
 |
|
May 22, 2013
John Thorne:
They launched the 'Arab Spring' but now yearn for the good old days of a strongman
May 20, 2013
Richard A. Serrano: Is Meir Kahane's assassin now a changed man?
Melissa Healy: Genetic copies of living people from embryos no longer science fiction
Jewz in the Newz by Nate Bloom : Jews Inducted into Rock Hall of Fame; Anton Yelchin co-stars in New "Trek" film; Kutcher (but not Kunis) visits Israel; Jewish TV Star Praises Jewish Rap Star
The Kosher Gourmet by Cathy Pollak: WARNING: This WALNUT CAKE WITH PRALINE FROSTING, perfect for afternoon coffee, is addicting
May 13, 2013
Rabbi Nathan Lopes Cardozo: Why the giving of the document that would permanently change the world could only be done in desolation
David G. Savage: Church-state, literally? Supreme Court weighing public school graduation in a church
May 10, 2013
Rabbi Berel Wein: Be all that you should be
May 8, 2013
Peter Ford: Why China is welcoming both Israel's Netanyahu and Palestinians' Abbas
Warren Richey: Obama administration quietly backs out of appeal over new contraceptive mandate
Fred Weir: At Kerry-Putin meeting, US-Russia relations thaw --- a tad
The Kosher Gourmet by Leela Cyd Ross : Almost too pretty to eat, this colorful salad with Sicilian inspiration will tickle the taste buds and delight your visual sensibility
May 6, 2013
May 3, 2013
Kids, kittens the Same? With employee perks at struggling Internet pioneer Yahoo! it's hard to tell
Sandy Kleffman: Artificial kidney offers hope to patients tethered to a dialysis machine
April 29, 2013
Roy Gutman: Poland's new Jewish museum celebrates life, doesn't revisit Holocaust
Mark Clayton: Terrorism in America: Is US missing a chance to learn from failed plots?
Kim Murphy: Boston Bomber's 'Svengali' Revealed
Pete Spotts: Tiny satellites + cellphones = cheaper 'eyes in the sky' for NASA
April 26, 2013
Clifford D. May: Defense in the Age of Jihadist Terrorism
Sharon Palmer, R.D.: How to feel your best -- with plenty of energy, a healthy weight and optimal mental and physical function -- without driving yourself batty
April 24, 2013
|
| |
Jewish World Review
Oct. 19, 2006
/ 27 Tishrei, 5767
LIBS GONE WILD!
By
Victor Davis Hanson
| 
|
|
|
|
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
Why do Republicans drive leftists so crazy these days? Liberal democrats are beginning to sound like rowdy students on spring break, shrieking and exhibiting themselves on camera. >
Consider some of the recent rabid outbursts by once sober, old-guard politicians. West Virginia Sen. Jay Rockefeller insists that the world would be better off if Saddam were still running Iraq. Crotchety Congressman John Murtha, of Pennsylvania, rushed to announce that our Marines were guilty of killing Iraqis in "cold blood" before they were tried. Illinois Sen. Richard Durbin has compared our interrogators at Guantanamo Bay to Nazis, while Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry said our soldiers have "terrorized" Iraqi women and children.
Then there is the constant anger from Democratic ex-presidents. It used to be that out-of-office chief executives kept relatively hush. Presidents Ford and Bush Sr. both voted out of office did not bray when President Clinton had his trials, personal and otherwise.
Not so now with Presidents Carter and Clinton. They repeatedly harp about the sins of the current administration. By now, everyone has seen clips of Clinton losing his temper (complete with finger-wagging) and lashing out at the "right-wingers" on TV. He lectures on political extremism, even as one of his wife's staff members slandered John McCain by saying he broke under torture while a POW in Hanoi. And even at 82, Jimmy Carter almost daily carps over Bush's foreign policy.
Do not forget the unhinged billionaire leftist philanthropists. Ted Turner said he resented President Bush asking Americans, after 9/11, to take sides in our war against Islamic terrorists. George Soros claimed that President Bush improved on Nazi propaganda methods.
The frustration with Bush & Co. has driven a few in the media almost to the point of clinical madness. In 2004, a clueless Dan Rather imploded by airing clearly forged memos that called into question Bush's National Guard service with the result that he was eased out by an embarrassed CBS News. More recently, Keith Olbermann, the foaming news head on the struggling cable channel MSNBC, keeps his ratings low with uncontrollable rants about Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld pushing a "new fascism."
On college campuses, the old leftist intolerance of unwelcome free speech is back with a fury. A guest spokesman for the Minutemen immigration reform group was shouted down at a recent Columbia University lecture. Earlier, Harvard's liberal president Larry Summers was forced out, after timidly questioning academic orthodoxy about the role of women in science and engineering.
What sends liberal criticism over the edge into pathological hysteria?
Is it that George Bush is a polarizing figure, not just in terms of his Iraq policy, but also because of his Christian Texan demeanor?
Or is the current left-wing savagery also a legacy of the tribal 1960s, when out-of-power protestors felt that expressions of speaking bluntly, even crudely, were at least preferable to "artificial" cultural restraint? Why should graying veterans of the barricades, then, remain "polite" when their country's less sophisticated red-state yokels are taking it in the wrong direction?
The Democrats have not elected congressional majorities in 12 years, and they've occupied the White House in only eight of the last 26 years. The left's current unruliness seems a way of scapegoating others for a more elemental frustration that they can't gain a national majority based on their core beliefs. More entitlements, higher taxes to pay for them, gay marriage, de facto quotas in affirmative action, open borders, abortion on demand, and radical secularism these liberal issues don't tend to resonate with most Americans.
To compensate, leftist pundits, billionaire philanthropists and politicians, from current officeholders to ex-presidents, work to ensure that isolated moments of Republican ineptness (George Bush strutting on a carrier deck in his flight suit) and wrongdoing (repulsive e-mails from a perverted Congressman Mark Foley) blare out as the only issues of the day. This distracting drumbeat, not their own agenda, is the only strategy for success in the next election.
True, reactionaries in the 1990s expressed a Neanderthal hatred of Bill Clinton. But now shouting leftists have lowered the bar. The danger, of course, is that by emulating the rhetoric of a Cindy Sheehan or Michael Moore, the feral Democrats when they come back into power again as tamed leaders who must govern will have created Frankensteins. And, as we know, such monsters always turn on their creators.
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and military historian at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. Comment by clicking here.
Archives
© 2006, TMS
|
|

Arnold Ahlert
Mitch Albom
Jay Ambrose
Michael Barone
Barrywood
Lori Borgman
Stratfor Briefing
Mona Charen
Linda Chavez
Richard Z. Chesnoff
Ann Coulter
Greg Crosby
Larry Elder
Suzanne Fields
Christine Flowers
Frank J. Gaffney
Bernie Goldberg
Jonah Goldberg
Julia Gorin
Jonathan Gurwitz
Paul Greenberg
Argus Hamilton
Victor Davis Hanson
Betsy Hart
Ron Hart
Nat Hentoff
A. Barton Hinkle
Jeff Jacoby
Paul Johnson
Jack Kelly
Ch. Krauthammer
David Limbaugh
Kathryn Lopez
Rich Lowry
Michelle Malkin
Jackie Mason
Ann McFeatters
Dale McFeatters
Dana Milbank
Jeanne Moos
Dick Morris
Jim Mullen
Deroy Murdock
Judge A. Napolitano
Bill O'Reilly
Clarence Page
Kathleen Parker
Star Parker
Dennis Prager
Wesley Pruden
Tom Purcell
Sharon Randall
Robert Robb
Cokie & Steve Roberts
Heather Robinson
Debra J. Saunders
Martin Schram
Greg Schwem
Culture Shlock
David Shribman
Roger Simon
Lenore Skenazy
Michael Smerconish
Thomas Sowell
Ben Stein
Mark Steyn
John Stossel
Cal Thomas
Dan Thomasson
Bob Tyrrell
Diana West
Dave Weinbaum
George Will
Walter Williams
Byron York
ZeitGeist
Mort Zuckerman

Robert Arial
Chuck Asay
Baloo
Lisa Benson
Chip Bok
Dry Bones
John Branch
John Cole
J. D. Crowe
Matt Davies
John Deering
Brian Duffy
Everything's Relative
Mallard Fillmore
Glenn Foden
Jake Fuller
Bob Gorrel
Walt Handelsman
Joe Heller
David Hitch
Jerry Holbert
David Horsey
Lee Judge
Steve Kelley
Jeff Koterba
Dick Locher
Chan Lowe
Jimmy Margulies
Jack Ohman
Michael Ramirez
Rob Rogers
Drew Sheneman
Kevin Siers
Jeff Stahler
Scott Stantis
Danna Summers
Gary Varvel
Kirk Walters
Dan Wasserman

Tech Q&A
Mr. Know-It-All
Ask Doctor K
Richard Lederer
Frugal Living
On Nutrition
Bookmark These
Bruce Williams
|