Civility & Other BS

Republicans took 63 House seats and 6 Senate seats in the 2010 election. That occurred because the majority of Americans were mad as hell - mad at the direction Obama was leading the country; mad at the way the left was thuggishly going about its business; and mad at the left's disregard of America's core principals. The majority of Americans voiced that anger in the lead-up to the 2010 election, and they were motivated by that anger to vote the Democrats to the most devastating defeat of either party in nearly a century.

Make no mistake, today's calls for "civility" from the left are nothing more than a call to curb the momentum of the right and to blunt their disagreement with the left's agenda. It is the last gasp of the left's recent effort to delegitimize conservatives with a blood libel - that the right's passioned disagreement with the left's agenda led to the mass murder in Arizona. And the only reason that effort failed was because virtually everyone on the right side of the aisle stood up and called "Bull S***!!!!!"

The right's problem over the past decade has been far too much "civility" whilst the left has daily used scurrilous ad hominem attacks to delegitimize the right. Obama, in just the past three months, has referred to conservatives as "hostage takers" and "enemies" of Hispanics. Rep. Clyburn has spent the past year calling the Tea Party movement "racist" and, most recently, described Sarah Palin as attractive but stupid. How's that for civility?

Where were the calls for civility when the far left was calling Bush a liar and comparing him to Hitler, or when they were calling Cheney the second coming of Satan? What about when the left were willing to do or say anything to undermine the war in Iraq and our nation's national security for their own political gain?

If the left wants civility, they should start with their own house. Knock off all the ad hominem attacks, apologize for the grotesque attempt to tar the right with a blood libel, and admit that their effort was undertaken without a shred of evidence. They should further come clean that the aim of this attack was not to improve civil discourse - charging your opponents with complicity in murder is not not conducive to that end - but was aimed at delegitimizing conservative speech. Until then:


And here is my prediction. Any new found "civility" on the left will not last more then nine days - which is when Obama will take the podium to give the State of the Union speech. You can rest assured he will make ad hominem attacks against the right. The guy is a child of the far left - and that's what the far left does. Intellectual honesty and a desire for robust debate on the issues are far from their strong suits. It's just that, up until a few days ago, their rhetorical paradigm usually worked.

Update: Don Surber expresses similar thoughts, as does I Own The World and Nice Deb.

Related: This on the intersection of left wing civility and logic (H/T Legal Insurrection)