I find something very unsettling and not sufficiently appreciated in all the invective the Democrats and their supporters in the media have been spewing at the tea partiers: Biden likening them to terrorists; Chris Matthews comparing their negotiating position to “a thug attacking a victim”; at least four New York Times columnists making the terrorist analogy; Nancy Pelosi accusing John Boehner of having gone over to the dark side and claiming that her battle with the tea party was an effort “to save life on this planet as we know it”; John Kerry calling them “absolutists” and “extremists” … etc., etc.
This unhinged vituperation has been widely criticized, but I don’t think it’s true depth has yet been plumbed. As long-time readers of DISCRIMINATIONS will recall, I grew up in Alabama and came of political age during the civil rights movement (the old, original one, the one that demanded colorblind equality). The recent attempt to Palinize the tea party, to smother it in wild epithets as evil incarnate, remind me of nothing so much as the angry white Southern denunciation of all civil rights workers and even supporters as communists. These accusers, of course, had never met a “communist,” and their criticism had nothing to do with Marx, but in an odd sort of way they were right: since what they meant by “communist” is someone who favored ending racial discrimination, by the dim lights shining in the South in those days civil rights supporters were indeed communists.
Similarly, when liberals today vilify the tea party, they don’t mean members of any particular organization. What they mean by “tea party” is all those people, and their representatives in Congress who agree with them, who are angry about excessive government spending and debt and deficits and want to start putting a stop to them right now.
But these vilifiers have a big problem: a substantial number of Americans — according to many polls, a substantial majority — believe spending has gotten out of hand, that the debt and deficit are too big, that we need to take drastic action such as passing a balanced budget amendment to bring them under control. That is, most Americans share the core concern of the “tea party” (quotes, because it is not an organized party, or really a significant organization of any kind, but a mood).
We know that Obama wanted to make the United States more like Europe (although we didn’t know that what he had in mind was Greece), but it comes as something of a surprise to see how much liberals hate so many Americans and what they believe. Their current rage is enough to make you think they hate America itself.
Of course they hate America. They have hated America since 1917 when the Democrats surrendered to communism.
Yes, they hate America. And they hate anyone who doesn’t agree with them. But somehow they just can’t see the hypocrisy in insisting on free speech for themselves and their views while trying to stifle any dissenting voices. They have the same kind of zealous behaviors as those who led the Bolshevik Revolution, the same blind intensity as those who saluted Hitler, and the same rapturous fervor of the extreme religious right. Those who disagree are shouted down and taken down. This kind of frenzied mob behavior though is rarely recognized by those inside the mob, who are convinced of their own righteousness and who continually reinforce each other.
Claire,
There is no doubt that those remarks by ‘liberals’ were over-the-top but yours were far, far worse. Liberals (I’m not one) love America just as much as you and Rosenberg do. They’re your friends and neighbors, family and fellow employees, etc. They have a little different value system than you that might sometimes err too much on the side of workers, the poor and minorities, etc. But to compare them to the Bolsheviks, Hitler zealots or ‘extreme right’ Christians? Who raised you? What do you read? Your comments are despicable and indicate that you might not be in touch with reality.