House of Eratosthenes

The day after I made a good-faith attempt to capture what it means to be a liberal, along comes Sen. Joe Biden to show me up. My attempt yesterday was to just hit some of the high points, not to provide a complete encyclopedic coverage of the subject, but nevertheless the Senior Senator from Delaware shows me I left out something so important, that backtracking is compulsory. So backtrack I shall.

First just watch the video, those of you who have not already, I’ll wait right here. Dum de dum de dum…hmmm hmmm hmmm…

Back yet? Okay, two things, one already much-discussed, one not quite yet. Not to the best of my knowledge.

First the one that other people have already kicked around. Biden doesn’t need to answer to anybody here. He has nothing for which to atone, because he is a Democrat. If he were a Republican, we would have a scandal. And not just a little itty-bitty scandal, either. A full-blown one. The Republican scandal would change overnight what the 2006 election is all about, I daresay. Those darn Republicans, they think Indians aren’t fit to do anything except run Dunkin’ Donuts. No, that won’t be happening. Biden gets a pass. The idea is proposed through action, not words — since the idea doesn’t make enough sense to be articulated outright — that Democrats are drawing on a huge reserve of propaganda capital that they deposted clear back in the sixties with the Voting Rights Act and the Civil Liberties Act. So they get to make racist cracks without being overdrawn, whereas Republicans, well, they’re supposed to be still digging out of some kind of deficit.

Is that fair? Is that right? Does it serve the sensitivities and needs of the minorities who are supposed to be offended? No, no, and no. And yet, does anybody even question this situation anymore? No. Deep down, we all know the horrified breath-sucking about this racist slur, or that quasi-racist gaffe, is all about political weaponry, nothing more. When Democrats step in it, it doesn’t count. Right-wing talk-radio hosts and right-wing bloggers say it out loud…but everybody knows it.

Okay, that’s been covered.

Now on to what I’d like to notice. Did you see that look on his face as soon as the last syllable escaped his lips, that look of “oh golly, maybe I shouldn’t have said that?” Neither did I. He thought he was really doing something clever here. He thought he was really handing it to that Delaware East Indian community, congratulating them, above and beyond what was called for. Boy, they really owe him now. Biden stopped everything in his busy schedule, and made the effort to notice their accomplishments.

And if you’re wondering what accomplishment that is, just watch the video again. The accomplishment of being plentiful. That’s what I want to address. What human achievement means to a liberal. The achievement of becoming numerous. Like an Indian is put on earth to do nothing that some stupid fish couldn’t do.

Admit it, when is the last time you heard of a liberal Democrat congratulating someone on doing anything else? Someone whose last name isn’t Kennedy or Carter or Clinton. No, the rest of us are here to breed, and we’re to be congratulated when we take the group of which we are a part, and give that group a higher notch on some kind of demographic table. Unless that group is Republicans, of course.

Now this is outside of what I mentioned yesterday, but some parts of it do overlap with what I was saying. It goes back to living day-to-day just being free of concern about anything, versus, living day-to-day trying to get something done that isn’t quite done yet. We do not owe anything in our lives to those among our anscestors who managed to stay carefree about things; we don’t owe anything to those who went from cradle to grave without worrying. We really don’t owe anything to those who took their ethnic group, and overbred and overimmigrated until the quantity of that ethnic group was pegged in a chart somewhere.

We owe what we have, to people who had misgivings about the status quo, and labored until something dissatisfying to them was made satisfying. The video camera that captured Biden’s absent-minded racist drivel, was invented by someone like that. The “innernets” that carry it to you, likewise, was built by people like that. The video codec was developed by someone like that.

But our liberals don’t want anybody thinking the way those people thought, ever again. Just hunker down, go about your daily routine, and don’t worry about anything. Breed, bring your family over from your country of origin in much larger numbers, and vote for us. You East Indians who have made real contributions in engineering and medicine, we’ve got nothing to say to you.

Update 7/15/06: This is Installment 2 of 3. The first installment is here and the third installment is here.

[…] Update 7/15/06: This is Installment 3 of 3. The first installment is here and the second installment is here. […]
- House of Eratosthenes | 11/02/2006 @ 08:38
[…] I found an excellent series of posts entitled “What is a Liberal?” In the first installment, Mr. Freeberg sets up three scenarios, then describes what the liberal and conservative solution would be to each. In parts two and three, he recounts reactions and things that have happened since his initial post. (Part III has some language in it that may be offensive – you have been warned.) SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: “Liberalism, Explained”, url: “http://daniel.summershome.org/2006/liberalism-explained” }); […]
- Liberalism, Explained « Blog Archive « Daniel J. Summers | 11/26/2007 @ 13:12
[…] Which was not yet the case when I wrote What Is A Liberal? Part V or IV, or the first three chapters either. Now, the air is thick with liberal blatherings. I haven’t exactly been trying to escape them, but assuming that avenue was open to me, it doesn’t seem to me to be a wise plan. Being a liberal is all about coming up with ideas to solve problems, that aren’t necessarily so likely to solve the problem, as they are to change the lives of everyone in a way we can’t ignore once the ideas are put into effect. So this is the interesting thing about our liberals — you can ignore them today, you can ignore them tomorrow. Can’t do both. There’s a certain “pay the piper” overtone when it comes to paying attention to, or ignoring, liberals. […]
- House of Eratosthenes | 12/01/2007 @ 14:59

Leave a Reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.

Recent

Items of Interest

Monthly Archives

What They Say

Links

What Is A Liberal? IIFriday, July 7th, 2006

What Is A Liberal? II
Friday, July 7th, 2006