ feeling “a tingle in his leg” when he heard one of her campaign speeches back in 2008. Despite her failures recently Matthews was on his show lamenting “Are we ready to kick out our first female president?” Statements like that truly sadden me, as I thought that this country had progressed to a point where a woman would want to be judged on her merits and not her gender. It is horrible that we as a nation feel that women are inferior to men and should be held to lower standards. And I haven’t even covered her weak foreign policy, anti-energy production directives or efforts to drive up health care costs…
One other important note about Sarah Limbaugh that I did not mention earlier – she is white.
Now I have a question for all of the Obama supporters out there who had a set of measurements by which they judged George Bush. Based only on the information you’ve read here, would you vote to re-elect Sarah Limbaugh in 2012?
If you would, you might be a fool.
If you would not vote for her but you plan to vote for president Obama, you might be a racist.
