10 Things That Make Me Angry: Numbers 10 and 9
(Subtitle: If Keith Olbermann Can Count Down, So Can I.)
PREFACE: A word of warning…you will be offended. Deal with it.
10. My fellow conservatives who think it’s fine to break Ronald Reagan’s so-called "11th Commandment." I was recently sickened by a cowardly, pointless online networking group created by so-called "conservatives" to deride and debase Senator John McCain, a man who spent 23 years in the Navy, including seven hellish years in a North Vietnamese POW camp.
Also, during the last Republican debate on MSNBC some of Texas Congressman Ron Paul’s fellow debaters actually laughed at him when he made a very passionate, serious point of conscience about the Iraq War. Not only was this rude, but it was also just plain stupid. When debating an issue as momentous as war, all views need to be voiced within a constructive setting without such unprofessional displays of emotion. Is it just me, or is Paul looking better and better with time? Imagine that: a Presidential candidate with an intellect, and some moral principle. I pray that we nominate someone a la Duncan Hunter or McCain next year, rather than a pro-choicer like Rudy Giuliani or Kerry-esque Massachusetts flip-flopper like Mitt Romney. (No, I have nothing against him for his Mormonism, thank you very much.)
Can you imagine Reagan, Barry Goldwater, or indeed conservative Republican President Calvin Coolidge doing such a thing to a lone dissident, e.g. Paul, when they ran for President? No? That’s right—because they didn’t! Although I wouldn’t expect you to remember much about Coolidge…no one else does. (He was the epitome of the classic, conservative, humble, honest, laissez-faire, no-agenda leader. Learn about him!) So much for us being different than the abrasive lefties. We really have trashed our own roots—such a shame. If we don't get them back--and soon--we will continue losing big like we did in 2006. At least the Democrats are living up to their base's expectations, as low as those might be.
9. “Political correctness.” First of all, does anyone realize that that term originally stems from the Soviet Union? But oh, I forgot, here in America today Nazism is the only vicious form of totalitarianism we talk about any longer. Communism gets a free pass, probably because the liberal college professors (9 out of 10 are liberal now) don’t want us to realize that the left wing, not just the right, has nightmarish potential if left unchecked. When Lenin and Trotsky first established the Communist state in Russia, there was still a great deal of political opposition and so they established their infamous system of “politically correcting” such supposed miscreants, usually in labor camps and prisons, which Stalin would later perfect to a diabolical science that would cost 30 million innocent lives.
Is that really the model we want to follow? In the home of the Bill of Rights and the Gettysburg Address? After all, the real danger of restricting speech—which the liberals should realize—is that it automatically legitimizes the most ridiculous, reprehensible, indeed ruthless things that are said by allowing those who are no longer allowed to speak freely the ability to claim the moral high ground. If you want evidence of this, just look at the way dictatorial regimes are almost always overthrown and replaced with equally repressive governments, just from the other end of the spectrum. The two realities are not unrelated. This is why it is so dangerous to correct speech, because the repression of expression feeds the resentments and paranoias of already-troubled groups. This is something the Founding Fathers, in their genius, prophesied… if you allow fools to speak their minds, the vast majority of the masses will see them for what they are: fools. If you shut them up, however, you make them martyrs.
In closing, allow me to point out a massive inconsistency with the liberal P.C. propaganda. We are told by either implication or direct edict that we can say nothing critical about any Black American, any Muslim male, any Latin(o/a), any homosexual or lesbian, any Hindu or Buddhist or non-Westerner, any global warming advocate, etc. etc. Just look at Don Imus or Trent Lott or George Allen or Rush Limbaugh--but somehow Bill Maher and Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert and Chris Rock get away with saying equally atrocious things. Somehow it's worse when a conservative says it. Where is this outrage when despicable, unfettered attacks are made on Christians? Catholics? Blacks who vote Republican? Conservative women? When Muslim women are stoned, tortured, and oppressed? Or, above all, when Jews—a minority, if there is such a thing!—are bashed, ridiculed, and scapegoated by the likes of Jimmy Carter and others? That’s right, there is none. Political correctness and “tolerance” are a farce, a lie, a diversion. Nothing more, nothing less. True tolerance doesn’t tamper with the First Amendment—end of story.
PREFACE: A word of warning…you will be offended. Deal with it.
10. My fellow conservatives who think it’s fine to break Ronald Reagan’s so-called "11th Commandment." I was recently sickened by a cowardly, pointless online networking group created by so-called "conservatives" to deride and debase Senator John McCain, a man who spent 23 years in the Navy, including seven hellish years in a North Vietnamese POW camp.
Also, during the last Republican debate on MSNBC some of Texas Congressman Ron Paul’s fellow debaters actually laughed at him when he made a very passionate, serious point of conscience about the Iraq War. Not only was this rude, but it was also just plain stupid. When debating an issue as momentous as war, all views need to be voiced within a constructive setting without such unprofessional displays of emotion. Is it just me, or is Paul looking better and better with time? Imagine that: a Presidential candidate with an intellect, and some moral principle. I pray that we nominate someone a la Duncan Hunter or McCain next year, rather than a pro-choicer like Rudy Giuliani or Kerry-esque Massachusetts flip-flopper like Mitt Romney. (No, I have nothing against him for his Mormonism, thank you very much.)
Can you imagine Reagan, Barry Goldwater, or indeed conservative Republican President Calvin Coolidge doing such a thing to a lone dissident, e.g. Paul, when they ran for President? No? That’s right—because they didn’t! Although I wouldn’t expect you to remember much about Coolidge…no one else does. (He was the epitome of the classic, conservative, humble, honest, laissez-faire, no-agenda leader. Learn about him!) So much for us being different than the abrasive lefties. We really have trashed our own roots—such a shame. If we don't get them back--and soon--we will continue losing big like we did in 2006. At least the Democrats are living up to their base's expectations, as low as those might be.
9. “Political correctness.” First of all, does anyone realize that that term originally stems from the Soviet Union? But oh, I forgot, here in America today Nazism is the only vicious form of totalitarianism we talk about any longer. Communism gets a free pass, probably because the liberal college professors (9 out of 10 are liberal now) don’t want us to realize that the left wing, not just the right, has nightmarish potential if left unchecked. When Lenin and Trotsky first established the Communist state in Russia, there was still a great deal of political opposition and so they established their infamous system of “politically correcting” such supposed miscreants, usually in labor camps and prisons, which Stalin would later perfect to a diabolical science that would cost 30 million innocent lives.
Is that really the model we want to follow? In the home of the Bill of Rights and the Gettysburg Address? After all, the real danger of restricting speech—which the liberals should realize—is that it automatically legitimizes the most ridiculous, reprehensible, indeed ruthless things that are said by allowing those who are no longer allowed to speak freely the ability to claim the moral high ground. If you want evidence of this, just look at the way dictatorial regimes are almost always overthrown and replaced with equally repressive governments, just from the other end of the spectrum. The two realities are not unrelated. This is why it is so dangerous to correct speech, because the repression of expression feeds the resentments and paranoias of already-troubled groups. This is something the Founding Fathers, in their genius, prophesied… if you allow fools to speak their minds, the vast majority of the masses will see them for what they are: fools. If you shut them up, however, you make them martyrs.
In closing, allow me to point out a massive inconsistency with the liberal P.C. propaganda. We are told by either implication or direct edict that we can say nothing critical about any Black American, any Muslim male, any Latin(o/a), any homosexual or lesbian, any Hindu or Buddhist or non-Westerner, any global warming advocate, etc. etc. Just look at Don Imus or Trent Lott or George Allen or Rush Limbaugh--but somehow Bill Maher and Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert and Chris Rock get away with saying equally atrocious things. Somehow it's worse when a conservative says it. Where is this outrage when despicable, unfettered attacks are made on Christians? Catholics? Blacks who vote Republican? Conservative women? When Muslim women are stoned, tortured, and oppressed? Or, above all, when Jews—a minority, if there is such a thing!—are bashed, ridiculed, and scapegoated by the likes of Jimmy Carter and others? That’s right, there is none. Political correctness and “tolerance” are a farce, a lie, a diversion. Nothing more, nothing less. True tolerance doesn’t tamper with the First Amendment—end of story.
posted by Douglas Schrock at 9:38 PM
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