Fighting Back

Member Group : Lincoln Institute

A favorite bromide of the Left is tolerance.  Tolerance to them, of course, is complete and total agreement with their view of America.  Deviate from the talking points and tolerance ends, usually with a series of tired old insults being hurled at anyone who dares to disagree.

The Left is at its most intolerant when the target of their venom fights back. They seem to take it as a divine right (at least those who believe in a deity) that their opinions and attacks are simply to be absorbed and accepted and that anyone who fights back is a barbarian at the gates.

This unflattering trait of the Left was on full display in the days after Judge Brett Kavanuagh appeared before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee to defend his honor and reputation after having been slimed by a series of unsubstantiated accusations which escalated in ridiculousness as each day passed.

Kavanaugh came out of his corner of the ring fighting.  He lit into those senators who for months have attacked him; he challenged his accusers; he defended his honor.

And the Left was horrified.

He was denounced as an “angry” man who displayed an injudicious demeanor.  He was accused of politicizing the court and compromising his fairness. Judge Kavanaugh had transgressed against Left-wing orthodoxy by fighting back rather than meekly submitting to the public lashing he was taking merely for having been selected for the job by President Donald Trump.

Trump himself is the poster boy for violating the Left’s prohibition against fighting back.  Driving the Left’s visceral hatred of Donald Trump is, unlike past Republican presidents, he isn’t willing to sit quietly in the Oval office and absorb their blows.  Quite to the contrary, he immediately responds and compounds his violation of politically correct protocol by firing back.

And the chorus from the Left and it’s mouthpieces in the mainstream media goes up: “How dare he attack us!!”

As for the Supreme Court, the very thought that Judge Kavanaugh has politicized the panel is laughable.  Look at any given case and you can predict with 90% accuracy how each justice will rule.  That especially is true of Left wing Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor, and Stephen Breyer.  In fact, if any justice veers from their ideological lane is would be one of the constitutionalist justices.

Here in Penn’s Woods the same Left wing outrage is being felt in the race for governor.  Republican nominee Scott Wagner is a businessman with no interest in a long-term career in politics.  He is blunt, plain spoken, and couldn’t care less about political correctness or the boundaries on discourse set by the Left.

As a result he is pillaged by Governor Tom Wolf and his allies who label him, extreme, unhinged, and everything short of a madman.  It is true that Wagner himself has suggested he should take some pills before speaking, but his Trumpian assault on the Left is precisely the approach those working to secure pro-growth policies must take.

What the Left fears most is that the Right has caught onto their tactic of intimidating those who disagree with them into silence or at best timid and watered down responses.  That is why they have plunged the nation into the politics of personal destruction because they know they cannot win an intellectual debate and if they can’t browbeat their opponents into silence then all that remains is to seek and destroy.

Americans, however, have an affinity for the underdog and for the fighter.  Deep down we are not the “safe space” nation the Left believes in, we are a nation of doers, of fighters, of people who go out and accomplish great things.

The fact the Left goes into meltdown when we fight back is proof positive that we should demand our elected officials at all levels become more aggressive in challenging their policies.  After all there is much truth to the old saying that all that is needed for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing.

(Lowman S. Henry is Chairman & CEO of the Lincoln Institute and host of the weekly Lincoln Radio Journal.  His e-mail address is [email protected].)

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