Warner Todd Huston
Liberals value good intentions above both truth and outcomes
By Warner Todd Huston
Amusingly enough the Washington Post has a blog called PostPartisan. I say amusing because it is obvious that there is nothing "post" partisan about it if a rant against tea partiers by Jonathan Capehart is any indication. He thinks that Obama was speaking to the tea partiers in his latest healthcare address and so posted his titled, "A message from President Obama to Tea Party America."
In an effort to come rushing to the aid of the president and in an effort to castigate all those racist tea partiers he so dislikes, Capehart excerpted a segment of Barack Obama's recent healthcare speech (what is this one, like number 200 or so?) and pointedly asked tea party activists what was wrong with it — or rather what is wrong with them for not being in thrall to this president?
Capehart is mad at those tea partiers that think Obama is a "Manchurian candidate sent here to destroy the United States" and found the following segment of Obama's millionth healthcare address particularly inspiring, claiming that it spoke to the "true character of this nation."
Well, I have an answer and it is one that shows why leftists are so easily fooled by lies and the cynical machinations of those "Manchurian candidates" Capehart scoffs at so. It's because liberals value flowery talk and good intentions above truth and actual outcomes.
Looking at Obama's words and taking them all by themselves one will find a few paragraphs of bland rhetoric that might at first seem inoffensive. The problem is, however, not with the words themselves but what actions behind those words.
What is Obama saying we are refusing to "scale back," for instance? What "aspirations" is he striving to implement? What effort that isn't "easy" is he reaching for? If all these actions Obama's praising are efforts that are in keeping with our culture, our history, our principles and our laws, then that's all good. But, if those "hard" actions he's talking about are essentially un-American actions, then we have a problem. Without the qualifiers telling the listener what actions his flowery rhetoric is being used to cover, these words are empty bits of fluff without meaning.
And that is just the problem. Capehart hears all the fluff free of any substance and he doesn't mind it a bit. In typical Obama-speak, the president uses soaring rhetoric that, upon closer examination, slips right through your fingers like air for its weightlessness.
Oh, yes, we Americans do what is hard. Certainly we want to control our own destinies. But does this socialist healthcare bill help us do that? Not one bit. In fact, Obama's actual actions take away our freedoms, they destroy our ability to control our destiny. In truth, his soaring words are in direct contravention to his actions.
Yet it is the lofty rhetoric that Capehart and his fellow left-wing, Old Media cohorts love. They don't pay any attention to actions. Just the fluffy, lovely words Obama speaks.
But it is the actions, Mr. Capehart, the actions that tea partiers are against. Call us racists, call us hatemongers, call us evil all you want. But we understand clearly what Obama's policies will do to this great nation. And none of it is in keeping with the American character of which Obama spoke so highly.
And that, Mr. Capehart, is why Obama's empty words do not warm our hearts.
© Warner Todd Huston
March 24, 2010
Amusingly enough the Washington Post has a blog called PostPartisan. I say amusing because it is obvious that there is nothing "post" partisan about it if a rant against tea partiers by Jonathan Capehart is any indication. He thinks that Obama was speaking to the tea partiers in his latest healthcare address and so posted his titled, "A message from President Obama to Tea Party America."
In an effort to come rushing to the aid of the president and in an effort to castigate all those racist tea partiers he so dislikes, Capehart excerpted a segment of Barack Obama's recent healthcare speech (what is this one, like number 200 or so?) and pointedly asked tea party activists what was wrong with it — or rather what is wrong with them for not being in thrall to this president?
Capehart is mad at those tea partiers that think Obama is a "Manchurian candidate sent here to destroy the United States" and found the following segment of Obama's millionth healthcare address particularly inspiring, claiming that it spoke to the "true character of this nation."
-
"But today, we are affirming that essential truth — a truth every generation is called to rediscover for itself — that we are not a nation that scales back its aspirations. We are not a nation that falls prey to doubt or mistrust. We don't fall prey to fear. We are not a nation that does what's easy. That's not who we are. That's not how we got here.
We are a nation that faces its challenges and accepts its responsibilities. We are a nation that does what is hard. What is necessary. What is right. Here, in this country, we shape our own destiny. That is what we do. That is who we are. That is what makes us the United States of America."
Well, I have an answer and it is one that shows why leftists are so easily fooled by lies and the cynical machinations of those "Manchurian candidates" Capehart scoffs at so. It's because liberals value flowery talk and good intentions above truth and actual outcomes.
Looking at Obama's words and taking them all by themselves one will find a few paragraphs of bland rhetoric that might at first seem inoffensive. The problem is, however, not with the words themselves but what actions behind those words.
What is Obama saying we are refusing to "scale back," for instance? What "aspirations" is he striving to implement? What effort that isn't "easy" is he reaching for? If all these actions Obama's praising are efforts that are in keeping with our culture, our history, our principles and our laws, then that's all good. But, if those "hard" actions he's talking about are essentially un-American actions, then we have a problem. Without the qualifiers telling the listener what actions his flowery rhetoric is being used to cover, these words are empty bits of fluff without meaning.
And that is just the problem. Capehart hears all the fluff free of any substance and he doesn't mind it a bit. In typical Obama-speak, the president uses soaring rhetoric that, upon closer examination, slips right through your fingers like air for its weightlessness.
Oh, yes, we Americans do what is hard. Certainly we want to control our own destinies. But does this socialist healthcare bill help us do that? Not one bit. In fact, Obama's actual actions take away our freedoms, they destroy our ability to control our destiny. In truth, his soaring words are in direct contravention to his actions.
Yet it is the lofty rhetoric that Capehart and his fellow left-wing, Old Media cohorts love. They don't pay any attention to actions. Just the fluffy, lovely words Obama speaks.
But it is the actions, Mr. Capehart, the actions that tea partiers are against. Call us racists, call us hatemongers, call us evil all you want. But we understand clearly what Obama's policies will do to this great nation. And none of it is in keeping with the American character of which Obama spoke so highly.
And that, Mr. Capehart, is why Obama's empty words do not warm our hearts.
© Warner Todd Huston
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