Thanks, But I Know Which Fork to Use

I am absolutely with Jeff Goldstein on this. It is one thing to congratulate Obama on his victory, in order to be gracious; it is quite another to join with his supporters in endowing him with virtues that are not manifestly in evidence. Is he a “good and decent man?” Why should we think so? Because he’s kind to his wife and children? Where is the virtue in that? Whether out of cold-blooded political calculation, or because he shares their beliefs, Obama has associated for more than twenty years primarily with people who (pretty much literally) wrote the book on radical anti-Americanism. He came to power nurtured in the cocoon of the notorious Chicago political machine. He supports the barbarity of partial-birth abortion, and even the practice of withholding care from babies born as the result of botched abortions. His campaign for president used intimidation and it abused the law in trying to blunt legitimate political opposition. We know less about Obama than we do about probably any other presidential candidate in history (thank you, mainstream media!), and while it’s certainly ok to suspend judgment about the wisdom of his policies until he becomes president and starts to formulate some, there is no reason to suspend our intellectual faculties and pretend that his M.O. will not carry over from campaigning to governing – and much of what’s known, for certain, about that M.O. is not consistent with good character.

In any event, gauging his “goodness” is a futile task. What matters is how he governs. There are some grounds for believing that the bulk of his program (to the extent one can be identified) is so much oratorical applesauce. Unfortunately, there are also grounds for believing that he meant every word. Whether or not he resists the demands of the klepotcrats in his own party, or whether he leads their charge, the fact remains that an Obama presidency means a net gain in the power of the state at the expense of individual liberty. “Good man” or not, this is an outcome that should move us to be unstinting in our opposition to each and every decision and policy prescription that we believe to be inimical to the welfare of our nation. If he makes the occasional good decision or choice, fine, he’ll deserve kudos; but when he fails to do so, let’s not make excuses for him based on his purported decency, and chalk it up automatically to his being merely “mistaken” or to his “lack of experience”; bad policy could be part of the game plan (although it obviously wouldn’t be seen as bad by its formulator).

And if I hear one more conservative disparaging the fellow who puts a bumper-sticker on his car reading, “He’s not my president”, I swear I’ll buy one, myself. Of course it’s a silly slogan, but it is, after all, nothing more than venting. Does anyone really believe that the person (by the way, purely mythical insofar as I’ve been able to tell) who deploys such a slogan is actually going to begin negotiating his own treaties with foreign powers? Levying his own taxes? Building his own aircraft carrier in the backyard? People sometimes need a mental safety valve, and if plastering a bumper-sticker on their cars helps them deal with their disappointment, let ‘em have at it, I say. Besides, something like this is so far short of the vileness and diabolical hatred directed at George Bush over the last eight years by the nut-roots as to be harmless. In short, you conservative bloggers who are bending over backwards to be gracious go too far when you start warning the rest of us not to get carried away to extremes of bitterness – in the first place, there doesn’t seem to be much bitterness in evidence (except for, interestingly, the bitterness currently being demonstrated by certain unnamed McCain advisors who are trashing Sarah Palin), and secondly, we heard that sort of thing from Obama, so we really don’t appreciate hearing it from you.

Which brings me, at long last, to one of the key points in Jeff’s post, pertaining to the use of language as a weapon (an idea I’ve been wanting to write about for some time, and will, at length, someday). Just a taste: “In a political environment wherein the left has managed to turn the introduction of inconvenient facts into ‘smears’ or ‘racism,’ this willingness, on the part of some conservatives, to believe themselves capable of seizing the moral high ground by essentially giving cover to the demonstrably bad by allowing that it is merely ‘misguided,’ is yet another step toward the very kind of partisan pragmatism that has cost Republicans so dearly, and that, even more troubling, has served to devalue language and further institutionalize a dangerous idea of how interpretation works.”

Read it all.