Posted on 11/27/2012 4:48:01 AM PST by Kaslin
Post-election season is a time for healing, for putting aside the rancor of a long campaign and rediscovering what unites us. It has not been that way this year.
Prudence, one would think, if not generosity of spirit, should impel Democrats to be magnanimous in victory. Romney did receive about 48 percent of the vote. A little modesty among the winners would seem to be in order.
Instead, the gloating has been extravagant. Worse, liberals have gorged themselves on the same junk food they enjoyed during the campaign and cannot seem to resist under any circumstances -- slandering their opponents. The smears are so casual and commonplace that we become weary of responding. But we must protest, or someone new to politics may assume that we concede the point.
Appearing on "Meet the Press", documentary filmmaker Ken Burns attributed conservative unhappiness with the election to racism. "Race is always there in America," Burns opined. "It's always something we don't want to talk about. Do you think we'd have a secession movement -- a faddish movement -- if this president wasn't [sic] African-American? Do you think the vitriol that came out of some elements of the Tea Party?"
Ken Burns is a fine filmmaker. I met him once, and I found him to be engaging and amiable. It's painful to see him descend to this kind of defamation. Some disappointed Republicans are talking secession in Texas and elsewhere. This is proof of racism? Is this the standard of evidence Burns employs for his films?
Secession talk is the overheated emotional venting of the disappointed. It is not the exclusive province of Republicans. In 2004, Jonathan Gurwitz of the Houston Chronicle reminds us, Democratic talking head Lawrence O'Donnell suggested that George W. Bush's reelection would provoke "a serious discussion of secession over the next 20 years." When a fellow panelist on the TV show in question asked, "Are you calling for civil war?" O'Donnell replied, "You can secede without firing a shot." Bob Beckel was for kicking the southern United States out of the union that year. "Really, I think they ought to have their own confederacy." Alec Baldwin, among others, had threatened to leave the country if Bush were reelected.
Burns' flippant reference to the "vitriol" emanating from "some elements" in the Tea Party is nothing but an oft-repeated slur. The late Andrew Breitbart famously offered a $10,000 reward to anyone who could produce audio or video proof that the "n" word was hurled at black members of congress as they moved through a Tea Party protest on Capitol Hill. The accusation of racism was broadcast far and wide. The lack of proof -- though hundreds of people had video cameras recording every moment -- is the untold story. Someone as sophisticated as Ken Burns should know that the Tea Party protests were multiracial, multiethnic affairs, featuring speakers of every background. What united them was concern that the government should stop spending money it does not collect.
False accusations of racism are an attempt to delegitimize those who disagree with you. Promiscuous use of the word also defangs it for actual instances of racial bias. Honest liberals should further consider that flinging the charge protects them from having to defend their ideas. It's simultaneously ugly and lazy.
Kathleen Geier of the Washington Monthly writes that conservatives use abstractions because they are attempting to conceal positions that "a hefty chunk of the population" finds "icky." That's the reason, she explains, that they talk of "small government, right to life, states' rights, free markets, right to work, judicial restraint, family values."
I can't recall the last time a mainstream American politician referred to "state's rights," but I'm pretty sure that whoever it was, he was a Democrat. It was the code term southern Democrats used to defend Jim Crow laws. Three quarters of the nay votes on the 1964 Civil Rights Act came from Democrats. Conservatives, as Ms. Geier would know if she actually read them rather than relying on cartoon depictions, do talk of federalism. If Geier thinks the constitutional order providing for state and federal governments is "icky," she should say so.
As for the "right to life," isn't that a great deal more honest than the liberals' habit of disguising a policy of unrestricted abortion up to and including birth as "women's reproductive health"?
Geier further confuses her readers by explaining that "judicial restraint" means "no rights for women, gays, or nonwhites."
On reflection, I take it back. What liberals like Geier need is not humility or magnanimity. It's basic information.
Yes. Hadn't you noticed?
I find it hard to accept, too, Mona, but no matter how "engaging and amiable" a leftist seems to be on the surface, he's almost certainly a Stalin or Mugabe at heart.
When was it ever? When you were a girl Mona?
Post election is time for gloating if you won and pointing fingers and whining if you lost.
Guess what? Nothing unites us with marxist swine. Nothing. Time to stop pretending.
Well the nation is dying and in 4 years will be dead simply from the numbers of people looking to the Federals as Santa Claus...secession is the only remedy....
“small government, right to life, states’ rights, free markets, right to work, judicial restraint, family values.”
Gee, I thought these were some of the things that made America great and set us apart from the rest of the world.
bump
I have relatives I refuse to speak to because they voted for Obama.
I am not looking to be friendly with people who are brain dead.
The Nazi democrat party and their flop-eared Leninst god have declared war against America. Let’s see if enough people can figure that out and get organized enough to field the leadership and manpower to fight back. I have my doubts. About 10% will be involved and engaged, just like in 1776.
As Twain said, History doesn’t repeat itself but it sure rhymes.
Same here...I don’t want to hear a word from them and I know they don’t want to hear any from me either.
I cannot wait till Jan rolls around and the jolt about how much this is going to cost them sinks in a tad, only to be outdone by next January.
Everything is just a lot of talk. The media keeps talking and Obama is still President. They want him to keep his addiction to spending, blaming and telling lies.
Yes, Ken, tell us how we'd support this Marxist/Islamofascist if he were white.
Descend? Really?
It’s hardly a 'descent' if you have been a careful observer of his work.
There has never been any doubt in my mind about the steel core of his single-minded and unalloyed Socialism. It has driven his entire work product... and is apparent in everything he says and does, unless you permit yourself to be caught up in the smooth and seamless delivery!
This, “False accusations of racism are an attempt to delegitimize those who disagree with you.” needs to be bumper sticker.
Uh, The Civil War was pretty much Shelby Foote's movie, and I don't think Mr. Foote had any illusions about race relations in this country. Burns merely edited a book to video.
Oooh, I can. Check Bush v. Gore and the minority (Left) dissent: Souter, Breyer, and Stevens!
Burns’s Leftism is on open display in his National Parks and Dust Bowl documentaries. I don’t mind watching them, but it’s kind of like picking croutons (I don’t like croutons) out of my salad.
The goal of the Democrats isn’t to beat their opposition, the goal is to crush them. That should be obvious to anyone who has come into contact with these creatures on the internet.
Do you think we'd even have Obama "if this president wasn't African-American?"
And I thought this before I found out he was a raging socialist.
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