Forward to the Past

The winners of the October, 2010 Louis Renault Award have been announced: Anyone who is shocked, shocked! to learn that NPR is a wholly owned propaganda arm of the Progressive (formerly Democrat Party.) And the runners up are: Anyone, particularly Juan Williams, who is shocked, shocked(!) to learn that conservatives are orders of magnitude more tolerant, caring and forgiving than progressives.

Louis Renault, for those who have never seen Casa Blanca, is the police Captain who accosts Rick--played by Humphrey Bogart--the proprietor of Rick’s, saying that he was shocked, shocked(!) to discover that gambling was going on in Rick’s place...moments before he was handed his gambling winnings.

I’ve long thought Mr. Williams to be among the more rational and least doctrinaire leftists. Occasionally he falls back into the fold, ignoring the facts, denying the obvious, gamely trying to defend the indefensible, but generally, Williams has been one of a very rare breed: A liberal who can discuss controversial topics without displaying the usual liberal traits of yelling insults, calling opponents racist, stupid or mentally defective, accusing opponents of plotting to starve children, knock the elderly out of their wheelchairs and do horrible things to small furry animals, running out of the room, exploding in raging anger, or if they can’t work up to the real thing, feigning righteous anger, playing the moral superiority card, or just turning red and sputtering. He’s the kind of man with whom I could easily enjoy a brisk, civil debate.

But I have to wonder. Williams spent a decade working for NPR. In all of that time in the progressive snake pit, didn’t he ever wonder what all the hissing was about? Didn’t he often see what appeared to be a duck, walking and quacking like a duck, and didn’t he realize that it actually was a duck? Didn’t he find himself regularly immersed in a tepid bucket of politically correct spit? He’s a smart man; why didn’t he see who and what his colleagues were?

I have been heartened to see a bit of light peeking through the progressive clouds, but the scales have yet to fall completely from Mr. Williams’ eyes (metaphor alert!). He has opined that maybe, just maybe, it wasn’t conservatives who were intolerant after all. Maybe, just maybe, it was, it was--gasp!--leftists all along. No doubt Mr. Williams has been encouraged to ponder this apparent paradox owing to several recent developments, among them his abrupt firing from NPR for the crime of speaking the truth about the existence of Islamic terrorists, a truth understood and shared by tens, even hundreds of millions of Americans; his subsequent immediate hiring--at a much higher salary--by the locus of all of the world’s evil: Fox News (Arizona is a close second); the fact that those who immediately jumped to his defense were almost entirely conservatives; the fact that those who selflessly defended and hired him did so because they were expressing loyalty to a friend, a friend who was also meritorious, which is of no small importance to conservatives, but is of little or no importance to progressives; and the fact that they were defending constitutional principles of free speech without concern for the political correctness of said speech.

I’ve little doubt that Mr. Williams is grateful, but I wonder if he--like far too many Congressional Republicans, has really learned the most important lessons of his experience. Considering that November 2 is fast approaching, this is not--like the details of Dr. Evil’s life--inconsequential.

Many Republicans such as Lindsay Graham and John Boehner have already begun to mutter about reaching across the aisle, compromising and cooperating with Democrats. There are many problems with this, but I’ll mention two just for fun: They haven’t taken control of either house of Congress as yet, and if they don’t they’ll be able to expect exactly the same cooperation, compromise, professionalism and human decency that Democrats have extended to them for the last two years: Not only none, but less than none. And even if they do win, as Rush Limbaugh put it, where’s the compromise with socialism, with policies that are designed to destroy freedom, democracy and the rule of law? Do we strike a deal to allow the Democrats to destroy the odd numbered articles and rights in the Constitution? The even?

To be completely fair, the Congress should be a place for honest and full debate, a body where no law is passed before the people have a chance to read it in full, where no bill is written like a blank check for future bureaucrats to fill out, where no bill can be more than 100 pages long, where everyone is treated with respect and dignity, but where everyone understands that they are temporary hired hands entrusted with the future of the last, best hope of mankind. To that end, everyone should be treated fairly and professionally, but when any one legislator ignores the Constitution, when they put themselves above the people, when they forget who they are and their temporary status as public servants, they deserve to be treated as the scoundrels they are and must, slowly and painfully, earn the full privileges of their positions. This is the current state of the Democrat party, a party dedicated to the destruction of America. Until every Democrat is once again dedicated to America and has proved that dedication beyond any doubt, they must be treated like the insidious danger they are.

Whether it is Juan Williams or Congressional Republicans, the problem is the same: A inability and/or stubborn unwillingness to recognize, embrace and act upon experience and reality. Sadly, I suspect that Mr. Williams will be far more likely to embrace reality than the Republicans. If this is the case, the Republicans may expect many more, and much more painful, lessons delivered by a public who can learn from experience and deal with reality. Living in the real world, rather than Washington D.C., tends to do that.

So, good luck to Juan Williams. Come on over to the good side of the Force, you know, the side that embraced and defended you when it mattered? And to Congressional Republicans: Nobody likes you. You are, for the moment, the lesser of two evils. You have a very, very long way to go before you have once again earned the trust of the American people. Start by defeating the immediate evil. We're watching.