The evolving rules governing acceptable public discourse require serious explanation.
Earlier this year, during the memorial services for the victims of the Arizona shooter’s rampage, the president admonished that political debate needed to become more civil and should be conducted in a way that “heals” rather than “blames.” Of course, since then the president has been blaming everything and everyone (but mainly Republicans) for the country’s current predicament.
Two days ago, CNSNews unearthed a video that captured a July 3, 2008 campaign speech by then-candidate Obama. In it, he said:
The problem is, is that the way Bush has done it over the last eight years is to take out a credit card from the Bank of China in the name of our children, driving up our national debt from 5 trillion for the first 42 presidents–number 43 added 4 trillion dollars by his lonesome, so that we now have a 9 trillion dollar debt that we are going to have to pay back–$30,000 for every man, woman, and child. That’s irresponsible. That’s unpatriotic.
Liberals are free to throw around the word “unpatriotic” with near impunity: Witness the fact that the Democratic nominee for president could call the sitting president “unpatriotic” and it didn’t even register as a fleeting blip on the media’s radar screen; whereas Rick Perry’s comments about a sitting Fed Chairman provoked several days of media indignation and a reprimand from President Obama. The civil discourse rules seem to apply almost exclusively to conservatives.
Mark Steyn has a piece in the current issue of National Review examining how, in much of the West, the right of free speech is becoming a function of the speaker’s identity and membership in a particular class — a kind of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Grievants. Blacks can say things whites cannot, Muslims can say things Catholics cannot, etc. The greater the perceived victimhood status of the speaker, the more latitude he gets.
Of course, victimhood status isn’t static. It shifts with time and political imperatives. What’s permissible for a Hispanic Rastafarian female to say today may be trumped by the sensibilities of an Asian Mennonite male tomorrow.
Accordingly, some clear, bright-line parameters would be helpful. And given that President Obama has already anointed himself the general arbiter by demonstrating that he can call a president unpatriotic without repercussion yet chastise Governor Perry for infelicitous remarks about Ben Bernanke, he should be the one to provide more definitive standards for what constitutes permissible political speech. For example, the following needs explanation:
Is it merely irresponsible to say American troops are just “air-raiding villages and killing civilians,” or is it unpatriotic?
Is it unpatriotic to compare U.S. troops in Guantanamo with Nazis and Pol Pot, or is it irresponsible?
Is it irresponsible to call Tea Party members terrorists, or is it unpatriotic?
Is it unpatriotic to spend $814 billion on non-existent “shovel-ready” jobs, or is it irresponsible?
Is it irresponsible to smuggle thousands of weapons to Mexican drug cartels, or is it simply galactically stupid?
We, the great unwashed, anxiously await guidance.
I figure it this way. If I met a girl and was actually into her, I wouldn't make changing her my primary goal. To make that one's goal is evidence of all sorts of things other than love and enthusiasm.
BHO - whose wife only fairly recently became proud to be an American - has no love of what this country was or even what this country still mostly is. He aims to "fundamentally transform" it. Fair enough. Call it what you want, but don't call it love or patriotism for my country.
To be fair, if BHO managed to "fundamentally transform" this nation to what he wants, my "patriotism" would still be intact for what once was my country. However, I'd be in favor of using any and all [remaining] Constitutionally protected freedoms...and then some...to tear his Frankenstein's monster completely apart - regardless of what flag he was flying over it. *THIS* flag, yes; *THAT* flag, no.
Patriotism isn't a shield; it is a sword. Lefties do not understand it. That is why the lefties not only hate the concept, but live in fear of it.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseYou plan to speak according to the president's "rules?" Why?
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuseapparently your sarcasm meter is still in the shop
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI think he was actually usung a gas chromatograph instead of his sarcasmotron. Hence the discrepency.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"we the great unwashed, anxiously await guidance."
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseDon't get your hopes up. liberals will never ever permit conservatives free speech - it's historical and they will accept no blame and feel no shame - ever. I know because I have liberal relatives who make me think I live in an alternate universe.
As far as I'm concerned, any speech that is legal - which is a very broad range in the U.S. - is fair game. Will foolish speakers have to suffer the opprobrium of their critics? Of course. Will feelings be hurt? Without a doubt.
We have turned into a nation of PC nannies and would-be censors. I say, let 'er rip and let the chips fall where they may. We don't need anyone, especially not this President, to tell us what is OK to say.
"The evolving rules governing acceptable public discourse require serious explanation." No they don't. There are no "rules". Public discourse will be determined to be "acceptable" or not by the public, not by some yammering politicians.
Speak your peace, man, and let the fun begin!
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThat's why I don't give a darn what the leftist media says is permissible. But I love to see their hypocrisy pointed out.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI'll answer a question that you didn't ask: Would it be irresponsible for Republicans to play the video unearthed by CNSNews over and over and over as the 2012 election approaches, or would it be wise? I say the latter. By then the debt will have increased far more in Obama's four years than in W's eight. If what W did was irresponsible and unpatriotic, what do you call what Obama has done? The video - with a graphic showing the rate of growth in the debt during the two administrations - would underscore what Obama's policies have done to the country and our children. They would also show that he's a hypocritical campaigner who was willing to say whatever he thought the audience wanted to hear in 2008 and that he still is. Examples of some of the most appalling stimulus boondoggles that were nothing more than wasteful payoffs to Obama cronies would be the icing on the cake.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThey could also juxtapose Obama talking about all the "shovel ready jobs" in the stimulus bill, with his later interview in which he laughingly admitted there is no such thing as a shovel ready job.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbusePeter, you're on fire with this post.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI, as one of the unwashed (I'm working on "great") am going to take a nap 'cause "guidance" is far from expected.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"If I met a girl and was actually into her, I wouldn't make changing her my primary goal."
This concept was very amusingly evoked in the great play title "I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change"
But guys almost never do that. That's a girl thing.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseGreat post.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseSimply Brilliant, thankyou!
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuseboy oh boy, this is a real doozy.
A) Take offense to Obama's comments if you please (or don't) but I think we can all agree there is a gulf between claiming a behavior is unpatriotic (as in, disrespectful to America) and threatening someone with violence for behavior deemed "almost treasonous."
Had Obama said something to the effect of, "after Bush spent all this money unpatriotically, if he set foot in Chicago boy we'd treat him like we were Al Capone" perhaps we could get a discussion going.
We're all reasonable people, we can assume Perry would not literally attack Bernanke were he to set foot in Texas after another round of quantitative easing but let's be honest.... these are fundamentally not one and the same and the lazy attempt to make them seem as such is a bit embarrassing. Bonus shame points for fellow commenters willing to go along with the lousy critique.
B) This whole post is predicated on nonsense. Kirsanow frames this discussion by taking an out of context quote from a speech in 2011 to tar Obama the candidate in 2008 in relation to an incomparable Rick Perry quote.
Out of context? Absolutely:
"So yes, we must examine all the facts behind this tragedy. We cannot and will not be passive in the face of such violence. We should be willing to challenge old assumptions in order to lessen the prospects of violence in the future.
But what we can't do is use this tragedy as one more occasion to turn on one another. As we discuss these issues, let each of us do so with a good dose of humility. Rather than pointing fingers or assigning blame, let us use this occasion to expand our moral imaginations, to listen to each other more carefully, to sharpen our instincts for empathy, and remind ourselves of all the ways our hopes and dreams are bound together."
Obama is clearly talking about forgoing blame within the context of the blood libel/Sarah Palin trigger map nonsense that occurred after the shooting. No reasonable political discourse could occur without some notion of blame or disagreement. Were Obama the demagogue conservatives seem to view him as, wouldn't this have been an ideal opportunity to attack and to lay blame? Regardless, his quote has ZERO relation to the topic at hand in this post and any claim that it does is blatantly baseless.
C) Whether or not Obama's response to a question from a reporter about Perry's remarks even counts as a reprimand is up for debate: "I think that everybody who runs for president, it probably takes them a little bit of time before they start realizing that this isn't like running for governor or running for senator or running for Congress, and you've got to be a little more careful about what you say. But I'll cut him some slack. He's only been at it for a few days now."
His remark is alternately playful or condescending, depending on your outlook, but he is not literally warning the man to watch his words. It seems more like advice from someone who has been down the same road.
It's the mildest rebuke imaginable considering the context of this post is about the infringement on free speech in relation to threatening to kill someone. Again, Obama certainly could have said, "If Perry makes one more off-color remark about the Fed chairman, well, I don't know what you'd do but over here in Washington we'd make sure he felt some pain"
D) I'm curious exactly how Rick Perry's free speech rights have been infringed. He was quoted accurately. He was given the opportunity to clarify his remarks. He suffered no penalty other than the embarrassment that comes along with the free and fair discourse that exists around him. If people were offended by his remarks, they have the right to campaign against him, vote against him, behave as they see fit. He has not been coerced, harmed, threatened by anyone with any ability to literally restrict his speech. The victim complex at work here is interesting.
E) As is often the case with NR critiques, there's a broad sweep of the hand rather than specifics to clarify exactly how Obama has been mean to Republicans. Let's see the QUOTES viciously excoriating Republican behavior during the debt ceiling, I bet it's some real juicy stuff. I'll be here waiting...
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThis is a really tidy demolition. Well done sir.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseObama & Crew have left miles and miles of great campaign footage for GOP ads. So many busted promises. So much hypocrisy. So much flat out lying.
Gee, but running on an actual record is tough, huh?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseDoes fighting these pointless battles of decorum ever get wearying for you?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseOkay, so Obama is a two-faced lying poser, he's still awesome!
{Which amounts to the support he has remaining - and only that much because Democrats were able to take over public education in this country after 1977}.
Of course, Obama will not be able either to run on his record or run far from it, so he will be reduced to attacking his opponent in the lowest and dirtiest manner seen in many decades. It doesn't matter who the GOP nominates, they will be subjected to a vicious assault from the Obama surrogates.
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