Smearing the Tea Party

DID VICE PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN slander Tea Party Republicans by saying they "acted like terrorists" in the protracted debate over raising the federal debt ceiling? To use such language would be contemptible, especially in the wake of Anders Breivik's twin massacres in Norway and just weeks before the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 atrocities. Biden claims he never said it, and out of respect for his office I'd like to say I believe him.

Politico reported Monday afternoon that at a closed-door meeting of the House Democratic caucus the vice president joined in the "hot rhetoric" against GOP conservatives, specifically agreeing with one Democrat who described them as a "group of terrorists [who] have made it impossible to spend any money." Biden's office initially refused to confirm or deny the comment, but after it became public, he went on TV to disavow it: "I did not use the 'terrorism' word," he told CBS.

What makes Biden's denial so implausible is that liberals and Democrats have been flinging the "terrorist" slur across the aisle for weeks. Do you remember President Obama's call, after the deadly shooting in Tucson last January, for "more civility in our public discourse?" Remember how he deplored the urge "to lay the blame for all that ails the world at the feet of those who happen to think differently than we do?" Many on the left have apparently forgotten, to judge by their zeal for linking the Tea Party's views on the debt ceiling to the extremism that leads fanatics to kill.

Listen, for example, to former Obama administration official Steven Rattner, speaking on MSNBC last week: "These Tea Party guys are, like, strapped with dynamite, standing in the middle of Times Square at rush hour and saying, 'Either you do it my way, or we're going to blow you up, ourselves up, and the whole country up with us.'"

Or to New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, warning that "if sane Republicans do not stand up to this Hezbollah faction in their midst, the Tea Party will take the GOP on a suicide mission."

Or to Representative Steny Hoyer of Maryland, the House Minority Whip, talking about "Russian roulette" with loaded chambers, and how House Republicans "want to shoot every bullet they have at the president."

Or to former Ted Kennedy aide William Yeomans, now an American University law professor, who says labeling Tea Party Republicans "hostage-takers" doesn't go far enough, since "they have now become full-blown terrorists."

I am no prig when it comes to robust political commentary. I have always believed that the marketplace of ideas has room for rhetoric that is passionate, combative, or angry. And I respect the power of an apt metaphor to enliven a critique or sharpen an argument. But there is language that goes beyond the limits of decency. Smearing people as "terrorists" -- as the equivalent of hate-filled zealots who blow up embassies and gun down children and detonate bombs in crowded subways -- adds nothing but poison to a debate over fiscal policy. There is nothing clever or illuminating about such invective. It is illiberal and grotesque and it pollutes our public discourse.

Twenty years ago, Mike Godwin of the Electronic Frontier Foundation observed that in any online debate, it is only a matter of time before someone invokes Adolf Hitler or the Nazis to discredit an opponent's position. Sadly, "Godwin's Law" seems more entrenched than ever, and it isn't limited to the internet or to Nazi analogies.

In the course of the debt-ceiling showdown, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney told reporters that GOP resistance would force the government into "a Sophie's choice. Who do you save?" -- a Godwinian reference to the movie in which Meryl Streep plays a mother able to rescue only one of her children from death in a Nazi concentration camp. Republicans and Tea Party members also found themselves compared to pro-apartheid Afrikaaners, to the Ku Klux Klan, to arsonists. And, over and over again, to terrorists.

I know that American politics, to coin a phrase, ain't beanbag. Political passions have always run high, and I wouldn't want to live in a country where public issues and values weren't vigorously contested. But there is a difference -- a sharp difference -- between disputing a view you reject and demonizing someone who holds that view as a murderous enemy. Liberals who loathe the Tea Party have every right to challenge it. But when, in an apoplectic frenzy, they defame its members as "terrorists," they go way too far, and debase only themselves.

Twenty years ago? The author must be a youth. The progressives and communists started calling opponents Nazis / fascists about 70 years ago the second Adolph and Joe were no longer friends.

The vice president of the U.S. and "progressives" persist in spreading dangerous lies that their political opponents namely the Tea Party movement members are terrorists. That's just the most recent.

One purpose is to make the progressives "'seem opposed to fascism' when, in fact, the administration [is] pursuing totalitarian policies. Too few Americans today know of this travesty, a shameful blot on U.S. history."

That actually is a comment about something to which I compared what the Obama Administration and progressives are doing today with what FDR himself directed against political opponents 70 years ago.

I want to mention the comparison again because a cursory search for information about the Great Sedition Trial of 1944 will yield tons of acceptance -- from the Left -- that these anti-communist opponents of FDR were Nazi supporters. That is a lie.

As one of the prosecuted explained in the reference I provided on another thread FDR's DoJ included convicted Nazi supporters in the group of the accused for the sole intent to support the lie that all were Nazi supporters.

After years of persecution which began before the war started the efforts were finally denounced by all except the communists and their dupes.

Harry Truman as president fired the DoJ prosecutor and even the Washington Post editors -- whose employee helped FDR's DoJ entrap the victims -- denounced the years-long efforts and said that a mistake "was made in bringing 30 individuals of widely varying temperaments and backgrounds to trial at the same time and place for a series of alleged offenses classified as sedition."

Also the purpose of the president of the United States of America himself going after this group of "little people" was because it was merely a "warm up". The real targets were the likes of Republican Senator Robert Taft.

I hope Washington-insider Republicans take a look at all aspects of the Great Sedition Trial of 1944. It could prepare them.

American citizens who are loosely joined together in a movement called the Taxed Enough Already partiers are engaged in a battle of ideas. Their standard, by and large, is the Constitution of the United States, whose Preamble begins, "We, the People. . . ."

When they exercise their unalienable right to call their representatives to account for actions which threaten the solvency of the Republic, they are not "terrorists," they are defenders of liberty.

Writings of James Madison - Vol. 6 (to James Monroe):

"To consider a principle, we must try its nature, and see how far it will go: in the present case, he considered the effects of the principle contended for would be pernicious. If we advert to the nature of Republican Government, we shall find that the censorial power is in the people over the Government, and not in the Government over the people."

2012 is a critical year in this battle, as the enemies of freedom know. Their threats of labeling citizens who oppose them as "terrorists" or "hostage takers" is a clear indication of the political battlefield they envision.

Their candidate can be defeated in a debate--if the opposing candidate draws on an in-depth knowledge of the history of civilization, and the history of America's founding ideas.

C. S. Lewis said: “We need intimate knowledge of the past. Not that the past has any magic about it, but because we cannot study the future, and yet need something to set against the present. . . ." Lewis observed that “The scholar (who has studied history)has lived in many times and is therefore in some degree immune from the great cataract of nonsense that pours from the press and the microphone of his own age.”

Clearly, the current office holder is not "immune" from either, and is either ignorant of the essential philosophy underlying America's ideas of liberty--the principles which caused America to offer hope, opportunity, prosperity, and plenty to hundreds of millions of oppressed individuals for over 200 years--or, he is committed to other ideas which are not based in Creator-endowed liberty for individuals, but in coercive planning and control by some imperfect individuals over other individuals.

His "change" is based on counterfeit ideas which have enslaved people in every nation where they have prevailed, and those ideas are NOT "progressive." Indeed, they are the same old regressive ideas which motivated every villain who ever bought power for himself and his hangers-on at the expense of the freedom of those he sought to enslave.

That candidate who can articulate the ideas of freedom forcefully enough, and with the passion of America's founders, who can appeal to those populations most likely to be enamoured of the "take from the rich and give to the poor" words of the one who buys his power by promises of goodies--that candidate will win the debate.

Disarming the Left of its favorite arguments, "'racism' and other perjoratives" will be key, however. And that's why the candidate must be authentic and sound in an understanding of and devotion to America's founding principles, as well in an ability to appeal to those who might otherwise be fooled by the chicanery of a candidate whose political philosophy seems to be couched more in the writings of Mao, Marx, Lenin and Keynes than of Adams, Jefferson, Washington, Madison, and Adam Smith.

Conservatives are not without a cause for 2012. Indeed, theirs is the same as that which existed in 1776 and 1787, for the liberty of future generations is at stake.

George Washington was not a great leader because he won one battle. He is remembered as a great leader because of his devotion to the philosophy of the Declaration of Independence and respect for the "People's" written Constitution to limit, separate, check and balance the power of their representatives in government--including that of his own, in order to allow themselves to be in charge of their own destinies, free from government interference.

"Until the people have, by some solemn and authoritative act, annulled or changed the established form, it is binding upon them collectively, as well as individually; and no presumption or even knowledge of their sentiments, can warrant their representatives [the executive, judiciary, or legislature]; in a departure from it prior to such an act." - Alexander Hamilton

They can smear the Tparty all they want. It is proof of their guilt.

The government wants to collect all our properties. The Tparty is against that. Bottom line.

So who is the real terrorist now, eh?

This is dangerous, because they are trying to penetrate the Tparty one way or the other. They already have tried the political way, and now they are calling it physical danger. Whatever, the Tparty is a truth as it stands, so to speak, you cannot take arrows to it unless you are suicidal by default.

So, let them do their “slut walks” in Congress and fornicate and fail themselves all they want, they will do much more damage to themselves than we could ever do if we wanted to.

... and, there is no interest in being in charge, because being successful does not mean being in charge, but, guess what, the control freaks view it differently.

The Tparty does not have to be in charge of things necessarily to be successful.

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