Remember this?
In the days immediately following the election of Barack Obama, some fluffy lefty launched the website 52to48withlove. It was a noble idea--that just because the liberals won the election that we were all in this together. That we were all Americans who had the best interests of this country in mind.
What a difference a few months make.
It was barely a month after Obama took office when the stimulus package was rammed through with nominal "bipartisan" support from the senate's most notorious RINOs. Conservatives who were opposed to this extravagant spending pacakage and skeptical of the "stimulating" benefits were told in no uncertain terms by HRH Nancy Pelosi to sit down and shut up. "We won".
Since then, things have decidedly gotten worse. I've never been a person who has bought into the notion of the cult of the Presidency--I've always had contempt for the mindset of people who blamed George Bush for everything and blindly re-elected the same idiots to congress year after year. I also never saw Bush as a cult of personality, except as a target of unreasonable hatred on the left. Conservatives surely had plenty of reason to be displeased with Bush, especially on the "compassionate conservative" domestic problems. On the right side of the aisle, we are not afraid or averse to question our leaders.
Not so on the left side of the aisle. A true cult of personality surrounds Barack Obama and his followers believe he can do no wrong. As his weak leadership of this country progresses, the uber-liberals in congress are running the show; Obama is merely a front man for the ideas of the radical left.
As Obama's Presidency progressed, it became more and more obvious that the moderate he ran as was very differrent from the radical that he was. True polical junkies were always aware of this; indeed, many of us are heartsick that our worst expectations of this administration are coming to pass. As this radicalism became more and more apparent, as the power grab became more and more obvious, small government conservatives became more vocal in their opposition to the change our liberal leaders were selling.
And as that voice of opposition grew louder, the tactics to marginalize the opposition grew more radical and obscene. Here, Penn Jillette talks about being screamed at by his idol Tommy Smothers for merely appearing on Glen Beck's television show. It's ironic that Smother's TV show was taken off the air due to organized protests to stifle his free speech when he and his brother spoke out against the Vietnam War. The irony, apparently, was lost on Smothers (h/t Ht Air)
We are silencing free speech by labelling it "hate speech." Here's a local example, where at Temple University, Dutch Parliamentarian, and maker of the anti-Islam film "Fitna" Geert Wilders, is protested protested as delivering hate speech. Wilders speech is not only "hateful" in the minds of these PC drones; it's downright dangerous---not to Wilders himself, who requires 24/7 police protection because of his courage to express his views, but to the Muslims on campus who allegedly have been having "hate and fear thrown at them" for an entire week, simply because this man was coming to speak on campus. (for more on Geert Wilders' appearance at Temple, go to PAWatercooler here, here and here.)
Fully half of the country, the conservative half, to be sure, has been smeared as racist. This would be less alarming if we were talking about the far left fringe; the punditry and the netroots of Kos, Salon and Huffington Post.
We talk about our opposition to the administration's policies, and we are labelled racist; we talk about how conservatives are being systematically marginalized and we are paranoid. Ho hum, nothing new.
But now this is coming directly from the White House.
Rahm Emmanuel, Robert Gibbs and David Axelrod have begun a campaign to deliegitimize Fox News as a news organization The President, being interviewed on NBC, tried to maintain some kind of plausible deniability and tap danced around the direct question; but later capitulated and said,
"I think that what our advisers simply said is, is that we are going to take media as it comes," Obama said. "And if media is operating, basically, as a talk radio format, then that's one thing. And if it's operating as a news outlet than that's another. But it's not something I'm losing a lot of sleep over."
This is decidedly unPresidential and incredibly divisive of an already divided nation. It is damaging the very fabric of our country, perhaps irreparably. It is one thing for a liberal pundit to call Fox News "Faux News", it is another for the White House to do it. It is one thing for one of the Kos Kidz to label conservatives racist, it is quite another for this idea to be repeatedly and implicitly endorsed by the White House.
Yes, Mr. President. There is no need for your to lose sleep over marginalizing fully half of the country. No need to lose sleep over your dismissal of the voices of half of the population.
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