Posted on 04/06/2009 8:55:07 AM PDT by Borges
I have been watching an interesting phenomenon on the right, which is beginning to cause me concern. I am referring to the over-the-top hysteria in response to the first months in office of our new president, which distinctly reminds me of the "Bush is Hitler" crowd on the left.
Conservatives, please. Let's not duplicate the manias of the left as we figure out how to deal with President Obama. He is not exactly the antichrist, although a disturbing number of people on the right are convinced he is.
I have recently received commentaries that claim that "Obama's speeches are unlike any political speech we have heard in American history" and "never has a politician in this land had such a quasi-religious impact on so many people" and "Obama is a narcissist," which leads the author to then compare Obama to David Koresh, Charles Manson, Joseph Stalin and Saddam Hussein. Excuse me while I blow my nose.
This fellow has failed to notice that all politicians are narcissists. So what? Political egos are one of the reasons the Founders put checks and balances on executive power. As for serial lying, is there a politician that cannot be accused of that? And once, a recent president set a pretty high bar in this category, and we survived it. As for Obama's speeches, they are hardly in the Huey Long, Louis Farrakhan, Fidel Castro vein. They are in fact eloquently and cleverly centrist and sober.
So what's the panic? It is true that Obama has shown surprising ineptitude in his first months in office, but he's not a zero with no accomplishments, as many conservatives seem to think -- unless you regard beating the Clinton machine and winning the presidency as nothing. But in doing this, you fall into the "Bush-is-an-idiot" bag of liberal miasmas.
It is also true Obama has ceded his domestic economic agenda to the House Democrats and spent a lot of money in the process. But what's the surprise in this? After all, George W. Bush and John McCain both proposed (and in Bush's case pushed through) massive government giveaways (which amount to government takeovers as well). This is bad, but it doesn't make Obama a closet Mussolini, however deplorable the conservatives among us may regard it. Moreover, he has run into political resistance even within his own party. Charlie Rangel has made it clear that the itemized deduction tax hike is not going through his committee -- and that should tell you the American system is still in place.
Even as astute a conservative thinker as Mark Steyn has been swept up in the tide that thinks Obama is a "transformative" radical. But look again at his approach to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. In both cases, he is carrying out the Bush policies -- the same that he once joined his fellow Democrats in condemning. And that should be reassuring to anyone concerned about where he is heading as commander in chief.
In other words, while it's reasonable to be unhappy with a Democratic administration and even concerned because the Democrats are now a socialist party in the European sense, we are not witnessing the coming of the antichrist. A good strategy for political conflicts is to understand your opponent first -- not to underestimate him, but not to overestimate him, either.
As we move forward, Obama faces increasingly tough choices in the wars against Islamic fascism in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Gaza and Iran. Hopefully, he will make the right choices, and should he do so, conservatives will need to be there to support him. If he makes the wrong choices, conservatives will need to be there to oppose him. But neither our support nor our opposition should be based on hysterical responses to policies that we just don't like. Let's leave that kind of behavior to the liberals who invented it.
I don't think you can actually catch it just by being touched by them. It's not like Herpes either. If the feeling of fear and uncomfortableness persists for more than few days it might be worth looking into. What is it the people talking about the Antichrist and Obama have told you? (I haven't heard this one actually).
Fox News: Leftists planning to destroy "tea party demonstrations" from within
I meant WITHOUT getting any bailout funds. I am paying attention.
No, JasonC, you just demonstrated that your comprehension of Godwin's Law is flawed and your attempted application of it in this thread is incorrect.
Godwin's Law states: "As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1." It is a statistical observation of a Usenet(and now Internet) discussion phenomenon. It makes no judgment about the validity or truth of the analogy in a particular argument.
The fact that a fallacious "tradition" has arisen in online discussion fora that the mere mention of a Nazi comparison automatically loses the argument is merely a tactic adopted by dishonest or incompetent protagonists as a mechanism to forestall debate and evade having to actually demonstrate whether or not the analogy is valid for the particular topic under discussion.
Mike Godwin himself acknowledged that making the Nazi allusion did not automatically void or discredit the argument, and he clearly stated that he formulated Godwin's Law in order to discourage or minimize the trivializing effect its over usage would have on substantive debate.
Whether Horowitz' premise and argument has merit is certainly debatable, but even the creator of Godwin's Law himself would laugh at your speciously clumsy attempt to avoid making your case. You're no Godwin's Avenger - you're more like Godwin's Mangler... /grin
Jonah Goldberg is a modern writer who tried to turn the reductio ad Hitler argument on its usual slingers ("Liberal Fascism" is the book, I assumed everyone knows this etc). While he is nuanced about it, those who caught up the idea are not, and have become as silly as those he was wittily denouncing.
I apologize for hurrying through your sentence structure. But you still used the “fruitcake” label, after castigating others for calling Horowitz derogatory names. How does that add up?
Sounds like Horowitz has become an appeaser.
Guess he wants to stay on the right side of the ovens.
Mind-changing Books(Thomas Sowell)
Check it out.
There are intelligent ways to understand the statism of Obama and his movement.
On praying, you know, we prayed when President Kennedy was assassinated. We prayed for our country. And we prayed again during the Vietnam War. And when the abortion movement began changing American culture for the worse. It may have taken a long time, but we ELECTED Reagan president in 1980. And he was a GREAT president.
The last time I was ever on a street corner we were all cheering and applauding Reagan. Conservatives have to recapture that. They have to get back on offense and get their A game going again. This is who we are. America is a conservative and Christian country. Never forget it.
Get the documentary Ronald Reagan:Rendezvous with Destiny. Watch it.
So you’re saying they haven’t received any funds from the government?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.