The mob characteristic most gustily exhibited by liberals is the tendency to idolize their political leaders, while considering “as enemies all by whom [their beliefs] are not accepted.”1
The creation of an idol is textbook mob behavior. Crowds, Le Bon says, can only grasp the “very simple and very exaggerated.”2 They respond to images that “assume a very absolute, uncompromising, and simple shape.”3 And so, just as Clinton and Obama, for example, represented everything good to the mob, Reagan and Bush represented everything loathsome.
Manifestly, liberals fanatically worship their leaders. FDR, JFK, Clinton, Obama, even Hillary, Liz Holtzman, and John Lindsay—they’re all “rock stars” to Democrats. They’re the Beatles, Elvis, or Jesus, depending on which cliché liberals are searching for. As Le Bon says, the “primitive” black-and-white emotions of a crowd slip easily into “infatuation for an individual.”4
Nearly seven decades after FDR was president and five decades after JFK was, we still have to listen to liberals drone on about their stupendousness. It’s as if Republicans demanded constant praise for Calvin Coolidge. Even Republicans are forced to pretend to admire these profligate Democrats in order to court Democrat voters. Republicans don’t mention Reagan as much and he was a better president.
Liberals worship so many political deities that they’re forced to refer to them by their initials, just to save time—FDR, JFK, RFK, MLK, LBJ, and O.J. When’s the last time you heard a conservative get weepy about “RWR”?
In a 1986 Time magazine cover story on Reagan, reporter Lance Morrow droned on about the sainted FDR, saying he “explored the upper limits of what government could do for the individual”—evidently by putting Japanese in internment camps and fighting a war against a race-supremacist regime with a segregated military. Reagan, by contrast, Morrow said, “is testing the lower limits”5—one assumes by ending Soviet totalitarianism and bequeathing America two decades of peace and prosperity.
The most Reagan-besotted conservative would never seriously refer to his presidency with something as hokey as “Camelot.” But in the bizarro-world of the Democrats’ Camelot cult, all we ever hear about is the youth, the vigor, the glamour, the “Kennedy mystique,” and the rest of the cant. We never hear about the drugs, the prostitutes, a certain mishap at a bridge in Massachusetts, the inept intervention in Vietnam—including ordering the assassination of our ally—and the complete calamity at the Bay of Pigs.
Bill Clinton was called a rock star so often, the expression “rock star” surpassed “perfect storm” as the most irritating cliché of the century. (In fairness, if “rock star” means someone who sleeps with countless groupies, then Bill Clinton was a rock star.) Newsweek reporter Eleanor Clift described the doughy Clinton-Gore team as “the all-beefcake ticket,” gasping that she was “struck by the expanse of their chests,” and saying “they could do cameo appearances on ‘Studs.’ ”6 The Washington Post’s Sally Quinn said women identified with Clinton because of “the softness, the sensitivity, the vulnerability, that kind of thing.”7
An infatuated Jonathan Alter babbled in Newsweek about the Clinton hug: “Bill Clinton hugs other men. It’s not a bear hug, usually—more like a Full Shoulder Squeeze. Women get it, too, but the gesture is more striking in its generational freshness when applied to the same sex. He softens the old-fashioned backslap into something more sensitive. These guys are touching each other! It’s unselfconscious, gender-neutral, very ’90s.”8 Either that or it bolsters my theory that Clinton would have sex with anything that had a pulse.
And it wasn’t just Alter and the other ladies swooning! Newsweek’s Howard Fineman called Clinton the “first sensitive male chief executive,”9 while Peter Jennings said Clinton “has the kind of hands that people respond to.”10 Time magazine’s Walter Shapiro said that “for the first time in more than 30 years the nation has elected a President with sex appeal.” Shapiro quoted The Boomer Report editor Cheryl Russell saying, “Every woman I know is having sex dreams about Bill Clinton.”11 (If you call nightmares about Bill Clinton dropping his pants “sex dreams,” I guess I was, too.)
When Obama came along, guess who liberals started having sex dreams about? Yes, the big-eared beanpole. The New York Times’s Judith Warner reported, “Many women—not too surprisingly—were dreaming about sex with the president.” Warner confessed, “The other night I dreamt of Barack Obama. He was taking a shower right when I needed to get into the bathroom to shave my legs.” (Judith Warner, Chris Matthews—what is it with liberals and their legs?) The Obamas, Warner wrote, were “a beacon of hope, inspiration and ‘demigodlikeness.’ ”12
NBC reporter Lee Cowan—biologically, a man—said he could hardly contain himself when told he was to cover Obama: “When NBC News first assigned me to the Barack Obama campaign, I must confess my knees quaked a bit.… I wondered if I was up to the job. I wondered if I could do the campaign justice.”13 (Cowan then spent the rest of the day scribbling in his reporter’s notebook, “President and Mr. Barack Obama … Barack and Lee Cowan-Obama … Lee Obama … Mr. and Mr. Obama … First Lady, Mrs. Lee Cowan-Obama.…”)
NBC’s Matt Lauer noted that “people” have called Obama “ ‘The Savior,’ ‘The Messiah,’ ‘The Messenger of Change.’ ”14 Try to imagine conservatives coming up with such honorifics for Dwight Eisenhower. Being rational individuals, conservatives don’t turn their political leaders into religious icons. Liberals, by contrast, having all the primitive behaviors of a mob, idolize politicians.
Obama was also—in the fresh, pioneering words of NBC’s Andrea Mitchell—“a rock star!”15 To Newsweek’s Joe Klein, Obama was “the political equivalent of a rainbow—a sudden preternatural event inspiring awe and ecstasy.”16 (If Joe got out of Manhattan more, he’d know rainbows are perfectly natural.)
In one of his more balanced formulations, MSNBC’s Chris Matthews babbled, “They’re cool people. They are really cool. They are Jack and Jackie Kennedy when you see them together. They are cool. And they’re great-looking, and they’re cool and they’re young, and they’re—everything seems to be great.” Strangely, he also said, “If you’re in [a room] with Obama, you feel the spirit. Moving.”17 What is it about the Obamas that reduces cable news hosts to babbling, pimple-faced losers at a Star Trek convention?
It is impossible to imagine any conservative describing any Republican in such teeny-bopper patois. Haley Barbour is like totally the dreamiest! And did you see the way he hugs men? But it’s never-ending with the Party of the Mob. Reporting on Senator Teddy Kennedy’s endorsement of Obama in 2008, ABC’s David Wright said, “Today, the audacity of hope had its rendezvous with destiny. The Kennedy clan anointed Barack Obama a son of Camelot.”18 On ABC’s Good Morning America, anchor George Stephanopoulos said of Obama’s incoming cabinet, “We have not seen this kind of combination of star power and brain power and political muscle this early in a cabinet in our lifetimes.”19 (He left out “affinity for evading taxes.”)
It’s almost like a “Can You Top This” game with liberals describing their political idols. In a Time magazine cover story, reporter Nancy Gibbs compared Obama to Jesus—and not sarcastically, the way the rest of us do. The article began, “Some princes are born in palaces. Some are born in mangers. But a few are born in the imagination, out of scraps of history and hope.”20 Of course, as the leader of twelve apostles, even Jesus had more executive experience than Obama. (But I’m sure the risen Christ appreciated the shout-out.)
Run-of-the-mill Democrats behave the exact same way. Time magazine’s Walter Shapiro reported that the “swooning and the cooing on the rope lines during the last days of the Clinton campaign were unavoidably reminiscent of Kennedy. In Louisville, Kentucky, the scene seemed out of Beatlemania.”21 Except that when one of the Beatles claimed they were bigger than Jesus, people got upset. Newsweek’s Joe Klein talked about the “emotional connection” crowds had for Clinton.22 The Washington Post’s Phil McCombs described the Democratic crowds pouring out to glimpse Bill Clinton: “To watch this President connect with people emotionally is an awesome thing.”23 (And if you think that’s awesome, you should see the guy dry-hump a cocktail waitress in an elevator.)
But Clinton was just a hustler from Arkansas compared with Obama. Barack’s supporters posted endless YouTube tributes to him, taught schoolchildren to sing paeans to him, wore Obama T-shirts for their mug shots, cried and fainted at his speeches. “You can see it in the crowds,” ABC’s Terry Moran said on Nightline of Senator Barack Obama’s supporters. “The thrill, the hope. How they surge toward him. You’re looking at an American political phenomenon.… He inspires the party faithful and many others, like no one else on the scene today.” Except maybe Kanye West, I would have added if anyone had asked me. Moran continued, “Around here, they’re even naming babies after him.”24 At that point, Obama hadn’t even been in the Senate for two full years.
NBC anchor Brian Williams reported that in Berlin Obama “brought throngs of people” into the center of the city, “surging to get close to him, to hear his message.… I heard one American reporter tonight say it’s hard to come up with a list of others who could draw such a crowd, but then again it’s hard to know what we witnessed here today.”25 Wasn’t there another political leader who brought out the crowds like that in Berlin once?
Harold Koplewicz, president of the Child Mind Institute, explained the liberal esteem for Obama by saying, “He was going to end war, end the recession, improve education, improve our image to the world, and provide universal health care. Whether or not he could actually do it wasn’t important. It was the belief in him that was.”26 Well, exactly. When a guy’s that good at making promises, who cares about actual results? Bush lied, kids died! Go green!
It’s remarkable how similar it is for nearly every Democratic president.
Giving President Andrew Jackson the strange new label of “rock star,” his biographer Jon Meacham reports that this father of the Democratic Party drew “staggering” crowds of admirers, with one newspaper describing Jackson as “happy in their affections and loving them with all a parent’s love.”27
A parent’s love? What is it with these Democrats? It is nothing more than the mass psychosis of a mob.
In a YouTube video made by actor Ashton Kutcher just after Obama’s inauguration, dozens of Hollywood celebrities pledged “to be a servant to our president and all mankind.”28 It was like something out of an Aztec festival of the gods—if what the Aztec gods wanted was for Hollywood actresses like Eva Longoria to use “less bottled water.”
I don’t remember Frank Sinatra and Bob Hope producing a video pledging themselves to be servants of Ronald Reagan. In fact, if anyone had ever made a video with people reading the exact same lines as Demi and Ashton’s friends about a Republican president, MSNBC would be running specials on the rise of fascism in America. I mean, even more than it does now. Reagan won the Cold War, rescued the economy, set the country on a decades-long path of peace and prosperity, and was a terrific speaker. And yet Republicans were able to listen to him give a speech without fainting.
In his book Obama Zombie: How the Liberal Machine Brainwashed My Generation, Jason Mattera describes liberal blogger Michael Whack’s giddy account of his encounter with Obama at a 2008 campaign event. After seeing “the guy” in front of him shake Obama’s hand, Whack wrote:
As the guy drew back his hand I asked him, “You shook his hand didn’t you?” Happily the guy said “Yes.” I then said, “give me some of that” and the guy shook my hand with the same hand he had just clasped with Barack’s. A woman friend of mine who was standing next to me saw me shake hands with the guy. I turned to her and said “He [the guy] just shook hands with Barack,” to which she responded … “Hey, give it up.” We then shook hands. She then turned to the person next to her and shook hands. This chain of handshakes went on for about five or six more persons.29
Democrats would drink Obama’s bathwater.
Perhaps it is because they don’t believe in the real God that liberals are compelled to turn so many humans into living deities. Elena Kagan, liberal Supreme Court justice, said she “sat down and wept” when Liz Holtzman lost the 1980 election for the U.S. Senate.30 Can you imagine John Roberts crying when G.H.W. Bush lost his reelection bid in 1992? For that matter, can you imagine even Barbara Bush crying over that?
When California Democrats Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein won their 1992 primary elections for the U.S. Senate, Time magazine’s Margaret Carlson said she felt “a rush, an exultation, that surpassed any political moment I have ever known.”31 Uma Thurman proclaimed Al Gore “adorable” and “sexy,” saying that looking at him was like “watching a beautiful racehorse run.”32 (A racehorse who came in second in a two-horse race in 2000.)
Margaret Carlson called Hillary “the icon of American womanhood”—an “amalgam of Betty Crocker, Mother Teresa and Oliver Wendell Holmes.”33 (That last one perhaps explaining why Hillary always wears pants.) The Washington Post’s Martha Sherrill said Hillary was “replacing Madonna as our leading cult figure.”34 Time magazine’s Lance Morrow said Hillary was “somewhere between Eleanor and Evita, transcending both,” and that her run for the Senate marked the moment “when the civilization pivots, at last, decisively—perhaps for the first time since the advent of Christian patriarchy two millenniums ago—toward Woman.”35
Conservatives are never disappointed because they never expect much from their leaders. They certainly don’t have sex dreams about them, or describe them as “rainbows.” Perhaps conservatives aren’t looking for a savior on the ballot because they already have one.
Most of the time, conservatives can barely tolerate their leaders. Republican presidents are lucky if their own party doesn’t move to impeach them. President Nixon lied once to the country, not under oath, and his own party demanded that he resign immediately. Bill Clinton lied repeatedly under oath in two depositions and a grand jury inquiry, and yet every single sitting Democratic senator voted to keep him in office. (Clinton also lied not under oath, to his friends, to his party, to his wife—we’re told—in public and in private.)
Although there may be enthusiasms about a popular Republican leader, the cultlike worship of politicians, common to mobs, is peculiar to Democrats. Republicans didn’t even idolize Ronald Reagan, indisputably among the nation’s greatest presidents. Forget the warm nostalgia conservatives have for Reagan today, based on his record. There was no hero worship of the man at the time. Contrary to our whitewashed memories, Reagan was criticized early and often by conservatives—or “the New Right,” in the parlance of the day.
A year into office, the Washington Post ran an article about how Reagan’s favorite newspaper, Human Events, was devoting a lot of ink to attacking him. “Ronald Reagan’s ‘favorite newspaper,’ ” the Post said, “is giving him fits lately.” Although there weren’t “two more committed true-blue-Reaganite-to-the-core conservatives anywhere” than editors Thomas Winter and Allan Ryskind, the Post reported, Reagan himself had noticed the attacks, telling them, “I’m still reading you guys, but I’m enjoying it less.”36
At about the same point in Obama’s presidency, Obama singled out his cheerleading squad at MSNBC to praise them for providing “an invaluable service,” and keeping “our government honest.”37
A perusal of the headlines throughout Reagan’s presidency makes it clear that conservatives did not view even their most-admired president as a demigod. True, Obama gets the occasional fake denunciations from a few showoff liberal bloggers trying to prove what badass Marxists they are, but it is inconceivable that any Democratic president could produce this many headlines about liberal angst.
Try to imagine a stream of headlines about Obama and his base along the lines of this small sample from the Reagan years:
Conservatives Attack Reagan Appointees
—United Press International, February 25, 1981
“New Right” Disillusionment with Reagan Breaks into the Open
—Washington Post, February 25, 1981
The Far Right Splits with Reagan
—United Press International, July 14, 1981
For Reagan and the New Right, the Honeymoon Is Over
—Washington Post, July 21, 1981
Conservatives Meeting to Discuss Disappointment with Reagan
—Associated Press, January 21, 1982
President Warned by Conservatives
—New York Times, January 22, 1982
Conservatives Disappointed with Administration’s First Year Record
—United Press International, January 22, 1982
Is Reagan Betraying the Right?
—Washington Post, January 27, 1982
Reagan Hears Thunder from the Right
—U.S. News & World Report, February 1, 1982
When Mr. Conservative Is Too Liberal
—Christian Science Monitor, February 26, 1982
Rumblings on the Right
—The National Journal, March 13, 1982
New Right Meeting Grumbles About Reagan
—Washington Post, July 28, 1982
Conservatives Blame White House for GOP Losses
—Associated Press, November 4, 1982
New Right Decides to Part Company with Reagan
—Miami Herald, November 26, 1982
Leftward Drift of Reagan Decried; Some Conservatives Shop for a “New Face”
—Washington Post, February 4, 1983
Reagan Bid Reopens Rift with Right
—New York Times, February 19, 1983
Conservatives Criticize Reagan
—United Press International, September 4, 1983
New Right Disappointed by Reagan’s Reactions
—Washington Post, September 6, 1983
Conservatives Divided on Support for Reagan
—Associated Press, September 11, 1983
The Right Is Really Sore at Reagan …
—Washington Post, September 18, 1983
New Right Poll: Alarm Bells for Reagan
—Associated Press, October 13, 1983
Right Critical of Reagan in Hostage Crisis: Longtime Supporters Attack Policies
—Washington Post, June 29, 1985
Even Conservatives Are Abandoning Ship
—Los Angeles Times, December 9, 1986
Trouble on the Right
—U.S. News & World Report, December 29, 1986
Baker Helping Reagan Renew Ties to Conservative Leaders
—Associated Press, March 30, 1987
Reagan Seeks to Calm His Right-Wing Critics
—Los Angeles Times, September 6, 1987
Reagan’s Arms-Control Dream Is Nightmare for Conservatives
—Washington Post, November 30, 1987
There would never be such unremitting criticism of Kennedy or Clinton—to say nothing of the angel Obama—from the Democratic base.
By September of Reagan’s first year of office, he was not even the most popular conservative in the country. According to a poll by the Conservative Digest of more than a thousand of its readers, the Reverend Jerry Falwell was No. 1 and William F. Buckley was No. 2. Then Reagan.38
By contrast, in Obama’s first year in office, he was consistently voted the most popular human on the planet. Even before becoming president, Obama was showered with awards. He won not one but two “Best Spoken Word Album” Grammy awards for his audiobooks, Dreams from My Father (2006) and The Audacity of Hope (2008). (He then gave the least profanity-laced acceptance speech of any African-American Grammy winner in history.)
His concession speech after the New Hampshire primary was turned into a music video, which won an Emmy Award. In 2008, the Obama yard sign/bumper sticker became a status symbol accessory like a Prius, solar panels on your house, or an adopted Malawian baby.
Throughout 2009, headlines incessantly announced, “Obama by Far the Most Popular Political Leader in Europe and U.S.; No Other Head of Government Comes Close.” Liberals around the globe worshipped Obama, and suddenly America became the most admired country in the world, jumping six places to do so.39 Obama even won a Nobel Peace Prize based on his first twelve days in office.
Like a first-time bestselling author obsessively checking Amazon rankings, liberals were transfixed by Obama’s sky-high popularity, commissioning poll after poll on the subject in February, April, May, and December of 2009. The last such poll taken seems to have come in April 2010, when Obama’s worldwide popularity began to sink. At home in the United States, the Dalai Lama beat Obama, who merely tied with Hillary Clinton at 57 percent. And so the poll was taken no more.40
Also during his first year in office, Obama was named “the sexiest politician in the world” by OnePoll.com.41 His wife Michelle was named one of the “100 Sexiest Women on the Planet” by Maxim magazine, which called her “the hottest First Lady in the history of these United States.” Obama was the runaway winner of Gallup News’s Most Admired Man poll in both 2008 and 2009.42 He came in fifth in Jockey International’s “Celebrity Dad Most Women Want to See in Their Undies” list, just behind Brad Pitt, Matthew McConaughey, Hugh Jackman, and Will Smith.43
Obama was more popular than Justin Bieber (and for my money, a hundred times dreamier!).
A few years into Obama’s failed presidency, liberals were still besotted. Washington Post readers got this crucial update in the October 12, 2010, edition: “The moment was vintage Obama—emphasizing his zest for inquiry, his personal involvement, his willingness to make the tough call, his search for middle ground. If an Obama brand exists, it is his image as a probing, cerebral President conducting an exhaustive analysis of the issues so that the best ideas can emerge, and triumph.”44
Who knows what issue was being probed, what zestful inquiry instigated, or what tough call being made. For all we know, he was deciding which flavor ice cream to order during the next geopolitical crisis. The point was: Obama was a dreamboat.
The Left’s passionate adoration of President Obama—and Clinton, FDR, JFK, Hillary, Teddy Kennedy, and on and on—are the primitive emotions of a mob. These are sentiments generally associated with women, children, and savages, according to Le Bon. It’s not an accident that when Republicans of all stripes—Arnold Schwarzenegger, Rand Paul, Sharron Angle, and Christine O’Donnell—choose an epithet for Democrats, it’s to call them women. Everyone sees it: Democrats are a mob.
The flip side of liberals turning their own leaders into icons is that they also “consider as enemies all by whom [their dogmas] are not accepted.”45
Being a successful president, Reagan was detested by liberals. There were mob protests throughout Reagan’s presidency in all the usual hotspots—Germany, Spain, Italy, London, New York, Los Angeles, Ann Arbor, Berkeley, and Madison. Month after month, filthy wastrels hurled paint and projectiles at police, smashed windows, burned Reagan in effigy, and vandalized military bases—pausing occasionally for a round of “We Are the World.”
Forget that liberal mobs are always on the wrong side—protesting, for example, Reagan’s bombing of poor, innocent Libya in retaliation for Moammar Khadafy’s murdering U.S. servicemen. One does not see conservatives out smashing windows, throwing rocks, or vandalizing buildings even in support of a good cause—such as bombing Khadafy.
Decades later, liberals would force one another to retract the mildest praise of Reagan. During the 2008 presidential campaign, for example, Obama cited Reagan’s “clarity” and “optimism,” and liberals reacted as if he had praised Hitler. Hillary instantly launched TV and radio ads accusing Obama of actually liking Reagan.
Obama was soon forced to deny that he had ever had any warm thoughts whatsoever about Reagan. “What I said,” Obama bleated during a Democrat debate, “is that Ronald Reagan was a transformative political figure because he was able to get Democrats to vote against their economic interests to form a majority to push through their agenda, an agenda that I objected to.… I spent a lifetime fighting, a lifetime against Ronald Reagan’s policies.”
Meanwhile, Republicans issue constant, nauseating praise for FDR and Kennedy.
Depending on who’s in the White House, the enemy of the liberal mob is either the president or the people. Americans are either enlightened truth-seekers or racist, paranoid haters. “Dissent is patriotic” only when a Republican is president, and we must have “respect for the office” only when a Democrat is president.
After promising to unite us—following the horror of the Reagan years—President Bill Clinton blamed conservative talk radio for Timothy McVeigh.
When Clinton was caught ejaculating on interns, the First Lady of the United States responded by going on the Today show and claiming there was “this vast right-wing conspiracy that has been conspiring against my husband since the day he announced for president.” Newsweek’s Jonathan Alter called Ken Starr and his assistants “sheet sniffing prosecutors,”46 and Geraldo Rivera called Starr an “investigative terrorist.”47 Margaret Carlson compared Clinton’s impeachment to the legal system in Saudi Arabia.
As the Senate began Clinton’s impeachment trial, Ellen Mendel of Manhattan matter-of-factly told the New York Times that she felt “the same despair that she did as a girl in Nazi Germany when the efforts of a stubborn group of leaders snowballed, crushing the will of the people.” (Clinton never got even 50 percent of the country to vote for him.) It was clear, she said, “that the bulldozing campaign by the Republicans will not end.”48
But as soon as George W. Bush became president, the only threat to the republic came from the White House itself. Every White House employee was an evil genius, knee-deep in dark conspiracies and cabals. Bush was the target of almost unimaginable calumnies—the sort of invective liberals usually reserve for people who disable detectors on airplanes. Liberals were more sympathetic to Islamic terrorists than they were toward President Bush.
As Le Bon says, “A commencement of antipathy or disapprobation, which in the case of an isolated individual would not gain strength, becomes at once furious hatred in the case of an individual in a crowd.”49 Little did Le Bon know he was the first to discover “Bush Derangement Syndrome”!
Out of a cast of thousands, liberal financier and convicted felon50 George Soros, former vice president Al Gore, and Vanity Fair’s James Wolcott compared Bush to a Nazi. In the case of Soros, it was unclear if this was meant as a compliment; Soros had helped the Nazis identify Jewish homes in his native Hungary as a boy.51 (Hey, we all have to start somewhere. I was on the safety patrol at school when I was a little girl.)
Bookstores overflowed with anti-Bush books. The paper alone destroyed so many trees that Sting’s musical career was extended a full decade. A novel released in 2004 advocated the assassination of President Bush “for the good of humankind.” A mock documentary depicted President Bush’s assassination as a news event—and went on to win the International Critics Prize at the 2006 Toronto Film Festival (not to mention “Best Date Movie of 2006” by The Nation magazine).
Bush was heartily disapproved of by the world’s most fiendish tyrants—Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Hugo Chavez, and Air America’s Janeane Garofalo.
Bush was called a “miserable failure” by Democratic congressman Dick Gephardt, a guy who ran for president two times without anyone noticing. Journalist Helen Thomas said Bush was “the worst President ever … the worst President in all of American history.”52 Forgotten 1950s calypso singer Harry Belafonte—not Louis Farrakhan, I mean the other forgotten 1950s calypso singer who hates America—called Bush “the greatest tyrant in the world, the greatest terrorist in the world.”53 Time magazine’s Joe Klein said Bush’s foreign policy was one of “arrogance” and his domestic policy “cynical, myopic and cruel.”54 Washington Post columnist William Raspberry, whose last name means “a rude sound effect made with the mouth to mimic a bodily function, used to express disapproval,” called Bush “a devil.”55
With critics like these, no wonder Bush was elected president of the United States twice.
After the Washington Post’s Dana Priest abetted America’s enemies by disclosing the government’s top-secret rendition program—for which she would win a Pulitzer Prize—NPR’s Nina Totenberg said of Bush’s rendition program, “It is the first time in my life I have been ashamed of my country.”56 Liberals spent a lot of time being ashamed of their country under George Bush, even when it later turned out the rendition program was started under President Clinton.57
CBS’s Dan Rather attacked a sitting president on the eve of his reelection with forged documents he used to accuse President Bush of shirking his National Guard duty. When the documents were exposed as phony, Rather attacked the bloggers who exposed the fraud as “powerful and extremely well-financed forces” who decided to “attack” him and destroy his “credibility.”58 Dissent was patriotic, but dissent from CBS News was not.
At a performance on the eve of Obama’s inauguration, hip-hop artist Young Jeezy shouted out, to huge cheers, “I wanna thank two people, I wanna thank the mother f**ker overseas that threw two shoes at George Bush and I wanna thank—and listen, listen—and I wanna thank the mother f**kers who helped dem move their sh*t up out of the White House. Keep it moving bitch because my president is mother f**king black, nigga!” Cheers and applause.59
And thus Obama ushered in a new era of attacking Americans who opposed the president and concluded the era of dissent being patriotic. Overnight, the soi-disant “adversary press” switched from being the people’s watchdogs to the government’s guard dogs. (Except at MSNBC, where they became the government’s lapdogs.)
Opponents of Obama’s health care nationalization were automatically deemed racists, thugs, and lunatics. CNN called them “teabaggers”—a crass sexual reference—as did Democratic senator Dick Durbin (D-IL), who also called Obama’s critics “birthers.”60 Senator Chuck Schumer called then–Senate candidate Scott Brown a “far-right teabagger.”61 (Ironically, liberals love actual, sodomitic teabagging, but use the term derisively when talking about ordinary Americans protesting a Democratic president’s policies.) Nancy Pelosi called opponents of ObamaCare “Un-American”—and, again, this could have been a compliment. Speaking of “Un-American,” Harry Reid called them “evil-mongers.” Jimmy Carter said an “overwhelming portion” of the people opposed to Obama’s health care plan were racists.62 (And if there’s one guy who’s got his finger on the pulse of what the American people are thinking and feeling, it’s Jimmy Carter.)
The last time I heard this much race-baiting and crass invective I was … in my usual front-row pew, as I am every Sunday morning, at Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago listening to the Reverend Jeremiah Wright.
As a special bonus, mainstream pop culture—timeless classics such as Law & Order—portrayed Tea Party people as extremely angry, clearly dangerous, secession-leaning nutters who had the air of the Aryan Nation about them and talked like they were in the old movie Sergeant York. (“Ain’t that some kind of foreign name? We don’t cotton to feriners ’round here!”) When Republicans swept Congress in the 2010 midterm congressional elections, MIT professor Noam Chomsky said, “The latest election, a couple of days ago, you could almost interpret it as a kind of death knell for the species.”63
Why had liberals hated Bush again? A normal person, not under the sway of groupthink, would say U.S. presidents are different in important respects, in ways that can help or harm the nation—but not 180 degrees different. It’s not Jesus Christ vs. Josef Stalin. (Except in the case of Martin Van Buren, who may have been Stalin.)
Both Bush and Obama went to Ivy League schools, had traditional families with a wife and two girls, claimed to be Christians, said Islam is a religion of peace, kept Guantánamo open, killed civilians in the war on terrorism, bailed out banks, opposed gay marriage, and sought amnesty for illegal aliens. Their most readily apparent difference is that Obama knows how to pronounce “nuclear” correctly and Bush knows how to pronounce “Pakistan.”
Conservatives probably liked Reagan about 70 to 80 percent of the time, Bush 50 to 60 percent of the time, and Obama 5 to 10 percent of the time (admittedly, mostly when he continued the Bush policies he had campaigned against). With liberals it’s 100 percent burning hatred for Reagan and Bush and 100 percent adoration for Obama—which briefly fell to 98 percent in 2010 when the Justin Bieber movie Never Say Never was released. If you ask the right liberal and he doesn’t have time to do the math in his head, he’ll tell you that his hatred for Reagan sometimes went up to 120 percent.
Only the mob mentality of the liberal explains such infantile, black-and-white thinking.
Indeed, anyone a liberal doesn’t care for will be compared to the worst monsters of history—as Bush was to Hitler. With no explanation whatsoever, the Washington Post’s Lonnae O’Neal Parker said award-winning author Shelby Steele, Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas, activist Ward Connerly, and journalist Armstrong Williams reminded her of the groveling slave, Fiddler, from the movie Roots.64 She provided no quotes or positions from the beastly men to explain the resemblance; indeed, the bulk of the passage is about Parker’s sister straightening her hair and watching MTV.
There is a scene [in Roots] where kidnapped African Kunta Kinte won’t settle down in his chains. “Want me to give him a stripe or two, boss?” the old slave, Fiddler, asks his Master Reynolds.
“Do as I say, Fiddler,” Reynolds answers. “That’s all I expect from any of my niggers.”
“Oh, I love you, Massa Reynolds,” Fiddler tells him. And instantly, my mind draws political parallels. Ward Connerly, I think to myself. Armstrong Williams. Shelby Steele. Hyperbole, some might say. I say dead-on.
“Clarence Thomas,” I say to my Cousin Kim. And she just stares at me. She may be a little tender yet for racial metaphors. I see them everywhere.
Parker was so proud of this sparkling gem, she included it in her book, which—like the column—contains not another word about these horrid men, such as, for example, what she didn’t like about them.65 Parker was following Le Bon’s playbook for whipping up crowds: Use images, not words.
In the days before Republican Senate candidate Scott Brown won a Massachusetts special election to replace Teddy Kennedy, MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann repeatedly raged that Brown was “an irresponsible, homophobic, racist, reactionary, sexist, ex–nude model, teabagging supporter of violence against women and against politicians with whom he disagrees.”
Three days earlier, Olbermann had never heard of Scott Brown. With the soul of an actress, Keith borrows other people’s opinions, adds the sanctimony and indignation, and delivers speeches in a deep baritone, wearing glasses so morons think he’s a genius. (For the huge segment of Keith’s audience that watched just to laugh at him, his firing was heartbreaking.)
NPR’s Nina Totenberg famously said of Republican senator Jesse Helms, “If there is retributive justice, he’ll get AIDS from a transfusion, or one of his grandchildren will get it.”66
We had important Democratic elected officials, Democratic contributors, and Vanity Fair writers calling Bush a Nazi; Pulitzer Prize–winning journalists calling him a devil; network anchors slandering him with dummied documents, and award-winning movies gleefully portraying his assassination. But liberals see a sign at a conservative rally depicting Obama as a monkey and act as if they’re staring into the eyes of Lee Harvey Oswald (who happened to be a communist, by the way).
There are other hard comparisons to be made. Conservatives don’t threaten to leave the country if a Democrat becomes president. Liberals do every four years. In 1992, Barbra Streisand said she’d leave if the first George Bush were reelected and then, in 2000, with stunning originality, a whole slew of liberals made the same threat if Bush’s son were elected—director Robert Altman, Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam, Alec Baldwin (as quoted by his then-wife), and Kennedy press secretary/ABC News correspondent Pierre Salinger.67 In 2008, Susan Sarandon said she’d leave if McCain won. The only one to ever leave was Salinger, who was merely moving back to France, though some believe he left out of embarrassment after falling for the Internet hoax that TWA flight 800 had been downed by the U.S. Navy.68
True, these are mostly just actors—except Barbra Streisand, who was a key Gore policy adviser. (In 2000, Streisand told TV Guide that Gore had “called me from Air Force One” for advice, but “I couldn’t take the call. I was in the middle of something.”69 Just as soon as she learns how to spell “Iraq,” she’ll be getting calls from Obama.)70 But the Democrats certainly don’t dismiss them as mere actors. Hollywood celebrities tour with Democratic candidates, headline their fundraisers, record robo-calls, and donate millions of campaign dollars to their campaigns.
The Left’s “blind submission” to their leaders and “inability to discuss” their beliefs—consistent with Le Bon’s characterization of mobs—leads to one of their most peculiar debate gambits: the appeal to authority. They will cite a prominent conservative’s liberal position on the odd issue and brandish it as if that ends the argument. Reagan granted amnesty to illegal aliens! William F. Buckley supported legalizing pot! Goldwater supported abortion! Case closed, QED, let’s all go home.
Conservatives are always left dumbfounded at the triumphalism of such nonarguments. We like Republicans, we liked many things about Buckley, Reagan, and Goldwater. They’re not God. Not even Reagan.
Only liberals use the sarcastic line “last time I checked” so-and-so is “not a socialist”—as if it matters.
Obama pitched his government takeover of health care by saying Bob Dole and Bill Frist supported it and—“last time I checked they’re not socialist.”71 Democratic congressman Gerald Connolly thought he made a devastating point at a hearing on Obama’s failed economic policies by saying, “By the way, Ben Bernanke, the Federal Reserve bank chairman here in the United States, announced to us last week at a luncheon that he believes the stimulus here is working—and not a wild-eyed liberal, last time I checked.”72 And Democratic strategist Alicia Menendez thought she had cornered O’Reilly when she responded to his question about government spending to the point of nearly bankrupting states like California by saying, “The last time I checked, California had a Republican governor.”73
There are, of course, great men who change the course of history and seem to have the spirit of the divine working through them. Most of our founding fathers are among them. Reagan is among them. We honor them. We view their service with reverence. We don’t have sex dreams about them. We’re not a mob.