A.J. DiCintio
Congressman King's crime
By A.J. DiCintio
Whether it's name calling by contemptible true-believers or silence by expedient cowards, the Democratic reaction to Congressman Peter King for holding hearings to shed light on the extent of "radicalization" in the nation's Muslim community demonstrates the ugliness of liberal discourse one more sickeningly repetitive time.
However, as Diana West insightfully points out (dianawest.net), there is something more rotten in the state of liberal speech than the vulgarity of spitting venom such as "McCarthyism," a favorite liberal slur West condemns for its perversity in conjuring up images of "Salem-esque 'witch hunts' [directed at] free-thinking innocents."
(Yes, Virginia, there is a post WWII era in which the U.S. government was infiltrated by not-so-innocent communists just as today there is the threat posed by home-grown Islamist terrorists who, like their counterparts across the globe, are anything but free-thinkers.)
But to return to the something more rotten: It is the repression of ideas, an agenda so critically important to liberals that they denounce anyone who dares even to question the validity of their dogmas as guilty of an odious "crime."
Now, one certainly must agree with Ms. West that when liberals denounce "criminals" such as Congressman King for having committed the "crime of exposure," they mimic the behavior of front groups, that "boring from within . . . require undisturbed cover, not questions, not discussion, not sunshine."
Indeed, how could anyone disagree? After all, liberals have always found it necessary to insinuate their minority agenda into American life —
Through rulings issued by lifetime-appointed liberal activist judges, the stink of whose hubristic, anti-Jeffersonian vision an unctuously slick Barack Obama has sought to perfume with the Alinskian fragrance of "empathy."
And through de facto law promulgated by faceless bureaucrats so securely ensconced in the arrogant niches of labyrinthine Washington that an army of citizens supported by ten thousand bloodhounds just might be able to sniff them out.
With this much said about Ms. West's post, it is abundantly clear that it enriches the nation more than by shedding light on Congressman King's "crime."
And indeed it does, for it reminds of the crucial importance of educating the American public about the profound danger posed by ideologues who invented PC expressly as a means of implicitly or explicitly screaming "shame!" or "guilt!" in order to place liberal-derived limits upon speech, beginning — as do all schemes for indoctrination devised by political fanatics — with the speech of young children.
Therefore, with thanks to Diana West, I'll advance the educational imperative with a few words regarding one of the filthiest instances in which liberals silenced a "criminal" who dared to take on a sacred dogma of the Liberal Church.
The year was 1965.
The "criminal" scholar/politician Daniel Patrick Moynihan, then, an Assistant Secretary of Labor in the Johnson administration.
And the "crime" a labor Department report titled "The Negro Family: The Case For National Action" (since referred to simply as the "Moynihan Report").
Moynihan's intention regarding the report? Basing our judgment upon his admirable life, we can infer he believed scholarship, history, and common sense supported its possibilities for "[helping] the American Negro move beyond opportunity to achievement.'"
Tragically, however, neither in the public sector nor the private were the ideas of the Report used to help black Americans arrive at Moynihan's noble purpose because liberals, both white and black, immediately savaged Moynihan as a racist for speaking of the illegitimacy rate in the black community as a problem and for arguing that reality dictates the educational focus in large, heavily black neighborhoods ought to be making schools there "better than they are" (Thomas Meehan, The Times Magazine, July, 1966.)
In fact, so intense was the liberal outcry in denouncing Moynihan for "blaming the victim" (a term coined by William Ryan for his 1976 book attacking the Moynihan Report) that President Johnson withdrew his support for Moynihan's ideas after "100 prominent religious and civil- rights leaders" agreed to a resolution that "the question of 'family stability' be stricken entirely from the [White House] agenda." (Meehan)
The bottom line, then, is this: In 1965, Daniel Moynihan was not simply criticized for being deeply concerned about the profound, negative effects almost certain to be visited upon the 25% of black children born to unwed mothers, he was condemned in a manner so hideously ugly that it shut off scholarship and debate about the issue for decades.
Moreover, it is an indictment of the social and political insanity festering in America for the past half century that in the year 2011, with the 25% figure having exploded to nearly 70%, liberals will slime a person who seeks to shine a light upon and help rectify the same problem with the identical reality-denying, thunderously mind-blowing stupidity they spat upon Moynihan in '65, an example of which Meehan quoted as follows:
"[Moynihan]. . . assumes that middle-class American values are the correct values for everyone in America. . . Moynihan thinks that everyone should have a family structure like his own."
That utterance can be made only by an arrogant, madly ideological, perfectly closed mind that rejects truths about the inestimable value of the love, nurture, and protection afforded to the child by two monogamous parents — truths that humans have acknowledged and religions have promoted and celebrated for millennia, truths the social sciences have confirmed, and truths biologists now posit as an essential evolutionary force that made the development of Homo sapiens possible.
Sadly, today, the same kind of mind continues its perverse tradition of spewing vicious name calling to shut down non-liberal discussion with respect to every major problem facing American culture.
Congressman King ought to be proud that only such a mind can deem him a "criminal."
© A.J. DiCintio
March 19, 2011
Whether it's name calling by contemptible true-believers or silence by expedient cowards, the Democratic reaction to Congressman Peter King for holding hearings to shed light on the extent of "radicalization" in the nation's Muslim community demonstrates the ugliness of liberal discourse one more sickeningly repetitive time.
However, as Diana West insightfully points out (dianawest.net), there is something more rotten in the state of liberal speech than the vulgarity of spitting venom such as "McCarthyism," a favorite liberal slur West condemns for its perversity in conjuring up images of "Salem-esque 'witch hunts' [directed at] free-thinking innocents."
(Yes, Virginia, there is a post WWII era in which the U.S. government was infiltrated by not-so-innocent communists just as today there is the threat posed by home-grown Islamist terrorists who, like their counterparts across the globe, are anything but free-thinkers.)
But to return to the something more rotten: It is the repression of ideas, an agenda so critically important to liberals that they denounce anyone who dares even to question the validity of their dogmas as guilty of an odious "crime."
Now, one certainly must agree with Ms. West that when liberals denounce "criminals" such as Congressman King for having committed the "crime of exposure," they mimic the behavior of front groups, that "boring from within . . . require undisturbed cover, not questions, not discussion, not sunshine."
Indeed, how could anyone disagree? After all, liberals have always found it necessary to insinuate their minority agenda into American life —
Through rulings issued by lifetime-appointed liberal activist judges, the stink of whose hubristic, anti-Jeffersonian vision an unctuously slick Barack Obama has sought to perfume with the Alinskian fragrance of "empathy."
And through de facto law promulgated by faceless bureaucrats so securely ensconced in the arrogant niches of labyrinthine Washington that an army of citizens supported by ten thousand bloodhounds just might be able to sniff them out.
With this much said about Ms. West's post, it is abundantly clear that it enriches the nation more than by shedding light on Congressman King's "crime."
And indeed it does, for it reminds of the crucial importance of educating the American public about the profound danger posed by ideologues who invented PC expressly as a means of implicitly or explicitly screaming "shame!" or "guilt!" in order to place liberal-derived limits upon speech, beginning — as do all schemes for indoctrination devised by political fanatics — with the speech of young children.
Therefore, with thanks to Diana West, I'll advance the educational imperative with a few words regarding one of the filthiest instances in which liberals silenced a "criminal" who dared to take on a sacred dogma of the Liberal Church.
The year was 1965.
The "criminal" scholar/politician Daniel Patrick Moynihan, then, an Assistant Secretary of Labor in the Johnson administration.
And the "crime" a labor Department report titled "The Negro Family: The Case For National Action" (since referred to simply as the "Moynihan Report").
Moynihan's intention regarding the report? Basing our judgment upon his admirable life, we can infer he believed scholarship, history, and common sense supported its possibilities for "[helping] the American Negro move beyond opportunity to achievement.'"
Tragically, however, neither in the public sector nor the private were the ideas of the Report used to help black Americans arrive at Moynihan's noble purpose because liberals, both white and black, immediately savaged Moynihan as a racist for speaking of the illegitimacy rate in the black community as a problem and for arguing that reality dictates the educational focus in large, heavily black neighborhoods ought to be making schools there "better than they are" (Thomas Meehan, The Times Magazine, July, 1966.)
In fact, so intense was the liberal outcry in denouncing Moynihan for "blaming the victim" (a term coined by William Ryan for his 1976 book attacking the Moynihan Report) that President Johnson withdrew his support for Moynihan's ideas after "100 prominent religious and civil- rights leaders" agreed to a resolution that "the question of 'family stability' be stricken entirely from the [White House] agenda." (Meehan)
The bottom line, then, is this: In 1965, Daniel Moynihan was not simply criticized for being deeply concerned about the profound, negative effects almost certain to be visited upon the 25% of black children born to unwed mothers, he was condemned in a manner so hideously ugly that it shut off scholarship and debate about the issue for decades.
Moreover, it is an indictment of the social and political insanity festering in America for the past half century that in the year 2011, with the 25% figure having exploded to nearly 70%, liberals will slime a person who seeks to shine a light upon and help rectify the same problem with the identical reality-denying, thunderously mind-blowing stupidity they spat upon Moynihan in '65, an example of which Meehan quoted as follows:
"[Moynihan]. . . assumes that middle-class American values are the correct values for everyone in America. . . Moynihan thinks that everyone should have a family structure like his own."
That utterance can be made only by an arrogant, madly ideological, perfectly closed mind that rejects truths about the inestimable value of the love, nurture, and protection afforded to the child by two monogamous parents — truths that humans have acknowledged and religions have promoted and celebrated for millennia, truths the social sciences have confirmed, and truths biologists now posit as an essential evolutionary force that made the development of Homo sapiens possible.
Sadly, today, the same kind of mind continues its perverse tradition of spewing vicious name calling to shut down non-liberal discussion with respect to every major problem facing American culture.
Congressman King ought to be proud that only such a mind can deem him a "criminal."
© A.J. DiCintio
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