Posted on 05/14/2009 4:10:32 PM PDT by Sioux-san
When I accepted an invite to lunch at a leadership summit sponsored by the Kansas Chamber of Commerce, one of America’s better chambers, I had no idea I would hear a veritable Gettysburg Address of passive-aggressive “moderation.”
The speaker was David Dillon, the CEO of the Kroger Company, America’s second largest retailer. His listed topic--“Winning Management Styles In Today’s Challenging Economy”—gave no hint of the provocation to come.
The speech derived its lasting power not from its style or its substance, but rather from its pure distillation of what one British wag has memorably called “smug and counterfactual Whiggishness.”
Beyond Colin Powell, beyond Arlen Specter even, Dillon has perfectly mastered the glib mindlessness of middle-of-the-road patois. He put that skill to exemplary use in condemning that timeless moderate bugaboo, “intolerance.”
Translated into everyday English, “intolerance” means “principled conservatism.” Moderates seem to have no other unifying principle than their distaste for the same.
Having established intolerance as the theme, Dillon asked those in the largely Republican business audience to raise their hands if they knew who Edmund Ross was
In moderate iconography, Ross is Ché, their poster child, the only one as far as I can tell at least since Neville Chamberlain was discredited.
Dillon explained that Ross, a Kansan, had been appointed to the U.S. Senate in 1866 upon the death of his predecessor. In 1868, he held the deciding vote on whether to convict impeached president Andrew Johnson of high crimes and misdemeanors.
Like Lincoln, Dillon told us, Johnson had only wanted to welcome the South back into the Union. The “Radical Republicans” wanted Johnson out.
(Excerpt) Read more at cashill.com ...
If you want to see a Liberal squirm (or progressive or whatever they are calling themselves these days)...just declare to them that: Intolerance is not a bad thing. In and of itself it is an entirely neutral thing. For example, it is not bad to be intolerant of child abuse. In fact, with regard to any bad actions it is tolerance which should be avoided. I hope people will point this out because it takes away a whole concept/buzzword/accusation. It is like taking one little arrow out of their quiver of words. Let’s get our language back one word at a time.
Andrew Johnson opposed Reconstruction and vetoed the Civil Rights Act and Freedman's Bureau Act. Had Johnson gotten his way the Jim Crow era would have begun a decade sooner. Not very "moderate" that.
I would also add into that conversation “all cultures are not equal - some cultures are really quite horrible” - that gets my lib anthropologist daughter in a tizzy, which is fun ;o)
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