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Posted on 07/08/2003 4:06:39 PM PDT by PatD
July 8, 2003
Our nation is blessed (?) with a surfeit of opinion-vendors whose tone seldom de-escalates from terminal shrillness. Doom-shouting, crisis-mongering, and accusations of the lowest kinds of corruption are their staple goods. Most of these, historically, have been politically left of center.
With few exceptions, since the Fifties the left side of the American political spectrum has been indifferent or worse toward national security. Over the past fifty years, only one Democrat who reached the White House, John F. Kennedy, has shown much interest in the strength of our defenses or our ability to protect American interests abroad. Rhetorical lip service was essentially all our defense sector got from Lyndon Johnson, Jimmy Carter, or Bill Clinton.
The most prominent liberal spokesmen over that period have exercised a chilling moral equivalence between the United States and her foreign adversaries. Totalitarian despotisms such as the Soviet Union and Castro's Cuba have received more approval from them than has the freest and most benevolent country in the history of the world. Even after the atrocities of Black Tuesday, September 11, 2001, Leftist mouthpieces tried to blame the slaughter of innocent, defenseless Americans on America herself. Former president and current national embarrassment Bill Clinton tried to excuse it on the grounds that we -- Americans -- were being paid back for the Crusades.
Refresh your Curmudgeon's memory, please: Which of the Crusades involved an American Expeditionary Force?
Today, of course, we have innumerable leftist opinioneers insinuating that President Bush is guilty of everything from deceit to dictatorial usurpation. His liberation of Iraq is supposed to be "all about oil." His rejection of the United Nation's assertion of supremacy over our decision to act militarily is supposed to have made the whole world our enemy. His tax cut initiatives are supposed to be bribery to "the rich." And of course there's Fox News, the Supreme Court, and Election 2000; can't let anyone forget about that.
The screaming can drive one mad. But for forty years it's all come from the Left.
Recently we've grown a handful of voices who challenge the left on their home turf. Rush Limbaugh has been doing it for nearly two decades. Larry Elder and Ken Hamblin participate as well. But always there's been reluctance among Rightist commentators to scream back at the Left as shrilly as its spokesmen scream at us. It wasn't polite; it wouldn't do; it would give conservatives and conservatism a bad name.
Until today.
No pundit has captured the attention of America as Ann Coulter has done. Say what you will about her style; she's got the public's eye and ear, which is the first and most important hurdle a polemicist must surmount. She's socked the politically inclined public with a ton of explosive data and opinion. With three books -- High Crimes And Misdemeanors, Slander, and Treason -- she's given notice that, from her at least, the Left's harridans will get as good as they give, and better.
Among other things, this tests conservatives' confidence. Do they mass behind Coulter and press their advantage, as a smart, confident general would do with a tactical breakthrough? Or do they cringe in anticipation of a counterblast from the enemy, hoping he isn't too badly offended by Coulter's ringingly successful strokes?
Common-man conservatives are largely cheered by Coulter's aggressive diatribes. They've known for some time that something was terribly wrong with our political dialogue. They've been inhibited about responding in kind to the calumnies Leftists have heaped onto America, freedom, capitalism, and conservatism. The involute, unctuous courtesies of William F. Buckley have been de rigueur on the Right for so long that a take-no-prisoners style like Coulter's has become near to unthinkable. It just wasn't done. But Coulter is doing it, and conservative Americans are rallying to her standard.
But the Right's other pundits are not.
You might have noticed the general reluctance among conservative luminaries to endorse Coulter's incendiary style. You might not have noticed that they give little attention to the substance of her arguments, particularly those in her latest and most important book, Treason. As of this morning, only the gentlest of her critics, David Horowitz of Front Page Magazine, himself no stranger to controversy or stylistic criticism, has addressed any substantive deficiency in her work.
For example, Dorothy Rabinowitz, writing in the Wall Street Journal's editorial section, poured gallons of sarcasm over Treason and Coulter, particularly over her epochal defense of Senator Joseph McCarthy, but without once mentioning a substantive fault in Coulter's thesis. All Rabinowitz saw fit to cite was the Malmedy Massacre -- an episode near the end of World War II, involving American soldiers taken prisoner in battle and later found dead. A number of German SS troopers were convicted of having murdered the Americans, on the basis of confessions extracted from them by torture. McCarthy protested this as a miscarriage of justice...for which highly principled act Rabinowitz seeks to smear him as a Nazi sympathizer and thus undermine Coulter's case.
Why aren't prestigious conservatives massing behind Coulter? Her style is no more strident than that of our adversaries. More, she manages to be funny, which they do not. Her facts are unassailable. She has yet to be caught lifting something misleadingly out of context. Why not stand with her and say to our opponents, "All right, we've taken the gloves off too. Now we'll see who's standing at the end" -- ?
Because it's just not done?
It strikes your Curmudgeon that the Left's gander is smarting from Coulter's brisk application of its own favorite sauce. It ought not to receive aid or comfort from our ranks.
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