PUBLIC NUISANCES: The Wages of Hatred/Guess Who's Coming to Dinner
Tyrrell, R. Emmett Jr.
PUBLIC NUISANCES R. EMMETT TYRRELL, JR. The Wages of Hatred WASHINGTON OR THE MOST PERCEPTIVE INSIGHT into George W. Bush and the Republicans' robust victory over Senator Jean-Francois Kerry...
...Some will say that obviously they have to reach out to other geographical regions in the country...
...The President on the other hand is obviously genuine...
...Yet loosely defined the Al Simpson I knew was conservative, which means that the liberals who knew him probably suspected him to be down deep a bigot and stupid...
...At the same time they overlooked the glum fact that their latest political messiah is a perfectly dreadful candidate, whom they plucked from a field of perfectly dreadful candidates...
...He also talks as though the citizenry in the heartland has legitimate values...
...I went to New York...
...These rare conservatives of intellect, every liberal knows, are immoral and usually in the pay of evil powers, for instance, in the pay of the corporations...
...Liberals believe that even the most amiable conservative is predisposed towards old-fashioned prejudice against all their approved minorities: gays, blacks, poor people, feminists, the disabled...
...That is Senator Evan Bayh of Indiana, who told a New York Times reporter that "We need to be a party that stands for more than the sum of our resentments...
...Simpson is not easy to dislike...
...What will Senator Bayh and his more sensible Democrats have to do to make the Democratic Party competitive with the Republicans...
...The electorate realized that the evidence did not support the charge...
...Apparently they did not think it mattered whether "foreign leaders," as Kerry bragged, "look at you and say 'You gotta beat this guy...
...To American liberals almost all conservatives are a little stupid, even conservative presidents...
...Those values are not unique to liberals, though liberals think they are...
...That Kerry tried to focus our attention on his performance all those years ago is but more evidence that he lives in a fantasy, and, by the way, has manifestly bad judgment...
...Why is it that so few of their presidential candidates are normal...
...I talked to all of them, to find out how serious they were about really holding Saddam Hussein accountable...
...Democrats had better look harder for heroes...
...44 DECEMBER 2004/JANUARY 2005 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 83...
...He took a war that had national support and politicized it...
...In fact, did the liberals at the Kennedy School even recognize the amiable old senator's political values...
...When the Massachusetts Braggart rumbled that President Bush "deceived us" on going to war with Iraq, the charge did not stick...
...In all the soul searching I have read since the election only one Democrat has demonstrated the insight to move on with the rebuilding of his party...
...If memory serves, he was pro-choice...
...First they will have to recognize the legitimacy of the Republicans...
...The only exception to this rule isa conservative who is obviously intelligent, for instance Richard Nixon or Henry Kissinger...
...In a pre-election interview with the British newspaper The Guardian Wolfe observes that the eastern media elite "do not have a clue about the rest of the United States...
...Thus they still cannot understand how the President won...
...The liberal Democrats' contempt for those who just won the November 2 elections explains their amazing anger...
...He is committed to waging war against our enemies...
...Try to comprehend that your dinner companion is neither a bigot nor a dolt...
...Those are basically the values of moral accountability, hard work, personal freedom, limited government, equality before the law, and then you can throw in many of the so-called liberal values: tolerance, compassion, some sort of egalitarianism...
...To be sure, liberals in their think tanks, their universities, their corporate offices or government bureaucracies encounter the occasional conservative...
...Nor did it matter to lib-erals when in debate Kerry b.s.-ed that "I went to meet with the members of the Security Council in the week before we voted...
...But did they respect his political values...
...I have never come across a candidate who is so reviled," Wolfe continues, "Reagan was sniggered at, but this is personal, real hatred...
...In 1992 they nominated a draft dodger...
...Couple their contempt with their ignorance—often studied ignorance—of the people who just beat them, and you will understand why I say liberals are, politically speaking, finished...
...At some point I think the American people caught on...
...Of liberalism it can be said that when it does take up a good principle or fine value it eventually takes it to an extreme that is at first preposterous then repellent...
...He was not a ferocious tax cutter or very vigilant proponent of limited government...
...As usual America's finest living writer sees America with limpid clarity...
...Doubtless over at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard many of the resident liberals knew that amiable moderate conservative, former Senator Al Simpson...
...Then the Democrats will have to adopt those values with their own twist, be it populist or statist or whatever...
...Worse still, in rendering the war controversial he gave aid and comfort to our enemies...
...In 2004 their so-called war hero was actually a war resister...
...Our enemies in the Middle East and elsewhere now know that to strike a blow against America is to hazard destruction...
...In the last days of the campaign researchers dredged up the evidence that this war hero did not even get an honorable discharge from the service...
...Guess Who's Coming to Dinner WASHINGTON ONE OF THE REASONS I CAN SAY with the utmost confidence that the liberal Democrats are going to be out in the cold for a very long time has to do with a sociological observation...
...They recognized this man as a fraud...
...Many probably even liked him...
...This is not the first time he gave aid and comfort to our enemies...
...But first I suggest that the well-intentioned Democrat take a Republican to dinner...
...It is when one gets off into "gay marriage," affirmative action, the campaign against religion, and in favor of whatever it is that liberals now say they want to do with the United Nations that liberals lose touch with the American people...
...But there is another matter they 82 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR DECEMBER 2004/JANUARY 2005 PUBLIC NUISANCES might investigate...
...As it was, the Democrats and their secretarial staff at CBS, the New York Times, and elsewhere in the media ignored Kerry's every botch and every flight into bizarre pretentiousness...
...Now that he has been defeated the liberals are going to try to figure it all out...
...Yes, the good senator said "condescending" and "contemptuous...
...The world is better off with Saddam in a cell...
...They will have to identify the legitimacy of the Republicans' values...
...Almost no liberal Democrat knows a conservative Republican of whom he is not contemptuous...
...Moreover, American liberals have been convinced for generations that John Stuart Mill was right on the money when he adjudged conservatives as being members of "the stupid party," notwithstanding that Mill was talking about a different country and a different kind of conservative...
...For me, most of Senator Jean-Francois Kerry's extravagances were amusing, but there was one that was shameful and unforgivable...
...That gave the American electorate an uneasy feeling about this boastful aspirant to the White House...
...The Wages of Hatred WASHINGTON OR THE MOST PERCEPTIVE INSIGHT into George W. Bush and the Republicans' robust victory over Senator Jean-Francois Kerry and the Democrats, look to Tom Wolfe...
...Maybe they will even catch on that what the rest of the country considers moral issues are genuine...
...His liberal supporters saw nothing amiss with his b.s.-ing...
...He has given the United Nations a chance to cooperate, but he is not going to tie us to its endless dithering...
...As I say, Al is a "moderate conservative...
...He made it difficult for Democrats to support the war...
...The thing for a liberal is impossible...
...Well, a record 60 million voters did support Bush...
...You are considered twisted and retarded if you support Bush in this election...
...The Swift Boat Veterans made it clear Kerry did the same thing 35 years ago...
...In the heartland, where I am from, there are doubts...
...Aloft in his egotistic fantasy Kerry did not believe in anything real, not the war in Iraq nor even the contrariness and corruption of the United Nations...
...Too often, we're caricatured as a bicoastal cultural elite that is condescending at best and contemptuous at worst to the values that Americans hold in their daily lives...
...If the Republicans ran such a ludicrous fantasist as the snooty football-throwing, bicycling Renaissance man, Senator Kerry, everyone in the world would be made aware of his shortcomings...
...This explains why Kerry made more fantastical statements about his opponent, his own policies, and his own resume than any presidential candidate I can recall, including Bill Clinton...
...Kerry's basic shortcoming was that, being a fantasist, he was forever taking implausible positions and saying things that were demonstrably untrue...
...They diabolized a perfectly agreeable gentleman, whose major fault is that he disagrees with them...
...As always in matters where intellect should preside, the liberals became emotionally involved, losing what little political sense they still had...
...Why are so many fantasists with egregious lapses in their resumes...
Vol. 37 • December 2004 • No. 10
