The Left's Most Compelling Argument

The American political left has a favorite political tactic. Let's take a look at their response to conservative positions on various recent hot button issues:

~Do you support the Arizona illegal immigration law and think the U.S. should enforce the border with Mexico? (RACIST) BIGOT!

~Do you believe that we should keep the traditional definition of marriage as a union between one man and one woman? (HOMOPHOBIC) BIGOT!

~Do you support the Tea Party movement to control federal spending and limit taxes? (RACIST) BIGOT!

~Do you think it is inappropriate for an Islamic cleric sympathetic to terrorism to build an Islamic center just a few hundred feet from Ground Zero? (ISLAMOPHOBIC) BIGOT!

~Do you oppose President Obama's policies and believe they are harmful to our country? (RACIST) BIGOT!

~Do you think Obama's Justice Department should not have dropped charges against New Black Panther Party members intimidating voters outside a polling station in Philadelphia? (RACIST) BIGOT!

Folks, this is how many people on the left argue. They don't really engage the facts. They just impugn the motives of their political opponents. They don't explain why their opponents are wrong. They just claim their opponents are hate-filled bigots and call it a day. And remember, on virtually all of these issues, the majority of the American people fall into the category of "bigot."

In an earlier post, I commented on articles in the Washington Post by Colbert King and Eugene Robinson that made explicit comparisons between Tea Party activists protesting the Democratic health care bill and white supremacists protesting the desegregation of the schools in the Old South. They made all sorts of claims about racist behavior among Tea Partiers, none of which could be substantiated (and many of which were proven false). The same tactics have been used by many left-wing columnists, reporters, and politicians on all the issues listed above. What influential conservative has not been called a bigot or a racist? Bill O'Reilly, Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich, George W. Bush, Ron Paul, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, etc., etc. They 're all racists!

Since the issue most currently in the news is the Ground Zero mosque controversy, let's take a look at how leading mainstream journalists are covering this story.

1. Kirsten Powers, a Fox News political analyst and New York Post columnist, wrote an article on the Daily Beast blog entitled "The GOP's Long, Hot, Racist Summer." Hmmm...I wonder where this article is coming from. She starts out the article with these words: "Welcome to the summer of hate. These dog days have brought a veritable festival of racial demagoguery, from a phony 'New Black Panther' controversy to Arizona’s draconian illegal-immigrant crackdown to the most recent 'ground zero mosque' hysteria." (See all the ways conservatives are racist?) Powers completely distorts the New Black Panther controversy. She dismisses the voter intimidation as unimportant, lies about the New Black Panther Party's role in the incident, suggests that the Obama Justice Department carried out justice in the case when in fact they dropped the charges, and suggests that all high-profile Republicans are indifferent to white racism. With regard to the Arizona immigration law, she gives one over-the-top quote from Michael Savage (someone who would hardly identify himself as a Republican) about illegal immigration (no mention of race in the quote) to prove the racial motivations of supporters of the AZ law, and then lies about the law by claiming "brown skin" constitutes reasonable suspicion to check immigration status. With regard to the mosque, she makes no effort to seriously address any of the reasonable concerns about the imam involved or the location of the mosque (which I summarized in a recent post here). She simply says, "Let's be honest. The problem is they are Muslims." Case closed!

2. The cover story for Time magazine's most recent cover story is "Is America Xenophobic?" Anyone want to take a guess at the answer the magazine gives to that question? The article claims that Islamophobia is growing all across the country and that Republican leaders who oppose the mosque are fueling it. The author, Bobby Ghosh, admits that "there's no sign that violence against Muslims is on the rise," but cites "anecdotal evidence" for rising anti-Muslim sentiment. He also claims, in an interview with MSNBC's Keith Olbermann, that Islamophobia was widespread after the 9/11 attacks. We know from the historical record that this is a lie, and that the response from the American public was surprisingly restrained and respectful, given the provocation. These days, radical Muslims like Imam Rauf seem to get better press -- and far more benefit of the doubt -- than the America public. Rauf can attack the U.S. and defend terrorists and still be considered a moderate, but Americans cannot be angry over a provocative Islamic center to be built right next to Ground Zero without being called intolerant haters.

3. The ever-enlightening Maureen Dowd had to weigh in on the story too. Her main contribution in her most recent column, "Going Mad in Herds," is to claim that Obama is "a rational man running a most irrational nation" and to note that "the country is having some weird mass nervous breakdown." She adds, "The dispute over the Islamic center has tripped some deep national lunacy." Wow. Now, if you're opposed to the Ground Zero mosque, you're nuts. Most Americans do not agree with Maureen Dowd, therefore the whole nation is having a nervous breakdown. Can someone remind me again how this woman came to be an editorial page writer for one of the biggest newspapers in the land?

4. Taking the cake is another editorial from the New York Times, this one by Dick Cavett entitled "Real Americans, Please Stand Up." Yes, you read that right. If you oppose the Ground Zero mosque, you are not a "real" American. Cavett says that these prejudiced mosque opponents remind him of his 6th grade teacher who used to talk about the "dirty Japs." Cavett says, "How sad this whole mosque business is. It doesn’t take much, it seems, to lift the lid and let our home-grown racism and bigotry overflow." And this: "I like to think I’m not easily shocked, but here I am, seeing the emotions of the masses running like a freight train over the right to freedom of religion — never mind the right of eminent domain and private property." Just like all the other writers, Cavett never attempts to engage opponents of the mosque on any of the points they make about the mosque. He doesn't argue, he just asserts. His moral lectures to us about how we need to grow up and become real Americans is a disgrace. If he's so embarrassed by this backwards, racist, intolerant country, he should leave. Go somewhere real tolerance is practiced. Like any country in the Muslim world. Saudi Arabia, Iran, Pakistan, Libya, Somalia, Iraq, Turkey, Syria, etc.

In the meantime, I note that more statements by Imam Rauf have been coming out lately. The latest to surface was this gem: "We tend to forget, in the West, that the United States has more Muslim blood on its hands than al Qaeda has on its hands of innocent non Muslims. You may remember that the US-led sanction against Iraq led to the death of over half a million Iraqi children." As Jim Geraghty of National Review Online points out, "To suggest that the indirect effects of a U.S. sanctions regime is remotely morally comparable to al-Qaeda’s deliberate mass murder — much less to suggest that they are morally worse — is to eviscerate one’s claim to be moderate, pro-American, or sensible." I think that Imam Rauf would probably meet the criteria for being an editorial writer for many newspapers in this country.