The Cure For Political Dejection

from The American Spectator:

Streetcar Line


The Cure for Political Dejection

By Quin Hillyer on 7.29.10 @ 6:09AM



I really don't know what to write. We have a president who is so divisive that two longstanding pollsters of his own party write that "President Obama's divisive approach to governance has weakened us as a people and paralyzed our political culture."



We have columnists for major newspapers who are so nastily partisan that they fail to do even the most basic of investigatory requirements before sliming good, honest, decent Americans such as Justice Department whistleblower J. Christian Adams.



We have congressmen so eager to play gotcha that they try to blame former presidents for failing to do a constitutional duty even when the well-reported facts are that the operatives for the president of the congressman's own party unwittingly were the culprits in the supposed problem at issue. (Yeah, you won't know what I'm talking about; that's why you absolutely must read this link.)



We have a major congressional committee chairman who has conniption fits about not being given a $1 senior-citizen's discount, but who won't apologize for costing taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars by refusing for years to reform Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. (He also didn't seem too exercised about his boyfriend running a male prostitution ring out of his own basement, but that's another story.)



We have writers for publications respected by the "mainstream" media who are so vicious and dishonest that they would suggest randomly throwing around charges of racism without a shred of evidence -- a charge made the more despicable because one of the named victims of the smear happens to be one of the nicest, most decent people in all of Washington punditry or politics.



We have a national debt exploding so rapidly, by deliberate design of the president, that one almost believes he is trying to implement the Cloward-Piven strategy of manufactured crisis. Cause a political and economic cataclysm; use it as an excuse for radical executive orders and proto-martial law; that sort of thing. Again, I did say "almost." But we are getting to a point where it almost doesn't matter what the motivations are; the reality being created could have the same effect whether by intention or by autocratic reaction to the fruits of the leader's own incompetence.



We have a president who may as well have declared war on my home state. Or on the whole central Gulf Coast.



We have a speaker of the House so cynical (or batty) that she says we must pass a bill first in order to know what's in it, and a majority leader so accustomed to railroad jobs and internal autocracy that he actually makes fun of the idea of requiring that congressmen be allowed at least 72 hours to examine bills before voting on them.



We have Supreme Court nominees sailing through despite saying that genetic differences might make Latinas better judges (Sotomayor) and despite openly flouting the law to harm military recruiting in a time of war (Kagan), and despite wanting to rule that the Constitution forbids states from keeping currently incarcerated rapists and murderers from voting (Sotomayor) and despite manipulating both science and the law in order to keep the barbaric practice of partial birth abortion legal for another decade (Kagan). (Sorry, readers: I'm tired of providing links, but Google these things at the Washington Times and you'll find them.)



I could go on with other bad news, but I'm tired. I'm dejected. I'm disgusted. I'm furious. I'm disheartened and disillusioned.



I want fair play and integrity and intellectual consistency and common decency from all points on the political spectrum. But those attributes are not as prevalent on the right as they should be, and it seems they are almost nonexistent on the left. I don't mind honest and respectful disagreements; I am sickened by vicious attacks without substance.



And, dear reader, I assume you agree. I hate writing all these "I" sentences (yikes: I almost sound like Obama!), so let's make this about you. What are you going to do about all this? What do you want to see happen? How much do you care about your country and your community?



If you are reading this, the answer to the questions in the last sentence is probably "one heck of a lot." You care. You have aspirations for communities of freedom and comity. You want to stop all of these political horrors, and you want to stop cultural horrors not even touched upon here but that could take pages and pages of exposition. You want to believe in America. And, dare we say it without sounding too pie-in-the-sky, you want to do what Ronald Reagan said all good Americans want to do: "to dream heroic dreams." And to work to make them reality.



So get to it. Keep up your activism. Talk to your neighbors. Volunteer at campaign headquarters. Contribute financially to candidates. Make phone calls. Go to rallies. Write thoughtful and concise letters to the editor. Help register like-minded voters. Drive elderly or infirm like-minded voters to the polls in November.



Get involved and stay involved. For the sake of your country, your loved ones, your future. Our future. Together. As Americans. Go do it. Now.



Quin Hillyer is a senior editorial writer for The Washington Times and a senior editor of The American Spectator. He can be reached at Qhillyer@gmail.com.



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