4um: Obama's formulation is profoundly insulting

Title: Obama's formulation is profoundly insulting
Source: Sun-Journal Lewiston, Me
URL Source: [None]
Published: May 18, 2008
Author: Obama
Post Date: 2008-05-18 15:31:58 by Jethro Tull
Keywords: None
Views: 1740
Comments: 79

Obama's formulation is profoundly insulting

Barack Obama was caught saying something he believes.

At a San Francisco fundraiser, away from the prying eyes of the press, Obama reflected on why small-town voters in Pennsylvania and the Midwest seem resistant to his appeal. He said those areas had lost jobs for 25 years. Therefore, people "get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti- immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."

Obama has apologized for his phrasing while defending the substance of his statement. And why not? He was retailing an article of left-wing orthodoxy going back centuries: that the working class is distracted by religion and other peripheral concerns from focusing on its economic interests and embracing socialism.

Versions of Obama's insight have been expounded by a world- famous 19th-century economist (Karl Marx), by a 1960s New Left philosopher (Herbert Marcuse) and by a best-selling contemporary liberal writer (Thomas Frank, author of "What's the Matter With Kansas?"), among many others. It's such a commonplace that Bubba- friendly Bill Clinton wrote in his memoir that Republicans wanted to undermine confidence in government so voters would be more receptive to "their strategy of waging campaigns on divisive social and cultural issues like abortion, gay rights, and guns."

At bottom, this is a profoundly insulting point of view. Consider Obama's formulation. He makes it sound like no one would be a hunter or a Christian absent economic distress, that economic circumstances drive people into such atavistic habits. Has he considered that some people simply enjoy hunting? And view the right to bear arms as a guarantor of American liberty? As they used to say, "God made men, but Sam Colt made them equal."

The assumption is that only liberal attitudes are normal and well- adjusted: If only these small-town people could earn more income, get an advanced degree and move to a major metropolitan area, they could shed their chrysalis of social conservatism.

Obama prides himself on his civility, but it has to go much deeper than dulcet rhetoric. A fundamental courtesy of political debate is to meet the other side on its own terms. If someone says he cares about gun rights, it's rude to insist: "No, you don't. It's the minimum wage that you really care about, and you'd know it if you were more self-aware." But Democrats have an uncontrollable reflex to do just that. Since the McGovernite takeover of their party, they have struggled to work up enthusiasm for Middle American mores. (Since 1980, only Bill Clinton managed it, which is why he was the only Democrat elected president in three decades.)

When the liberal reflex is coupled with a Ivy League-educated candidate who seems personally remote and uncomfortable with everyday American activities, it's electoral poison. After the likes of Al Gore and John Kerry, Republicans had to be wondering, "Could Democrats possibly nominate yet another candidate easily portrayed as an out-of-touch elitist?" With Obama, Democrats appear to be responding with a resounding "Yes, we can!"

Obama brings a special measure of arrogance to the standard liberal critique of Middle America. His candidacy has always been characterized by two paradoxes. How can he be so hopeful at the same time he and his wife, Michelle, portray America as a sink-pit of despair? And how can he claim to be a uniter when he's an orthodox liberal who has risked little or nothing for bipartisan outreach?

Now, we know. Obama defines hopefulness as liberalism, specifically liberalism as embodied by himself. Only with Obama's election will America be redeemed from its harrowing false consciousness. We will be unified, not by Obama reaching out to conservatives to hammer out compromises, but by conservatives shedding their bitterness and becoming Obama liberals.

This is the underside of hope: arrogance fading into a secular messianism based on the fallenness of everyone who disagrees with Barack Obama. And it's small-town voters who are deluded?Rich Lowry is a syndicated columnist. He can be reached via e-mail at:

This is good hit to the disingenuous marxist fuck who is "obama." This elitist POS makes me want to puke.

"Hang on there darlin'/sugar pie/cutey/fill in the blank... we'll get to that in a minute" as he addresses a female news reporter and walks away from her question.

I'm sure there's more than a few boys down South that weren't too upset until this clown insulted religion (Christians), whites, and the 2nd Amendment.

Blacklisted by History

by M. Stanton Evans

In standard histories of the so-called "Red Scare" of the 1950s, Sen. Joe McCarthy (R-Wis.) is depicted as a lying bully who falsely named helpless victims in the U.S. State Department and other government bureaus as Communists or Soviet agents. Lying and baseless charges of subversion were the supposed essence of McCarthy's method. History has judged him such a loathsome figure that to this day, some fifty years after the Army-McCarthy hearings, people hurl the term "McCarthyism" to attack any perceived witch-hunt. But now, in Blacklisted by History: The Untold Story of Senator Joe McCarthy, veteran journalist M. Stanton Evans shows not only that this portrayal of McCarthy and his cases is mistaken -- but that virtually everything else that we've been told about McCarthy and his "era" is false.

Evans has spent more than a decade researching this book - poring over vast amounts of data that were unknown to the American public in the 1950s and that corroborate the case McCarthy was making then. Indeed, many of those people McCarthy named as Communists show up in the official records that were suppressed at the time -- and yet most of these individuals are still regarded as McCarthy's victims. And, while McCarthy is often accused of being a liar, Blacklisted by History exposes how the senator's opponents were covering up or even actively falsifying the factual record, and in some cases lying to the public.

Relying almost exclusively on primary source documents buried in U.S. government archives -- including troves of previously unexamined FBI files, formerly missing State Department records, telephone intercepts, and heretofore unknown data from congressional investigations - M. Stanton Evans has unearthed the hidden history of America's backstage Cold War. His astonishing findings reveal that McCarthy understood, far better than his opponents cared to admit, the insidious forces that posed a very real threat to American society and institutions.

A groundbreaking book based on exhaustive research, Blacklisted by History is much more than a look at the McCarthy era -- it is revealing investigation into how our view of history can so often be distorted.