The Last Refuge of the Liberal

by Charles Krauthammer

Posted 08/27/2010 ET

Liberalism under siege is an ugly sight indeed. Just yesterday it was all hope and change and returning power to the people. But the people have proved so disappointing. Their recalcitrance has, in only 19 months, turned the predicted 40-year liberal ascendancy (James Carville) into a full retreat. Ah, the people, the little people, the small-town people, the "bitter" people, as Barack Obama in an unguarded moment once memorably called them, clinging "to guns or religion or" -- this part is less remembered -- "antipathy toward people who aren't like them."

That's a polite way of saying: clinging to bigotry. And promiscuous charges of bigotry are precisely how our current rulers and their vast media auxiliary react to an obstreperous citizenry that insists on incorrect thinking.

-- Resistance to the vast expansion of government power, intrusiveness and debt, as represented by the tea party movement? Why, racist resentment toward a black president.

-- Disgust and alarm with the federal government's unwillingness to curb illegal immigration, as crystallized in the Arizona law? Nativism.

-- Opposition to the most radical redefinition of marriage in human history, as expressed in Proposition 8 in California? Homophobia.

-- Opposition to a 15-story Islamic center and mosque near Ground Zero? Islamophobia.

Now we know why the country has become "ungovernable," last year's excuse for the Democrats' failure of governance: Who can possibly govern a nation of racist, nativist, homophobic Islamophobes?

Note what connects these issues. In every one, liberals have lost the argument in the court of public opinion. Majorities -- often lopsided majorities -- oppose President Obama's social-democratic agenda (e.g., the stimulus, Obamacare), support the Arizona law, oppose gay marriage and reject a Ground Zero mosque.

What's a liberal to do? Pull out the bigotry charge, the trump that pre-empts debate and gives no credit to the seriousness and substance of the contrary argument. The most venerable of these trumps is, of course, the race card. When the tea party arose, a spontaneous, leaderless and perfectly natural (and traditionally American) reaction to the vast expansion of government intrinsic to the president's proudly proclaimed transformational agenda, the liberal commentariat cast it as a mob of angry white yahoos disguising their antipathy to a black president by cleverly speaking in economic terms.

Then came Arizona and SB 1070. It seems impossible for the left to believe that people of good will could hold that: (a) illegal immigration should be illegal, (b) the federal government should not hold border enforcement hostage to comprehensive reform, i.e., amnesty, (c) every country has the right to determine the composition of its immigrant population.

As for Proposition 8, is it so hard to see why people might believe that a single judge overturning the will of 7 million voters is an affront to democracy? And that seeing merit in retaining the structure of the most ancient and fundamental of all social institutions is something other than an alleged hatred of gays -- particularly since the opposite-gender requirement has characterized virtually every society in all the millennia until just a few years ago?

And now the Ground Zero mosque. The intelligentsia is near unanimous that the only possible grounds for opposition is bigotry toward Muslims. This smug attribution of bigotry to two-thirds of the population hinges on the insistence on a complete lack of connection between Islam and radical Islam, a proposition that dovetails perfectly with the Obama administration's pretense that we are at war with nothing more than "violent extremists" of inscrutable motive and indiscernible belief. Those who reject this as both ridiculous and politically correct (an admitted redundancy) are declared Islamophobes, the ad hominem du jour.

It is a measure of the corruption of liberal thought and the collapse of its self-confidence that, finding itself so widely repudiated, it resorts reflexively to the cheapest race-baiting (in a colorful variety of forms). Indeed, how can one reason with a nation of pitchfork-wielding mobs brimming with "antipathy toward people who aren't like them" -- blacks, Hispanics, gays and Muslims -- a nation that is, as Michelle Obama once put it succinctly, "just downright mean"?

The Democrats are going to get beaten badly in November. Not just because the economy is ailing. And not just because Obama overread his mandate in governing too far left. But because a comeuppance is due the arrogant elites whose undisguised contempt for the great unwashed prevents them from conceding a modicum of serious thought to those who dare oppose them.

Mr. Krauthammer is a nationally syndicated columnist.

The genius and his lemmings...

MEANWHILE...

LADIES VS GENTS

AMERICA, YOU VOTED FOR THESE IMBECILES

Great Orators of the Democrat Party .

"One man with courage makes a majority".  Andrew Jackson

"The only thing we have to fear is fear itself".  Franklin D. Roosevelt

 "The buck stops here".  Harry S.  Truman

 "Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country". John F.  Kennedy

And now from today's genius Democrats ...

 "It depends what your definition of 'is' is?'' Bill Clinton

 "That Obama ...  I would like to cut his NUTS off".  Jesse Jackson

 "Those rumors are false ...  I believe in the sanctity of marriage".  John Edwards

 "I invented the Internet". Al Gore

 "The next Person that tells me I'm not religious, I'm going to shove my rosary beads up their ass".  Joe Biden

 " America is ... is no longer, uh, what it ... it, uh, could be, uh, what it was once was ... uh, and I say to myself, 'uh, I don't want that future, uh, uh for my children".  Barack Obama

 "I have campaigned in all 57 states".  Barack Obama (Quoted 2008)

 "You don't need God anymore, you have us Democrats".  Nancy Pelosi (Quoted 2006)

 "Paying taxes is voluntary".  Sen Harry Reid

 "Bill is the greatest husband and father I know.  No one is more faithful, true, and honest than he".  Hillary Clinton (Quoted 1998)

 And the most recent gem of wisdom from the "Mother Moron" .

"We just have to pass the Healthcare Bill to see what's in it".  Nancy Pelosi (Quoted March, 2010).

HOW LUCKY CAN WE BE TO HAVE SUCH BRILLIANT MINDS IN CHARGE OF OUR ONCE GREAT COUNTRY.

''Life's tough ...  it's even tougher if you're stupid''.  John Wayne

HOW WARM IS HE NOW?

So long as the people do not care to exercise their freedom, those who wish to tyrannize will do so; for tyrants are active and ardent, and will devote themselves in the name of any number of gods, religious and otherwise, to put shackles upon sleeping men. - Voltaire, 1764

COMMODUS

BARAK COMMODUS OBAMA

Commodus Castigates a Centurion

By Jeannie DeAngelis

Emperor Lucius Aurelius Commodus, son of Marcus Aurielus, the "last of five good emperors," ruled Rome from AD 177 to AD 192.   History tells us that Commodus "proved to be a self-indulgent, disconnected leader."  In fact, Commodus' "accession to power ended a spell of 80 years in Roman history which had brought men to the throne by merit rather than birth."

Supposedly, Imperator Caesar Lucius Aurelius Commodus Augustus was filled with "cruelty, vanity, power and fear," which "formed into a terrifyingly dangerous mix of bloodlust, suspicion and megalomania."  

Thousands of years have passed and presently America is being ruled by Barack Obama.  Obama also maneuvers his way through the political empire like a Roman Emperor whose objective is retention of power by way of wile, stealth, and intimidation.

Defy or disparage Obama, and a suspicious president adopts dealing with the offender as his top priority and behaves like an obsessed Commodus, pursuing enemies who are armed only with blunted weapons. In fact, Obama's ancient predecessor, Commodus "is said to have feigned a plot against his own life, in order that he might have an excuse for putting many to death."

Take for example Arizona daring to enact immigration law as a means of self-preservation. Obama views the state under siege, defending itself from mutiny against the empire, and intends to drag the Grand Canyon state into the coliseum to spank the living daylights out of defiant politicians and policy.

Top commander in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal also did the inexcusable.  In a Rolling Stone article entitled "The Runaway General," McChrystal candidly described an encounter with Commodus-in-Chief. 

McChrystal thought Obama looked "uncomfortable and intimidated" by the roomful of military brass. Their first one-on-one meeting took place in the Oval Office four months later, after McChrystal got the Afghanistan job, and it didn't go much better. "It was a 10-minute photo op," says an adviser to McChrystal. "Obama clearly didn't know anything about him, who he was. Here's the guy who's going to run his [expletive] war, but he didn't seem very engaged. The Boss was pretty disappointed."

A highly trained general at the pinnacle of his military career certainly has experience enough to recognize "unpreparedness" when he sees it.  Yet, the observant General found that one dare not defy Obama, because harsh recompense can befall the mighty at the hand of the weak. Remember, "Whosoever ridiculed [Commodus] he cast to the wild beasts."

The President, like a power-hungry Roman emperor, seems driven by insecurity and exhibits disdain for disagreement. McChrystal's comments were defined as flippant insubordination by the "furious" Obama. Thus, America's highest-ranking legatewas summoned from the heat of battle for a face-to-face reproof in Washington, D.C.

If McChrystal thought fighting the Taliban was rough, the Afghan war is nothing compared to being dressed down by a Chicago community organizer whom McChrystal all but called a "wimp in the White House."

Although imprudent, General McChrystal and his aides spoke with unadulterated veracity about Obama's inexperience and ineptness. Obama chastising a "Spartan commander" of McChrystal's caliber can be likened to a Roman emperor throwing an unarmed centurion to the lions.

Though reported as a resignation, truth is President Barack Obama "ousted Gen. Stanley McChrystal" as the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan for contemptuous remarks about administration officials, which Obama contends "undermined civilian control of the military and eroded trust on the president's war team."

Ironically, Obama's irresponsible international diplomacy and "poor judgment" has compromised the safety of our troops numerous times. For an amateur like Barack to intimate that McChrystal's personal statement compromises the safety of the military in Afghanistan encapsulates the paranoid character of a current-day Commodus.

The comparisons between Barack Obama and Commodus are unsettling. According to historical texts, Commodus was a weak, inexperienced leader who came to power with great pomp and ceremony and fancied himself the god Hercules. Yet, Commodus' reign is credited with "ending years of Roman stability and prosperity." 

Like Barack Obama, Commodus entered Rome "in a triumphal procession, receiving a hero's welcome."  To the young, "Commodus [was] an icon of new, happier days to come; his arrival sparked the highest hopes in the Roman people."

In the name of peace, Commodus relinquished military advances the Roman Empire celebrated under Marcus Aurelius.   Militarily, the Roman Emperor "surrendered all his father had achieved" and retreated from "direly contested territories."  Emperor Commodus' retreat was viewed as "an utter betrayal of everything the beloved Marcus Aurelius had stood for."

Similar retreats from hard-won military advances may be at the crux of General McChrystal's beef with Obama.

Like Obama, Commodus was "loved by the lower classes" because "generosity was indeed a part of his imperial program...the emperor obtained some of this funding by taxing members of the senatorial class." The Emperor "nearly bankrupted the imperial treasury with his expensive lifestyle," and then "replenished it by accusing senators of treason and having their property seized."

Can anybody say $13 trillion dollar deficit, "BP shakedown," or tax the rich and "redistribute the wealth?"

Commodus identified with Roman gladiators who were drawn from the dregs of society. Commodus "played gladiator" while "the empire itself faced hard times."  Two thousand years later, Obama plays golf while American experience hard times.   

According to Roman historian Herodian (1.15-17), "In his gladiatorial combats, [Commodus] defeated his opponents with ease, and he did no more than wound them, since they all submitted to him only because they knew he was the emperor, not because he was truly a gladiator."

Even today Emperor Obama nibbles clusters of grapes while terrorists sneak over the border, the economy falters, Ahmedinejad is in the process of starting a nuclear friction fire by rubbing a bomb between Iran's Israel-hating hands, and oil hemorrhages like a severed artery into the Gulf of Mexico, smothering the American coastline.

At a sensitive time in the Afghan conflict, retribution for impertinence toward the Imperious One takes precedence over both strategy and security. General Stanley McChrystal's resignation is merely additional collateral damage delivered by a disgraceful administration that makes sport of "degrad[ing] the most honorable either by insulting them directly or giving them offices far below their deserts." 

 "Commodus' reign was filled with bad decisions, causing the people of Rome to suffer." Truth be known, Obama is nothing more than a high-handed modern-day Commodus whose disproportionate focus is dealing harshly with critics while Rome burns. 

WE HAVE MET THE ENEMY AND IT IS...

Black woman with one white boob and one black boob

This is very bad and viewer discretion is advised.

  

...unbelievable... photo of a woman with different colored boobs..