While running for president the first time, Hillary Clinton famously screamed, “I am sick and tired of those who say that if you debate and you disagree with this administration, somehow you’re not patriotic. And we should stand up and say, ‘We are Americans, and we have a right to debate and disagree with any administration.’” Not long after, once Barack Obama won the election, it became racist to debate and disagree with that administration. This is just one of many examples of liberals setting the rules, then changing them when it suits their needs. There is only one set of acceptable opinions to progressive leftists and they’re whatever they need to be at any given moment.
There was a time when liberals, including Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, opposed illegal immigration, now to hold that opinion is a hate crime. More than that, like every instance of straying from the progressive thought plantation, it’s violence.
Yes, we’ve gone from “sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me” to “words and thoughts are violence, too.” Of course, the fact that words, or the thought of words being spoken, is met with violence by leftists across the country on college campuses is an irony lost on the irrational liberal mob.
It was bad enough when this spoiled child mentality was confined to universities, but it is creeping into adulthood and into (presumably) professional work environments. Laura Ingraham is facing a boycott because she said David Hogg, perhaps the most self-entitled person in the country at the moment, was “whining” about not getting into the colleges of his choice. It’s a well-orchestrated boycott organized by adults at Media Matters, a Goebbels-esque “charity” who’ve monetized outrage and perfected the fascist’s dream of enforcing conformity.
What Ingraham did was ill-advised – for all his bluster and media attention, Boss Hogg doesn’t just act like a baby, he basically is one, crying when he doesn’t get his way. A good rule of thumb in politics is to ignore the musings of anyone who hasn’t completed puberty. Sure, he’s said horrible things about innocent people that went unchecked, unchallenged, and uncorrected on MSNBC and CNN, but they’re essentially the video version of Pravda for the DNC. In the grand scheme of things, Hogg will be the answer no one gets in a trivia contest in a few months, so he’s hardly worth burning calories over.
Still, the outrage machine locked and loaded, and pounced when they saw an opening. Their army of flying monkeys in the media quickly piled on and some sponsors dropped the show.
While stupid, it’s perfectly legal (though how Media Matters maintains its tax-exempt status remains a mystery). The problem isn’t that Hogg called for a boycott (likely with coordination from the adults who pull this strings), or even that MSNBC and CNN gleefully joined (without concern for the reality that, if conservatives were so inclined, they could do the same to them with the ample offensive ammunition their programming provides for pearl-clutching on a daily basis), it’s the companies caved immediately to a crack that rates just below not saying “bless you” when someone sneezes. I know I won’t patronize companies that capitulated and I doubt liberals will because they did.
But it’s not just on TV where non-liberal opinions are subject to the “tolerance” veto, print saw its own sacrifice this week.
Kevin Williamson was a writer at National Review (and probably will be again). For a week he was a writer at The Atlantic. The reason for that job only lasting a week is The Atlantic has a purity test, and Williamson failed it.
Purity tests used to be associated with racist groups, demanding someone’s blood be “pure” in order to belong. Still a hallmark of the progressive left, they’ve evolved to become the defining characteristic for all progressive groups. You’re either all the way in, or you’re out – period.
Williamson is conservative, and that was enough for him not to be “pure” enough for the liberal Atlantic. It was couched by his spineless former boss, Jeffrey Goldberg, as being about comments Kevin made about supporting the death penalty for women who have abortions, but it was really much simpler than that.
A Klan of liberal writers were upset Goldberg had hired a conservative – a real conservative, not one of those David Frum/Jennifer Rubin-type writers who voted for Bush but feel guilty about it now so spend all their time writing about how awful Republicans are – and that was an unforgivable sin. Giving a non-doctrinaire thinker a platform is unacceptable. You can print vile things about any subject, as long as it’s liberal, in the Atlantic and you’ll remain in good standing with the Gestapo.
Conform and you’re part of gang that likes to consider its members rebels; think differently and you’re an unacceptable square.
Of course, Goldberg knew what Williamson believed when he hired him; it’s why he hired him – to dilute the shallow end of the thought pool a little. But even a little is too much. A 5-year-old can declare themselves to be the opposite sex and liberals demand the whole world accept it, be pro-life and you must be destroyed.
It’s not just abortion, there isn’t an issue where disagreement with progressive doctrine is tolerated. There are acceptable opinions, then there’s everything else. And everything else must be run out of town, killed, and have its grave soiled on a regular basis for all time. Mention Ronald Reagan to a liberal to see an example of not being able to tolerate any form of conservatism long after someone’s death.
Williamson will be fine, the people who love his writing will sing his praises and he’ll likely have another job by the end of the month, if not his old one back sooner. That’s not the issue here.
What this whole affair has exposed, yet again, is that liberalism is hate. It’s not made of hate, it doesn’t subsist on hate - it is hate. You are either one of them or you are their enemy. On an individual basis you can be friends with them, but especially in the political world, like the scorpion and the frog, if an opportunity comes along to destroy you, they will take it. It’s their nature.
That’s what is so amusing about so many “Never Trump” Republicans, of which Williamson was one. They get invited to the parties, they get invited to the conferences (airfare and deluxe accommodations included), they get the TV bookings, but they’re never really part of the club. The same reason liberals hate and are seeking to destroy Laura Ingraham is the same reason they hate and tried to destroy Kevin Williamson. Sure, the words were different, but everything else is the same.
The Atlantic can fire anyone they want, as can any company, it’s not a First Amendment issue if it doesn’t involve the government. This is beyond that.
These events, and ones like it, are symptomatic of the end of civility; the end of simply avoiding someone you don’t like or disagree with. It’s not enough, just not interacting with them. This is bigger, this is working to destroy people not because they slept with your spouse or stole your dog, but for daring to not agree with you.
The Daily Beast reported Williamson was fired, in large part, “because of what his especially violent belief could mean for workplace relationships with female colleagues who may or may not have had an abortion.” Thanks to the liberal mob, we’ll never know if the strong, independent feminists at The Atlantic would be reduced to blubbering babies at the prospect of running into someone who thinks abortion is murder at the coffee machine because they and their differently genitalic fellow travelers made sure it won’t happen.
Jeffrey Goldberg protected these strong, independent women who don’t need a man to protect them because they demanded it.
The bubble is restored, dissent silenced. And liberals celebrated it all.
Liberals aren’t your colleagues, they may tolerate a token, but only insofar as you serve their purposes. At a minimum, maybe these events will serve as an inspiration for more conservatives to take the gloves off when it comes to the political game, because too many times too many of us stand by, satisfied with the mantle of the moral high ground, while others are stabbed in the back.