One of the favorite clichés employed – seemingly in every speech – by our most recent former president is one that is etched in so many American brains like the sound of fingernails on a chalkboard: “That’s not who we are.” This past week has provided a unique opportunity for all Americans to really ask, “Who are we?” First, let’s take a little trip down a fog-shrouded, muddy memory lane.
Barack Obama used this loaded, moralizing device, “That’s not who we are,” in so many hectoring speeches that David Rutz at the Washington Free Beacon found at least 46 examples. He even produced a helpful YouTube compilation to drive the point home. For those with the stomach to watch it, you can find it here. Mr. Obama deployed this trope when lecturing us about the twisted leftist perspective on everything from allowing “refugees” into our country from jihadist hotbeds like Syria, where no screening systems exist, to the moral imperative to nationalize our health care system, and destroying millions of Americans’ health care coverage in the process, to not voting for his 2016 opponent, Mitt Romney, who would be a scourge on America. (Well, maybe Obama got that right.)
The Democrats were so taken with this odious, implicit condemnation of their philosophical opponents, that recently-announced Democratic presidential candidate, Kamala Harris, has adopted it herself, using it in her much-anticipated announcement that she was running for president. All I could think when I heard that was, “Please, no more.” Surely, there is some other phrase Democrats can come up with to express their disdain for the perceived lack of morality among their conservative opposition.
Chris Scalia, the son of the late, great Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, penned a commentary piece in USA Today a couple years back in which he astutely observed that Mr. Obama used this phrase so often, because “Simply put, ‘that’s not who we are’ performs a very difficult rhetorical maneuver: It’s a way to call a policy, idea, or person un-American without using that harsh term. It subtly conveys what would otherwise be an incendiary claim.”
Now, I don’t pretend to speak for “we” Americans or to know who 330 million Americans collectively “are." I know who I am. That’s about the extent of it. But let’s consider who the modern Democrats appear to be, and what they stand for, at least if we take a look at the utterances of some of their luminaries over, say, the past month or so.
Let’s start with the estimable governor of my state of Virginia. What a remarkable week we beheld listening to this otherwise dull politician. We actually saw Governor Ralph Northam – an actual pediatrician who presumably took the Hippocratic Oath when he received his medical degree – calmly explaining to a benighted radio audience what dullards we were for not understanding the whats and wherefores of a new piece of legislation authored by his fellow Democrat, Virginia Representative Kathy Tran, which eliminated most restrictions on abortions up to the point of birth, to include murdering infants born alive. Here’s what Dr. Northam actually said about Rep. Tran’s bill:
“If a mother is in labor, I can tell you exactly what would happen. The infant would be delivered. The infant would be kept comfortable. The infant would be resuscitated if that’s what the mother and the family desired, and then a discussion would ensue between the physicians and the mother.”
Think about that. A doctor/governor was defending a new Democrat-sponsored bill that allows for a mother and a doctor to keep a baby who has survived its trip through mom’s birth canal and taken its first breath in this wonderful world to be “made comfortable” by same mother and doctor, before mom and doc have a “discussion” about that baby’s fate, assuming they were kind enough to resuscitate the baby, “if that’s what the mother and the family desired.” Bloodless doesn’t begin to describe the scenario that Dr. Northam so calmly laid out (if Northam is worthy of that appellation).
Gee, Doc, what comes next?
I would really like to have heard Dr. Mengele, er, Dr. Northam, continue with his hypothetical scenario. Now, if mom and you decide that little Baby Jane is unfit to live in the awesome Liberal America you envision, how exactly would you dispatch this small child created in the image of God? Perhaps you would use the Gosnell Method, apparently perfected by the good liberal Democrat Kermit Gosnell, which involves “snipping” their necks. As painfully described by one of Gosnell’s employees, who testified against him at trial: “It didn't have eyes or a mouth but it was like screeching, making this noise. It was weird. It sounded like a little alien," she reportedly testified of the death of a baby at Gosnell’s blood-drenched hands. Of course, Dr. Gosnell didn’t call this “killing” the baby. So nasty. Instead, he called it “ensuring fetal demise.” So nice.
Interestingly, the 281-page gruesome grand jury report detailing Dr. Gosnell’s practices has been removed from the City of Philadelphia’s website, where it apparently once resided, but no longer. Now why would that be? Fortunately, the good people at CNS News uploaded a copy, so that Dr. Northam will have some reading material to peruse during the free time he’ll no doubt soon be enjoying as the ex-Governor of Virginia.
But Gov. Northam’s illustrations of “who the Democratic Party is” only kept coming. Thanks to the good people at Big League Politics, we were treated to a glimpse of Gov. Northam’s page in his 1984 medical school yearbook, which depicts a photo of two people, presumably one being the good doctor, posing in full-on KKK regalia and Bojangles-worthy blackface costume. Before trying to deny that he was one of the idiots in the photo, Northam admitted that he was, in one of the most bizarre and inept examples of political crisis management ever, thus demonstrating not only his innate racism, but his complete lack of integrity. Wow. Now I’m beginning to understand who the Democrats REALLY are. Thanks, Gov!
But let’s not forget another of the brightest lights in the Democrat constellation: Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Or, as her friends like to call her, AOC. Or, as I like to call her, Ay-Ock, because the more you can reduce the number of syllables required to identify this woman, the less breath you have to expend, and the better off you will be.
This new congresswoman, whose every utterance sounds like it burst forth from the mouth of a wide-eyed freshman in a Philosophy 101 class at a $70,000+ per year liberal arts college, has compiled quite the collection of, like, TOTSRIDIC quotes (that’s “totally ridiculous” in text-lingo for us unhip old codgers). Yes, this brainiac actually compared “climate change”, which has been occurring, well, since the formation of the universe, to Nazi Germany. I’m sure that would come as a surprise to my late great father, Charles Marshall, who vividly described in his book, A Ramble through My War: Anzio and Other Joys, walking over the bodies of American soldiers killed by Nazi Germany’s soldiers, that were frozen in death by rigor mortis in gruesome contortions. Sorry, Ay-Ock, you know nothing.
And a final mention goes to two new Democratic Muslim Representatives, Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib. Ms. Omar, from Minneapolis, who has credibly been accused of having married her brother as part of an immigration fraud scheme, enjoys calling Israel an “apartheid regime.” Minnesota, you must be so proud. For her part, Michigan’s Rashida Tlaib gloated at a press conference that she tells her young son that the President of the United States is a motherf----r. Just wow.
So while I don’t think anyone should presume to say who “we”, as Americans, are, I think the puzzle is coming together of who the modern Democrat Party is. Maybe that’s why Howard Schultz was so shocked that his fellow Democrats have resoundingly rejected him -- a mostly liberal, but very successful, businessman, who believes in capitalism, hard work and striving for success -- as a potential Democratic presidential candidate.
Matthew Continetti has written an excellent piece opining that President Trump has caused Democrats to lose their minds. But I think President Trump has just caused Democrats to reveal who they truly are.
William F. Marshall has been an intelligence analyst and investigator in the government, private, and non-profit sectors for more than 30 years. He is a senior investigator for Judicial Watch, Inc. (The views expressed are the author’s alone, and not necessarily those of Judicial Watch.)