J. Matt Barber
Obama sends in the clowns
By J. Matt Barber
With a potential political bloodbath looming in November, liberals are understandably desperate. They see it all slipping away and it shows. The grassroots groundswell of opposition to Obama's neo-Marxist, secular-humanist agenda intensifies daily despite the left's best efforts to silence dissent.
Commensurate with plummeting poll numbers and evaporating public trust, Democrats, media elites and the usual gaggle of left-wing pressure groups have ramped-up the unhinged "right-wing-extremist" twaddle to historically hysterical levels. For those who delight in watching the self-styled "progressive" movement implode, it's priceless.
"How can it be?" they ask. "The stars were aligned." With Barack Obama in the White House and his egalitarian enablers running Congress, liberals found themselves at ship's helm on the USS Hopey-Changey, sailing unabated toward the perfect storm of Euro-socialist reform. America's elite class would, at long last — curse these two-plus centuries of "constitutional" government — be as those erudite Europeans our homespun lefties so pitifully parrot.
Oops... something happened on the way to the Communism. Middle America, channeling Dana Carvey's Bush-one, said: "Nope, not gonna' do it... wouldn't be prudent." According to the latest Pew poll, America's trust in today's godless Obama-Pelosi-Reid federal government is at an all time low of 22 percent, little more than a year after Obama took office.
Plan B: Demonize Dissent
Mahatma Gandhi once said: "First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win." His words are eerily applicable to the elitist acrimony we see in response to the rapid resurgence of America's traditionalist zeitgeist.
After months of ignoring the burgeoning constitutionalist movement and dismissing it as "Astroturf," the left hit the panic button. Jig was up. It had become painfully apparent to all that this measured, monotone young president who carried with him such high hopes for so many was, in fact, the radical leftist ideologue those Limbaugh-Hannity-Beck-types had warned of.
And so, the mainstream media hit back, latching like pit-bulls to a poodle on iffy reports that Tea Partiers had shouted racist and "homophobic" slurs at black members of Congress and, well, Barney Frank (claims which, as it turns out, were apparently fabricated whole cloth).
Conservative pundit Andrew Breitbart offered $100,000 reward to anyone able to provide video or audio of the alleged slurs. Despite scores of television cameras in the immediate vicinity, no one has produced a shred of evidence.
Capitalizing on the media's deliberate mischaracterization of Tea Party conservatives as racist, inbred seditionists, some despondent Obama supporters then devised a strategy to "crash the Tea Parties." Throngs of constitutionally challenged, Berkeley-esque short-bussers (you shall know them by their patchouli covered bong pong) infiltrated many of the conspicuously peaceful "Tax Day Tea Parties" with racist and misspelled signs, screaming bigoted and inane slogans in an effort to paint Tea Partiers in a bad light.
Again, the strategy backfired with hilarious results as these boorish boobs outed themselves by posting their intentions on the internet in advance of operations. Legitimate Tea Partiers were ready for these "decaf" counterfeits, peacefully surrounding them when they showed up and calling them out in comical fashion.
Conservatives are Domestic Terrorists
Others have taken to the gutter deeper still. Most recently it was Bill Clinton with his lip-bitingly ominous warning that Tea Party conservatives and talk radio will cause another Oklahoma City. Senator Jim Inhofe (R-Okla) issued a scathing statement, calling Clinton's remarks "unconscionable," and chided the former president: "This is an over-the-top effort to try to stop a movement of people who aren't amenable to supporting Obama programs, like cap and trade, government-run health care and closing Gitmo."
And then there's the Alabama Alinskys. The Southern Poverty Law Center, a hard-left Montgomery-based outfit that claims to "monitor hate groups and racial extremists," remains the liberal media's go-to smear merchant. Perhaps more than any other group, the SPLC has overplayed its hand in vilifying opponents of Uncle Sam's extreme makeover.
SPLC director Mark Potok, for instance, compared Tea Partiers to "domestic terrorists," saying they're "...shot through with rich veins of radical ideas, conspiracy theories and racism," and are widely linked to "hate" and "vigilante groups."
Filed under "absurd acts of transparent desperation" — the SPLC recently lumped-in with the KKK, neo-Nazis and "potentially violent" militia groups, a list of 40 high profile conservatives — to include three sitting U.S. representatives — who are apparently facilitating sedition (a federal offense).
Among the treasonous "enablers" of the "antigovernment patriot movement" (read: Tea Partiers and pro-life/pro-family Americans) are Rep. Michelle Bachman (R-Minn); Rep. Ron Paul (R-Tex); Rep. Paul Broun (R-Ga); Glenn Beck (Fox News host); Judge Andrew Napolitano (Fox News legal analyst); and Joseph Farah (Editor of WorldNetDaily.com).
Seriously, guys? The SPLC would save us all time and energy if it simply released a list of conservative pundits, politicos and organizations that are not on its official "right-wing watch list."
Perhaps the one charge SPLC nailed is that America is currently experiencing a "far-right resurgence" (read: conservative comeback). The good news is that such dishonest smears are causing the SPLC — already hemorrhaging credibility — to just bleed-on-out.
Mainstream media, you're on official notice: Continue to cite the activist "analysis" of this discredited gang of kneecappers at your own peril. You risk losing completely, your own already vanishing credibility.
I'm sure they'll get right on that.
In the meantime, what these panicked "progressive" pixies fail to understand, is that the more they malign the ever-growing millions of red-blooded, God-fearing Americans who feel compelled to push back against Obama's weighty radicalism — the more they humiliate and embarrass themselves.
The more the left attempts to marginalize our nation's center-right mainstream with disingenuous charges of "racism," "homophobia" and "potential violence" — the more it marginalizes itself.
Still, I say marginalize away. Political self-neutering may just be these frowny clowns' one true act of patriotism.
© J. Matt Barber
April 27, 2010
With a potential political bloodbath looming in November, liberals are understandably desperate. They see it all slipping away and it shows. The grassroots groundswell of opposition to Obama's neo-Marxist, secular-humanist agenda intensifies daily despite the left's best efforts to silence dissent.
Commensurate with plummeting poll numbers and evaporating public trust, Democrats, media elites and the usual gaggle of left-wing pressure groups have ramped-up the unhinged "right-wing-extremist" twaddle to historically hysterical levels. For those who delight in watching the self-styled "progressive" movement implode, it's priceless.
"How can it be?" they ask. "The stars were aligned." With Barack Obama in the White House and his egalitarian enablers running Congress, liberals found themselves at ship's helm on the USS Hopey-Changey, sailing unabated toward the perfect storm of Euro-socialist reform. America's elite class would, at long last — curse these two-plus centuries of "constitutional" government — be as those erudite Europeans our homespun lefties so pitifully parrot.
Oops... something happened on the way to the Communism. Middle America, channeling Dana Carvey's Bush-one, said: "Nope, not gonna' do it... wouldn't be prudent." According to the latest Pew poll, America's trust in today's godless Obama-Pelosi-Reid federal government is at an all time low of 22 percent, little more than a year after Obama took office.
Plan B: Demonize Dissent
Mahatma Gandhi once said: "First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win." His words are eerily applicable to the elitist acrimony we see in response to the rapid resurgence of America's traditionalist zeitgeist.
After months of ignoring the burgeoning constitutionalist movement and dismissing it as "Astroturf," the left hit the panic button. Jig was up. It had become painfully apparent to all that this measured, monotone young president who carried with him such high hopes for so many was, in fact, the radical leftist ideologue those Limbaugh-Hannity-Beck-types had warned of.
And so, the mainstream media hit back, latching like pit-bulls to a poodle on iffy reports that Tea Partiers had shouted racist and "homophobic" slurs at black members of Congress and, well, Barney Frank (claims which, as it turns out, were apparently fabricated whole cloth).
Conservative pundit Andrew Breitbart offered $100,000 reward to anyone able to provide video or audio of the alleged slurs. Despite scores of television cameras in the immediate vicinity, no one has produced a shred of evidence.
Capitalizing on the media's deliberate mischaracterization of Tea Party conservatives as racist, inbred seditionists, some despondent Obama supporters then devised a strategy to "crash the Tea Parties." Throngs of constitutionally challenged, Berkeley-esque short-bussers (you shall know them by their patchouli covered bong pong) infiltrated many of the conspicuously peaceful "Tax Day Tea Parties" with racist and misspelled signs, screaming bigoted and inane slogans in an effort to paint Tea Partiers in a bad light.
Again, the strategy backfired with hilarious results as these boorish boobs outed themselves by posting their intentions on the internet in advance of operations. Legitimate Tea Partiers were ready for these "decaf" counterfeits, peacefully surrounding them when they showed up and calling them out in comical fashion.
Conservatives are Domestic Terrorists
Others have taken to the gutter deeper still. Most recently it was Bill Clinton with his lip-bitingly ominous warning that Tea Party conservatives and talk radio will cause another Oklahoma City. Senator Jim Inhofe (R-Okla) issued a scathing statement, calling Clinton's remarks "unconscionable," and chided the former president: "This is an over-the-top effort to try to stop a movement of people who aren't amenable to supporting Obama programs, like cap and trade, government-run health care and closing Gitmo."
And then there's the Alabama Alinskys. The Southern Poverty Law Center, a hard-left Montgomery-based outfit that claims to "monitor hate groups and racial extremists," remains the liberal media's go-to smear merchant. Perhaps more than any other group, the SPLC has overplayed its hand in vilifying opponents of Uncle Sam's extreme makeover.
SPLC director Mark Potok, for instance, compared Tea Partiers to "domestic terrorists," saying they're "...shot through with rich veins of radical ideas, conspiracy theories and racism," and are widely linked to "hate" and "vigilante groups."
Filed under "absurd acts of transparent desperation" — the SPLC recently lumped-in with the KKK, neo-Nazis and "potentially violent" militia groups, a list of 40 high profile conservatives — to include three sitting U.S. representatives — who are apparently facilitating sedition (a federal offense).
Among the treasonous "enablers" of the "antigovernment patriot movement" (read: Tea Partiers and pro-life/pro-family Americans) are Rep. Michelle Bachman (R-Minn); Rep. Ron Paul (R-Tex); Rep. Paul Broun (R-Ga); Glenn Beck (Fox News host); Judge Andrew Napolitano (Fox News legal analyst); and Joseph Farah (Editor of WorldNetDaily.com).
Seriously, guys? The SPLC would save us all time and energy if it simply released a list of conservative pundits, politicos and organizations that are not on its official "right-wing watch list."
Perhaps the one charge SPLC nailed is that America is currently experiencing a "far-right resurgence" (read: conservative comeback). The good news is that such dishonest smears are causing the SPLC — already hemorrhaging credibility — to just bleed-on-out.
Mainstream media, you're on official notice: Continue to cite the activist "analysis" of this discredited gang of kneecappers at your own peril. You risk losing completely, your own already vanishing credibility.
I'm sure they'll get right on that.
In the meantime, what these panicked "progressive" pixies fail to understand, is that the more they malign the ever-growing millions of red-blooded, God-fearing Americans who feel compelled to push back against Obama's weighty radicalism — the more they humiliate and embarrass themselves.
The more the left attempts to marginalize our nation's center-right mainstream with disingenuous charges of "racism," "homophobia" and "potential violence" — the more it marginalizes itself.
Still, I say marginalize away. Political self-neutering may just be these frowny clowns' one true act of patriotism.
© J. Matt Barber
The views expressed by RenewAmerica columnists are their own and do not necessarily reflect the position of RenewAmerica or its affiliates.
(See RenewAmerica's publishing standards.)
