It gets me all warm and fuzzy when President Barack Obama steals a moment from his busy golf schedule to counsel Americans on hate speech and to urge that we tone down our heated, anti-government rhetoric. It seems the left, ever wrapped in its cozy mantle of hypocrisy, is intent on stifling criticism, especially of Obama or the government.
The president even chided in a speech at the University of Michigan that inflammatory rhetoric endangers our "democracy designed by Jefferson and the other founders. ..." (We live in a constitutional republic, but how is a Harvard scholar to know?) "At its worst," Obama said of the rhetoric, "it can send signals to the most extreme elements of our society that perhaps violence is a justifiable response."
The left even hauled Bill Clinton out of a boudoir somewhere to underscore the dangers of hateful dissent, incivility and demonizing the nation's leaders. It could, he hinted "without trying to draw total parallels," make nutjobs hurt somebody, like the Oklahoma City bombing. Dissenters, he seemed to be saying without actually saying, are dangerous.
As Paul Greenberg, the Arkansas Democrat- Gazette's Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial page editor, wrote recently: "I can't recall Bill Clinton's ever appealing for civility when it was George W. Bush who was president and target-in-chief. Even though that president was called every name in the book and then some.
"Ever see those posters depicting W. in Nazi uniform, complete with a Hitlerian mustache? Somehow those assaults on his character, policies and everything else about the man never aroused the kind of concern in politically correct quarters that is now routinely expressed when Barack Obama is being trashed."
I cannot remember anybody on the left urging decorum. Quite the opposite. Those who disagree with Obama nowadays have been labeled seditious by liberal pundits. The left's shameful vitriol and hatred directed at religion in general, the Christian Right, Sarah Palin, Condoleeza Rice, Bush and any and all Republicans have been absolutely breath-taking. There is no need to describe in detail Bush being burned in effigy, or the movie about his assassination, or Obama's reference to tea party members with a sexual slur. No need to detail so-called comedians urging the death of Bush, or Donald Rumsfeld or even Rush Limbaugh. No need to mention other bits of brilliance like this one, from Village Voice zany Michael Feingold:
"Republicans don't believe in the imagination, partly because so few of them have one, but mostly because it gets in the way of their chosen work, which is to destroy the human race and the planet...
Which is why I personally think they should be exterminated before they cause any more harm."
Exterminated? That may sound hateful, but wait -- Feingold must be a liberal. If you disagree with the left, you are the enemy and either ignorant, racist, unpatriotic or a fascist who hates cats. Because liberals are inherently saint-like -- ask them -- if you are the enemy, you necessarily are evil. It is not hate speech to be hateful in attacking evil. It's free speech. Hence, urging extermination of Republicans is OK because they are the enemy. Neat, huh?
None of that should be a surprise. We're dealing with the Saul Alinsky Party of the Politically Correct and anything goes. Politics, after all, is a rough-and-tumble game and, as Obama acknowledged in his speech, it "has never been for the thin-skinned or the faint of heart. ... If you enter the arena, you should expect to get roughed up."
Right. So why now the certainly unorchestrated -- nudge-nudge, wink-wink -- push to silence anti-government rhetoric? Why kumbaya?
Is it because folks are wising up to a cancer-like government that has commandeered a huge percentage of the American economy, put it in shambles, pushed unemployment into double digits and piled on, as of Wednesday, $12,943,495,066,136.13 in public debt? Is it because in the annals of American history you may not find a more partisan, denigrating, arrogant and dismissive president? Why does the left want you to shut up? Obama's minions are, as liberals tend to be, afraid -- of the elections this year and in 2012; of Americans rising up to turn them out of office.
They are afraid of losing power. They are afraid of you. Keep up the good work.
Paul Jenkins is editor of the Anchorage Daily Planet.
PAUL JENKINS
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