The Ugliness of Pure Unadulterated Bigotry

In the past few days we have seen the ugliness of bigotry directed at the good people of South Carolina.

In a defining moment of the current political debate, Congressman Joe Wilson shouted during Obama's speech to Congress last week "You lie!" Under pressure from other Republicans he issued an apology. Pushed to reiterate his retraction, he refused to budge another inch. In other words he does not dispute what he said, just the forum in which he said it.

Wilson's statements triggered an unusually heated blast of hatred from the Left that coincided with the massive protests last week in Washington DC and elsewhere. Obama's Administration dictated to the protestors that their stance was simply "wrong." Columnists such as Maureen Dowd of the New York Times and Margery Eagan of the Boston Herald attacked Wilson as a racist. His powerful stance against a president that happened to be black could not have come from honest disagreement over that chief executive's policies. No, it must be racism.

And here is how you know that the leftists have lost. They try to hush all debate by hauling out what used to be the dreaded "R" word. That word used to make people shake in their boots. Stab me, shoot me, just don't call me a racist. However it has been trotted out so many times, it's lost its punch.

Eagen was particularly eager to slam the state of South Carolina, hauling out historical figures who, except for Strom Thurmond, all died before any of her readers were born. Of course she recounted all the insults (the Audacity of Dope I particularly liked) and accusations aimed at Obama as a sign of hysteria. Did she feel the same when Bush was accused of falsifying National Guard enlistments, or was compared to a monkey? She was likely right along with that hatred, feeling morally righteous all the while. Today she says the whole state of South Carolina is full of crackpots and dingbats. Maybe I think that her entire newspaper is just as filled with hate, bigotry, and vitriol as she is. That would not be fair, but the left specializes in collective generalization.

Folks, this is what they think. Don't assume that they will not attack West Virginia. They feel the same, if not worse, about us. It is hatred, pure bigotry, a knee jerk negativity that knows no reason or bounds. If they could get away with hanging all rural conservatives from a sour apple tree, they would.

The scary thing is that two groups of Americans move farther and farther apart, unable to fathom the other side or how we even live in the same country. They blame it on conservatives and libertarians, but they lie. Two visions exist of what America ought to be. One side wants government paternalism, the other a restrained system that promotes freedom and responsibility. Just as before the Civil War, the realm of compromise shrinks to imperceptibility.

In the Civil War no option remained by 1860 except to fight. No political solution existed to solve the divide between those that believed that individual liberty was best protected by states and those that believed the federal government ought to play a predominant role (although much less predominant than leftists today.) Are we seeing the same trend in our time? Perhaps, but probably not.

Bigotry from the left expresses a hatred not seen in this nation since the 1960s. That hatred was the last gasp of the dying segregationist culture. They knew history was closing the book on them. Hopefully radical left wing socialism is issuing its last foul and dying breath with this administration.