More Evidence Liberalism Is Dead
WASHINGTON -- The evidence mounts that Liberalism is dead.
The Liberal wizards, working their wonders at the New York Times and its clearing houses in the major networks, cannot even dupe the American people with an absurd conspiracy theory anymore. In Dallas back in 1963 Lee Harvey Oswald, a pious communist awash in the Marxist-Leninist bilge, shot President John F. Kennedy. In no time the Liberals had the nation focused on the "dangerous right-wing atmosphere" supposedly pervading Dallas. Soon all the talk was of "the paranoid style" of American politics. Oswald was almost forgotten. Doubtless, today there are fervent Liberals living in haunts in Massachusetts and in Berkeley, California, who believe in their heart of hearts that the president was felled by Texas Republicans.
This time around an obvious lunatic shoots 19 people in Tucson, killing 6 (one of whom is a Republican judge) and wounding 13 (one of whom is a Democratic Congresswoman), and the Liberals try again. With artifice and craft they try to focus the nation's attention on the "heated rhetoric" of the right. Sarah Palin is trotted out. The Tea Partiers are cited. The venerable Times editorializes, "… it is legitimate to hold Republicans and particularly their most virulent supporters in the media responsible for the gale of anger [remember the Times' cosseting of the Angry Left back in 2008?] that has produced the vast majority of these threats, setting the nation on edge." Today, however, the average American has had enough of this Liberal garbagespiel, and so in a CBS poll nearly six in ten Americans deny that the "country's heated rhetoric" had anything to do with the shooting. Liberalism has come to the end of the line. It is a bore.
Yet what kind of person directs our attention to the meaningless madness of a lunatic, and tries to lecture us on the random concreteness of nouns appearing in the chaos of the poor wretch's attempts at thought. The gunman, Jared Lee Loughner, mentions Mein Kampf. He mutters something about the gold standard. And my favorite -- he advocated proper grammar, or perhaps he abominated proper grammar. He was not very clear. At least there was something about grammar. Hear! Hear!
Loughner is obviously a schizophrenic. I am no psychiatrist but I would bet he is a paranoid schizophrenic. That is the most dangerous kind of schizophrenic. What he says might matter to his psychiatrist but it has little significance to the outside world. Yet apparently it mattered greatly to Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman. On Monday he wrote in the Times: "Where's that toxic rhetoric coming from? Let's not make a false pretense of balance; it's coming, overwhelmingly, from the right." And he continued, "It's hard to imagine a Democratic member of Congress urging constituents" to violence. Now Krugman has been a columnist for the Times for a long enough time, covering a sufficient variety of political events, for us to deduce that he is a political nitwit. Other Nobel laureates have been nitwits, for instance Lord Russell. There are a lot of political nitwits in this world. Perhaps the Times could give Krugman a cooking column. He would be their Nobel Prize-winning cooking columnist.
Of course, examples of Democrats speaking loosely about violence toward Republicans have now been piling up in blithe contradiction to this nitwit's asseveration. The inimitable James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal cites Senator John Kerry joshing with Bill Maher about how "...I could have gone to 1600 Pennsylvania and killed the real bird [George W. Bush] with one stone." Taranto adds that in 1988 Kerry had joked about the Secret Service being under orders, if George H.W. Bush were killed, "to shoot Quayle." And he quotes then-Representative Paul Kanjorski in October saying (as Jeffrey Lord first reported in The American Spectator), "That [Rick] Scott down there that's running for governor of Florida. Instead of running for governor of Florida, they ought to have him [sic] and shoot him. Put him against the wall and shoot him." Mr. Kanjorski alleged that Mr. Scott's transgression was stealing "billions of dollars from the United States government." He was defeated in 2010. Scott was elected. Yet Kanjorski resurrected marvelously. On the op-ed page of the Times he appeared Tuesday counseling on the proper response to the Tucson shooting.
As I say, Liberalism is dead. This hitherto unthinkable effort to blame the unhinged act of a lunatic on the language of the right without respect to the often more inflammatory language of the left is a cry from the grave. Rigor mortis has set in, comrades, and even your president suffers. On the campaign trail in 2008 Barack Obama said, "If they [Republicans] bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun."
I am eager to to read what Krugman does with broccoli.
R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr. is founder and editor in chief of The American Spectator. His new book, After the Hangover: The Conservatives' Road to Recovery, was published on April 20 by Thomas Nelson. His previous books include the New York Times bestseller Boy Clinton: the Political Biography; The Impeachment of William Jefferson Clinton; The Liberal Crack-Up; The Conservative Crack-Up; Public Nuisances; The Future that Doesn't Work: Social Democracy's Failure in Britain; Madame Hillary: The Dark Road to the White House; and The Clinton Crack-Up.
Shamus| 1.13.11 @ 6:25AM
Krugman looks like Dr. Evil in the picture where he's stroking the cat.
sane person| 1.13.11 @ 11:13AM
The reality is that the perverse metal masterbation called "conservatism" is dead. The editors of the Amer Spec are whores for a rich alcoholic benefactor in Pittsburgh PA whose only purpose in life is to stroke the fires of white entitlement for underemployed, lazy, undereducated, people being left behind in today's society.
dbri| 1.13.11 @ 11:24AM
What is masterbate and what does it have to do with metal? Or is this too "hard" a question to a great liberal thinker like yourself?
sane person| 1.13.11 @ 11:29AM
The reality is that the perverse mental masterbation called "conservatism" is dead. The editors of the Amer Spec are whores for a rich alcoholic benefactor in Pittsburgh PA whose only purpose in life is to stroke the fires of white entitlement for underemployed, lazy, undereducated, people being left behind in today's society.
Cpm| 1.13.11 @ 11:38AM
I'm glad you took the opportunity to identify yourself as "sane person" because nobody would ever suspect after reading your post.
heres waldo| 1.13.11 @ 11:53AM
Obviously publicly schooled. Still waiting to hear what masterbation is...
Appleby| 1.13.11 @ 6:41AM
Doesnt anybody still have any photos and tape from Chicago in 1968? Any film of the mob of, er, poo poo heads chanting Hey Hey LBJ! How Many Kids Did You Kill Today? Anybody even remember 1968 at all? I was at universityback then and what I remember was the Free Speech Movement that seemed mainly to be about calling people inflammatory names, burning flags, and shouting Burn Baby Burn. Not a one of these people was conservative. In fact, in my Freshman class, the only conservative on campus was me.
Dan Hirsch| 1.13.11 @ 9:16AM
A'by;
You'll find them in our government, regulating us into their idea of 'proper' behavior, and eventually receiving a far better pension than 99% of the private sector workers...and now whispering "Burn, baby, burn, Sara, Rush, Glenn...!"
Look out, it IS coming unless we get involved and bring some real, POSITIVE change.
cyberdog| 1.13.11 @ 7:04AM
I hear the Krugman Cassarole is full of balogna and children love it for it's simpleness.
MrDan| 1.13.11 @ 7:17AM
The very act of trying to blame conservatives for this act of violence is absolute proof liberals have lost in the arena of ideas. They realized it from the November elections, and were waiting for any "crisis" they could use. It was a despicable act of desperation.
Gary| 1.13.11 @ 7:18AM
Mr. Tyrrell hit the nail on the head: “Liberalism has come to the end of the line. It is a bore.”
This is the worst possible landing place for those who have spent decades cooking up fresh anti-American rhetoric on a daily basis. As more and more responsible, tax-paying voters across the country turn away from these lunatics, the intensity of their sales pitch increases in lockstep with their panic.
Recall historic footage of Hitler ranting from a 50-foot stage, but, instead of the crowd being roused to a fever pitch, they just turn and walk away. Some day soon, perhaps we’ll hear the final, pathetic whimper.
saleboter| 1.13.11 @ 7:34AM
Times, Krugercowski, who are they?
Lullabys, Legends and Lies| 1.13.11 @ 7:47AM
"Doubtless, today there are fervent Liberals,.. who believe in their heart of hearts that the president was felled by Texas Republicans." You'd think that after almost 50 years, that one of them would have found the damn tennis ball already?
So Liberalism's dead? I'm not so sure about that!! If it really is dead, it's only dead in that Evil Freddy Krueger sort of way, and we'll have to kill it all over again, when the sequel(s) comes out in a few years, like they always do. Beware, don't fall asleep!!
Mimi| 1.13.11 @ 8:00AM
All it took, for them to call "The DOGS Off" is one..60-40 poll, telling them the NATION wasn't buying their narrative. The truth and facts just wasn't going with it. We have got to stop reacting to amature, incompetent LOSERS and wait while they self destruct.....this is a painful time for grown-up AMERICA .....It's like raising TEEN-AGERS.
Yes , Mr. Tyrrell the lights are going out for the LIBS.
Ken (Old Texican)| 1.13.11 @ 8:15AM
Mimi,
The fascinating thing to me is that CBS always runs a "liberal's poll" to start with. Announcing 60-40... heh I'm betting at least 70-30 across America.
davelnaf| 1.13.11 @ 8:11AM
It was not always the case, but reading a liberal blogger these days you get the sense that his effort is more about trying to convince other liberals—or himself—about the correctness of a point he is trying to make than it is about engaging in a “dialog.”
For a good laugh catch the BBC’s take on the Arizona shooting as a “political act.” Somebody needs to reprogram those leftwing robots for their own good. The BBC is the Fairness Doctrine run amuck.
donna| 1.13.11 @ 8:14AM
Liberalism is not going to die until the liberals die through extinction. Few liberals grasps logical reality and shift right to common sense (typically the younger ones who has at least one conservative parent), but the majority of liberals from by experience, cannot make it over the logical hurdles. They haven’t had the “father figure” to conservatively parent them.
Dan Hirsch| 1.13.11 @ 9:24AM
Dear Donna;
The attitude that hides behind the name "Liberalism" is rooted in sophism. Remember the philosophy that each individual sets his own values and rules. The ancient Greeks named the philosophy 2500 years ago - it's still around and it will be around as long as there are humans able to think.
Christians refer to it by a different name, sin. Denying that God sets the rules is truly sinful, and that's what sophists do. They'll never be extinct until sin is. And the lucky of us know when that will be; it won't be a time most people will even recognize. Lucky ones will, it's in the Book.
Gregg| 1.13.11 @ 8:18AM
Mr. Tyrrell,
Sorry - while I'd love to believe that Liberlism is dead, I cannot. In addition, I think suggesting so is the first step to their regaining strength. Roughly half the nation still votes as liberals; roughly half thinks Obama is doing a fair or good job.
And don't forget: only 2 years ago Conservatism was proclaimed to be dead.
Big Mistake.
Martin Owens| 1.13.11 @ 8:30AM
I must concur with Gregg.
This is not a matter of a few election defeats.
Liberals long ago suborned our education and
media establishments, and a good half of our religion. If we're not living under national socialism today, it's surely not for lack of trying...
The United States today resembles one of the those poor wretches one reads about from time to time who are suffering from a tumor damn near as big as they are. Even trying to remove the cause of the disease is so complicated as to be life threatening.
Nancy in NC| 1.13.11 @ 9:25AM
As long as we have left winged nuts in academia, liberalism will never be dead. They fill the youth with this garbage who in their young exuberance suck it up like a sponge.
Liberalism is very much alive in universities all over this land.
Timothy L. Pennell| 1.13.11 @ 8:54AM
The part of all of this that I find most DISGUSTING, is when our Muslim Boy King said, at the Campaign Rally / Memorial, that we had to stop all of the "POLARIZATION" of our Country. Stop the "POLARIZING" rhetoric.
"Polarized Nation"? "Polarized Rhetoric"? Who polarized it?
Rich vs. Poor. Black vs. White. People who want to ENFORCE our Immigration Laws vs. Hispanics. EVIL DOCTORS, cutting out Tonsils and cutting off feet. The Black Panther Case. Evil Insurance Companies. Evil Pharmaceutical Companies. FAT CAT BANKERS. Demonizing the Oil Companies.
These are people and organizations who SAVE OUR LIVES. Who give us JOBS. Who find, and retrieve, the ENERGY that powers our lives. They spend YEARS of man hours, and BILLIONS of Dollars, coming up with the DRUGS that extend our lives, and cure our diseases. (I'm talking to YOU, Mr. HIV / AIDS)
And they have been vilifies since DAY 1, by this man. Because that's who he is. He's an instigator. He's a troublemaker. He's just doing what he's always done. Fomenting CHAOS. Fomenting HATE and MISTRUST. That's what you learn from Saul Alinsky. That's what you learn from Frank Marshall Davis. That's what you become, sitting in the pews of Jeremiah Wright's HATE CHURCH for 20 YEARS.
The idea that this man could heal anything, or that he would even WANT to, is absurd.
Hes a child of the LEFT. And to the LEFT, these situations are a Dream Come True. The LEFT lives for CRISES. And we all know that THIS WHITE HOUSE, never let's a CRISES GO TO WASTE.
Harry the Horrible| 1.13.11 @ 9:01AM
Liberalism isn't dead; not even close. It metastasizing
Derek Leaberry| 1.13.11 @ 9:03AM
Liberalism is surely a bore but it is self-delusional to say it is dead. Since the three-cornered presidential election of 1992, liberalism's party has won from 48 to 53 percent of the national vote in presidential elections. Four of the nine Supreme Court justices are liberals of the most extreme variety. Even after the recent landslide election, 53 Senators, all of whom are a liberal of some variety, are Democrats. All the important cultural institutions- the colleges, television, newspapers, motion pictures, the public schools, the arts, publishing, the establisment of public mores- are in the hands of liberals. If you want to know how thoroughly liberals dominate American society, remember how easily the liberals passed the right of open homosexuality in the military only two decades after Ronald Reagan and Cap Weinberger cracked down on homosexuality in the military. It passed with hardly a whimper. Think about the nation being one Supreme Court justice from enacting homosexual "marriage" for the whole nation. No, liberalism may be morally bankrupt and carbuncled with lies but it is winning.
Stormzeye| 1.13.11 @ 9:23AM
Agreed. Further, we Conservatives must learn the virtues of PATIENCE and PERSEVERANCE from the liberal/progressives if we are to succeed in defeating the tyranny of the left.
Mimi| 1.13.11 @ 9:27AM
Derek: Since the last presidential election....LIBERTY loving Conservatives is the one on the Move...All bets are off...The sun now shines, brightly on the P.C. crowd...showing all the defects.....WATCH !!!
Derek Leaberry| 1.13.11 @ 9:42AM
Do you believe that the Republicans will even attempt to overrule the Obama/Gates/Mullen policy on open sodomites in the military? Why hasn't any Republican confronted Admiral Mullen and tell him that he is a dishonorable man?
Redstateboy| 1.13.11 @ 9:05AM
How can Liber-ulism be ever dead ? Are these the most irrational people you could meet? They live in a fantasy world which is impenitrable.
P. Aaron| 1.13.11 @ 9:21AM
Krugman & his liberal cadre could go back to college and take the upgraded courses in flinging poo upon the Dean's office wall.
stmichrick| 1.13.11 @ 9:21AM
As long as there is an electoral component to government-backed 'compassion,' liberalism will live.
Michael L. Hauschild| 1.13.11 @ 9:51AM
The only reason anyone on the left wants the right to "cease and desist" is becasue the rhetoric is the truth and it is effective. They do not have the interests of the Nation in mind, the only "healing" they wish to staunce is hemoraging of their bleeding liberal hearts.
GKPAL| 1.13.11 @ 10:14AM
As someone said, liberalism is a mental disorder. And without treatment it gets worse. Just take look at what liberals were able to accomplish in congress in just two years. These buffoons will not die easily. They will go into hibernation, but will come back more determined than ever to destroy this country. That's their ultimate goal and will not stop until the succeed. The question is are we willing to stop them? Only the future will tell.
Byron| 1.13.11 @ 10:39AM
I noticed and others have pointed out that the left has cast Sarah Palin as a witch with supernatural powers that can force a person, with no contact, to do evil deeds. PDS has shown us how witch hunts happened in the distant past. The vicious attacks from the left are a result of her simply pointing out that the government is spending way too much money. Hmm...
Cynicon Implant| 1.13.11 @ 10:45AM
I agree with Nancy in NC. A concerted effort must be made to counteract what is being put into the heads of our sons and daughters at university. I have personally taken it upon myself to debunk the idiocy that comes out of my kids' mouths. They are now seeing the world with more clarity as a result. Each of us must do this as liberalism is not dead, merely festering.
Richard Baker| 1.13.11 @ 10:46AM
How would Krugman prepare crow?
Anthony| 1.13.11 @ 10:50AM
Paul Krugman is a poster-child for disgraced leftism. Almost everything coming out of this man's mouth is pure insanity, including those pronouncements from his chosen, trained profession, economics.
I truly believe Krugman has mental issues. After Bush won in 04, Krugman had to take a sudden leave of absence from the Times and Princeton. The excuse was an economics text book he was working on. I believe it was far more personal than a text book.
I doubt Krugman listened to Gov. Palin's comments on her facebook, after his vile ad hominens about her, they would have rendered this fool speechless, that, or send him further into the leftist land of Palin derangement syndrome.
If liberalsim is dead, unfortunately, the leftist zombies are still walking the earth. I think it was a young Paul Krugman who made his debut in the classic, "Night of the Living Dead". Yes, I'm sure he was the lead zombie.
Imagine spending $60,000 a year to send your kid to Princeton to be taught by zombies.
A. C. Santore| 1.13.11 @ 11:05AM
Now, who's worse, Krugman or Olbermann?
Occam's Tool| 1.13.11 @ 11:20AM
AC, it's Obama. He's farther to the Left than Krugman, and he has a job with some power behind it.
Al Gayda| 1.13.11 @ 11:37AM
Any one who is 20 and not liberal has no heart and any one who is 40 and not a conservative has no brain.
Cpm| 1.13.11 @ 11:47AM
Just as true today as when Winston Churchill first said it.