Blacklisting Conservatives

The left wing of the political spectrum sometimes appears to look back at the years of McCarthyism with a bizarre sense of nostalgia. Perhaps, it is that it was a time of victimization for which they recall with twisted fondness or perhaps it is mere historical revisionism. While Senator McCarthy may have over stepped in his pursuit of Soviet infiltrators and collaborators, he was undoubtedly correct that the Soviets were attempting to infiltrate American society and one of their key avenues was through the media. While communism is no longer the threat it once was, the threat of “statism” through unchecked government expansion remains real. Indeed, as long as humanity inhabits this Earth, the threat of central planning through authoritarian control under the arm of government will always exist.

However, the shoe is now on the other foot, or so it seems. Instead of “the right” going overboard in their attack on “the left” and the punishment (or criminalization) of ideas, it is now the media in cooperation with the political elite on the left using the power of the government, tactics of intimidation, defamation, distortion, and ostracism to de-legitimize conservatives in America. This shift has been especially noticeable since the Democratic Party’s takeover of the Congress in 2006 and has amplified since Barack Obama took control of the White House.

This past summer, average Americans from across the country took to the streets, town hall meetings, and marches in opposition to the Obama administration’s health care reform plans. Regardless of how you feel about the Administration’s plan, the protests expressed legitimate grievances and ideological opposition to an overt desire to expand the government’s role in health care. The media, denigrated these protests, labelling them “tea baggers”, a disgusting sexual reference most notably aired by CNN’s Anderson Cooper. The perverse label has continued to be used by the media as recently as this past Sunday on ABC’s “This Week” by E.J. Dionne and Paul Krugman. Cooper and others have been incapable of concealing their disdain for these protesters and were joined by senior members of the Democratic Party’s leadership. Nancy Pelosi falsely accused the protesters of having swastikas and dismissing them as an “AstroTurf” movement. At the same time the health care company Humana was effectively censored by the White House for exercising their first amendment rights in issuing warnings to their customers about what the potential consequences of the proposed reforms might entail.

Now, in true Nixonian fashion, the Obama administration has made a concerted effort to marginalize and ostracize Fox News because of its rightward bent in its prime time line up. Fox makes no apologies for this, just as MSNBC and CNN don’t apologize for their leftward bent. It is a free country after all, and news organizations are free to push an agenda if they so wish. However, the Obama administration has gone a step further in targeting Fox News in verbal attacks by senior members of the administration such as Rahm Emmanuel and David Axelrod. It is now less surprising that Obama has been unwilling to take a hard line against Hugo Chavez, he may be borrowing some of the same techniques used against Globovision TV.

And, as usual, the left has chosen to once again target conservative radio hosts Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck. Agree or disagree with either of them, their programs are examples of the first amendment in action. Rush Limbaugh’s association with a group attempting to buy the St. Louis Ram’s was opposed by race-baiters Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, enabled by the spineless NFL Commissioner Robert Goodell in an apparent bargaining chip for upcoming collective bargaining agreements with the NFL players union. Even if you hate Limbaugh, you should agree that in a democracy one’s legitimate political views should not affect your ability to participate in legal commercial activity. Limbaugh was defamed and slandered, enabled by CNN and other news outlets that shamelessly aired quotes that had no basis whatsoever (fact checks for critical SNL skits only). And as usual, Rush was forced to re-live his unwise (but not racist) comments concerning Donovan McNabb from his brief stint on ESPN years ago.

I’m not a huge Glenn Beck fan. His views are paranoid at times and he’s prone to emotional roller-coasters which can be hard to take after a day’s work when you just want to put your feet up. That said, he’s done an excellent job exposing a vein of extremism running through the administration. First, he exposed the Marxist Van Jones as radical with troubling views from his past statements. The White House either did a horrible job vetting him, or simply didn’t have any major disagreements with his left wing extremist views. He’s also pointed out another Marxist strain in Anita Dunn’s praise of Mao Tse Tung during a speech to high school students. She can attempt to spin it any way she wants, and the media can ignore it for the time being, but her comments on Mao are nothing short of sickening. Having Mao as her favourite philosopher, a man who killed between 30 and 70 million people, is no better than heaping praise on Joseph Stalin, Kim Jong Il, or, dare I say it, Adolf Hitler. It is disgusting, unjustifiable, and shameful.

The Obama administration should be wary of playing this card against Fox News. President Nixon further complicated matters for himself when he made an enemy of the media. While CNN and MSNBC may smugly enjoy the attacks from the White House for now, they may become envious of still higher ratings for Fox News that have resulted from the controversy and adopt similar tactics of opposition to the Obama administration. Many other commentators have already observed that the White House demeans itself by stooping to such petty attacks, but if the attacks garner attention, others might be tempted to grab some attention for themselves.

The tragedy for the country is that it is being disserved by a media so complicit in the attempt to marginalize conservative views while unapologetically cheerleading the Obama administration. If the American experiment is to continue, it must be a bustling marketplace of ideas from the left and right. This attempt to blacklist conservatives seems a concerted attempt to distract the public and the media from the real issue at hand: the expansion of government. No news agency is asking the direct question that must be asked of the Obama administration and the Congress: at what point is government too big? The state cannot continue to expand without the endangerment of the continuation of democracy and liberty. Thank goodness for Fox News and responsible journalism.

This article is also available at: Family Security Matters