{"id":1704,"date":"2010-04-16T18:18:19","date_gmt":"2010-04-16T18:18:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/victorhanson.com.108-166-28-151.mdgnetworks.com\/wordpress\/?p=1704"},"modified":"2013-03-12T18:20:24","modified_gmt":"2013-03-12T18:20:24","slug":"why-all-the-wounded-fawns","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/why-all-the-wounded-fawns\/","title":{"rendered":"Why All the Wounded Fawns?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>by Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n<p>NRO&#8217;s\u00a0<em>The Corner<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Why are charges of racism and political extremism suddenly in the air?<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Party politics is always the norm, but what is unusual this time around is the juxtaposition between the once-soaring Obama unity rhetoric of the past and the hardball Chicago politics of the present, amid a landscape of feigned outrage that somehow politics are not &#8220;fair.&#8221; A bit of history is in order.<\/p>\n<p>Like it or not, throughout much of the Bush administration, the public was conditioned to believe the following:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Filibusters were a key traditional Senate protection designed to thwart the tyranny of the majority as embodied by the Bush-Cheney steamroller (Republicans, to be fair, often damned them as obstructionist).<\/li>\n<li>Recess appointments were the desperate acts of an executive without confidence in either popular or legislative support. Popular protests were grass-roots democracy at its finest.<\/li>\n<li>Occasional fringe groups that frequented anti-war, anti-Bush rallies, and called their president horrific epithets or threatened violence, were either irrelevant or forced into such understandable extremism by their own government&#8217;s excesses.<\/li>\n<li>The once-abhorrent expression of hatred in popular culture for the president (cf. e.g., Knopf&#8217;s Nicholson Baker novel\u00a0<em>Checkpoint<\/em>, about killing Bush, or the Toronto Film Festival award winning a docudrama about assassinating George Bush, or Jonathan Chait&#8217;s New Republic essay &#8220;The Case for Bush Hatred,&#8221; or Michael Moore&#8217;s abhorrent talk after 9\/11 about blue\/red state deaths and his empathy for terrorists in Iraq (&#8220;Minutemen&#8221; . . . &#8220;and they will win&#8221;)) were not merely not abhorrent, but often creative expressions that captured the mood of popular dislike, and certainly no grounds for ostracism (cf. Moore&#8217;s attendance at film openings and conventions with top Democratic politicians).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>In other words, apparently few on the Left realized that in their dislike for Bush, and in their tolerance for those who hated Bush, they more or less changed attitudes toward acceptable and unacceptable public expressions of dissent. So now the public sees their sudden call for polite discourse as abject hypocrisy. Even the toxic and increasingly desperate charge of racism has little currency now, and soon will boomerang back on the accusers.<\/p>\n<p>What does all this mean? A largely center-right country that polls consistently conservative apparently is beginning to think it was had in the election of 2008. A weak McCain campaign, weariness after eight years of Bush, fascination with a charismatic African-American landmark candidate, fright after the September 2008 meltdown, and\u00a0Obama&#8217;s centrist &#8220;purple&#8221;\u00a0rhetoric all provided the margin of victory, but apparently not the margin for an intended remake of America in which the daily conditions under which we live and\u00a0see the world (buying a Chevy, going to the mailbox on Saturday, attending the doctor, viewing Israel, making claims on Medicare, paying taxes, trying terrorists, etc.) would be radically altered in just a year.<\/p>\n<p>For the once-giddy Left, which misinterpreted the causes of the Obama landmark victory, the current pushback is seen as somehow terribly unfair, and thus arise both their own furor and their amnesia about their own past attitudes during the Bush years. I think ultimately many &#8220;progressives,&#8221; adherents to relativism, feel that the past furor over Bush in all its creepy manifestations was justified because of who Bush was; but that a similar methodology (or, in fact, far softer manifestations) of dissent toward Obama is unacceptable because of who Obama is (i.e. one can act rudely toward clearly bad people, but not rudely toward unquestionably &#8220;good&#8221; people). It is that simple.<\/p>\n<div align=\"center\">\n<p>\u00a92010 Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>by Victor Davis Hanson NRO&#8217;s\u00a0The Corner Why are charges of racism and political extremism suddenly in the air?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[590],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-ru","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":823,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/target-ann-romney\/","url_meta":{"origin":1704,"position":0},"title":"Target: Ann Romney","author":"victorhanson","date":"April 19, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online Recently a Democratic operative, Hilary Rosen, was furious that Mitt Romney had made reference to his wife\u2019s opinions on women\u2019s issues and the economy. So Rosen blurted out on a cable news show that Ann Romney \u201chasn\u2019t worked a day in her life.\u201d\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Women&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Women","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/women\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":11587,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/it-was-always-about-the-wall\/","url_meta":{"origin":1704,"position":1},"title":"It Was Always about the Wall","author":"victorhanson","date":"December 21, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review There was likely never going to be \u201ccomprehensive immigration reform\u201d or any deal amnestying the DACA recipients in exchange for building the wall. Democrats in the present political landscape will not consent to a wall. For them, a successful border wall is now considered\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;George W. Bush&quot;","block_context":{"text":"George W. Bush","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/george-w-bush\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3222,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-same-old-change\/","url_meta":{"origin":1704,"position":2},"title":"The Same Old Change","author":"victorhanson","date":"November 17, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services We will likely see a lot of political \"readjustments\" come January, once President-elect Barack Obama and many new Democratic congressmen assume office, and the Republican administration leaves. Take the filibuster. For much of the Bush administration, out-of-power Democratic senators defended it as a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;November 2008&quot;","block_context":{"text":"November 2008","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2008\/november-2008\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2066,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/our-flip-flopping-wars\/","url_meta":{"origin":1704,"position":3},"title":"Our Flip-Flopping Wars","author":"victorhanson","date":"December 21, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services We don't hear all that much about Iraq these days, do we? The war at one point almost tore apart this country. Public anger sent George W. Bush's approval ratings plummeting. And the outrage over our losses helped elect vocal anti-Iraq-war candidate Barack\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;December 2009&quot;","block_context":{"text":"December 2009","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2009\/december-2009\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3203,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/bush-through-the-obama-prism\/","url_meta":{"origin":1704,"position":4},"title":"Bush Through the Obama Prism","author":"victorhanson","date":"November 30, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson NRO's\u00a0The Corner I\u00a0think Obama may do more for George Bush's reputation than anyone thinks. I've collated the dozens of articles from liberal thinkers that explain why so far Obama \u2014 the candidate of hope and change, and cleaning out the entrenched status quo that so warps\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;November 2008&quot;","block_context":{"text":"November 2008","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2008\/november-2008\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1251,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/rethinking-george-bush\/","url_meta":{"origin":1704,"position":5},"title":"Rethinking George Bush?","author":"victorhanson","date":"September 20, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services Former President George W. Bush left office with the lowest approval ratings since Richard Nixon. In reaction, for nearly two years President Barack Obama won easy applause by prefacing almost every speech on his economic policies with a \"Bush did it\" put-down. But\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;September 2010&quot;","block_context":{"text":"September 2010","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2010\/september-2010\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1704"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1704"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1704\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1705,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1704\/revisions\/1705"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1704"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1704"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1704"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}