House of Eratosthenes

The sports media elicited comments from a handful of players, none of whom I can recall ever meeting. Among other things, at least one said he would never play for a team I was involved in given my racial views. My racial views? You mean, my belief in a colorblind society where every individual is treated as a precious human being without regard to his race? Where football players should earn as much as they can and keep as much as they can, regardless of race? Those controversial racial views?

The NFL players union boss, DeMaurice Smith, jumped in. A Washington criminal defense lawyer, Democratic Party supporter and Barack Obama donor, he sent a much publicized email to NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell saying that it was important for the league to reject discrimination and hatred.
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As I explained on my radio show, this spectacle is bigger than I am on several levels. There is a contempt in the news business, including the sportswriter community, for conservatives…”Racism” is too often their sledgehammer. And it is being used to try to keep citizens who don’t share the left’s agenda from participating in the full array of opportunities this nation otherwise affords each of us. It was on display many years ago in an effort to smear Clarence Thomas with racist stereotypes and keep him off the Supreme Court. More recently, it was employed against patriotic citizens who attended town-hall meetings and tea-party protests.

These intimidation tactics are working and spreading, and they are a cancer on our society.

I recall hearing someone say this was part of an attempt to keep conservatism from being mainstreamed. That sounds like Rush; maybe I heard it on his show, and thought I’d read it in an article. It was right after this thing was announced.

Anyway — it’s worse than that. As liberalism has become emboldened, “conservatism” has taken up its traditional standard of simply cautioning waitaminnit. As in, waitaminnit, how do you enter arms control treaties with dictators who routinely make promises and then break them? Waitaminnit, with the dollar in free fall from the accumulation of all this debt, where’s the money going to come from to do that? Waitaminnit, didn’t we try this before? Waitaminnit, if we’re supposed to be a color-blind society…how about just once, for a change, we try to be one?

That kind of conservatism is mainstream already. It is a matter of simple, durable logic. When the concepts discussed become sufficiently simple, there is such a thing as an “absolute center.” As in…when a nation seeks to revitalize its economy, a tax cut is more absolutely-centrist than a tax increase. If you have some measure of intellect you can apply and don’t just follow crowds & slogans, you would have to be hoodwinked in some way to support the tax increase over the tax cut.

So this is an attempt…a successful attempt…to make fringe-kooky stuff look centrist, and vice-versa.

I have a list — and I’ve been linking back to it with increasing frequency, as the world has gone increasingly mad — called How To Motivate Large Numbers of People To Do a Dumb Thing, Without Anyone Associating the Dumb Thing With Your Name Later On. That list, other than crediting President Obama for inspiring the last two items, makes no mention of conservatives or liberals. None whatsoever. The third item on the list is “Switch Moderation and Extremism with Each Other.” That means to fool people into thinking whatever seeks to turn everything upside down, doesn’t, and whatever doesn’t, does. Then you describe your revolutionary but dumb idea in terms that suggest it is just the natural, common-sense thing to do…and anybody who opposes it, necessarily, must be a firebrand of hatred, prejudice and acrid zeal.

This NFL-Rush-Limbaugh thing has been a pretty good example of what I was talking about.

Cross-posted at Right Wing News.

[…] Cross-posted at House of Eratosthenes. […]
- “Working and Spreading, and They Are a Cancer on Our Society” | Right Wing News | 10/17/2009 @ 06:33
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“Working and Spreading, and They Are a Cancer on Our Society”Saturday, October 17th, 2009

“Working and Spreading, and They Are a Cancer on Our Society”
Saturday, October 17th, 2009