Posted by
Bert Chapman on Tuesday, September 15, 2009 7:22:14 PM
South Carolina Rep. Joe Wilson drew the wrath of Messiah Obama's congressional colleagues when he dared voice his criticism of a part of presidential legislation with the declaration of "you lie." Rep. Wilson's outbreak may be crude and inappropriate but one can legitimately criticize the veracity of Obama statements in a democratic country just as liberals are free to criticize the veracity of Republican presidential statements. The fact of the matter is that is a Democratic congressional representative had made such pejorative comments during a nationally televised address by any recent Republican President, particularly George W. Bush, there would hardly have been any criticism of that individual for defaming the President or violating supposedly sacrosant congressional behavioral decorum.
This episode, and the just-passed congressional reprimand of Rep. Wilson, clearly demonstrate that Democrats can dish out inflammatory political rhetoric but can not take it when such incendiary rhetoric is directed at them. Speaker Nancy Pelosi, reacting to the petulant whining of the Congressional Black Caucus that a white Southern Republican had the impudence to denigrate the "Messiah's" grandiloquent rhetoric and policy proposals, saw to it that the perpetrator of this "egregious offense" be reprimanded with a speed that would please apparatchiks in totalitarian dictatorships.
It's especially amusing to hear ignorant American news commentators condemn this alleged decline in American political civility. Have they forgotten the often virulent criticisms liberal politicians and media figures made against former Presidents George W. Bush and Ronald Reagan? Have they never witnessed the smash mouth political rhetoric emanating from British parliamentarians or from other parliamentary democracies during Prime Minister's Question Time? They must not have noticed a year or two ago that South Korean legislators, opposed to a free-trade agreement with the U.S., tried to forcibly break into a legislative committee room to express their views. These superficial insular political observers may also not have noticed that nearly a decade ago, if memory serves me right, Taiwanese legislators became involved in such a heated debate that they were vigorously punching each other. These behavioral extremes pale when compared with the daily violence of political debate in dictatorial regimes across the world.
In reality, U.S. political debates, are as mild as the conversation of dowager women at a tea party. What's most revealing about this debate, besides Democratic hyprocrisy, is that Obama Administration supporters are so intellectually incapable of defending their positions on health care policy, that they launch vicious personal attacks against their critics. Such tactics, of course, were practiced by the Clinton Administration without a peep from Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow, and other leftist media sycophants of that era. This episode shows the beginnings of panic by Obama supporters as they realize they will not be able to ramrod their radical health care restructuring on the American people. Those of us opposed to Obama Administration policies and by the sycophantic support the President has received from much of the establishmentarian media should take heart from the reaction to Rep. Wilson's outburst.