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Aug 5, 2004 The past couple of years has taught me quite about about the political left and its view of dissent. For instance, we've heard time and again from the Hollywood crowd about how they have a right to express dissent from our government and, when they suffer some type of career setback (which is somewhat of a misnomer on its own because most of the outspoken Hollywood elite have not had active careers since Reagan was in office), we hear the gripes about how their freedom of speech is being curtailed. The latest example is Whoopie Goldberg whose most recent career success is evidenced by her being paid to lose weight and brag about it in television commercials. Ms. Goldberg went on a raunchy rant at a Democratic party fundraising event making sophomoric word plays on President Bush's name along with gestures to her privates, apparently for the sake of being funny or supporting John Kerry, I'm not sure which really. (After this, John Kerry got up and told the crowd how these Hollywood types represent the heart and sole of Americans. Yeah, John, you go guy!) And just this week I responded to a liberal posting to this useless-knowledge website only to receive an e:mail reply accusing me of attacking the writer personally. (In my opinion, this person's writing was entirely off-base and my criticisms of her message, may have been strong, but in no way were personal attacks made or intended.) It seems the left-wing is entirely on board with the concept of free speech and open dissent, as long as those speeches and dissent are in line with the liberal agenda. When that dissent strays from the liberal cause, it is no longer considered free speech or constructive in nature, it becomes a threat somehow. Liberals blow hard with rhetoric and empty, simple-minded slogans like, "Bush lied, people died." They openly attack our president, not with facts or logic, but with shrill name-calling and unsupportable accusations. And they cannot tolerate any dissent being expressed over their dissent. Liberal Democrats are masters at discrediting their political opponents with character assassinations. Often they do not even have to engage in open debate on the issues themselves, simply accuse their counterpart of being racist, sexist, homophobic, evil--well, you know the drill. This is why virtually all Republican candidates for president in recent history have had their intellect publicly questioned (i.e. Bush, Reagan, Ford, etc.) in the media while Democrats are almost always accepted as being intellectually superior (i.e., Gore, Clinton, Carter, now Kerry and Edwards). And, when they cannot really question a conservative's intellect, they simply attempt to demonize him or her for one reason or another (i.e, Cheney, Ashcroft, Condoleeza Rice, etc.) Personally, I think liberals become defensive when their "arguments" are questioned because they are very often weak and based on emotion. This isn't a personal attack; it is an attack on their arguments. When they say Bush's only cares about the rich, they don't have much of a valid response when you tell them the top income tax brackets actually pay a larger percentage of total income taxes after Bush's tax cuts than they did before the cuts or that the percentage of home ownership has reached record levels under Bush's leadership. They have no retort for facts like this. And it doesn't matter that the whole world knew Saddam possessed wmd's, or that Saddam Hussein himself could have stopped the Iraq war just by complying with UN resolutions, "Bush lied" when he told us they had wmd's. Facts and logic are irrelevant. Liberals need to grow up and learn to defend their positions from an intellectual perspective or perhaps rethink whether they have a valid argument in the first place. And remember, when you put forth an argument, particularly a politically-charged argument, you open yourself up for criticism and even harsh debate, and even boycotts if you happen to be part of the Hollywood elite. This, after all, is truly what the concept of dissent is all about. ------------ About the author: Ed Abraham is a concerned citizen living in flyover country, U.S.A., who happens to be truly disgusted by the loss of common sense in our society and is doing all he can to try to reinstall it. Email: eabra@myway.com Tell a friend about this site! ------------ |
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