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by Dennis Peacocke
November 2009
It’s no secret that the mainline media has been left-winged for decades. We also know that the left doesn’t really believe in free speech. If you doubt this, try and bring a conservative speaker to a major state University. Once the conservative talk-show radio hosts began to be able to affect electoral politics, the left once again showed its true colors by proposing to shut them down using the FCC’s “Fairness Doctrine.” No surprise there either.
The left has never wanted a fair fight. That reveals a lot. Nevertheless, the nation’s recent Town Hall meetings designed to discuss President Obama’s health care proposals have caught my attention. The left is now whimpering like a cry-baby school child because conservatives are using the same kind of tactics at these meetings that the left have been using against everyone else for years. No fair, and I’m going to tell my mommy!
In the 1960’s some of the more extreme tactics surfaced from those studying Lenin, Stalin, and a host of younger, more creative leftists. Saul Alinsky became the mentor of choice to my Berkley-roots activists. Politeness and fairness became totally irrelevant. The issue wasn’t about truth. It was intimidation, silencing the opposition, and phrases that effectively vilified anyone who opposed you. The means of political change were measured only by their effectiveness, not their relationship to democratic debate or any rules or protocols.
Out of all this came groups like, “Move On” and a multiple set of other culture-jolting leftist groups. Their power was intimidation, guilt, anger, and highly selective phraseology. The silent majority was silent because they were playing by an entirely outmoded set of rules and assumptions about the political process. The conservatives or even middle America, always slow to perceive cultural shifts, have now begun to awaken to the power of the left’s real politic. Is that a good thing? Probably only in the short run… In the long run, the politics of intimidation has never elevated the body politic anywhere in history.
Governments and people require clarity, principle, and the mutual exchange of points of view with respect to produce climates of social advancement. So be it. For now the other side of the street is being heard and won’t be quiet or polite for its own decade or so. Now, grow up lefties, you let this genie out of the bottle, and that is…..the bottom line.