FROM White House advisor Karl Rove's attack on liberals last week to Democratic Party Chairman Howard Dean's slur against Republicans earlier this month, the punditocracy has been busy bemoaning the purported incivility of politics. Far from being a sign of social decay, the recent resurrection of strong rhetoric should be embraced as the hallmark of a mature democracy. In a pluralistic society such as ours, it is only proper that political debate should be free-flowing, honest, open and uninhibited.
In this age of sensitivity training and moral relativism, Americans have all but lost the courage of their convictions and their voices. Under the tyranny of political correctness and corporate and academic speech codes, we are terrified to speak our minds and tell things as we see them. Thus, it was so refreshing to hear Karl Rove ridicule liberals in a speech last week for wanting to "offer therapy and understanding for our attackers" in the wake of Sept. 11, 2001.
While Democrats, feigning indignance, immediately called on Rove to apologize, his remarks were undeniably true. Let's flash back four years: Right after the 2001 terrorist attacks, thousands of protesters came out of the woodwork and started demonizing America. Before the administration had even announced how it would respond, peaceniks started jumping down President Bush's throat. Radical polemicist Amiri Baraka wrote a screed full of racist innuendo about our country's political leaders. As a college senior, I personally clashed with hundreds of angry young militants beating on bongo drums in their war against the war on terrorism.
While many of my liberal friends also stood up for America, the fact remains that the protestors were not conservatives, but liberals. Democrats who now claim deep offense are crying crocodile tears. Where were they when Noam Chomsky, MoveOn.org and company, chomping at the bit, seized the tragedy to renew their raison d'être of slandering the United States?
As truthful as Rove was about liberals, Howard Dean was equally accurate in noting that Republicans are "a pretty monolithic party where they all behave the same, and they all look the same. It's pretty much the white Christian party." While the rest of his speech was typical Howard Dean -- off the wall, angry and downright libelous -- Republicans cannot deny the statistical fact that they are more demographically homogeneous than are the Democrats.
Of course, the blame for this phenomenon lies mostly with the liberals. The Democrats' group-identity demagogues have turned race into a political allegiance rather than a physical or cultural trait. To wit, people are not ethnically black, Hispanic, or Asian; they are politically so. And unless they all march in lockstep with the liberal party line, they are denounced as race traitors. In light of this mindless groupthink, is it any wonder that the Democratic Party holds racial minorities in a headlock?
All of this is a slight digression from the issue at hand, however. The point is: Why shouldn't conservatives call liberals on their failure to rein in the anti-American militants among their ranks after Sept. 11? Why shouldn't liberals accuse conservatives, albeit hypocritically, of not being more inclusive? In short, why shouldn't people tell us how they really feel? I for one, have made no bones in this column -- or ever -- about where I stand on the issues. And what's so wrong with that?
In any event, I am not convinced the purported incivility in civil discourse is not really a creation of the chattering class. Even as they chide politicians for strong language, the pundits yell and scream at each other to be heard on TV shows like the "McLaughlin Group" and "Crossfire." Meanwhile, the American people salute straight talkers like Sen. John McCain, and may they continue to do so. In a democracy, the greatest fear we should have is not the proliferation of passion and debate, but rather their extermination.
Eric Wang is a Cavalier Daily columnist. He can be reached at ewang@cavalierdaily.com.
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