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Who Gets a Pass?
Townhall.com ^ | August 9, 2012 | Victor Davis Hanson

Posted on 08/09/2012 5:12:30 AM PDT by Kaslin

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel recently said of the Chick-fil-A fast-food franchise that "Chick-fil-A's values are not Chicago's values." Why? Because Chick-fil-A CEO Dan Cathy is on record as being opposed to gay marriage -- as is close to half the U.S. population, according to polls. The mayors of Boston and San Francisco also suggested that the company isn't welcome in their cities.

Oddly, none of these public officials have lectured President Obama to keep clear of their cities. Yet until recently, Obama was likewise on record as opposing gay marriage. Why the exemption?

Nor have the mayors in question disinvited any black churches from their cities. Yet some pastors in churches with black congregations have been quite loud in their denunciations of gay marriage. Fundamentalist Islamic mosques routinely disparage homosexuals, often publicly so in their literature. Is there something about white Christian males that makes their opposition to gay marriage different from that of their black or Muslim counterparts?

Even as Emanuel warned Cathy that his company did not reflect "Chicago values," his own city remains among the most murderous in the world. This year, Chicago youth have killed more Americans than have the Taliban in Afghanistan. Unable to stop the carnage, a desperate Emanuel welcomed in Nation of Islam minister Louis Farrakhan to help quell the mostly black-on-black violence, even though the latter has a long record of racist and anti-Semitic tirades. Is the Chick-fil-A CEO a greater danger to Chicago than gun-toting gangs, or more illiberal than the racist Farrakhan?

Politics -- not just race or religion -- is also a key to the paradoxical double standard. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) just slandered Nuclear Regulatory Commission member Bill Magwood, an African-American, as "one of the most unethical, prevaricating, incompetent people I've dealt with." Reid, furious with Magwood because of his support for the Yucca Mountain nuclear repository in Reid's state, also called Magwood a "treacherous, miserable liar," "a first-class rat" and a "sh-t stirrer."

In 2008, Reid condescendingly attributed presidential candidate Barack Obama's success to the fact that he was "light-skinned" and spoke "with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one."

More recently, the crude Reid, in McCarthyesque fashion, claimed that Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney had not paid income taxes for 10 years -- based on a rumor that an anonymous source supposedly had passed on to him. "His poor father must be so embarrassed about his son," Reid said of the late George Romney, Mitt's father.

Reid has demonstrated that he is both vulgar and illiberal, but there are no calls for him to vacate his post. That exemption was not extended to an earlier counterpart, Sen. Trent Lott (D-Miss.). Lott, in similarly illiberal and crass fashion, said at Strom Thurmond's 100th birthday party in 2002 that America would have avoided "all these problems over all these years" if Thurmond had been elected president in 1948. Lott was pressured by both the Republican Party and the media to step down, and he did so in shame.

There is a common theme here. Our self-appointed priests of fairness from time to time freely commit sins of intolerance. But don't dare hold them to the same sort of accountability to which they hold other, less progressive Americans, whose similarly dumb remarks are not gaffes but rather windows into their prejudicial souls.

We must make allowances for the supposed Biblical conservatism of some black pastors in a way we cannot for the white, Christian CEO of Chick-fil-A. Farrakhan's hatred cannot possibly earn him ostracism. We cannot extend the anger at evangelical Christians for their incorrect attitudes toward feminism and homosexuality to the Muslims who often share similar views.

Such selectivity is untenable. Classical Western liberalism was predicated on judging people as individuals -- and on their merit and performance -- rather than collectively as identity groups identified by gender, race and religion. Using illiberal means to advance supposedly liberal ends results not just in hypocrisy and cynicism, but in the current disaster of "Chicago values."

Politically correct exemption is doomed, because who can sort out the conflicting agendas of various identity groups? Who certifies who's really black, brown or white in a multiracial, intermarried America -- Barack Obama or Elizabeth Warren? Who deserves how much compensation for which particular past oppression?

Can black pastors who oppose gay marriage be judged prejudicial? Is the Asian-American who opposes illegal immigration subject to the same charge of nativism leveled at so-called whites? Can Harry Reid be judged a bigot and McCarthyite if he claims he's liberal?

A simple antidote to multiculturalism and political correctness is to evaluate all Americans on their actual behavior, regardless of their politics, race, gender or religion -- in other words, a return to the ancient liberal idea that one common culture treats all sorts of different people absolutely the same.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial
KEYWORDS: barackobama; calypsolouie; chickfila; dancathy; dingyharry; louisfarrakhan; rahmemanuel; senatorreid; vdh

1 posted on 08/09/2012 5:12:40 AM PDT by Kaslin
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To: Kaslin
That explains Obama's decision to support gay marriage! If he didn't, he wouldn't have been allowed to campaign in Chicago, Boston, or San Francisco! Nobody allowed in those cities if you don't openly support same-sex marriage!

Do the airports and train stations have special "customs entry points" where you have to declare that you support same sex marriage, and if you don't, you're not allowed into the city?

Mark

2 posted on 08/09/2012 5:27:18 AM PDT by MarkL (Do I really look like a guy with a plan?)
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To: Kaslin
This type of verbal defecation has got to come to a screeching halt in November or this country goes directly into the processing tank at the national sewer.
3 posted on 08/09/2012 5:30:53 AM PDT by primatreat (I am really tired of "0"s hustlers slinging defecation. i.e. "shit.")
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To: Kaslin

There was a Miss America contestant who also expressed the identical marriage view of The 0ne, and she was grilled for it, but not The 0ne.

Someone explained it to me- 0bama is lying to get America to go along with his other agenda items, but Miss America was saying it from her heart.

Umm, that only works if you can read minds, I said, to no avail.


4 posted on 08/09/2012 5:34:31 AM PDT by DBrow
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To: Kaslin
Something else to ponder... When Rahm Emmanuel went on TV begging the gang bangers to kill each other in alleys, and not around children, didn't he also specificly state that the problem wasn't that the gang bangers "don't have values, they have the 'wrong values.'" So is he saying that the Chicago gang bangers have better values than Mr. Cathy and Chick-Fil-a, since he publicly stated that Chick-Fil-A was NOT welcome in Chicago due to values, but never told the gang bangers they weren't welcome there. So I guess Emmanuel considers the values of murderous gang bangers to be superior to the values of a Christian family. And as a bonus, Emmanuel is inviting a racist hate-monger to help quell the violence in Chicaco - So we can take away the simple fact that Louis Fahrakahn's "values" are more in sync with Chicago than Chick-Fil-A's owners.

Mark

5 posted on 08/09/2012 5:36:22 AM PDT by MarkL (Do I really look like a guy with a plan?)
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To: MarkL
Warning! Graphic photo that explains Obama's decision to support homosexuals.

6 posted on 08/09/2012 5:43:53 AM PDT by Yosemitest (It's simple, fight or die!)
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To: Kaslin
A simple antidote to multiculturalism and political correctness is to evaluate all Americans on their actual behavior, regardless of their politics, race, gender or religion -- in other words, a return to the ancient liberal idea that one common culture treats all sorts of different people absolutely the same.

That sounds like something MLK would have supported with words like, ". . . children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character." I'm sure today's racists will call VDH racist for taking that position.

7 posted on 08/09/2012 5:46:07 AM PDT by Pollster1 (Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. - Ronald Reagan)
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To: Kaslin

The proper response to left wing pc intimidation is to respond So what? Who cares?

The left has prospered by raising their blocs to victim status by claiming prejudice and discrimination. Gays being the latest.

America is tired of being bullied.


8 posted on 08/09/2012 5:57:52 AM PDT by y6162
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To: Yosemitest

Is that for real?!?


9 posted on 08/09/2012 6:08:32 AM PDT by houeto (https://secure.freerepublic.com/donate/)
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To: houeto

Yes. Click on it to go to the source.


10 posted on 08/09/2012 6:46:41 AM PDT by Yosemitest (It's simple, fight or die!)
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To: houeto
Go to Amazon and read the reviews of Barack Obama & Larry Sinclair: Cocaine, Sex, Lies & Murder?.
11 posted on 08/09/2012 6:52:35 AM PDT by Yosemitest (It's simple, fight or die!)
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To: houeto; Yosemitest
Is that for real?!?

I'm not so sure if it is real. (No offense, Yosemitest.)

http://raisedonhoecakes.com/ROH/2011/06/19/some-people-and-you-know-who-you-are-should-be-ashamed-of-themselves/

Just my , um, 5¢.

12 posted on 08/09/2012 7:40:10 AM PDT by Jefferson Spins (in his grave at Monticello because our republic is imperiled from within.)
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To: Kaslin
From the article: More recently, the crude Reid, in McCarthyesque fashion...

The Verona files proved that Joe McCarthy told the truth. But VDH continues the lie that McCarthy was on a witch hunt. With "friends" like this, why do we bother to oppose the Leftists?

Is there ANYONE out there who can refute liberal lies of the present and in the process NOT give legitimacy to liberal lies of the past? Statements that confirm liberal lies only confirm our ignorance of history and our willingness to toss good decent people under the bus.

We are truly whistling past the Graveyard of History.

13 posted on 08/09/2012 7:55:32 AM PDT by garybob (More sweat in training, less blood in combat.)
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To: Jefferson Spins
No offense taken, but anything connected to Obama is a shell game.
Satan mixes lies with truth, so as to make the people accept the lie for the truth, and reject the truth for a lie.
There is too much from before 2008 about Obama's homosexual love affairs, to doubt his bisexual activities.
Read Mom of Murdered Obama Gay Lover Speaks Up
and read from September 16, 2008 Obama and the Trinity United murders.
Then again on October 30, 2008 a Free Republic thread Donald Young, murdered in Chicago - Obamas Gay Lover??? provides several sources about Obama.
Look at all the links provided here on Free Republic in Donald Young’s Mother Defies Death Threats – Talks from July 16, 2010.

14 posted on 08/09/2012 9:31:38 AM PDT by Yosemitest (It's simple, fight or die!)
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To: Kaslin

15 posted on 08/09/2012 10:48:15 AM PDT by rickade
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To: Yosemitest
Satan mixes lies with truth, so as to make the people accept the lie for the truth, and reject the truth for a lie.

Neither Satan nor God has the ability to 'make' us do anything. It is, and always has been, our choice. It's called 'free will'.

God gives us what we 'need', Satan gives us what we 'want'. Guess which one most people choose ?

16 posted on 08/09/2012 10:58:49 AM PDT by UCANSEE2 (Help. How do I put something in my tagline.)
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To: Kaslin
For Chick-fil-A to have 'Chicago Values' They would have to:

1. Shoot a few hundred customers EVERY month and have about 40 of them die each month from their wounds.

2. Pay off the local Alderman

3. Hire the kids of of Democrat and Union 'bigs' - pay them full time when they 'work' 3 hours a month (the time it takes them to pick up their paychecks)

Be part of 'the team' if you know what I mean...

17 posted on 08/09/2012 11:30:45 AM PDT by GOPJ (..convinced if you put a compass in the hands of a liberal, it will point south -Fr Neveronmywatch)
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To: GOPJ

4. Hire (minority) Harvard Lawyers for Community Organizers


18 posted on 08/09/2012 11:33:47 AM PDT by bert ((K.E. N.P. N.C. +12 ..... Present failure and impending death yield irrational action))
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