Conservatives Should Give PC-Pushing Liberals a Taste of Their Own Medicine
Who came up with the inane rule that only liberals can hurl an accusation of racism, as if the term belonged to the left exclusively? In that case, what are we supposed to do in those instances where the racists are liberals?
Take rlowney856 for example. That’s the screenname of the left-leaning reader named “roger” who — in language that was less than progressive — took exception to a recent column I wrote criticizing both Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid for his condescending racial comments about Barack Obama’s dialect and skin tone during the 2008 presidential election and a slew of his fellow Democrats for bending their morals into pretzels to defend him and declare the subject closed.
Or as rlowney856 put it:
ruben, my son … how petty can you get??? … to dwell on a year old quote by sir harry is so low i find it hard to believe!!! … are you so hard up you can’t find something less petty to write about?? … are all you right wingers as trashy and stupid as you?? … you take the cake you mexican garbage bag … go back to south of the border where you and your right wing idiots belong … what a total farce you are!!! … roger
By the way, for what it’s worth, I thought the mainstream press was much too kind and generous with Reid when it rushed to label his comments “racially insensitive.” I would have used the word “racist.” Yes, that’s right, I said “racist.” I’ve heard all the excuses and explanations — Reid was complimenting Obama, Reid was really insulting white voters, what Reid said was ugly but true, etc. etc. — and I haven’t found any of them especially persuasive.
When — according to the book Game Change by Mark Halperin and John Heilemann — Reid said privately that Obama could win the White House because he is “light-skinned” and speaks “with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one,” he seemed to be implying that all Obama has going for him as a presidential candidate is that he’s light-skinned and can flip his “Negro dialect” on and off like a light switch. It’s not that Obama is, in the least, intelligent, charismatic, or skilled in selling himself. Those attributes, we can assume, are more commonly found in 70-year-old white guys from Nevada.
9 out of 10 people don’t know what the word ‘racist’ means. So it’s no surprise that they use it in place of ‘bigot’.
Look them up.
Harry made assumptions about the white American voter being too racist to vote for a dark skinned black man who didn’t speak Harvard. Harry could well be racist, but since I don’t know it for a fact I won’t charge him with it. I doubt if Bill is a racist, he’s part of the generation that decided racists were extremely uncool. He has always seemed quite comfortable with black people. I take his remark that the ambitious upstart Obama ranked with interns, not with the elite of Washington politics. Kinda like they think of Sarah Palin. Of course there is a double standard, and conservatives are too timid about calling out the liberals, but we have to work from hard facts. Assumptions are not good enough. I also think there is a great weariness with the whole racist tag as a political weapon. The greatest double standard is with black racism, which is pervasive in black academia and black entertainment. Martin Luther King would not be amused.
Thank you, Ruben, it’s nice to agree with you once in a while. And thanks for the quote from the “progressive” blogger, with his xenophobia and bigotry for all to see. He may be inadvertently correct about one thing, though. Maybe the right would be happy “south of the border.”
My father, an old-style southern Democrat in, one might say, the Harry Reid mold, worked in Mexico for awhile in the 1970s. He came back enthralled by the people and the country in general. Warm, wonderful people, he called them, ruled by a corrupt government, but still possessing a work ethic and family spirit that he feared was slipping in America. For the rest of his life he missed Mexico, and wanted to retire there, but cancer stopped that.
You and I disagree often on the details of immigration, though less often on the bigger picture. I’m not an open-borders libertarian, and would insist, instead, that Mexico find some way to fix itself rather than pour its unemployed illegally into the US, but it wouldn’t harm some of my conservative compatriots to more openly embrace the family spirit and work ethic in their new neighbors that my father witnessed. I think most of us do; it’s too often the self-styled progressives that worry me the most (which is true in most cases, come to think of it).
“some conservatives”
Forget that and forget listening to the fifth column within the ranks. There are many who have spent years posing as “conservatives” except when their vote or efforts make a difference. They’re the source of the “don’t sink to their level” sermons that yields the battlefield without a fight, the “they’re all the same” whining that yields elections by encouraging people to stay on the sidelines, and worst of all, the “don’t let the far right take over the party” slander that keeps the republican party from embracing republican values rather than being a democrat lite party.
Screw the people who won’t fight fire with fire and the donkey they rode in on.
Regards
Saul Alinski’s book on the runles for community organizers lists item one as “don’t let the truth stand in the way of radical, progressive Democrat aims”! The Chicago thugocracy has auxilliaries Acorn, AARP, Union button men who are now in Massachusetts trying to steal 10,000 votes in critical precincts. They were effective in Minnesota and they are building up critical skills for the 2010 elections. The good news is honest patriot Tea Party volunteers are manning polls as poll watchers throughout the state and are hopefully going to impede the voting frauds. Tarbender, Maine
Goodness, Ruben, so good to see you say so. You had seemed the only arbiter of who or what is ‘racist’ up until now — at least as regards Latino/Gringo relations.
So you now agree that we may discuss each other with regard to all our human inter-connections, not just your approved contexts, without enduring malicious slander from all sides including yours.
Idiot Reid is simply an old man Midwesterner who speaks oldman-Midwest which seems cabalistic to non-oldman-Midwesterners. Just like Strom Thurmond spoke South Carolina “geech”. Just like my friends and neighbors here in Latin America talk Latino automatic-anti-gringo. But I don’t think any of them racist for their upbringing nor their vernaculars.
Looks like you contemplate joining my club. Welcome.
I most certainly did not take Ruben Navarrette Jr.’s advice and describe Harry Reid and Bill Clinton as racists. I did exactly the opposite: I defended both men from these unjust attacks! As matter of fact, I completely agree with Reid that Barack Obama’s election chances were helped by his lighter complexion and Harvard diction. These were astute observations and nothing more. Ted Kennedy was looking for an excuse to abandon the Clintons. He therefore jumped all over Bill’s apt comment that a few years earlier a politician like Obama would be getting them coffee. This bit of hyperbole was quite appropriate considering the candidate’s slim resume and lack of accomplishments. I don’t have time to cheap shot ideological opponents. Such behavior is beneath contempt.
Well, I’d sure say that ex-KKK Grand Cyclops Congressman Bird is a dedicated racist. He even dropped N bombs on national TV. Naturally, the gov’t run media ignored it. The funny thing is that it is the demos that have a history of racism in their past, not the republicans.
Frankly, I think it is a lot of psychological projection involved w/ the rats whenever they go racist on us. They are the real racists, not us! See Bird!
Reid and Clinton’s remards were racist however that doesn’t mean they are personally racist.
The Obama’s sat in a church and listened to a man he (Obama) refers to as his mentor, who married the Obama’s and babtized there children, spout racial hatred for over 20 years. Any rational person would have to pin the racist label on them.
Mr. Navarette:
“So, you see, the new revelations about Harry Reid and Bill Clinton aren’t really new at all. Conservatives have plenty of material to work with if they want to give PC-pushing liberals a taste of their own medicine.”
The problem with using the Liberals’ favorite weapon is that one runs the risk of becoming just like them.
Reid’s and Clinton’s words should just simply be accurately quoted and attributed and then allow the reader to drasw his or her own conclusions. At the most, an observation of the kind of “outraged reaction disparity” to what came out of Reid’s mouth and to what came out of Trent Lott’s soup-cooler should be all that is necessary to drive the point home.
The last thing any conservative should want is to become more like a liberal. Our “ace in the hole” politically is that by and large, conservatives are FAR more congenial people than liberals.
Heck…even liberals eventually get fed up with hanging around other liberals.
LOL, this coming from the guy who thinks it is racist to require immigrants to learn English and it is racist to oppose amnesty for criminals who violate our immigration laws.
While I despise Harry Reid with a passion, my observation was that he was merely making a critical assessment of BHO’s electability. I’ve heard some redneck jokes from people I know, regarding BHO being President, that are far worse.
Political Correctness is another word for Cultural Marxism..which foments Marxist revolution by taking Western democracies strong points,
ie. “tolerance”, “openness.” etc…and using them to DESTROY the West.
An example is “MultiCulturalism”..ie the relentless inclusion of diverse antagonistic cultures until the tensions build up and destroy the host nation.
Next time you read a headline about Nigerian muslims almost blowing up airliners over Detroit, Lebanese cabdrivers plotting to collapse the Holland Tunnel, Black muslims putting bombs against synagogues in Brooklyn…remember
its all happening according to plan…and next time they will get through.
So really Ruben…Conservatives arent inclined to use PC…as all that does is further a Marxist agenda.
GONE TOO FAR
As a nation, we have allowed ourselves to drift too far from our roots, those established when the Pilgrims arrived and when our system was codified by the 19th century Democrats from Jefferson, Madison on to Cleveland, as cited in The Changing Face of Democrats on Amazon.com and claysamerica.com. We’ve allowed the Old World ideas of Rousseau and Marx to infect our politics through the 20th century Democrats, and now we are paying the price for it. Whether we will regain our proven way again remains to be seen. Whether enough of the electorate will choose the New World way or stay the course being laid down by Obama and become just another nation ruled by the few elite over the wishes of the many with individual freedom a thing of the past is yet to be decided. America proved prosperity comes from freedom, not dictatorship. Claysamerica.com
Liberal Democrats are at their worst in racial terms when a prominent “person of color,” to use a liberal phrase, leaves the liberal plantation and becomes active in the other party. Remember the way Clarence Thomas was savaged by the liberal forces of tolerance and compassion. Joe Biden addressed Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez as “buddy boy” when the AG testified before Biden’s senate committee. Democrats were the party of slavery before the Civil War and the party of black subjugation after it. The Republican party was founded to end slavery and it did. 620,000 American soldiers died in the Civil War. Republican Reconstruction gave blacks civil rights after the War. In the backlash that followed, Demcrats retaliated by passing Jim Crow laws. The KKK was formed by Democrats. A modern historian has called the KKK the military force of the Democrat party. FDR’s New Deal was made possible with the votes of Southern Democrat senators- the Solid South was Democrat and segregationist down to the 1960′s. Bill Clinton’s mentor Wm. Fullbright was a segregationist. George Wallace was a Democrat. Sheriff Bull Connor of Birmingham, Alabama was a Democrat. So was Orville Faubus who barred blacks from Arkansas schools in violation of the order of the US Supreme Court whose Chief Justice was the Republican Earl Warren. Lester Maddox, segregationist governor of Georgia was a Democrat. Bilbo, Rankin, Irvin, Russell and many more were all Democrats. Democrats still have much to answer for. They left the US a tradition of white racial superiority and black debasement that was evil. This country still suffers from that Democrat leagcy.
Has someone stolen Ruben Navarrette’s identity?
If there’s one thing I can’t *STAND*, it’s INTOLERANCE! These people need to be rounded up and SHOT!