The Persistence of Memory

I usually avoid controversial topics on my blog. Since no one reads my blog, I don't know why I do this.

So I'm going to say some things here that might be controversial. But they're things I've been thinking for a long time and by-God I'm going to say them.

Why not? Everyone else pops off on their blogs, and damn the flaming e-mails they might get in response. I've been blogging for three years and have received only so many e-mails as I could count on the fingers of one hand. So here goes:

Today, April 4, 2008, is the 40th anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. So this is the most appropriate day (this year anyway) to make the following statement:

Liberals have been "dining out" for more than four decades on the fact that they were right about one -- and only one -- thing.

That is correct. Liberals have never been right about anything. They're always wrong. Except for that one time that they won't let anybody forget about.

Items:

1. They told us we were losing in Vietnam, so we did. Only problem was, we were winning when they said it through their official mouthpiece, Walter Cronkite. Unfortunately in 1968 network TV news carried a lot more influential weight than it does now, and people were inclined to believe whatever Uncle Walty told them. So when Cronkite declared the Vietnam War "unwinnable" after the Tet Offensive in 1968, never mind the fact that the Tet Offensive was an act of desperation by the communists; never mind the fact that we had the North Vietnamese basically on the run at that point; everyone believed Uncle Walty and communism's triumph in that corner of the world was assured.

2. As W. Emmett Tyrell pointed out in this morning's Washington Times, when the stock market crashed in 1987, Liberals began marching around the block in lock-step, whacking their washtubs and proclaiming that President Ronald Reagan "sounded like Herbert Hoover" when he insisted that the economy was fundamentally sound. Depression, disaster and mass unemployment were all around the corner, they sang in chorus like the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. "This debacle marks the last chapter of Reaganomics," Michael Kinsley crowed, no doubt feeling his oats after tap-dancing to work that morning with visions of Democrats re-taking the White House in 1988 dancing through his head. Anyone remember the Great Depression of 1988? I don't either. Wrong again, babies.

(By the way, I don't understand why anyone would take seriously anything any liberal Democrat says, ever, on the subject of the U.S. economy. Our economy is based on free-market capitalism, and it is a basic tenet of the liberal faith that free-market capitalism is evil and must be punished whenever it dares to create prosperity. (Liberals call prosperity "greed.") Why should people who think that way be trusted running a free-market economy? It's like the cliche about putting the fox in charge of the chicken coop.)

3. Liberals hooted and jeered and made jokes about "Star Wars" when President Reagan proposed a missile defense system in the 1980s. When people didn't laugh at their jokes, they started shouting that a missile defense system would bring about global nuclear holocaust by frightening the Russians (liberals were always more concerned about the Russians' feelings than they were about those of any of the millions and millions of people oppressed by Soviet communism) into launching a pre-emptive nuclear "first strike." Anybody remember that first strike? And by the way, where is the Soviet Union these days? (Cue sound of crickets chirping.) Wrong again, lefties.

4. When Rudy Giuliani dared to clean up New York City in 1993-94, a chorus of lefties began screaming their usual favorite words, "fascist" and "Hitler." They wrung their hands in despair that Adolf Giuliani was threatening the civil rights of muggers and rapists. And, by the way, interfering with the first amendment by mopping up the peep-show booths and porn shops on Times Square. People who would try and change the subject if you mentioned Castro locking up Cuban dissidents would pound the table and shout their lungs out defending the rights of muggers, rapists and pornographers. They even had the brass balls to try and sell the idea that crime, graffiti and garbage were part of New York's charm and must be protected against the incursions of Rudy the Fascist. Let's all vote Democrat, folks!

5. Violence in Iraq is down, like it or not. (Conservatives like it. Liberals don't; too much of their campaign strategy for 2008, laid out in 2007, depended on the situation in Iraq getting worse, allowing them to beat their breasts and wail about "quagmire.") No, Gen. David Petraeus' "surge" has, all-in-all, worked. Listen to those crickets chirping on the left. Nostalgic for the good old days of Vietnam, when hating America was a mark of hipness and worldly sophistication, liberals have been trying to sell the idea that Iraq is another Vietnam, and by the way using the same language: "unwinnable," "quagmire," "these people are not ready for democracy," etc. I'd dismiss them with a laugh as the Toothless Who Remember Being At Woodstock But Weren't, were it not for the fact that they have enough clout to intimidate the front-runners in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination into kowtowing fearfully in their direction. Both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are afraid enough of the left-wing nutjobs on the Stalinist side of their party's bullring to mouth defeatist rhetoric about Iraq in fear of alienating them. Let's get this in perspective, folks. 4,000 Americans have died in Iraq. To declare defeat and walk away now in the hope of keeping that jerk-off who runs the Daily Kos happy, would be a supreme disservice to the memory of those 4,000. Yes, the war in Iraq needs to end. But not in the U.S. surrender that liberals wearing Che Guevara T-shirts want.

These are just five things. I could go on and on and on. LBJ's "War on Poverty" created urban housing projects that later had to be dynamited when they turned into 10-story slums. FDR's New Deal did NOT end the Depression. It extended it by repeatedly preventing the free market from correcting itself. Don't believe liberals when they tell you that FDR ended the Depression. World War II ended the Depression. Period.

The same people who a generation ago were trying to sell the idea that nuclear holocaust was imminent are now trying to tell us that global warming is going to destroy the planet unless we turn all power over to Al Gore and let him bullyrag all the governments of the world into regulating business and industry into the ground (the left's wettest wet dream -- remember? Free-market capitalism is evil and must be punished) in the name of "saving the planet." Pardon me if I'm skeptical. This all just sounds too familiar to me. Remember Cabrini Green. Remember "The Day After" -- an eminently forgettable 1983 TV movie that nevertheless got the advance publicity of a Beatles reunion tour because it was about the nuclear war that the media were trying to convince everyone Reagan was going to start. Remember Uncle Walty telling us that Vietnam was unwinnable when we were in fact winning.

"Left is right and right is wrong?"

Hah. THE LEFT HAS NEVER BEEN RIGHT ABOUT ANYTHING.

Except once. Yes, they got it right, in the 1960s, on civil rights. William F. Buckley Jr. had the wrong take when he mistook the civil rights movement for the triumph of lawlessness.

Well, at least he had the balls to admit, years later, that he had made a mistake. I can't remember a recorded instance of a liberal ever admitting he or she was wrong about anything, even in the face of an avalanche of evidence. (Not unless, like David Mamet, they've just committed the apostasy of becoming conservatives.) Even now, 17 years after the implosion of the USSR, I have yet to hear one single voice on the left admit that they were wrong in having a soft spot in their hearts for communism. Bring it up; they'll try to change the subject. I guarantee it. They'll stick their fingers in their ears and start humming. Watch.

So here's my point. On this, the 40th anniversary of the villainous murder of Martin Luther King Jr., the liberal left in America is marking more than 40 years of exploiting that one single issue. They got that one thing right, 45 years ago, and ever since have been telling America, through their panting running dogs in the news media, that they have sole possession of the moral high ground and should be entrusted with all and everything. The message is loud and clear: "We're the good guys. Remember? ("Remember" is the key operative word here -- they want people to remember pretty far back.) Remember how we all held hands during the "I Have A Dream" speech? (1963, before half the current U.S. population was born.) That should remind you that only we are the friends of the poor, the downtrodden, and the enemies of those evil "special interests!" (Yeah, right. Last year Democrats took more money from rich contributors than Republicans did.) And besides, we all know -- you should know, because we've been telling you for 40 years -- that those mean old Republicans are all ... racists! ("Racist" is the second favorite name-calling staple among liberals. The first is "fascist.") And don't forget to remember!

I remember this, which you will never, ever, catch the mainstream media remembering: for 100 years (that's a century, folks) the Democratic Party was the party of the Ku Klux Klan.

Okay, you're never going to read that anywhere else, so I'll say it again: For 100 years, (that's a century, folks) the Democratic Party was the party of the Ku Klux Klan.

I want you to understand the ramifications of that. When you look in horror at those gruesome photographs of lynchings in the South from the 1920s and '30s, that is NOT a group of Republicans you're looking at. Those lynchers are Democrats, folks. All of them. Today Democrats are forever calling Republicans "racists." It was Democrats who actually lynched black people. That is not my opinion. That is a fact of history.

Nobody in the mainstream media wants anyone to remember that. But it's true. Abraham Lincoln, who for reasons of political expedience issued the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, was a Republican. For that reason alone, for a century after the Civil War, the South was solidly, firmly, unsplittingly Democrat. No southerner would vote Republican to save his children from drowning. The original "Yellow-Dog Democrats," who boasted that they would "vote for a yellow dog" before they would vote for a Republican, were NOT, as their present-day co-religionists would like you to believe, Woodstock-attending, Birkenstock sandal-wearing, up-with-people, down-with-capitalism types. They were die-hard southerners, often members of the Klan, who were nursing a "mad" at the party of Lincoln. Civil Rights: 45 years. KKK: 100 years. But it's the longer of those two legacies you'll never, ever see mentioned in the Washington Post, where E.J. Dionne is no doubt still celebrating the Bear-Stearns meltdown by smothering his picture of John Kenneth Galbraith with wet kisses.

My old friend and fellow Mason Howard Freelove, a self-described "Yellow Dog" Democrat, proud of his opposition to "injustice," is invited to think about this.

See ya around, y'all.