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Contributors
Chris Field- Contributor
Chris
Field is Editor of Human
Events Online [go
to Field index]
TWO
CENTS
 The
'Tolerant' Left
Lecturing
the Rubes of America...
[Chris Field] 11/8/04
Have you witnessed
the fallout from the latest election -- how it has affected
Liberals? It has unmasked them entirely.
They think religious
people are stupid. Not just stupid, dangerous.
Make
that Christians. More
specifically, make that Evangelicals.
The Left, the
base of the Democratic Party, hail the virtues of tolerance
and consider themselves to be THE tolerant citizens of America.
In their touting of tolerance they express their obvious disdain
for those whose views run contrary to that of enlightened Liberalism.
Dare
to make a statement of conviction of any kind, and one of
these Leftists
will set down his cheese and wine, pause his lecture on the
virtues of plurality and the absurdity of the belief in absolute
Truth, and tell you your convictions -- everything you believe
and hold dear -- are absolutely wrong. Where does he get his
understanding that what you claim is "right" is actually
not? Against what standard is this wrongness measured? He can't
say. All he knows is that you're a bigot, you're intolerant,
you're not worthy of being an American. In fact, you're not
smart enough to understand what it means to be an American.
And
not only are you dumb, you're dangerous. Fanatics like you
don't belong
in a "tolerant" culture like ours. You and your beliefs
and the people who share them should not be allowed in our
civilized society . . . or, at the very least, you should be
denied the right to vote. Because when you vote, when you're
politically active, you screw everything up.
People like
you foist upon the world monsters like Ronald Reagan, George
Bush, Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, and Antonin Scalia.
People like
you are the most likely to attack America: you're no different
than the Islamists who fly planes into buildings, suicide-bomb
pizzerias, detonate car bombs in the middle of busy streets,
and blow up buses. At least those Islamic terrorists had a
reason: America, pushed by people like you, has oppressed the
Arab world. Yes, you are the reason 3,000 Americans were killed
on September 11.
Nowhere has
your un-Americanism been more poignantly explained and demonstrated
than on the New York Times opinion pages over the last two
days. Need evidence? Here are portions of five opinion pieces
that made it into the ever-so-prestigious (and self-righteous)
newspaper of record.
#1
From "The
Day the Enlightenment Went Out" by Garry Wills:
"The
secular states of modern Europe do not understand the fundamentalism
of the American electorate. It is not what they had experienced
from this country in the past. In fact, we now resemble those
nations less than we do our putative enemies.
"Where
else do we find fundamentalist zeal, a rage at secularity,
religious intolerance, fear of and hatred for modernity? Not
in France or Britain or Germany or Italy or Spain. We find
it in the Muslim world, in Al Qaeda, in Saddam Hussein's Sunni
loyalists. Americans wonder that the rest of the world thinks
us so dangerous, so single-minded, so impervious to international
appeals. They fear jihad, no matter whose zeal is being expressed.
"It
is often observed that enemies come to resemble each other.
We
torture the torturers, we call our God better than theirs -
as one American general put it, in words that the president
has not repudiated.
"The
moral zealots will, I predict, give some cause for dismay
even to
nonfundamentalist Republicans. Jihads are scary things. It
is not too early to start yearning back toward the Enlightenment."
#2
From "The
Red Zone" by Maureen Dowd:
"The
president got re-elected by dividing the country along fault
lines of
fear, intolerance, ignorance and religious rule. He doesn't
want to heal rifts; he wants to bring any riffraff who disagree
to heel.
"W. ran
a jihad in America so he can fight one in Iraq - drawing a
devoted flock of evangelicals, or "values voters," as
they call themselves, to the polls by opposing abortion, suffocating
stem cell research and supporting a constitutional amendment
against gay marriage."
#3
From "Two
Nations Under God" by Thomas Friedman:
"Why
didn't I feel totally depressed after George H. W. Bush defeated
Michael
Dukakis, or even when George W. Bush defeated Al Gore? Why
did I wake up feeling deeply troubled yesterday?
"hat
troubled me yesterday was my feeling that this election was
tipped because
of an outpouring of support for George Bush by people who don't
just favor different policies than I do - they favor a whole
different kind of America. We don't just disagree on what America
should be doing; we disagree on what America is.
"At
one level this election was about nothing. None of the real
problems
facing the nation were really discussed. But at another level,
without warning, it actually became about everything. Partly
that happened because so many Supreme Court seats are at stake,
and partly because Mr. Bush's base is pushing so hard to legislate
social issues and extend the boundaries of religion that it
felt as if we were rewriting the Constitution, not electing
a president. I felt as if I registered to vote, but when I
showed up the Constitutional Convention broke out.
"My
problem with the Christian fundamentalists supporting Mr.
Bush is not
their spiritual energy or the fact that I am of a different
faith. It is the way in which he and they have used that religious
energy to promote divisions and intolerance at home and abroad.
I respect that moral energy, but wish that Democrats could
find a way to tap it for different ends."
#4
From "O.K.,
Folks: Back to Work" by Bob Herbert:
"Mr.
Bush's victory on Tuesday was not based on his demonstrated
competence
in office or on a litany of perceived successes. For all the
talk about values that we're hearing, the president ran a campaign
that appealed above all to voters' fears and prejudices. He
didn't say he'd made life better for the average American over
the past four years. He didn't say he had transformed the schools,
or made college more affordable, or brought jobs to the unemployed
or health care to the sick and vulnerable.
"He
said, essentially, be very afraid. Be frightened of terrorism,
and
of those dangerous gay marriages, and of those in this pluralistic
society who may have thoughts and beliefs and values that differ
from your own.
"As
usual, he turned reality upside down. A quintessential American
value
is tolerance for ideas other than one's own. Tuesday's election
was a dismaying sprint toward intolerance, sparked by a smiling
president who is a master at appealing to the baser aspects
of our natures."
#5 From "No
Surrender" by Paul Krugman:
"President
Bush isn't a conservative. He's a radical - the leader of a
coalition that deeply dislikes America as it is. Part of that
coalition wants to tear down the legacy of Franklin Roosevelt,
eviscerating Social Security and, eventually, Medicare. Another
part wants to break down the barriers between church and state.
And thanks to a heavy turnout by evangelical Christians, Mr.
Bush has four more years to advance that radical agenda.
"Democrats
are not going to get the support of people whose votes are
motivated, above all, by their opposition to abortion and gay
rights (and, in the background, opposition to minority rights).
All they will do if they try to cater to intolerance is alienate
their own base.
"Democrats
mustn't give up the fight. What's at stake isn't just the fate
of their party, but the fate of America as we know it."
Don't
you get it, you rubes? You and your God and your morality
are destroying
America. tOR
copyright
2004 Human Events
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