Hints of a Liberal Backlash?
The essay excerpts which follow are extracted from an op-ed piece that appeared in, at least, the Washington Post.
This is strange because the Washington Post is a Liberal/Progressive newspaper, and this essay is severely critical of President Obama.
I present here more of an excerpt than might be allowed, strictly speaking. It's about half of the original text. Nevertheless, I do not believe that I am transgressing upon a copyright by publishing it here. The real problem is that I do not have a link to the original material, so if your interest is piqued, you'll have to search the original out for yourself.
By Matt Patterson (columnist - Washington Post, New York Post, San Francisco Examiner)
Government & Society:
Years from now, historians may regard the 2008 election of Barack Obama as an inscrutable and disturbing phenomenon, the result of a baffling breed of mass hysteria akin perhaps to the witch craze of the Middle Ages...Imagine a future historian examining Obama's pre-presidential life: ushered into and through the Ivy League despite unremarkable grades and test scores...a cushy non-job as a "community organizer"; a brief career as a state legislator devoid of legislative achievement...and finally an unaccomplished single term in the United States Senate...And then there is the matter of his troubling associations: the white-hating, America-loathing preacher who for decades served as Obama's "spiritual mentor"; a real-life, actual terrorist who served as Obama's colleague and political sponsor...Norman Podhoretz addressed the question recently in the Wall Street Journal...
...[B]ecause Mr. Obama was black, [he was] entitled in the eyes of liberaldom to have hung out with protesters...he was given a pass. Let that sink in: Obama was given a pass—held to a lower standard—because of the color of his skin...
Podhoretz puts his finger, I think, on the animating pulse of the Obama phenomenon—affirmative action...the motivating sentiment behind all affirmative action laws and regulations, which are designed primarily to make white people, and especially white liberals, feel good about themselves. Unfortunately, minorities often suffer so that whites can pat themselves on the back. Liberals routinely admit minorities to schools for which they are not qualified, yet take no responsibility for the inevitable poor performance and high drop-out rates which follow.
Liberals don't care if these minority students fail; liberals aren't around to witness the emotional devastation and deflated self-esteem resulting from the racist policy that is affirmative action. Yes, racist. Holding someone to a separate standard merely because of the color of his skin—that's affirmative action in a nutshell, and if that isn't racism, then nothing is.
And that is what America did to Obama...All his life, every step of the way, Obama was told he was good enough for the next step, in spite of ample evidence to the contrary. What could this breed if not the sort of empty narcissism on display every time Obama speaks?...Not one original idea has ever issued from his mouth—it's all warmed-over Marxism of the kind that has failed over and over again for 100 years...And...Obama is constantly blaming anything and everything else for his troubles. Bush did it; it was bad luck; I inherited this mess. It is embarrassing to see a president so willing to advertise his own powerlessness, so comfortable with his own incompetence. But...[t]he man has never been responsible for anything, so how do we expect him to act responsibly?
In short: our president is a small and small-minded man, with neither the temperament nor the intellect to handle his job.
When you understand that, and only when you understand that, will the current erosion of liberty and prosperity make sense. It could not have gone otherwise with such a man in the Oval Office.
