links<\/a>\u00a0[1] that crime to the \u201cpoisonous political environment that was interpreted by one right-wing Jewish nationalist as a license to kill Rabin \u2014 he must have heard, \u2018God will be on your side\u2019\u2014 and so he did.\u201d<\/p>\nFriedman then notes the parallels with America today, similarities that \u201cturn my stomach: I have no problem with any of the substantive criticism of President Obama from the right or left. But something very dangerous is happening. Criticism from the far right has begun tipping over into delegitimation and creating the same kind of climate here that existed in Israel on the eve of the Rabin assassination.\u201d<\/p>\n
The hypocrisy of this complaint, leaving aside the complete falseness of the analogy with Israel, is breathtaking even for the\u00a0New York Times<\/em>. First, though, consider the reductive psychological analysis typical of liberals, who see all behavior as the consequence of environmental factors outside the individual, rather than being the result of choice. Like those who see jihadist terrorists as mere reactors to Western crimes against Muslims, Friedman seems to think that Rabin\u2019s assassin was programmed and triggered by heated political rhetoric. It does not occur to him that he could have been a free-agent choosing to act on his fanatical beliefs.<\/p>\nBut Friedman\u2019s point has nothing to do with this useless analogy. Rather, he wants the drama of Rabin\u2019s assassination to serve as an emotionally lurid smokescreen for his partisan attempt to \u201cdelegitimize\u201d Obama\u2019s critics.<\/p>\n
This is where the hypocrisy comes in. Little that we\u2019ve heard so far from Obama\u2019s conservative critics comes close to the vicious slanders and rhetorical violence aimed at George Bush, Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld, and the Republican Party for eight years, the aim of which was precisely the \u201cdelegitimation\u201d that\u2019s now got Friedman in a fit. If Friedman needs some reminders of Bush hatred, he can see the recent article in National Review by Jay Nordlinger. Here are some highlights:<\/p>\n
\n- Howard Dean, Chairman of the Democratic National Committee: \u201cI hate the Republican and everything they stand for.\u201d Politics, Dean said, \u201cis a struggle of good and evil. And we\u2019re the good.\u201d<\/li>\n
- A\u00a0New Republic<\/em>\u00a0editor wrote an article called, \u201cThe Case for Bush Hatred,\u201d which started, \u201cI hate President George. W. Bush.\u201d<\/li>\n
- The premier of Michael Moore\u2019s 2004 cinematic agitprop, Fahrenheit 9\/11, which accused George Bush of attacking Afghanistan to profit his business friends, was attended by almost the whole Democratic Party establishment.<\/li>\n
- The Nazi analogy that these days so troubles the Democrats was a standard trope during Bush\u2019s presidency (remember \u201cBushitler\u201d?): Democratic Senator John Glen called the Republican campaign rhetoric \u201cthe old Hitler business.\u201d Al Gore spoke of \u201csquadrons of digital brownshirts.\u201d Julian Bond, chairman of the NAACP, said that the Republicans\u2019 \u201cidea of equal rights is the American flag and the Confederate swastika flying side by side.\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Notice, too, that as Nordlinger points out, these comments come from \u201cpolitical and intellectual leaders, not the ordinary rabble, who were far worse.\u201d<\/p>\n
I wonder, did Friedman back then fret about whether this \u201cpoisonous political environment\u201d could lead to violence against President Bush or further polarize the electorate? After all, many liberals were explicit about their desire to see the President dead:<\/p>\n
\n- CBS talk-show host Craig Kilborn showed Bush on screen with the caption \u201cSNIPERS WANTED.\u201d<\/li>\n
- In 2006, in an interview with Bill Maher John Kerry, responding to Maher\u2019s suggestion that he could have gone to New Hampshire and found a gift for his wife and politicked for the primary and so \u201ckilled two birds with one stone,\u201d retorted, \u201cOr I could have gone to 1600 Pennsylvania and killed the real bird with one stone.\u201d<\/li>\n
- The same year, at the Queens College graduation ceremony, New York comptroller Alan Hevesi said that Democratic Senator Charles Schumer would \u201cput a bullet between the president\u2019s eyes if he could get away with it.\u201d<\/li>\n
- In England, novelist Nicholas Baker wrote a novel about killing the President, and a TV movie,\u00a0Death of a President<\/em>, was broadcast.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Nordlinger recommends the zombietime.com blog for even more graphic visual evidence of the \u201cpoisonous political environment\u201d of the Bush years, one that most liberal commentators either ignored or defended as \u201crobust political speech\u201d or humorous exaggeration.<\/p>\n
The problem isn\u2019t the rudeness or vulgarity or even violence of political speech, all of which are typical of democracies with freedom of speech. It\u2019s the rank hypocrisy of liberals like Friedman who attempt to silence speech they don\u2019t like by invoking scary scenarios of assassination. And let\u2019s not forget the racial dimension of this newfound liberal sensitivity. From the beginning of Obama\u2019s campaign, his supporters have attempted to short-circuit robust criticism by raising the specter of assassination by frothing racist, a trick akin to Jimmy Carter\u2019s recent charge that criticism of Obama reflects inveterate American racism.
\nThe truth is, political speech in democracies has been notoriously vicious going all the way back to ancient Rome and Athens, where orators and comic poets alike charged their political enemies with everything from homosexual prostitution and incest, to plundering the treasury and selling out their country to the enemy.<\/p>\n
Give ordinary people the power of free speech, and most of the time they will use it without the delicacy or civility affected by elites. A politician who complains about the tone of his fellow citizens\u2019 exercise of their First Amendment right is like a celebrity whining about paparazzi: If you don\u2019t like it, get a different job. But don\u2019t try to impose a double standard the purpose of which is to silence the political speech you don\u2019t like.<\/p>\n
\n
\u00a92009 Bruce S. Thornton<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
by Bruce S. Thornton FrontPage Magazine You know liberals are edging toward a full Jonestown-style meltdown when someone as smart as New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman starts losing it.<\/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":[22,651],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-zW","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":5458,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/by-the-sword-ibrahim-and-spencer-unveil-the-truth-of-islam\/","url_meta":{"origin":2228,"position":0},"title":"By the Sword: Ibrahim and Spencer Unveil the Truth of Islam","author":"victorhanson","date":"July 10, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton Private Papers The\u00a0New York Times\u2019s Thomas Friedman is right on the mark most of the time in his analysis of the dysfunctions troubling the Muslim world and of our own failures in confronting them. Particularly important is his frequent criticism of our feckless disregard of our\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Bruce S. Thornton"","block_context":{"text":"Bruce S. 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On matters of trade, China is always flexible in responding to critics of its asymmetrical, 30-year\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "China"","block_context":{"text":"China","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/china\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":808,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-eu-speeds-for-the-iceberg\/","url_meta":{"origin":2228,"position":2},"title":"The EU Speeds for the Iceberg","author":"victorhanson","date":"May 2, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton FrontPage Magazine The foreign minister of Spain recently compared the troubled EU to the Titanic, a metaphor not quite so trite given the new research into why the world\u2019s biggest ocean liner collided with an iceberg. Titanic historian Tim Maltin argues that a cold-water mirage may\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Bruce S. 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