According to liberal assertions, to resist the radical stampede under way in the US is to be rude, violent, or racist. And liberals making these assertions want to improve political discourse. Does anyone see contradiction here?
The allegation of rudeness comes from President Barack Obama. On Sunday public-affairs television programs Sept. 20, Obama criticized three cable news networks for encouraging misbehavior. "The easiest way to get on television right now is to be really rude," he said on ABC's This Week with George Stephanopoulos. On CNN's State of the Nation, he urged networks to "reward decency and civility in our political discourse." And on CBS's Face the Nation, he said news programs and blogs "can't get enough of conflict," adding, "It's catnip to the media right now."
Liberal blitz
Who opposes civil discourse? But where's civility in the liberal blitz Obama has tried to press on the nation since taking office, including nationalization of US automakers, previously unimaginable government spending, state-centered overhaul of health care, and reconfiguration of the energy mix?
Offering blithe and often indefensible assurances to the contrary, the president proposes to expand government and hike costs of American existence for dubious reasons—and to do so swiftly. He has shown scant interest in discourse; he has, in fact, started a fight. To now scold the media for reporting conflict is disingenuous.
Woops. The fight metaphor implies violence, fear of which brought House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to tears during a Capitol Hill news conference Sept. 17. Asked whether intensifying political debate in the US might incite violence, Pelosi likened currently heated rhetoric with language in use during a gay rights controversy that led to the assassinations of two San Francisco officials in 1978. "I think we all have to take responsibility for our actions and our words," the weepy speaker said. Of pointed commentary, she warned, "The ears that it is falling on are not as balanced as the person making the statement might assume."
Pelosi's choke-up followed formal admonishment of Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC) for an alarming indiscretion during Obama's Sept. 9 speech to Congress on health care reform. When the president said legislation wouldn't provide illegal immigrants free coverage, Wilson blurted, "You lie!" Wilson apologized for what he described as a spontaneous breach of decorum. But the outburst revived suspicions that he is racist, which he denies.
By then, the racist cobra was out of the basket and riling the crowd. Did opposition to the first African-American president in US history betray racism? Yes, declared former President Jimmy Carter after Wilson's blunder. "I think an overwhelming portion of the intensely demonstrated animosity toward President Barack Obama is based on the fact that he is a black man, that he's African-American," Carter said on NBC Nightly News a day before making similar observations in a speech at Emory University.
All these allegations dangle on threads of truth. Rudeness happens, even in public life. Much more regrettably, some sick people commit violence, sometimes acting out political delusions. And, yes, racism lingers in American society. But it's possible to disagree with Obama's program without being guilty of any of that. In response to Obama's very liberal and urgently promoted program, dissent can be simply dissent, however hard its edges.
Familiar theme
Oil and gas professionals may sense a familiar theme in these utterances by liberal celebrities. It's how the statements characterize opposition instead of responding to it. The dominant political party, controlled now by its most liberal members, serves up an agenda that many Americans see as radical then treats disagreement as evidence of behavioral disorder. No wonder people are angry.
For the oil and gas industry, such treatment is standard. Industry expertise has come to be seen as perversion. US energy policy therefore heads in more errant directions, more rapidly, than ever before. Like Americans staging latter-day tea parties, the industry no longer can afford just to express rational concern about important issues. It first must redress condemnation by antagonists who'd rather moralize than argue.
More Oil & Gas Journal Current Issue Articles
More Oil & Gas Journal Archives Issue Articles
