New York Times columnists Charles M. Blow (“Whose country is this?”, March 27) and Frank Rich (“The rage is not about health careMarch 28, 2010) smugly and stentorianly condemn the “abuse, threats and acts of violence” (Blow) following the passage of Obama’s health care law.
“Mimicking Kristallnacht on a small scale” is what Rich calls the apparent excesses of the diminutive minority of protesters protesting the anti-democratic health care bill. His own crypto-racist assumptions are evident in Blow’s evisceration of those he calls “extremists”:
Even the optics must be irritating. A woman (Nancy Pelosi) pushed a health care bill through the House. The bill’s most evident and loudest supporters included a gay man (Barney Frank) and a Jew (Anthony Weiner). And the black man in the White House signed the bill. It’s enough to make a good ancient man go crazy.
Let me give Mr. Blow an alternative scenario: for the left
Even the optics must be disturbing. A (nationally recognized) woman (Sarah Palin) opposed the House-passed health care bill. The bill’s most evident and vocal opponents included a practicing Catholic (John Boehner) and a Jew (Eric Cantor). And prominent black men (former Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell, Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele, and former Godfathers Pizza chairman Herman Cain) did not want a black man in the White House to sign the bill. It’s enough to make a New York secular liberal go crazy.
Frank Rich., driven by the same reactionary anointment as Mr. Blow, writes something eerily similar in his article:
The combination of a black president and House Speaker — complemented by a astute Latina on the Supreme Court and an influential gay congressional committee chairman — would sow fear of disenfranchisement among the country’s shrinking and endangered minority, whatever policies were in play.
Let me rephrase once again:
The combination of a black chairwoman of the Republican National Committee and a conservative vice presidential candidate — complemented by a wise African-American conservative on the Supreme Court and an influential evangelical committee chairman — would sow fear of disenfranchisement among the minuscule, self-described secular elite in the media and academia, regardless of policy.
However, not content with lampooning all conservatives with the basic brush of bigotry, Rich returns to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 as further evidence of the right’s slander (apparently unaware of the fact that More Republicans in the House of Representatives than Democrats voted for it). Blow goes one step better, claiming that Tea Partiers, according to a Quinnipiac University survey, show that they are “disproportionately white, evangelical Christians, and ‘less educated…than the average six-pack Joe and Jane’.”
Ah, the evangelical slur rears its head: conservative Christians simply don’t have the intelligence that the rest of society has. This statement is to intellectual credibility what the Big Mac is to nutrition. The tired claim that evangelicals are uneducated idiots fails sedate analysis. According to an extensive survey done in 2004 by GreenbergQuinlanRosner Research for the PBS program “Religion and Ethics”: “About 22 percent of white evangelicals have a college degree compared with 27 percent of the general population. (One) quarter (27 percent) of white evangelicals have a post-secondary education compared to 26 percent of the general population.”
Unfortunately, Blow and Rich remained mute as images of a decapitated George W. Bush, guns to his head, and “Kill Bush” T-shirts spread among the left. For much of the first decade of the 21st century, the blogosphere was flooded with terrible messages of hatred, cruelty and violence against the 43rd President. Most of us on the right attributed these disgusting things to politically minded minorities, but were disturbed by the fact that MoveOn.org, Michael Moore, Arianna Huffington, and other pop culture “acceptables” condoned and encouraged Bush’s hatred as if it were merely raucous patriotism. Jonah Goldberg rightly calls this “liberal fascism.” Now that a handful of people have gone too far, suddenly conservatives (both Tea Partiers and Republicans) are (I’m making this list based on exactly two articles published in three days in New York Times):
- Foaming
- Copper face
- Apoplectic
- Thugs
- Guards
- Not glued
- Deadly (at least rhetorically)
- Apocalyptic (not to be confused with apoplectic – see above)
- Irritated
- Hysterical
- Bullies
- Desperate
- Extremists
- Bad
- Frustrated
- Wicked
- Crazy (afternoon tea)
- Anemic (Republicans)
- Bigoted (afternoon tea)
- Brutal (afternoon tea)
- Anachronistic
And most of them, I think, dress poorly.
Both Blow and Rich triumphantly conclude that white conservatives are a dying breed and that America’s demographics are dooming the (overwhelmingly white) Tea Party movement to failure. Here, to borrow a phrase from the overdue Israeli diplomat Abby Eban, Blow and Rich experience an “isolated spasm of clarity.”
America’s racial and ethnic composition is indeed changing. Conservatives must take seriously the reality that, sometime by the middle or end of the century, white Americans will become merely the largest in numbers in a multiethnic nation. We must do a much better job of engaging and thoughtfully engaging people of color and convincing them that a conservative vision of personal responsibility, constrained government, lower taxes, and true social justice (for the born and unborn) is the best course for our – and I emphasize, our – nation.
But Blow and Rich should heed the wisdom of America’s greatest president, Abraham Lincoln (a Republican, no less!): The hen is the wisest of all animals because she never croaks until her eggs hatch.
The fight for the ideas and beliefs that should shape our country should never include in its ranks those pathetic souls from either extreme whose racial, ethnic or ideological hostility inspires their political conduct. But Charles Blow and Frank Rich should beware of cackling too soon.
Whose country is this? All ours. About “we, the people” who lived not in a capricious state manipulated by a left-wing bourgeois elite, but in an established political order based on a written text and the unwritten but real virtue of the conscious citizen. Conservatives are fighting to maintain it. And we have only just started fighting.