United Liberty

As you have seen here and in the news, President Barack Obama has started a war against House Republicans over Rep. Paul Ryan’s budget, claiming the the spending cuts being proposed to domestic programs is “social darwinism.” Over at Cato @ Liberty, David Boaz takes Obama to task for the level of discourse he’s using to bash Republicans:

[H]eadlines this week report that President Obama accused the Republicans of “social Darwinism,” and I don’t see anyone exercised about that. A New York Times editorial endorses the attack.

Is “social Darwinist” within some bound of propriety that “socialist” violates? I don’t think so. After all, plenty of people call themselves socialists — not President Obama, to be sure, but estimable figures such as Tony Blair and Sen. Bernie Sanders. Members of the British Labour Party have been known to sing the socialist anthem “The Red Flag” on the floor of Parliament.

But no one calls himself a social Darwinist. Not now, not ever. Not Herbert Spencer. The term is always used to label one’s opponents. In that sense it’s clearly a more abusive term than “socialist,” a term that millions of people have proudly claimed.

Lashing out at the tea party movement this weekend, Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis called them “teabaggers,” a favorite term from the Left to describe the protesters that have been a headache for the Obama Administration and Democrats:

Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis embraced the derogatory term used to describe members of the tea party in an appearance at the Florida Democratic Convention over the weekend.

“I’ll be darned if I’m going to set that aside now because a few tea baggers want to somehow muzzle my voice,” she said, according to the Tallahassee Democrat. “We don’t have to sit back and allow a minority in the Congress, known as the tea party, to dominate the discussion in our households.”

This story is just getting picked up in the national press, so expect to hear more about it in the coming days — perhaps even a call for an official repudiation from the White House.

Maybe it’s me, but this sort of childish rhetoric seems beneath a public official. You don’t have to agree with the tea party movement, but they’ve proven to be a formidable obstacle for Democrats both at the ballot box and in implementing policy. And just because you are sitting at the top doesn’t mean you’re entitled to have your agenda forced through, which is where this frustration is coming from.

Seriously, if you want the discourse to change, as President Obama has said before, then he needs to start with his own administration.

In response to the rhetoric of protesters defending public-sector unions in Wisconsin - including signs depiciting Gov. Scott Walker as Adolf Hitler and crosshairs over his face, Stephen Hayes is encouraging President Barack Obama to encourage civil discourse:

Last Tuesday, hundreds of protesters shut down the road in front of Gov. Walker’s family home in Wauwatosa, Wis. Across the state in Madison, a crowd of 20,000—many of them teachers skipping school—gathered at the Capitol. Signs compared Mr. Walker to Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak, Joseph Stalin and Benito Mussolini. Still others accused him of “terrorism” and “rape.” One sign had a photo of the governor in crosshairs: “Don’t Retreat, Reload.”

Elected officials joined the protests—and the slurs. In a television interview on the sidelines of the demonstration, state Sen. Lena Taylor compared Mr. Walker to Adolf Hitler.

While protesting the Koch brothers for their involvement in financing the tea party movement, some of these progressives said that Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas should be sent “back to the fields” or lynched and called for the deaths of other conservative figures. Classy, huh?

Here’s the video:

Parting question. If it’s so bad for Charles and David Koch to spend the money they earned - a strange concept to the left, why haven’t they protested George Soros for doing the same thing?

H/T: Hot Air

While giving the commencement speech at the University of Michigan back in May, President Barack Obama discussed the state of political discourse in the country:

Obama was direct in urging both sides in the political debate to tone it down. “Throwing around phrases like ‘socialists’ and ‘Soviet-style takeover,’ ‘fascists’ and ‘right-wing nut’ — that may grab headlines,” he said. But it also “closes the door to the possibility of compromise. It undermines democratic deliberation,” he said.
[…]
Passionate rhetoric isn’t new, he acknowledged. Politics in America, he said, “has never been for the thin-skinned or the faint of heart. … If you enter the arena, you should expect to get roughed up.”

Political discourse could be improved, but this is how it has always been in our country, and it has been much worse at various times, such as the Election of 1800 between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson and the Civil War.

But if President Obama was serious about raising the level of discourse, he probably shouldn’t say things like this:

Fox News pushes “a point of view that I disagree with. It’s a point of view that I think is ultimately destructive for the long-term growth of a country that has a vibrant middle class and is competitive in the world,” Obama said.

“But as an economic enterprise, it’s been wildly successful. And I suspect that if you ask Mr. Murdoch what his number one concern is, it’s that Fox is very successful.”

If you’re in Twitter world and you follow Tabitha Hale, a really cool chick who works for FreedomWorks (one of the more principled activist groups), you may have witnessed the exchanges between her and actor John Cusack, who also slammed Fox News, Dick Armey and others during his multi-tweet (is that a word?) diatribe.

We often hear that political discourse has reached new lows. You’ll year people call conservatives and Republicans “haters,” a discription that was frequently used by Cusack in his Twitter feed, or that they are the “party of hate.” I do disagree with their positions on a few socials issues, but both sides are just as guilty of “intolerance” (and I’m using that loosely, I don’t mean it as a smear).

For example, here is a sampling of messages and e-mails left by liberals for FreedomWorks employees (language warning):

Do you still think it’s just Republicans contributing to the break down of political discourse in the country?

Rick Moran has a conversation with himself and diagnosis what is wrong with political discourse in this country:

It got to the point last week, after reading the usual nonsense from many conservatives about how Obama is deliberately trying to “destroy” the country, or is a Marxist, or wants to be a dictator, or is favoring Muslims in the Middle East because he actually is one, or is plotting to cancel the elections in November, or wasn’t born here/not a naturalized citizen/Hawaiian official says he was born in Kenya/yadayadayadayada…that I nearly screamed

STOP THE MADNESS!

Jesus lord God I get nauseated reading this crap. And in my two jobs, I have to read it all the time. Comments, articles, emails – it never stops. Conspiracies, falsehoods, batshit crazy observations, wildly off base dot connecting, Cloward-Piven, Rules for Radicals — a never ending flood of idiocy, illogic, unreasoning hatred, and just plain ignorance from people who tell me I am insufficiently passionate in my opposition to Obama and the liberals and am therefore on their side.

It’s like the previous 8 years of putting up with the exact same crap from liberals about George Bush never happened.

The. Exact. Same. Crap.

Bush the dictator. Bush trying to destroy the country. Bush policies formulated only to help cronies. Don’t these people remember how we laughed at that kind of stupidity? And now, it looks like I have to put up with the same damn ignorant tripe for another 8 years.

And you could go back further than that and say that what we’re seeing today isn’t just a repeat of the opposition during the Bush years, but also a repeat of the opposition during the Clinton years.

Last week while giving the commencement speech to the graduating class at the University of Michigan, President Barack Obama addressed some of the rhetoric being bantered about and defended his view of how government should work:

“What troubles me is when I hear people say that all of government is inherently bad,” Obama said after receiving an honorary doctor of laws degree. “When our government is spoken of as some menacing, threatening foreign entity, it ignores the fact that in our democracy, government is us.”
[…]
But Obama was direct in urging both sides in the political debate to tone it down. “Throwing around phrases like ‘socialists’ and ‘Soviet-style takeover,’ ‘fascists’ and ‘right-wing nut’ — that may grab headlines,” he said. But it also “closes the door to the possibility of compromise. It undermines democratic deliberation,” he said.

“At its worst, it can send signals to the most extreme elements of our society that perhaps violence is a justifiable response.”

Passionate rhetoric isn’t new, he acknowledged. Politics in America, he said, “has never been for the thin-skinned or the faint of heart. … If you enter the arena, you should expect to get roughed up.”

It’s funny that Obama addresses the harsh discourse in politics and just a few days later a quote he gave for book on the first year of his presidency surfaces: