House of Eratosthenes

Liberal Democrats and their friends in the media have tried just about everything to dismiss and discredit the tea-party movement. They’ve accused Americans who are anxious and angry about a rapidly encroaching government of being racists, extremists, birthers, pawns of a corporate “AstroTurf” effort—and, now, potential Timothy McVeighs.

No less a figure than Bill Clinton seized on the occasion of the Oklahoma City bombing’s 15th anniversary to lecture tea-party activists, first in a speech last week to the Center for American Progress Action Fund, then in a Monday New York Times op-ed. “Have at it, go fight, go do whatever you want,” he said in the speech. “You don’t have to be nice; you can be harsh. But you’ve got to be very careful not to advocate violence or cross the line.” In the op-ed, he wrote: “There is a big difference between criticizing a policy or a politician and demonizing the government.”

Taken strictly at face value, these statements are unobjectionable. Yet given that the tea-party movement has been peaceful and law-abiding, it’s hard to escape the conclusion that Mr. Clinton is engaging in a not-so-subtle smear campaign.

In doing so, Mr. Clinton is taking a page out of his own Presidential playbook. Five days after the 1995 bombing, he delivered a speech in which he denounced “purveyors of hatred and division.” He said, “They leave the impression that, by their very words, that violence is acceptable. . . . When they say things that are irresponsible, that may have egregious consequences, we must call them on it.” A news report at the time noted that Mr. Clinton made these incendiary accusations while “never putting a noun to the pronoun.”

Mr. Clinton’s opposition to “demonizing the government” would be more credible had he been heard from on the subject during the first eight years after he left office—when, for example, Hollywood demonized George W. Bush by releasing “Fahrenheit 9/11,” or when Mr. Clinton’s own former Vice President railed against the man who beat him in 2000: “He betrayed this country!”

Instead, Mr. Clinton’s effort to exploit the memory of Oklahoma City looks like a partisan cheap shot. In his speech last week, the former President observed that, unlike the Boston Tea Party, “this fight is about taxation by duly, honestly elected representatives that you don’t happen to agree with, that you can vote out at the next election.” Our guess is that the next election is what he’s really afraid of.

The fight is about out-of-control entitlement spending by duly elected representatives who were told, in no uncertain terms, that their constituents opposed it by three-fifths to two-fifths.

It’s about being marginalized as a rube, a ruffian, a mobster, a racist, a hack, a thug, an arsonist, a thief and a liar if you don’t go along with brand new national debts so incredibly exorbitant that your grandchildren will only dream about having a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out of.

It’s about one energy crisis after another, during which time our liberal politicians tell us we can’t drill here or there because it might make things a tad uncomfortable for some kind of stinkbug. It’s about a prolonged economic malaise, during which time our liberal politicians attack our businesses as if the businesses were monsters, rather than legally recognized entities chartered for the purpose of making money. Tell executives of those businesses they can’t make bonuses over such-and-such an amount. Nationalize entire industries and then have the gall to say you aren’t doing it. And (don’t forget this step) BlameGeorgeWBush.

It’s about having our shoes piddled on, and being told it’s raining.

The most historically significant note jotted down by “Tea Party” in the history textbooks of tomorrow, I think, will not be that they fixed something that was broken, but that they demonstrated something else was broken. They have been, more-or-less, a model for what dissent should be in America. They have been what everybody says they want: Self-disciplined, contained, principled and peaceful disagreement. The way their movement has been treated, by the modern aristocracy, the think tanks, the legislators, the executives, the establishment media, the academia, by overly-bloated self-important huckster ex-Presidents, et al — has been nothing short of scandalous. It really is a national disgrace.

We’re not anti-government. We just want it back.

So, Mr. Clinton, demonization for thee, but not for me?
- philmon | 04/21/2010 @ 06:46
First the race card, and now this.
Makes me wonder how many jokers their deck has.
- jwb7605 | 04/21/2010 @ 12:11
I remember at the time, in the aftermath of the bombing, a bunch of the Left – from the president to left-wing media figures all the way down to rank-and-file liberals on the street – were all up in arms about these “militia” groups. Remember that? It was supposed to be the big boogeyman of the mid-90s. And usually it was “right wing militias” or “right wing extremists.” Rush said at the time that in the minds of liberals, there is apparently no such thing as a reasonable conservative. All us right-wingers are by definition “extremist.”

So the nut goes and blows up a federal building and kills a bunch of innocent people in a style more related to Al-Qaeda than any American group associated with the Right, and we all got blamed for it. We had to sit there and bear the guilt-by-association from the actions of one genuinely anti-government loon who had absolutely nothing in common with us.

Now, the nut has been dead for nine years, and we’re STILL having to hear about him. Yeah, it really is amazing that so many liberals claim to be terrified of the Tea Party demonstrations. Wouldn’t you like to say, “Ahem. If violence actually breaks out, THEN you can start throwing your sanctimonious crap about what loose cannons they’re supposed to be. In the meantime…SHUT THE HELL UP.”

And if I never heard from Clinton again, it would be just fine with me.
- cylarz | 04/21/2010 @ 18:39
Paradoxically, the demonization of legitimate dissent against irresponsible government makes violence more likely in the end.
- chunt31854 | 04/22/2010 @ 04:50
They’ve never met a bit of incoherent propaganda they didn’t like.

The story, the way they tell it, is quite absurd. It begins on January 20 of ’09 does it not? All references to the eight years before are just finger-pointing. So in Chapter One we elect a black man President…Chapter Two is, our residual racists flip out and take to the streets. Chapter Three, tomorrow, is that things are about to turn horribly violent. Oh dear, a crisis, never let one go to waste…

In a sensible universe the moral of the story would be: Well then, our unfortunate black President can make tomorrow’s violence more likely by being a hardcore liberal jerkwad, and less likely by working with His detractors in Congress. Soothe the savage beast by meeting it halfway. The word “appease” comes to mind. I mean, that’s how they want to avoid violence when it comes to violent people who happen to live in other countries, so why shouldn’t the same set of protocols apply stateside?

Liberals behave very much the same way toward conservatives, that conservatives behave toward terrorists and communists. With the obvious exception that the things conservatives say about terrorists and communists, more often than not, turn out to be true.
- mkfreeberg | 04/22/2010 @ 04:59

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The Violence CardWednesday, April 21st, 2010

The Violence Card
Wednesday, April 21st, 2010