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Mark Steyn: Politics trumps Left's empathy
The Orange County Register ^ | Jan 6, 2012 | Mark Steyn

Posted on 01/07/2012 6:31:22 AM PST by passionfruit

Lest you doubt that we're headed for the most vicious election year in memory, consider the determined effort, within 10 minutes of his triumph in Iowa, to weirdify Rick Santorum. Discussing the surging senator on Fox News, Alan Colmes mused on some of the "crazy things" he's said and done.

Santorum has certainly said and done many crazy things, as have most members of America's political class, but the "crazy thing" Colmes chose to focus on was Santorum's "taking his two-hour-old baby when it died right after childbirth home," whereupon he "played with it." My National Review colleague Rich Lowry rightly slapped down Alan on air, and Colmes subsequently apologized, though not before Mrs. Santorum had been reduced to tears by his remarks. Undeterred, Eugene Robinson, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post columnist, doubled down on stupid and insisted that Deadbabygate demonstrated how Santorum is "not a little weird, he's really weird."

The short life of Gabriel Santorum would seem a curious priority for political discourse at a time when the Brokest Nation in History is hurtling toward its rendezvous with destiny. But needs must, and victory by any means necessary. In 2008, the Left gleefully mocked Sarah Palin's live baby. It was only a matter of time before they moved on to a dead one.

(Excerpt) Read more at ocregister.com ...


TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Culture/Society; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: empathy; gagdadbob; onecosmosblog; steyn
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To: passionfruit
This past August, my wife went to the bathroom and our twenty-week baby started to come out. By the time the ambulance came, he didn't have a heartbeat. When she delivered at the hospital, I was unsure if I wanted to see the baby, but I had to. I am eternally thankful for the time when my wife and I were able to hold our son, telling him hello and goodbye at the same time. We only got to meet him in death, but we are glad that we got even that much too short time with him. Ghouls like Colmes and Robinson would probably cringe that I have pictures of the little boy on my phone that I look at some times. He had my full lips and his skinny legs looked exactly like mine. I would give anything to have had more than just a couple of hours with him, but that is not the way it worked out.

I even went to see my son a few days later in the hospital morgue to spend one last time with him and take some pictures of his tiny hand wrapped around one of my fingers. It was really hard to let go and say goodbye. I don't consider my behavior weird at all. In fact, my sister lost a child during pregnancy earlier that year and she told me that she really regretted not seeing the child at all after she delivered, and that she wished she had treated the baby with more respect and dignity.

For some deranged fiend to mock my family or Santorum's family's few precious moments shows that they are truly mentally disturbed, and that there is absolutely nothing they won't do to win political points.

21 posted on 01/07/2012 8:43:20 AM PST by SeafoodGumbo
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To: passionfruit; betty boop; Alamo-Girl
Steyn: "...The Left's much-vaunted powers of empathy routinely fail when confronted by those who do not agree with them politically. .."

In other words, it's the "empathy" of society's freaks. bttt

"under the guise of "tolerance" and multiculturalism, we have deprived these poor souls of the feedback they need in order to know that they are not normal. This is not empathy, but cruelty. ..." Here:

Revenge of the Ghouls: When Liberals Attack

".....Believe or not, there was a time, not too long ago, that abnormal people in our culture actually felt abnormal. They were aware of their deviancy, and how this deviancy contributed to an unhappiness that no government has the power to eliminate. .....

"...In order to allow such people to feel normal in their abnormalcy, we have had to develop a deviant culture for them to live in, to such an extent that the normal are now made to feel abnormal.

"This is one of the hidden influences of the Tea Party movement, and more generally the effort to take our country back from the deviant.

"Not surprisingly, this is enraging the abnormals of the left, as witnessed, for example, by the weird attempt to suggest that normal people somehow caused the patently abnormal Jared Loughner to open fire on a bunch of normal people.

"If multiculturalism were true, it would mean that all cultures are of equal value.

"But this is equivalent to saying that there is no reality to which culture is an adaptation. As a result, culture devolves to a mere fantasy world. Which, of course, it is for the left. They are, by their own lights, not oriented to reality, since reality is just an oppressive white European male construct. ...."

22 posted on 01/07/2012 8:55:07 AM PST by Matchett-PI ("One party will generally represent the envied, the other the envious. Guess which ones." ~GagdadBob)
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To: All
The "empathetic" Leftist's M.O.: By Hook or by Crook
23 posted on 01/07/2012 9:19:02 AM PST by Matchett-PI ("One party will generally represent the envied, the other the envious. Guess which ones." ~GagdadBob)
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To: passionfruit

Typical Steyn excellence. Worth reading the whole piece. Thanks for posting.


24 posted on 01/07/2012 9:19:43 AM PST by Bigg Red (Pray for our republic.)
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To: miss marmelstein
It breaks my heart that Santorum’s wife cried upon hearing Colmes’ remark. Just when does the brutality towards the family of Republican candidates end?

The image that came to my mind when reading that part was of Justice Samuel Alito's wife at the morally bankrupt Senate hearing for his confirmation ...

A pox on the house of all of these shameless and cowardly 'brutal' libs.

25 posted on 01/07/2012 9:32:36 AM PST by Servant of the Cross (the Truth will set you free)
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To: passionfruit

I remember how shocked I was when a leftist relative of mine cheered the death of Tony Snow. Tony Snow! Lord have mercy.


26 posted on 01/07/2012 9:45:35 AM PST by k omalley (Caro Enim Mea, Vere est Cibus, et Sanguis Meus, Vere est Potus)
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To: passionfruit

We are up against truely soulless evil people and it is going be a real battle and may even have eventually go 2nd amendment if we are to survive within our own nation


27 posted on 01/07/2012 10:06:38 AM PST by uncbob
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To: passionfruit
Never mind the dead kid, [Santorum] has six living kids. How crazy freaky weird is that?

This crazy freaky weird: all those self-evidently ludicrous risible surplus members of the Santorum litter are going to be paying the Social Security and Medicare of all you normal well-adjusted Boomer yuppies who had one designer kid at 39. So, if it helps make it easier to "empathize," look on them as sacrificial virgins to hurl into the bottomless pit of Big Government debt.

Gotta love Steyn. Another hard-hitting column.

28 posted on 01/07/2012 10:07:37 AM PST by RhoTheta ("We're from the Government, and we're here to help you ... NOT")
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To: SeafoodGumbo

I don’t consider my behavior weird at all.

^^^^^
It isn’t at all!!!!!
Thank you for sharing your memories on this thread. What you experienced is more and more respected and promoted in maternity and NICU hospital settings. I was a NICU nurse, and felt that I had let down a mother who chose not to see her baby after an emergency C-section - knowing that she would not have the full experience of knowing her child. Her emptiness would be greater for the lack.

But I guess her shock was so great that she could not accept the added trauma of looking at her lost child.


29 posted on 01/07/2012 10:08:52 AM PST by maica
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To: pepsi_junkie

Thank you for your sad moving story. Are some people so removed from death that they cannot emphathize with a young mother? I wonder what else this dreadful season will bring?


30 posted on 01/07/2012 10:13:16 AM PST by miss marmelstein
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To: maica

That’s understandable, too, isn’t it? I would not look at my father when he died at home. He had medical equipment still attached to his body from the EMS workers and I refused to look. Neither did my mom. We also refused to look at the body bag being taken out of the house. We saw him the next day at the funeral parlor. He then looked like the person I knew.


31 posted on 01/07/2012 10:16:58 AM PST by miss marmelstein
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To: Servant of the Cross

Yes, and Ginny’s sadness during the Clarence Thomas hearings.


32 posted on 01/07/2012 10:18:09 AM PST by miss marmelstein
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To: formosa
Add me to the list of those who had the same reaction. The left is vicious. When people like Alan Colmes spew out their insane accusations they are really just revealing what in their own hearts.

Cordially,

33 posted on 01/07/2012 10:22:28 AM PST by Diamond (He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people,)
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To: passionfruit

Steyn brilliantly points up the huge divide between liberals and conservatives. Conservatives keep trying to argue with liberals, while liberals merely sneer at conservatives.


34 posted on 01/07/2012 10:23:51 AM PST by irv (Live Tea or die!)
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To: passionfruit

Like every other characteristic for which the Left prides itself, their “compassion” is phony.


35 posted on 01/07/2012 10:59:01 AM PST by Rocky (REPEAL IT!)
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To: Diamond; betty boop; Alamo-Girl
"The left is vicious. When people like Alan Colmes spew out their insane accusations they are really just revealing what in their own hearts."

Monsters ARE insanely vicious. bttt

The Care and Feeding of Media Monsters

"....Liberals, of course, want us to understand the terrorists. But one of the first things I learned in my psychoanalytic training is that real empathy has nothing to do with reinforcing someone's delusions just to make them feel better. Rather, it must involve things like confrontation, interpretation, clarification, etc.

"So the most empathic thing you could do for a bin Laden [type] -- for the whole Islamic world, for that matter -- would be to confront them with the truth of which they are so desperately in need, for a mind deprived of truth still "needs to eat," but it will feed on lies, which in turn creates a monster.

"You do not flatter them with the monstrous lie -- as did Secretary of State Clinton the other day -- that "you folks have your politically motivated extremists and so do we, with that tea partier who murdered all those people the other day."

"Lies are monster food. All monsters feed on lies, and a monster is simply a living lie. They are the lie made flesh.

"Hitler could not have been the monster he was without a steady diet of outrageous lies with no connection whatsoever to reality. Stalin, Mao, Castro, Arafat, Pol Pot, and all the rest of the 20th century Monster Club -- all were soulless zombies because of their fidelity to the Lie which created them.

"In this regard, you can certainly see how ideology becomes a substitute religion rooted in the satanic eucharist (or "dyscharist") of ingesting the Lie. Once the liar is in place, he needs a steady diet of more lies in order to maintain himself. Conversely, he will respond to truth in the way a vampire reacts to garlic or Obama to media scrutiny. ..."

36 posted on 01/07/2012 11:00:13 AM PST by Matchett-PI ("One party will generally represent the envied, the other the envious. Guess which ones." ~GagdadBob)
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To: miss marmelstein

I would not look at my father when he died at home.

****

Very understandable! Tubes and wires and equipment and agony are not what you want to remember.

With newborns and late miscarriages, the babies are dressed in tiny clothes and blankets and the parents are given as much time as they want in a comfortable - non-hospital - room; so, like seeing your father as you knew him the next day.


37 posted on 01/07/2012 11:14:05 AM PST by maica
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To: maica

Yes, I understand that. If it had been my situation, I too, would have wanted to see my baby, all swaddled up. These terrible choices are up to the individual. Alan Colmes has no right to stick his ugly face into this!


38 posted on 01/07/2012 11:19:11 AM PST by miss marmelstein
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To: passionfruit

Excellent column from Mark Steyn.


39 posted on 01/07/2012 11:37:07 AM PST by hattend (If I wanted you dead, you'd be dead. - Cameron Connor)
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To: Ghost of Philip Marlowe

Conservatives presence is a fatal reminder of the liberals disingenuous compassion. They see what authentic living is like and it magnifies their hollow shallowness. So they must be mock and destroy it.


40 posted on 01/07/2012 12:15:35 PM PST by Walkingfeather
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