Left-Wing Savagery
Victor Davis Hanson coins a new phrase to describe the hyperventilating hyperbole too many on the left are engaging in. He touches on quite a few items that have been the subjects of posts here and at many other blogs and weaves them together with consummate skill.
Why do Republicans drive leftists so crazy these days? Liberal democrats are beginning to sound like rowdy students on spring break, shrieking and exhibiting themselves on camera.
Consider some of the recent rabid outbursts by once sober, old-guard politicians. West Virginia Sen. Jay Rockefeller insists that the world would be better off if Saddam were still running Iraq. Crotchety Congressman John Murtha, of Pennsylvania, rushed to announce that our Marines were guilty of killing Iraqis in "cold blood" before they were tried. Illinois Sen. Richard Durbin has compared our interrogators at Guantanamo Bay to Nazis, while Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry said our soldiers have "terrorized" Iraqi women and children.
Then there is the constant anger from Democratic ex-presidents. It used to be that out-of-office chief executives kept relatively hush. Presidents Ford and Bush Sr. – both voted out of office – did not bray when President Clinton had his trials, personal and otherwise.
Not so now with Presidents Carter and Clinton. They repeatedly harp about the sins of the current administration. By now, everyone has seen clips of Clinton losing his temper (complete with finger-wagging) and lashing out at the "right-wingers" on TV. He lectures on political extremism, even as one of his wife's staff members slandered John McCain by saying he broke under torture while a POW in Hanoi. And even at 82, Jimmy Carter almost daily carps over Bush's foreign policy.
Read the whole thing, it is well worth taking the time. Hanson points out the deadly trap that Democrats are setting for themselves by cozying up to this hysteria. Unable to convince people that their agenda is worth enacting, they fall into rhetorical denunciation. What will be the outcome when they manage to claw back into power?
True, reactionaries in the 1990s expressed a Neanderthal hatred of Bill Clinton. But now shouting leftists have lowered the bar. The danger, of course, is that by emulating the rhetoric of a Cindy Sheehan or Michael Moore, the feral Democrats – when they come back into power again as tamed leaders who must govern – will have created Frankensteins. And, as we know, such monsters always turn on their creators.
Yeah, what he said.
By Ed, October 19, 2006 @ 2:08 pm
Victor Davis Hanson must be hell of a historian if this column is an example, since it was that ‘liberal’ site NewsMax that first accused McCain of breaking under torture:
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2005/11/29/100012.shtml
By Gaius, October 19, 2006 @ 2:23 pm
He didn’t say the staffer made the only reference or even the first. Just that the staffer made the statement (which is true).