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Unity? A Respectful Dissent.
I really, really, really do want all this unity I’ve been hearing about to happen and I do so wish I could actually get my hopes up that such a miracle — and that’s what it would amount to in today’s vile and mean atmosphere — could actually happen. I know many of us also harbor that hope, as evidenced by the comment of one of the members who characterized Paul Ryan’s speech about an “attack on one of us is an attack on all of us” as one of the great speeches of all time. While it was a nice speech and quite typical of the Speaker who says many “nice things”, as much as I would dearly like to believe all this kumbaya attitude will continue, I find myself in agreement with the brilliant commentator Mark Steyn, who stated, on the Tucker Carlson show last night:
“Yes, I think so,” said Steyn. “If you have people like the Southern Poverty Law [Center], which has become fabulously wealthy by labeling everyone they disagree with as a hate group, if you keep calling everybody a hater, and in fact, if your organization calls people haters, you are the hater. I would like to disagree with the tone of what we have heard today, including in the last hour for Martha MacCallum and Brit Hume, when they were talking about unity and will this unity last?”
“Obviously, the unity won’t last because ultimately, Rand Paul has very little that unites him with Bernie Sanders. We don’t actually need unity. We need robust, civilized disunity — people honestly recognizing that they disagree with each other on health care, on immigration, on Islam, on transgender bathrooms, and a bazillion other things, but that doesn’t make the other person a hater. Simply put, the left has to be willing to actually engage in debate with people that disagree with them.”
As if to put an exclamation point on this kind of argument, right on cue appears the truly vile Minority “Leader” Nancy Pelosi, who promptly blamed the action of an obviously deranged person of the far left on–you guessed it! — the President and the Republicans’ Politics of Personal Destruction!
“It didn’t used to be this way,” Pelosi said. “Somewhere in the 1990s Republicans decided on the politics of personal destruction as they went after the Clintons and that is what started and it has continued.”
“Again, I feel as if we’re having a family moment that is very, very serious and we’re talking about things that we can say, the discussion — save the discussion for another day,” Pelosi continued, before immediately attacking Trump.
“When the president says ‘I can shoot somebody on Fifth Avenue and nobody would care’, when you have somebody say ‘beat them up and I’ll pay their legal fees’, when you have all the assaults that are made on Hillary Clinton, for them to be so sanctimonious is something that I really am almost sad that I had to go down this path with you because I don’t think it’s appropriate for us to have the fullest discussion of it. It will be for another day.”
Unity? This is unity? With this kind of venomous language from one of the “Leaders” of our Government, where is the basis for hope that there will be a basis for some kind of amicable cooperation between the two parties?
And, on a personal note, as a fellow Louisianian, we fellow Cajuns are praying for a full recovery of Congressman Scalise and all of those injured in this grotesque attack, and no one would be more happy to be wrong about the outlook than I. But I just don’t see it happening any time soon, what with the kind of rote response of the Pelosis of the Government, together with, right on cue, as well, another major media report based on nothing but anonymous sources to the effect that the new Special Counsel is using his many, many, many new and hungry Hillary and Obama supporters to determine if the expression of a “hope” amounts to obstruction of justice. This being the one and the same Special Counsel who is not only one of James Comey’s closest personal friends but is also (try to find this in the Mainstream Media) the Godfather of one of his children and who, if there was a shred of common sense left in Washington, should be removed on the basis of a glaring conflict of interest. Alas, there does not seem to be any such quality around and the Special Counsel machine will just continue to go clunking down the road until it finds something, Anything, to pin on someone! Just ask Mr. Libby about out-of-control machines just like this one.
Unity! Isn’t it just lovely? What a lovely thing to behold! ….. oh–must have dozed off there for a minute…have to get back to the real world! Too bad, really. Wish I could stay in that dream world just a little longer!
Published in General
He would have fought back, but with a smile and a twinkle in his eye. “There you go again.” “It isn’t so much that liberals are ignorant. It’s just that they know so many things that aren’t so.” Are those quotes less personal than what Trump tweeted? Also, that was a different era. Reagan’s opponent was Tip O’Neal, not Pelosi / Schumer. Yet he was still mocked as an idiot by the “right thinking” crowd.
I can’t even begin to express how much I’d love to have another Reagan instead of Trump. Reagan is dead. Trump is president. This is where we are.
Is that what that was? I thought it was the results of the chili-dog I ate earlier :).
We don’t need unity. All we need is civility.
To quote the Institute for Civility in Government (not an endorsement):
Not more than 30 seconds before I read this, I posted on another thread:
@anuschka is right — we do need civility. @miffedwhitemale is also right in that the left uses calls for civility as a weapon. They do this because they understand that many conservatives are naturally civil, and so they can get unilateral disarmament while the left has no intention of being civil in return, at least not for more than a day or two.
I’m past the point of caring about calls for civility. I’ve been called everything but a child of God by the left for decades now. They’ll get civility from me once I start getting it from them.
You’re right that he would have put on the cloak of the happy warrior. But the reason I say that we (Herbert in particular) can’t know how Reagan would respond is because Reagan was president in a completely different era. The social fabric was still largely intact. He was hated by Democrats, but he did not face the sort of 24/7 rage that comes from the mainstream media and their Democrat lapdogs today.
Some of us were alive back then…
The amazing thing is that the Southern Poverty Law Center has flourished for so many years as a respected go to resource for all things race related and we only find out now they are a crack pot money making scheme for Morris Dees who has made himself fabulously wealthy by labeling everyone the Left hates as a hate group.
I think this is an important issue that is different in this age. But I can’t imagine Trump tweeting that Tip is a crook…
Umm… just finding out now? I thought that this has been common knowledge for many years. Maybe not as common as I thought.
“Some of us” includes me.
Lawfare is the answer. Sue them out of existence. Any lawyers up for it?
Some of us were even old enough to vote for the man. Actually, I voted against him in 1980, coming from a blue-dog Democrat family — my first presidential vote, and the last one I ever cast for a Democrat.
Reminds me of the preachers who claim god wouldn’t want them to fly commercial. That’s why we are asking for a special offering to buy the G5…
my first presidential election I voted for Anderson https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_B._Anderson
Naw, Drew. That wouldn’t be nice*. It’s “not who we are.” We mustn’t sink to their level. </snark>
* I first wrote “wouldn’t be civil”, but I guess it would be, since it’s not likely to be a criminal complaint, is it?
I always believed the Southen Poverty law Center was a Left leaning crock, even though the MSM uses the SPLC as a resource to this day, but I only recently became aware that Morris Dees had become very rich by fundraising for the benefit of Morris Dees.
Ah. I see you point. I didn’t even know who Morris Dees was until recently. Although I figured SPLC was largely a fund-raising mechanism, I didn’t look into it deeply enough to know anyone’s name.
So you know that TV news, talk radio, the internet, social media did not exist. You recognize that things change and you cannot assume what a politician from a prior time would do with todays climate, right?
JFK with strong National Defense, anti-communism and tax cuts to stimulate the economy would not be allowed in the Democratic party. He would be a Republican.
Yep, and probably to the right of many of the current crop of Beltway Republicans.
DJT included
But I just don’t see it happening any time soon, what with the kind of rote response of the Pelosis of the Government, together with, right on cue, as well, another major media report based on nothing but anonymous sources to the effect that the new Special Counsel is using his many, many, many new and hungry Hillary and Obama supporters to determine if the expression of a “hope” amounts to obstruction of justice.
It all depends on what the meaning of the word “hope” is, to paraphrase Hillary’s lovely husband.
Re # 14
If there’s any way people could make it less financially risky and aggravating for Palin to sue, I think they should.
It’s bad for all of us if the NYT can get away with a lie that damaging to someone’s reputation.
That. Right there. The Left doesn’t debate. It demonizes. It shouts down. It shuns. But it never debates. Because the Left knows it would never survive an honest, actual debate.
It’s symmetric: the left doesn’t debate (doesn’t have to) and our side doesn’t do power politics (thinks power politics is icky and so prefer to think that debating is politics).
Power politics wins and debates affect background issues and long term results — if the people winning the debates can get into power. See how that works? Get into power first and while there make changes that your former debates tell you need to be done (it takes a lot of power to do this) and use new debate results to help long term improvement to society.