Paul Ryan's Speech & The Left's Shrill Response

Paul Ryan's speech at the RNC last night was superb - and thus has brought the left out with in shrill and strident response. First, the speech - and if you haven't seen it, do please watch:



Flipping over to Memorandum shows the left's response, all minor variations on a common theme - leading one to ask, is the Journolist still active? At TNR, Jonathan Cohn wrote "The Most Dishonest Convention Speech . . . Ever?" James Downie at Wapo has penned "Paul Ryan's Breathtakingly Dishonest Speech?" while the Wapo editorializes about "Mr. Ryan's Misleading Speech." At Salon, Joan Walsh has written "Paul Ryan's Brazen Lies."

Each one of those articles is a cookie cutter. Let's take a look at what Walsh, for example, claims are lies:

His most brazen lie accused President Obama of “raiding” Medicare by taking the exact same $716 billion that Ryan and the House GOP notoriously voted to slash. It was stunning.

But that’s not all. He attacked Obama for failing to keep open a Janesville GM plant that closed under Bush in 2008. He hit him for a credit-rating downgrade that S&P essentially blamed on GOP intransigence. He claimed that all taxpayers got from the 2009 stimulus was “more debt,” when most got a tax cut (and the stimulus is known to have saved between 1.4 and 3.3 million jobs). He derided the president for walking away from the Simpson Bowles commission deficit-cutting recommendations when Ryan himself, a commission member, voted against those recommendations.

He blamed Obama for a deficit mostly created by programs he himself voted for – from two wars, tax cuts, new Medicare benefits and TARP.

And of course, he riffed on the tired central lie of the GOP convention: that the president said “government gets the credit” for small businesses, not the business owners themselves.

Other than that, it was a great speech.

Okay, one at a time:

"His most brazen lie accused President Obama of “raiding” Medicare by taking the exact same $716 billion that Ryan and the House GOP notoriously voted to slash."

Obama has raided Medicare for current seniors and applied those funds to pay for Obamacare. Indeed, Obama bragged about it at the time of Obamacare's passage. So, the lie here is what? Yes, Republican's want to cut about a trillion from Medicare - so that our nation remains fiscally solvent, not to fund yet another welfare program. The left utterly refuses to acknowledge the elephant in the room - that Medicare, left unchanged, cannot possibly survive without bankrupting the nation. Moreover, and most importantly, Walsh ignores that Ryan's plan for Medicare doesn't touch current seniors or those close to being able to rely on Medicare.

"He attacked Obama for failing to keep open a Janesville GM plant that closed under Bush in 2008"

Ryan's lie here is apparently that he had the temerity to point out that Obama came to the Janesville GM plant in 2008 and said "I believe that if our government is there to support you … this plant will be here for another hundred years." The plant closed and remains closed. Nowhere in his speech does Ryan blame the closing on Obama, but he did use it to highlight the larger issue of Obama's horrendous failure to restart our economy. Indeed, at several points in his speech, Ryan went out of his way to say that Obama did not cause the failed economy - only the failure to recover.

He claimed that all taxpayers got from the 2009 stimulus was “more debt,” when most got a tax cut (and the stimulus is known to have saved between 1.4 and 3.3 million jobs).

Ryan talks about the net impact of the Stimulus, and Walsh calls that a lie why? Apparently, Ryan can only address the failed Stimulus if he itemizes each individual line item. And as to those jobs "saved," we are in the worst recovery in our modern history. Does Walsh really want to pretend that Obama's record on jobs is something to be celebrated?

"He derided the president for walking away from the Simpson Bowles commission deficit-cutting recommendations when Ryan himself, a commission member, voted against those recommendations."

And the lie here is? Obama has wholly ignored the Simpson Bowles commission - and he did so in order to avoid having to make any cuts or reforms. Ryan did in fact vote against Simpson Bowles, but did so because "it not only didn’t address the elephant in the room, health care, it made it fatter." To say that Ryan and Obama are both the same on this issue is utterly disingenous.

He blamed Obama for a deficit mostly created by programs he himself voted for – from two wars, tax cuts, new Medicare benefits and TARP.

Apparently its not Obama to blame for the $5 trillion increase in debt during his presidency, its Paul Ryan for voting for things that - Walsh neglects to tell us - wholly predated Obama's presidency. Shameless.

"And of course, he riffed on the tired central lie of the GOP convention: that the president said “government gets the credit” for small businesses, not the business owners themselves."

Yes, because we all know that Obama never said that:



Apparently, the word "lie" now means to raise any fact that the left doesn't like. The left, Walsh and seemingly every other leftie in the MSM, is misusing the word no doubt for its impact and to create a narrative demonizing Ryan so they don't have to have the adult arguments. Any time over the past half century, that would have worked. But today, its whistling past the graveyard and, if 2010 is any indication, a majority of the voters know it.

Paul Ryan is under the left's skin.

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Word Games - Trying To Redefine "Judicial Activism"

Do you remember when today's "progressives" called themselves liberals? They don't today because the term "liberal" became too toxic, associated with all sorts of ills for which they were responsible. Thus the left rebranded. That is one word game the left follows, another is the art of "tenditious redefinition," to simply take a word that sums up an accusation against them, and turn it on its head. For example, does anyone actually believe that the People's Democratic Republic of North Korea is either democratic or a republic. At any rate, "tenditious redefinition" is what our left are doing today with the term "judicial activism."

"Judicial activism" has been used for years to refer to ignoring original intent and, equally, creating new law out of non-existent Constitutional cloth. Roe v. Wade (finding a right to abortion in the penumbras), Kelo v. New London (gutting the 5th Amenment), , Boumediene v. Bush (writing a role for the Courts into decisions of national security), and Trop v. Dulles (8th Amendment "evolving standards of decency"), all constitute clear examples of judicial activism. The polar opposite of "judicial activism" is originalism, where the Courts act within the constraints of the original intent of the drafters of our Constitution and existing precedent. The best example of this is the Heller case on the 2nd Amendment.

And yet now, the left, with Obamacare looking like its going to be overturned, is prepping the battlefield by claiming that to find Obamacare unconstitutional would be an act of "judicial activism." This is insane.

Obamacare would fundamentally change our federal government from one of enumerated powers - that it has been since 1783 - to one of unfettered power. As I point out in the post below, it would give the federal government the right to require that everyone who participated in the Boston Tea Party buy East India Trading Company tea. That is the polar opposite of what our Founding Fathers created when they signed onto the Constitution. To approve of this would be the most far reaching act of judicial activism our nation has ever seen.

According to the intellectually challenged EJ Dionne (the guy really is dumber than dirt), "It fell to the court’s liberals — the so-called “judicial activists,” remember? — to remind their conservative brethren that legislative power is supposed to rest in our government’s elected branches.legislative power is supposed to rest in our government’s elected branches." Dionne would redefine "judicial activism" to be the mere striking down an act of Congress as unconstitutional, irrespective of whether it exceeds the bounds of the power of the legislature. And he is far from alone. Johnathan Chait in NY Magazine makes precisely the same argument, as does the NYT editorial board.

These arguments are not merely intellectually dishonest, they are insidious in their attempt to redefine words to suit their purposes. And while I disagree with every word Dahlia Lithwick writes at Slate, at least she brings a bit of intellectual honesty to the argument. Her argument is pragmatic, that the Court should uphold Obamacare because it makes the most sense in our modern era. Her complaint is an accurate one, that the conservative justices are looking back in time to define legislative power. She says they are looking back to 1804. She is only off by 21 years.

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Orwell and The Left's Ever Changing Dictionary

We see the attempts by the Left to redefine words all of the time. Our current batch of little Orwellians in office play this game constantly. For example, only a few weeks ago, the Left took to labeling Dede Scozafaza as a "moderate" for the purpose of attacking the "far right wing" - i.e., people who believe in fiscal conservatism and strong national defense. Their aim was to redefine language and, thus, recalibrate what is considered the norm in American politics. To call Scozafaza moderate would, I guess, put Lenin a bit left of center. I and others have blogged on this practice many times before. For example, see here.

George Orwell wrote the book on this practice. Actually, he wrote, wrote several books that include the practice, and not to mention at least one famous article on the topic, "Politics and the English Language." Mark Falcoff picks up the meme in an interesting article at NRO:

. . .[Orwell's] major concern, however, was not merely with literary niceties but with the moral consequences of linguistic obfuscation.

He put the point thus: “The decline of language must ultimately have political and economic causes: it is not due simply to the bad influence of this or that individual writer.” He was particularly irritated with the way political words were used “in a consciously dishonest way. That is, the person who uses them has his own private definition.” Far too many political articles, he wrote, consisted “largely of euphemisms, question begging, and sheer cloudy vagueness.” Such usages were “deliberately intended to deceive.”

Well, here we are more than six decades later, and how much worse the situation has become, particularly in the American press. In recent times, I have begun to make a list of political terms in common usage that are, in fact, private definitions, as Orwell calls them. Perhaps many readers of this journal could add to it. Here are just a few.

. . . “Civil-rights leader.” A half-century ago, when many states in this country denied black people the right to vote or sit where they wished on buses or dine in restaurants of their choice, this term had some real meaning. People risked their lives and well-being to challenge laws that were unfair. However, since the passage of so much legislation in the last 50 years — not just the Civil Rights Act but also the Voting Rights Act — as well as the various forms of “affirmative action” and court-ordered reapportionments of congressional districts to ensure maximum black representation, it is difficult to see what possible dictionary definition “civil-rights leader” could have except “black agitator,” “shakedown artist,” or “poverty pimp.” Martin Luther King Jr. was a civil rights leader; Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson — to take just two of many tawdry examples — are merely cruel caricatures of the same. Too bad the media can’t see the difference.. . .

“Progressive.” Here is a term that at least those of us over 50 learned at school to identify with Pres. Theodore Roosevelt, or perhaps William Jennings Bryan. Lately, however, it has become a euphemism for liberalism, left-liberalism, or plain old leftism. Even bomb-throwing Communists or self-described revolutionaries (for example, Angela Davis or Van Jones) are no longer characterized as “Reds” or even “Marxists”; they are merely lumped into the category of harmless “progressives.” To be sure, most people on the left end of our political spectrum could best be characterized as liberal (in the American rather than the European, or classical, sense). That’s what they used to be called. Why has the word “liberal” suddenly disappeared? The answer is simple. Thanks to real-life experience, many people have understandably come to associate the word “liberal” with high taxes, a permissive attitude towards crime and criminals, and social engineering of the most obnoxious sort (school busing, racial preferences, etc.). To force the medicine down one final time, it needs to be rebottled under yet another new label. . . .

There is much more to read. You can find the entire article here.

I would make one additions to the list of Mr. Falcoff's - its the term "discrimination." To be able to discriminate is a necessary survival mechanism of everyday life. We must be able to discriminate between things which are good and those which are bad. Yet the word has become a font of all evil under the pc talk of today, used as shorthand to define the practice of racism. The Left, having effectively made discrimination a modern sin, has carried forward this logic to its extreme under the banner of multiculturalism, where no value judgment are allowed to be made about competing cultures lest it be discriminatory. That doesn't seem to be working out too well for the UK.

Instapundit has a video that makes this point perfectly. Please watch it.

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EJ Dionne Redefines Judicisal Activism

EJ Dionne, writing at the Washington Post, projects his own fantasies onto the question of the approval process for a Supreme Court nominee. He argues that the nominating process has always been politicized - not true. And he argues that judicial activism is the hallmark of the right - not only untrue, but insipid and outrageous. Mr. Dionne is attempting to redefine the term "judicial activism."

According to EJ Dionne, the nominating process for appointment to the Supreme Court has always been politicized by both Republican and Democtrat.

To pretend that these judicial fights are about anything other than the court's philosophical direction is a form of willful dishonesty. It's better to be straightforward about the existence of a political struggle over the court than to manufacture phony reasons for opposing a nominee related to "character," "qualifications" or "temperament."

That is palpably false. The nomination process became politicized when the left established as a litmus test that a Judge must acknowledge his obeidiance to Roe v. Wade and that line of cases finding rights that appear nowhere in the test of the Constitution. That very destructive turn of events started under Joe Biden with the hearings for Robert Bork - a hearing so highly politicized as to create of the nominee's name a verb - "borking." Certainly none of the Clinton appointments, Justices Ginsburg or Breyer, were subject to the political circus by the right that surrounded Justices Bork, Thomas, or any of the other Republican appointees since. Indeed, Justice Ginsburg, who has taken some pretty radical positions over the years, sailed through the nominating process - based on her charachter, qualifications and judicial temperament - with almost no Republican dissent. EJ Dionne is simply projecting the left's partisan approach onto Republicans without bothering to check the record.

While Dionne's projection may be false, his next statement is outrageously false:

Today, judicial activism is far more the habit of conservative justices than liberals. The real danger of a conservative Supreme Court is that it will rob Congress and the states of the right to legislate on civil rights, worker rights, the environment and social welfare, just as conservative courts did from the turn of the last century until the late 1930s.

Wow. This is the left's tried and true rhetorical device of redefining words far our of their original meaning. Conservative justices are associated with originalism - the belief that the Constitution should be interpreted to mean what the Founders who drafted the Constitution meant the words to mean at the time. And indeed, if enough Americans disagree with what they wrote at the time, the Constitution provides several methods by which the American people can democratically chage the Constitution. Until the left took over the Court in the last half century, that is how changes were repeatedly made.

But the left of today believes that they can redefine the Constitution to whatever they want it to mean, irregardless of what the Founders meant or, for that matter, whatever the text explicitly says. That is why there is no longer a takings clause prohibition against government taking private property and giving it to another private entity, despite the explicit words of the 5th Amendment. Its why, for the first time in the history, prisoners taken on a battlefield are entitled to court hearing using a habeus petition. Its why there is now a "wall between church and state" that clearly never existed before twentieth century and does not appear in the text of the Constitution. And its why there is today not a state legislated right to abortion, but a Constitutional one founded upon absolutely nothing in the text of the Constitution.

Interestingly, what Dion is referring to is the question of whether the commerce clause has been interpreted by the Supreme Court far beyond the terms of its original meaning. It is also a red herring. Even the most conservative of justices on the Supreme Court has not argued for a wholesale reinterpretation of the commerce clause. It is a very complex issue. But that is certainly not what the disingenuous Mr. Dionne posits. He wants a Supreme Court that will turn us into a far left nation based on the whim of Justices who share Dion's beliefs, irrespective of what our Founders wrote. That is real "judicial activism." And Mr. Dionne is obviously willing to dissimulate to get it.

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EcoAmerica & Tenditious Redefinition

It is one thing to cast about for words that frame your ideas in a positive light. We all do that. But it is another entirely to co-opt words and vastly redefine them in order to sell your ideas - sometimes to include even ideas that represent the polar opposite of what the co-opted words were originally meant to convey. The latter has been an insidious hallmark of the left for over the past century. It is Orwellian.

The NYT reports that EcoAmerica is trying to figure out how to recast the language of "global warming" to capture the support of more people. Focus groups are telling them that when people hear the words "global warming," the majority think of unwashed long-haired libs and complex scientific debates. What Eco-America has suggested follows the left's long established game plan.

Dafydd ab Hugh pointed out in a post a few days ago, Word Inflation,

When a word comes to mean anything at all... then it really means nothing at all. Effectively, we no longer have a word for torture, real torture, like al-Qaeda carries out routinely. No such word, thus no such concept; no concept, no torture! By trivializing what should be profoundly evil, we allow evil to flourish unremarked, let alone unprevented, unrepented, and unrevenged.

. . . If you no longer have the words to discuss the war against the Iran/al-Qaeda axis, designed to end militant Islamist terrorism, then those concepts no longer exist either: If you can't say it, you can't think it.

Dafydd refers to this as "tenditious redefinition." It is certainly a form of rhetorical device that the left has been using with regularity since the start of the 20th century. Orwell saw this over half a century ago and captured it perfectly with his "Newspeak."

Thus we have the People's Democratic Republic of . . . name your favorite communist police state where there is neither Democracy nor a Republic. But for the people living there, how are they to know that those arguing for democracy in their state are arguing for something the polar opposite of their current situation.

Or take the Employee Free Choice Act pushed by Obama and Big Labor. The words imply that employees will be given a greater ability to choose about unionization, while the reality is, of course, precisely the opposite, with the Act actually removing from employees their right to a secret ballot.

And it was only a few weeks ago that the Dept of Homeland Security issued a document to police across the U.S. that included within the definition of dangerous "extremists" those who vocally defend the Constitution or who protest such things as gay marriage. Such people are not only no longer, by definition, a part of mainstream America, they are instead a threat, and a potentially violent one, to our nation.

All of that said, we come now to an effort by Eco-America to change the language of "global warming." Their most Orwellian proposal is to stop using the words "cap and trade" to label the system Obama proposes to force carbon limits upon American businesses. Note that cap and trade represents a huge cost to every American that, from the outset, will cost each and every American family nearly $4,000 annually. Eco-America's suggestion to change the language to . . . get this . . . "Cap and Cash Back."

That is probably the most Orwellian of suggestions to come out of Eco-America, but the others are equally as insidious. For example, EA recommends that Greens "[d]rop discussions of carbon dioxide and bring up 'moving away from the dirty fuels of the past.'" The problem with that is that it makes it appear that the arguments over whether carbon is a cause of global warming are settled. Further, it implictly labels carbon dioxide is an unwanted pollutant. It is anything but.

At any rate, Dafydd ab Hugh has a good post up on this with some of his own suggestions. My favorite is his suggestion that, instead of referring to an "ice age," the new terminology should be that its "cool to be blue." Indeed.

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