November 20, 2009

Steve Pomper

Being Nasty won’t Help the Political Left.

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It’s stunning that we’ve arrived at a day in America where our republic’s most highly placed political leaders actually view their fellow Americans, citizens who simply oppose their political views, with abject contempt, and express it overtly and publicly. Those who dare to advocate for an America that reflects the constitutional republic originally created by our Founders are treated to scathing derision by their own elected representatives.

 

These leaders are attempting to invert the exceptional nation our Founders built, while at the same time claiming to revere those founders and the constitution and country they created. Essentially the current administration’s leadership, when pressed, claims to revere Washington, Jefferson, Adams, and Franklin, while at the same time reviling those Americans who espouse an affinity for those founding patriots’ political perspectives.

 

How can this be? If the current administration truly reveres our Founders and the Constitution, within which they framed self-government, wouldn’t they logically also be sympathetic to those who still follow and venerate the Founders? Sadly, too many current administration figures express, rather than affinity for Madison or Monroe, camaraderie with Marx and Mao.

 

I understand having opposing political arguments: they don’t agree with me, I don’t agree with them; fine, now let’s go watch the game and drain a pint or two. But today we have elected officials who deride average Americans, some of them their own constituents who’ve become energized and have begun to actively participate in the political process, some for the first times in their lives.

 

We have an American President who campaigned on bipartisanship but who allows, and at times seems to tacitly and overtly encourage his party’s leaders, including the Speaker of the House, to disparage, not elected political opponents, but ordinary Americans. For example using condescending terms such as “astroturf,” when referring to the most genuine grassroots political movement to manifest in years. This grassroots movement—tea parties, town halls, etc.—is the type of action the left has always claimed to admire so greatly, but, it would seem, only if the roots sprout on the left side of the political lawn.

 

How can any American trust political leaders who show such utter disdain for those who sincerely oppose their progressively ambitious, if not radically socialist, agenda? The President has even quipped that his opponents “stay out of the way” while he and his, “mop up their mess.” The President pokes jabs at politically energized citizens as, “tea-baggers,” a crude term having no place in a U.S. Presidents’ terminology regarding Americans he represents.

 

Many of these so-called “tea-baggers,” were, if not outright supporters of the president, were at least willing to give him a chance and even the benefit of the doubt. Being chided, derided, and marginalized by their president will not earn him any future benefit of the doubt. Our new president said he wishes to bring civility back to the political dialogue. Then, what’s stopping him?

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