Reason, Political Dissent, and Your Inner Racist

Is it possible to disagree with Barack Obama, even passionately, without becoming the object of McCarthyite slander attacks? Maureen Dowd has started it rolling in full gear: "Some people just can’t believe a black man is president and will never accept it" ("Boy, Oh, Boy," New York Times, Sept. 12, 2009).

Seeing his opportunity to say what was on his mind, Rep. Hank Johnson (D-GA) mused, "I guess we'll probably have folks putting on white hoods and white uniforms again, and riding through the countryside intimidating people." Here is the Congressman's complete statement.



Jimmy Carter is pleased that people are finally agreeing with him, so he gets out front in an interview.



...to which a friend of a friend on Facebook (you understand) commented: "Jimmy Carter is like grandpa. You listen to him and laugh, but you don't really take him seriously, because you never really know if he knows where he is, or if he is wearing pants."

Democrats just don't know how to deal with people who have principled disagreement with them. On the one hand, they spent their college years shouting people into submission with incendiary name-calling. On the other hand, since they are entirely convinced that the progress of moral history culminates in whatever their sentiments happen to be at the time, everyone who stands in opposition to them constitutes an homogenous group of monsters that includes Vlad the Impaler, Adolf Hitler, George W. Bush, and your grandmother.