by Victor Davis Hansen, Hoover fellow
Liberals applaud with Obama what they damned with Bush.
Democrats in Congress recently went all-out to try to pass the Dream Act, an amnesty for illegal-alien students willing to enroll — and stay — in college. Most of those who opposed it were derided as heartless at best, racist at worse. An insolvent California — still struggling with its $15 billion budget shortfall — is trying to advance its own version of the bill that would contravene federal immigration law and cost millions of dollars.
At around the same time, the state has announced plans to release about 40,000 prison inmates due to a shortage of funds needed to address overcrowding. Highly taxed Californians can borrow money to send illegal aliens to school, but not to keep felons in prison.
Americans still seethe about the Wall Street meltdown of 2008. But the “fat-cat bankers,” in fact, were players in a far larger fraud made possible by liberal executives at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Bill Clinton’s appointees and insider friends such as Franklin Raines, Jim Johnson, Jamie Gorelick, and Robert Rubin made millions, while the agencies and banks they oversaw lost billions.
It was just disclosed that Rep. Barney Frank helped land a job at Fannie Mae for his then live-in boyfriend, Herb Moses — despite at the time sitting on a House oversight committee that monitored the federally regulated agency. Fannie Mae went belly up. Moses made a lot of money. And Frank kept assuring the public in hearings that the nearly insolvent agency was in no financial danger.
When news surfaced about Frank’s conflict of interest, he scoffed, “There is no rule against it at all,” and predicted the story would die. He was right: It did. But substitute scary names like Dick Cheney or Halliburton and it would not have.
Last week, President Obama quietly signed a renewal of the once-hated Patriot Act — rather nonchalantly from the United Kingdom via mechanical autopen. There was no media outrage, there were no hyperbolic campus protests, no juvenile outbursts from a Hollywood celebrity about shredding the Constitution. Most even forgot that senatorial candidate Barack Obama had once promised to help repeal the Patriot Act.
But then, such moral outrage belongs to the now fossilized age of George W. Bush’s presidency, when the exalted goal of stopping a conservative Texan justified any means of opposition necessary. We may continue almost all of his antiterrorism protocols, but they no longer earn elite outrage.
The same holds true of the ongoing efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq, which have somehow reverted to back-page news. MoveOn.org could not care less about the new involvement in Libya, and the media now could not care less about MoveOn.org — in the same manner that Cindy Sheehan and Michael Moore are now no more than extinct dinosaurs of a forgotten Jurassic age. After all, Iraq magically went from the “worst” mistake in U.S. foreign-policy history to one of the Obama administration’s “greatest achievements.”
Social Security and Medicare are nearing implosion. The aging baby boomers are about to retire en masse. They have no reputation for either stoic acceptance or self-sacrifice. The people are overtaxed, and the government is running a $1.6 trillion annual deficit. So either the retirement age must be upped, benefits cut, high payroll taxes further increased, or portions of the entitlements privatized to spur competition and efficiency.
And the progressive response to these proposed remedies? Instead of a detailed plan of salvation, we see ads portraying a Rep. Paul Ryan look-alike who is not just throwing an elderly woman out of her wheelchair, but sending her over a cliff as well.
There is a vast machinery of selective liberal outrage, fueled and lubricated by the media, universities, and celebrity entertainment. When the redistributive welfare state starts to run out of money, the gears and pulleys are flipped on and shrill charges of greed, cruelty, nativism, and racism spew out of the production line. The machine sputters and shuts down when an aggrieved liberal suddenly must either make cuts or adapt the very policies that he used to damn.
Understand the mechanics of selective outrage, and our upside-down politics becomes comprehensible: A state suing to enforce immigration law is tantamount to a racist intrusion on federal jurisdiction, but a state openly flouting federal statutes for the Dream Act is acting in enlightened, humanitarian fashion.
Greedy Wall Street insiders at the center of the 2008 meltdown could not possibly include progressive bureaucrats and their liberal enablers in Congress, who are interested in people first, profits last. Everything in 2006 that we were told was near fascistic about national security suddenly evolved into what is wonderful and necessary.
Great post!
Let’s not forget back during the Bush administration how orgasmic liberals and the MSM would get over dead US troops. They kept a running tally and celebrated deadly milestones.
I am sure the water carrying, cool aid drinking, shit sandwich eating liberals will ignore all of this. We need to keep hitting people over the head with this stuff, keep pointing out what a total pieces of crap Obama and his administration are.
The King is eating chili dogs and fries while the Queen is unveiling her new dietary plans for the rest of us. I am willing to bet chili dogs and fries will not be on that list. What a couple of tools we have vacationing in the White House!
But, if they are wrong for being outraged at Bush, then what? You’re now angry because they’ve learned their lesson?
What is exactly is pissing you off?
You wanted the Patriot Act, you have it. Now, you’re angry because Obama saw the light? You’re angry becauSe the “liberal media” is now AGREEING WITH YOU????
Aren’t you being selective as well?
WTF?
You guys would bitch if they hanged ya with a brand new rope.
If you’d pull your heads out you’d realize it is a phony outrage you ever see in the press, for they are a part of it all. If you’d add two and two, you’d realize the myth of a “liberal media,” and NONE of this would be surprising. You’re only surprised because you choose to be ignorant–which is the same thing as being stupid–which is the same thing as being partisan.
I’ve seen Victor Davis Hansen speak at Fresno State before, and I kind of liked him. At the time I thought that, while he was certainly much further to the right than myself, he at least had an original perspective and was not at all like most right wing commentators. Since then, about every two or three weeks, the Fresno Bee posts a “new” editorial by Hansen which rarely says anything different from the content of this article. Now I can’t help but see him as the “intellectual” version of Rush Limbaugh. Trotting out the same tired talking points week after week and getting paid for it.
Hansen is right to point out the lack of outrage given to Obama’s expansion of the Patriot Act and other violations of power that Bush began. This is an outrage. But as Quentin said…what exactly is he outraged about? That we aren’t mad at Obama, or that we were mad at Bush? We should be angry about BOTH of them for the same reasons. The Patriot Act is inarguably a huge expansion of federal power. It’s also a violation of our civil liberties. But Hansen and the Tea Party aren’t concerned about that; the biggest threat to liberty in their imaginations is a slight tax increase on the wealthiest 2%.
President Obama should be feeling heat for breaking his promises by continuing the failed and unconstitutional Bush policies. The only liberal source I know of that has really done this is Salon.com. But conservatives are in no position to criticize Obama for this, lest they reveal themselves to be the hypocrites they accuse liberals of being.
Also, Hansen is dead wrong about the Dream Act. Productive, high school graduate, college eligible immigrant kids (most of whom had no choice in the matter of coming to America and have been here all their lives) SHOULD be given priority when it comes to becoming an American citizen. How is this even an argument?
Chris: “The Patriot Act is inarguably a huge expansion of federal power.”
The most egregious expansion of federal power is not the Patriot Act, which is at least carefully crafted and dewsigned for the protection of US citizens (Constitution calls for defense of the nation).
The most egregious expansion of federal power is, inarguably, the welfare and entitlement state which demands more and more of working citizens. (Not included in the Constitution). It is in the grossly tangled web of taxes and regulation to support the unsustainable monster.
There is no question about the hypocracy on the left with regard to the war(s).
Quentin: “You’re now angry because they’ve learned their lesson?”
Learned their lesson? LEARNED THEIR LESSON? What utter and complete nonesense!
“Obama saw the light?”
Read the tea leaves about his future election chances and legacy if another 911 happened on his watch is more like it!
“…for they are a part of it all.”
Part of what all? Some paranoid conspiracy theory?
One of my major problems with Obama and the Left is he is pissing all over the people who voted for him and they act like its rain. If that were all, I would sit back and laugh but if he is willing to do that to the people who put him in power, what wont he do to the rest of us?
“The most egregious expansion of federal power is not the Patriot Act,”
But is it an expansion of federal power or isn’t it?
You are against expansions of federal power, are you not?
“The most egregious expansion of federal power is, inarguably, the welfare and entitlement state”
All of the welfare measures you oppose were enacted by Congress, acting within their constitutionally mandated duties as the representatives of their respective states. No “expansion of power” occurred. The Patriot Act did not go through any such democratic process before becoming law; it was an unprecedented expansion of the power of the executive branch, and it is unconstitutional.
“But is it an expansion of federal power or isn’t it?”
Of course its an expansion of power. It happens when we are at war. Expansion does not mean abuse as detractors imply.
“…it was an unprecedented expansion of the power of the executive branch, and it is unconstitutional.”
Chris that is one point of view but it isn’t the only point of view. Legal scholars have voiced positions both for and against. The fact that it was indeed altered by Congress and won majority bipartisan approval, renewed by Congress, and adopted by this President makes your position moot. The resolution giving Bush the power to wage war by whatever means he deemed necessary also lends weight to the legality of the act.
The welfare and entitlement state is an insidious expansion of government power. Obamacare explodes this expansion and it was not written according to accepted practices of the legislative branch. These programs are used to buy votes year after year. They are used to keep portions of the population needy and have caused the break up the family and encouraged single parenthood, drug abuse, gangs, rising high school drop out rates, and homelessness. They are used to favor certain segments of the population over others. This does not fit into the paradigm the founders envisioned when they created this republic. It more closely resembles the Marxist state where control is centralized.
(I actually don’t like any of the entitlement programs, including MCARE and SS – but I admit it will be difficult, if not impossible, to turn this error around)