Go Ahead Democrats Insult The President Why Dont You - Road to the Middle Class

At one point, the Rev. Joseph E. Lowery, a former head of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), the group Martin Luther King Jr. helped found, made a reference to not finding weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. The well-heeled, mostly black crowd erupted in a standing ovation.

But at the conservative Washington Times things looked a little different. Of President Carter, not mentioned in the Washington Post article, reporter Joseph Curl wrote:

Halfway through the service, former President Jimmy Carter scolded Mr. Bush for his terror-surveillance program... Mr. Carter later said Hurricane Katrina was a clear sign that racism is still alive in America. Several black leaders have blamed the president for what they consider an insufficient federal response.

And about Joseph Lowery, he wrote:

The Rev. Joseph Lowery, co-founder of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and an outspoken civil rights leader, during his speech about Mrs. King ripped into Mr. Bush... “We know now that there were no weapons of mass destruction over there... [T]here are weapons of misdirection right down here.”

Real nice, isn’t it, to insult the President of the United States right to his face.

And you wonder: Did the Washington Post’s light touch on the insults issue from embarrassment over the graceless behavior of Democratic speakers, or did they not even notice the outrage?

This sort of behavior puts the lie to the gospel of political correctness, the doctrine that we should not use speech that hurts, that we should be sanctioned for using “hate speech.”

If we didn’t already know, we ought to know by now. It’s all a political ploy, a trick to deny conservatives their constitutional right to speech. It is all about licensing left-wing speech, however racist, however sexist, however it plays the class warfare card.

What Democrats don’t seem to understand, living as they do in their liberal bubble, is just how clear a message this sort of thing sends to people who aren’t fully committed liberal blue-state Democrats.

The first rule of politics is: Don’t make unnecessary enemies. Especially don’t make enemies of decent middle-class Americans.

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Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.

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Faith & Purpose

“When we began first to preach these things, the people appeared as awakened from the sleep of ages—they seemed to see for the first time that they were responsible beings...”
Finke, Stark, The Churching of America, 1776-1990

Mutual Aid

In 1911... at least nine million of the 12 million covered by national insurance were already members of voluntary sick pay schemes. A similar proportion were also eligible for medical care.
Green, Reinventing Civil Society

Education

“We have met with families in which for weeks together, not an article of sustenance but potatoes had been used; yet for every child the hard-earned sum was provided to send them to school.”
E. G. West, Education and the State

Living Under Law

Law being too tenuous to rely upon in [Ulster and the Scottish borderlands], people developed patterns of settling differences by personal fighting and family feuds.
Thomas Sowell, Conquests and Cultures

German Philosophy

The primary thing to keep in mind about German and Russian thought since 1800 is that it takes for granted that the Cartesian, Lockean or Humean scientific and philosophical conception of man and nature... has been shown by indisputable evidence to be inadequate.
F.S.C. Northrop, The Meeting of East and West

Knowledge

Inquiry does not start unless there is a problem... It is the problem and its characteristics revealed by analysis which guides one first to the relevant facts and then, once the relevant facts are known, to the relevant hypotheses.
F.S.C. Northrop, The Logic of the Sciences and the Humanities

Chappies

“But I saw a man yesterday who knows a fellow who had it from a chappie that said that Urquhart had been dipping himself a bit recklessly off the deep end.” —Freddy Arbuthnot
Dorothy L. Sayers, Strong Poison

Democratic Capitalism

I mean three systems in one: a predominantly market economy; a polity respectful of the rights of the individual to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and a system of cultural institutions moved by ideals of liberty and justice for all. In short, three dynamic and converging systems functioning as one: a democratic polity, an economy based on markets and incentives, and a moral-cultural system which is plural and, in the largest sense, liberal.
Michael Novak, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism

Action

The incentive that impels a man to act is always some uneasiness... But to make a man act [he must have] the expectation that purposeful behavior has the power to remove or at least to alleviate the felt uneasiness.
Ludwig von Mises, Human Action

Churches

[In the] higher Christian churches… they saunter through the liturgy like Mohawks along a string of scaffolding who have long since forgotten their danger. If God were to blast such a service to bits, the congregation would be, I believe, genuinely shocked. But in the low churches you expect it every minute.
Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm

Conversion

“When we received Christ,” Phil added, “all of a sudden we now had a rule book to go by, and when we had problems the preacher was right there to give us the answers.”
James M. Ault, Jr., Spirit and Flesh

Living Law

The recognition and integration of extralegal property rights [in the Homestead Act] was a key element in the United States becoming the most important market economy and producer of capital in the world.
Hernando de Soto, The Mystery of Capital

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