Category Archives: Liberal

When considering the implications of Bill Mahers latest antics, it is important to state that Maher has over the years become the trusted media host for black left-wing intellectuals. His roster of guests includes a whos who of the black intelligentsia from old stalwart Cornel West to MSNBC host Joy Reid. So given this history, it would seem surprising that Maher would so readily toss his friends under the bus by his casual on-air use of the n-word.

But if one really considers Maher and his history, a more complicated story emerges. Maher is a liberal prognosticator who exhibits a pretense of tolerance and open-mindedness thereby giving him comedic license to offend.

Mahers latest missive responding to Sen. Ben Sasses exhortation to engage in grassroots field: political organizing in Nebraska with the dismissive remark, Senator, Im a house n***er, is not surprising. But the remark was so out of context that it could not have been anything other than a strategically timed joke one that unfortunately missed the mark.

Read in the context of Mahers irreverent stance on many issues it seems that the use of the n-word was meant to remind black liberal intellectuals that they are the wholly owned property of the liberal elite. It was an open admission of something conservatives have noted all along black intellectuals do not have an actual ownership stake of the liberal establishment, but in fact serve at the pleasure and whim of the liberal wing of the Democratic Party.

Whether Maher, a 61-year-old white guy who has been employed by HBO for the past 14 years, actually considers himself a house negro is not whats significant here. He in fact may identify his job with that of a well-kept slave on the media plantation.

That Maher chose to use the n-word on his scripted talk show (deceptively named Real Time) was undoubtedly a calculated act. This was probably not the first time Maher has used the n-word in the presence of African-Americans. He probably believes that since he allows many of them to come on to his show and debate, and that he sticks up for them against conservative straw boogeymen, he therefore has earned license to use the term. Maher didnt ask any black person for such license of course, yet he assumed it, in the storied tradition of liberal arrogance and privilege of which he is a proud descendant.

It goes without saying that the n-word is a vulgar, disgusting term, with a history fraught with pain. As someone who grew up in the deep South at a time when many parents and relatives were openly and customarily called the n-word by whites, I know first-hand how hurtful it is. The word is an obscene smear created for the specific purpose of putting black people in their place relegating them to second-class citizenship, and alerting the intended victim that he is less than human. I have personally never used the term (nor any form of obscenity), and regard it as one of the most abhorrent terms in the English language. I dont like it when black entertainers use it, and I certainly dont like it when whites use it either. The word has no place in public discourse, much less in the enlightened sphere of intellectual debate.

Curiously, the reaction among black intellectuals to Bill Mahers verbal attack has been typically passive. They seem to have taken it on the chin and let him off the hook. No one has seriously demanded Mahers resignation from HBO, and there has been no organized boycott of his sponsors at the network. Can you image the reaction if a conservative host on Fox or any conservative media channel was caught using the n-word? The black community would be in total uproar, on the warpath, seeking blood, guts and retribution. And yet weve heard barely a peep from the black intellectual elite that polices conservatives speech like a mall cop on steroids.

The reason black intellectuals wont challenge Maher and the reason he still has a show after the incident is because they cant. Maher is smart. He calculates that he can get away with a lot more offense now that Trump is in the White House. With a guy like Trump on the other side of the street, he reasons, where are black folks going to go? They have no choice but to stay on the liberal plantation, no matter how much abuse the liberal elite heaps on them. Sadly, Mahers cynical calculus seems to be correct.

Now that he has gotten away with it, Mahers behavior, despite his tepid apology, is likely to get worse, not better. In the meantime, black intellectuals will undoubtedly accept these betrayals as the so-called price of progress. They will lie to themselves and justify such open racism because at the end of the day, they think it preferable to be kept on at the Democratic plantation than to leave and have to face big, bad Donald Trump on their own.

Armstrong Williams is owner of Howard Stirk Holdings, which owns TV stations in Charleston, Myrtle Beach and other cities. He was the SGA president from 1979 to 1981 at South Carolina State University.

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On the liberal plantation - The Times and Democrat

New York Times

Religious Liberals Sat Out of Politics for 40 Years. Now They Want in the Game. New York Times Frustrated by Christian conservatives' focus on reversing liberal successes in legalizing abortion and same-sex marriage, those on the religious left want to turn instead to what they see as truly fundamental biblical imperatives caring for the poor ...

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Religious Liberals Sat Out of Politics for 40 Years. Now They Want in the Game. - New York Times

The last time this country had a hung parliament, David Cameron and Nick Clegg made brave decisions that, somewhat surprisingly, delivered strong and stable government for five years. We should not be fooled into thinking that this hung parliament is comparable. This time, the 1970s offer a better, and less auspicious, precedent.

We mean no disrespect to the voters of Northern Ireland when we point out that most of the population of the United Kingdom have reservations about some of the policies of the Democratic Unionist Party.

We can accept the logic of support for Brexit providing the glue that would keep a deal together between the Conservatives and the DUP. Although it should be pointed out that in Northern Ireland the majority voted to remain in the EU, and that the DUP is just as opposed to the imposition of a hard border between the North and the Republic as any other party. How Northern Ireland can leave the EU and keep an open border with the EU is one of those you should have thought of that earlier questions.

However, it seems that Theresa May has in mind something more than an arms-length deal intended to protect her Governments business in the House of Commons. She has sent Gavin Williamson, her Chief Whip, to Belfast to try to negotiate a full coalition, including, as we report today, a seat or seats for the DUP at the Cabinet table.

This reflects the weakness of her position after losing her majority. The DUP is the only party to which she can turn. The Liberal Democrats oppose Brexit, commendably. They thought they could secure some of their policies in 2010 and indeed they did secure significant gains for liberalism and social justice but now the gulf between them and Ms May is too wide. The only other party that could deliver a Conservative government, the Scottish National Party, has made its implacable opposition to Ms Mays party well known.

The DUP knows what a strong position it is in. Its leaders remember how unionist parties used their leverage in the dying days of John Majors government (which lost its majority through deaths and by-elections in December 1996) and more significantly after the breakdown of the Lib-Lab pact in 1978. James Callaghans minority Labour government needed unionist votes to survive. It was a complete coincidence, of course, that the number of Northern Ireland seats was subsequently increased from 12 to 17.

This is a test, then, of Ms Mays integrity. If she deals with the DUP, she must do so without compromising her Governments support for gay rights, reproductive rightsand liberal values. She must stand by the assurances she gave to Ruth Davidson, the leader of the Scottish Conservatives on Friday. I was fairly straightforward with her and I told her that there were a number of things that count to me more than party. One of them is country, one of the others is LGBTI rights, Ms Davidson said. She said that Ms May agreed to try to use her influence to advance LGBTI rights in Northern Ireland.

At that stage, however, Ms Davidson was under the impression that the Prime Minister has already made it clear that it is not going to be a formal coalition. Ms Mays position as Prime Minister is already precarious enough. If she fails to stand up for equal rights, reproductive rightsand liberal values, she will find it unsustainable.

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Theresa May must stand up for gay rights, reproductive rights and liberal values - The Independent

The series opener between the Hays Larks and Liberal Bee Jays on Friday night was the textbook definition of a pitchers duel.

Larks starter Alex Lopez won the individual battle with Liberal starter Darin Cook. Lopez picked up his second win of the season with seven shutout innings, scattering five hits in the outing.

Through two starts, Lopez has a pair of wins and is yet to give up a run.

It feels pretty good right now, the Texas Wesleyan product said. Coming back out to Hays is always a great time. It was really good to start off this year with some good games.

Hays manager Frank Leo has come to expect nothing but quality from the second-year Lark.

It helps when youve seen a guy for a year. Its a guy you ran out in the championship game of the (NBC) World Series, Leo said. That tells you we have confidence in him.

Lopez retired the Bee Jays in order in the top of the first before the Larks plated the games only run.

Catcher Nick Jones ripped a one-out double before Jacob Boston plated him with a single for the games only run.

Lopez worked around a two-out single in the second before another 1-2-3 inning in the third. After the Larks stranded two in the bottom half, Lopez had to get himself out of a jam in the fourth.

An error, the only one of the game, put a man on before a single and a walk loaded the bases with two outs. Lopez made one of his better pitches on the night, catching Liberals Zac Cook looking on a 3-2 pitch to get out of the inning unharmed.

Hes an experienced guy that isnt going to get shook out there, Leo said. If he gets himself in a jam, he can step back and make pitches when he needs to.

Hays second baseman Johnathan Soberanes started a 4-6-3 double play to end the Liberal half of the fifth before the Bee Jays had their best opportunity in the sixth.

Jaron Robinson opened the top of the sixth with a double to the gap before Cale ODonnell singled, putting runners on first and third with no outs. Lopez got a strikeout before getting he got Bee Jay catcher Garrett Scott to ground into a double play.

It makes things really easy, said Lopez of pitching in front of a defense he trusts. You can just fill up the zone, and you know theyre going to have your back no matter what happens.

Hays outfielder Trevor Boone smacked a one-out double in the bottom of the sixth but stayed there after a pair of fly outs.

Lopez returned for his final inning in the seventh and sat down the Bee Jays in order, getting a ground out and his sixth and seventh batters.

Alex was really good, Leo said. He made pitches when he had to. Thats a sign of an experienced guy.

The seventh was the pitchers 12th consecutive scoreless inning to open the season. In Fridays seven innings, he said he rarely used his offspeed pitches.

Really working the fastball in on both sides of the plate was really good for me tonight, Lopez said.

Lopez handed it off to Ryan Kotulek for the eighth. After a leadoff single, Boston snagged a liner at short and threw to first for a double play. After playing third and short last year, Boston started the year handling most of the action in right field. With Trey Ochoa gone for the weekend, Leo was comfortable sliding Boston back into one of the most important defensive spots.

Hes a great utility guy, Leo said. Hes a very good athlete. He can handle a lot of spots for us.

Boston led off the bottom half with a walk and moved to second on a Boone single with one out. That ended Cooks night after 7.1 innings. The Liberal starter worked around 10 hits and struck out two with a walk. Derek Craft came on and got a fielders choice that moved Boston to third for Hays third baseman Alex Weiss. Weiss flared a pitch to right but saw it snagged by the Liberal outfielder.

It was far from the only time the Larks sent hard-hit balls right to Liberal fielders.

He barreled too hard, Leo said of Weiss. We did that several times during the night. Im encouraged by what were seeing.

Tyler Starks took the mound in a save situation in the ninth. After a lead off single, the Hays closer got Scott to ground out to Larks first baseman Jace Selsor. Selsor was able to step on first and throw to Boston at short, who tagged ODonnell for the second out of the inning. Starks recorded the save with a called third strike.

The Stephen F. Austin product appears to be in line to hold down the closer role this summer.

Hes the guy, Leo said. He wants the baseball. Hes used to that. Hes a competitor. Hes got the right demeanor for that situation.

The Larks looked to take the series in Saturdays Game 2.

Hays 1, Liberal 0

Liberal 000 000 000 0 7 0

Hays 100 000 00X 1 10 1

Lopez, Kotulek (8th), Starks (9th) and Jones. Cook, Craft (8th) and Scott. W Lopez. L Cook. S Starks. 2B Jones, Boone (Hays); Robinson (Liberal).

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Lopez wins duel, lifts Larks to win over Liberal - Hays Daily News

There was a very instructive moment this week amid all of the political messaging, applause and back-slapping involved in the arrival of the long-awaited Liberal foreign policy statement and defence review.

It happened when Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan was asked, in front of a sea of uniforms, to guarantee his exhaustive, occasionally thoughtful piece of policy homeworkwould survive beyond the life of the current government.

The report, after all,is supposed to be a 20-year document.

His response was somewhat awkward: "We as a government and future governments owe it to the Canadian Armed Forces that we fully fund the Canadian Armed Forces on a long-term footing."

Much of the post-policy coverage has, justifiably, focused on fiscal skepticism.

Do the Liberals have the money? If so, where is it? Will it add to the deficit? If so, by how much?

The answers were: Yes. Stay tuned. No. And see the previous answer.

The skepticism, however, has deep and tangled roots, some of them fresh in terms of the string of broken Liberal campaign promises; others stretch back decades where history is littered with well-crafted and some not-so-well-crafted defence policy plans.

The Trudeau government may have given Canadianssome crisp, well-honed ideas and fact-based conclusions in the report about a world in turmoil, many of which run contrary to what they campaigned on.

But what Sajjan's rather tentative call to arms indirectly exposed is perhaps the biggest failing of this latest endeavour and maybe even the ones that preceded it: The absence of clear, unambiguous, long-term political support.

So, forget about the budget for a minute. Think Parliament.

"Unless you do get a consensus, some kind of bipartisan consensus, which I think is possible, then this policy is going to be very short-lived," said Richard Cohen, a retired military officer who servedin the Canadian Forces and the British Army.

He should know.

A member of the military looks on as Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan unveils the Liberal government's long-awaited vision for expanding the Canadian Armed Forces Wednesday. (Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press)

As an adviser to former defence minister Peter MacKay, Cohen was one of the people who helped craft the ephemeral 2008 Conservative defence strategy document.

That 20-year plan survived a little less than 20 months from the time it was introduced, said Dave Perry, of the Canadian Global Affairs Institute.

TheConservative planwas sacrificed in a bid for abalanced budget, but in light of the toxic politics of the day succeeding governments, regardless of their political stripe, would have had a tough time swallowing even the more palatable portions.

The survival of this plan will depend on "whether there is cross-parliamentary and cross-partisan support," Perrysaid.

The two major overseas deployments in recent years have been either politically divisivethink Afghanistanor languished in misunderstood obscurity, such as Iraq.

The defence minister wasn't the only one in the spotlight this week.

Behind Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland's measured, sometimes chirpy, delivery of a major policy speech on Tuesdaywere some stark words and reality.

"To put it plainly: Canadian diplomacy and development sometimes require the backing of hard power," she saidin her speech.

Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland delivering a speech on Canada's foreign policy future in the House of Commons Tuesday. (Chris Wattie/Reuters)

The notion that Canada can no longer be entirely comfortable under the U.S. security umbrella is remarkable in its sobriety and significance.

Yet, it was politics as usual in the House of Commons after Sajjan delivered his plan.

"The previous government announced a lot of things, didn't put the kind of money forward in stable, long-term predictable ways,and that's what we've done," Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said answering opposition criticism.

What the Liberals haven't done is the kind of painful, political bridge-building that may be necessary in times that they themselves acknowledge are extraordinary, said Cohen.

"Neither [opposition]party is very supportive of the end result it seems to me," he said.

The Liberals would argue that both the Conservatives and NDP had their chance during the months of public consultations held during development of the policy.

And, in fairness, neither opposition party has shown any inclination towards ratcheting back the partisan rhetoric.

But Cohen argues the government has an extraordinary opportunity to take politics out of national defence and build some kind of long-term consensus in the implementation of its policy.

"I think this is a time when parties are moreor lessaligned on what they see in terms of our national goals. It is the means they are arguing about," he said. "I think it's possible to come to a consensus, but who knows, maybe it's too late."

Cohen said an overhaul of the House of Commons and senate defence committees,or creating some other kind of body,might provide a venue for bipartisan co-operation.

The almost-established parliamentary oversight committee on national security promised by the Liberals during the election could have provided such a bipartisan forum.

But defence is not included within its already sprawling mandate.

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Cost is one question but partisan politics may undo Liberal defence plan - CBC.ca

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Originally posted here:

Election night offers little cheer for the Liberal Democrats - The Economist (blog)

Galvanised by the referendum Young anti-Brexit protesters at Downing Street, June 2016. Photograph: Isabel Infantes/PA

Before that other surprising election night the one back in 2015 that now seems a very long time ago it had seemed that Britain had become a political environment where it was impossible to build a secure majority for any party. For every gain in support from somewhere, a party would lose some from the other end of its electoral coalition.

In 2015, David Cameron proved that it could be done, at least for one election, and for a while the Conservatives under Theresa May looked to have found a way of building a big majority. Perhaps Brexit had unlocked a future that would consistently deliver one-party hegemony for the Conservatives. It looked like Labours vote was badly split between the liberal remainer tribe and the partys traditional supporters who favoured Brexit, who were ready to defect to the Conservatives. But, as it turned out, the coalition of support that the Tories had enjoyed during Mays honeymoon was also too broad to survive.

The Conservatives achieved some of their aims in the election. They did gain some white working-class seats from Labour in the north and midlands, winning some new territory in places such as Mansfield (Labour since 1923), and North East Derbyshire and Stoke-on-Trent South (both Labour since 1935). The raid on Labours leave-voting heartlands came away with some prizes but the very campaign messages that helped them win those seats alienated some of the Conservatives own former supporters.

The Conservative vote in 2010 and 2015 included many liberal, free-market, pro-European electors who were increasingly alarmed by the drift towards isolationism and hard Brexit; May had assumed that the Conservatives could take these people for granted given the threat of Jeremy Corbyn. The disquiet among those Cameron-style Tories was amplified by the feelings of Britains liberal tribe.

The Liberal Democrats had a poor election overall, with the Conservatives consolidating their hold on past strongholds such as Yeovil and running Tim Farron close in his own constituency. But they picked up shock wins in Bath and Oxford West & Abingdon, as well as restoring Vince Cable and Ed Davey to their south London constituencies.

Labours share fell in Oxford West, helping to eject a Conservative MP, while it soared in Oxford East. Labours first-time gains in Canterbury and Portsmouth South which they did not manage even in 1997 came with the help of falls in the Green and Lib Dem vote totals. It was a surprising resurrection of tactical voting and progressive alliances on the ground. It could be that the vilification of the remainers the sense that a part of society had been pushed into a corner encouraged them to vote and to maximise the power of their vote.

The outcome of the referendum, by demonstrating the power of a vote to do something radical in a way that many young people and disengaged liberals disliked, encouraged them to strike back against the complacent assumptions of the people with power. Perhaps also the freedom to do the unexpected and radical encouraged Scottish voters to embrace the Conservative and Unionist party. The Scottish Tories a milder breed for the most part than their English counterparts have a lot of power in the new parliament if they choose to use it.

Theresa May must be wishing that remain die-hards were indeed citizens of nowhere, because that would mean they couldnt vote. Among all the cross-currents of the election the youth vote that finally turned out, the Ukip-to-Conservative movement that happened but not as powerfully as most expected, the dramatic drop in the SNP vote was the revenge of liberal Britain. For the first time in many years, a party has paid a price for scorning the embattled liberal elite.

Original post:

Britain's embattled 'liberal elite' has taken its revenge - The Guardian

"Harry Potter" author J.K. Rowling on Friday delivered a passionate takedown of "liberal" men who profess progressive politics yet still call women vile and derogatory names when they disagree with them.

"Just unfollowed a man whom I thought was smart and funny, because he called Theresa May a whore," Rowling tweeted. "If you can't disagree with a woman without reaching for all those filthy old insults, screw you and your politics. I'm sick of liberal' men whose mask slips every time a woman displeases them, who reach immediately for crude and humiliating words associated with femaleness, act like old-school misogynists and then preen themselves as though they've been brave."

Rowling frequently tweets acerbically about President Trump and is a champion for liberal causes, yet her defense of May came after the British prime minister's Conservative Party suffered a major blow losing its majority in the House of Commons.

Rowling ended her tweetstorm with a reference to Pepe, the online mascot of the "alt-right" movement that dishes out vitriolic hate on Twitter, and said "liberal" men who attack women based on their "femaleness" are no better.

"I don't care whether we're talking about Theresa May or Nicola Sturgeon or Kate Hooey or Yvette Cooper or Hillary Clinton: femaleness is not a design flaw. If your immediate response to a woman who displeases you is to call her a synonym for her vulva, or compare her to a prostitute, then drop the pretence and own it: you're not a liberal. You're a few short steps away from some guy hiding behind a cartoon frog."

Originally posted here:

JK Rowling attacks 'liberal' men who call women vile names online - Washington Examiner

Progressives want education, health care, and housing for everyone. And were the close-mindedones?

Protesters gather outside Republican Congressman Darrell Issas town-hall meeting in San Juan Capistrano, California, on June 3, 2017. (Reuters / Mike Blake)

If I have to read one more article blaming liberal condescension toward the red states and the white working class for the election of Trump, Im moving to Paris, France. These pieces started coming out even before the election and are still pouring down on our heads. Just within the last few weeks, the New Republic had Michael Tomasky deploring elite liberal suspicion of middle America for such red-state practices as churchgoing and gun owning and The New York Times had Joan Williams accusing Democrats of impugning the social honor of working-class whites by talking about them in demeaning and condescending ways, as exemplified by such phrases as flyover states, trailer trash, and plumbers butt. Plumbers butt? That was a new one for me. And thats not even counting the 92,346 feature stories about rural Trump voters and their heartwarming folkways. (I played by the rules, said retired rancher Tom Grady, 66, delving into the Daffodil Diners famous rhubarb pie. Why should I pay for some deadbeats trip to Europe?) Im still waiting for the deep dives into the hearts and minds of Clinton supporterswhat concerns motivated the 94 percent of black women voters who chose her? Is there nothing of interest there? For that matter, why dont we see explorations of the voters who made up the majority of Trumps base, people who are not miners or unemployed factory workers but regular Republicans, most quite well-fixed in life? (I would vote for Satan himself if he promised to cut my taxes, said Bill Thorberg, a 45-year-old dentist in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Im basically just selfish.) There are, after all, only around 75,000 coal miners in the entire country, and by now every one of them has been profiled in the Times.

In her fascinating recent book Strangers in Their Own Land, the brilliant sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild asks readers to climb the empathy wall and really try to understand the worldview of Trump votersas she did, spending over five years getting to know white Southern Louisianians, many of them Cajun, who have extreme free-market, anti-government Tea Party politics although they live in Cancer Alley, an area where the petrochemical industry, abetted by the Republican politicians they voted for, has destroyed nature, their communities and their health. Hochschild has a deep grasp of human complexity, and her subjects come across as lovely people, despite their politics. As she hoped, I came away with a better understanding of how kindly people could vote for cruel policies, and how people who dont think theyre racist actually are so.

But heres my question: Who is telling the Tea Partiers and Trump voters to empathize with the rest of us? Why is it all one way? Hochschilds subjects have plenty of demeaning preconceptions about liberals and blue-statersthat distant land of hippies, feminazis, and freeloaders of all kinds. Nor do they seem to have much interest in climbing the empathy wall, given that they voted for a racist misogynist who wants to throw 11 million people out of the country and ban people from our shores on the basis of religion (as he keeps admitting on Twitter, even as his administration argues in court that Islam has nothing to do with it). Furthermore, they are the ones who won, despite having almost 3 million fewer votes. Thanks to the founding fathers, red-staters have outsize power in both the Senate and the Electoral College, and with great power comes great responsibility. So shouldnt they be trying to figure out the strange polyglot population they now dominate from their strongholds in the South and Midwest? What about their stereotypes? How respectful or empathetic is the belief of millions of Trump voters, as established in polls and surveys, that women are more privileged than men, that increasing racial diversity in America is bad for the country, that the travel ban is necessary for national security? How realistic is the conviction, widespread among Trump supporters, that Hillary Clinton is a murderer, President Obama is a Kenyan communist and secret Muslim, and the plain-red cups that Starbucks uses at Christmastime are an insult to Christians? One of Hochschilds subjects complains that liberal commentators refer to people like him as a redneck. Ive listened to liberal commentators for decades and have never heard one use this word. But say it happened once or twice. Feminazi went straight from Rush Limbaughs mouth to general parlance. One of Hochschilds most charming subjects, a gospel singer and preachers wife, uses it like a normal word. Equating women who want their rights with the genocidal murder of millions? How is that not a vile insult?

Sorry, self-abasing pundits: If you go by actual deeds, liberals and leftists are the ones with empathy.

Im sure I have stereotypical views of people who live in red statesincluding forgetting that, as Tomasky points out, all those places have significant numbers of (churchgoing, gun-owning) liberals. I try not to be prejudicedmost people are pretty nice when you dont push their buttonsbut I probably have my fair share of biases. But so what? What difference does it make if I think believing in the Rapture is nuts, and hunting for pleasure is cruel? So what if I prefer opera to Elvis? What does that have to do with anything important? Empathy and respect are not about kowtowing to someones cultural and social preferences. Theyre about supporting policies that make peoples lives better, whether they share your values, or your tastes, or not.

How much empathy did Louisiana Republicans show when they electedand reelectedBobby Jindal, who, backed by Republican legislators, cut taxes, slashed spending on education, health care, and social programs and gave massive tax breaks to the very petrochemical companies that poisoned Republican voters themselves? In Oklahoma, a growing number of schools are now open only four days a weekvoters, ultimately, made the choice to cut taxes instead of pay for a decent education for the states children. You can go down the most uncontroversial list of social goodshospitals, libraries, schools, clean air and water, treatment for mentally ill people and drug addictsand Republican voters label them Big Government and oppose them. And when the consequences get too big to ignore, as with climate change, they choose to believe whatever nonsense Fox News is promoting that week, as if at least 97 percent of the worlds climate scientists are just elitists who think they know so much. True, by the time the world burns to a crisp, todays voters will mostly be dead, but wheres the empathy for their own grandchildren?

THE STAKES ARE HIGHER NOW THAN EVER. GET THE NATION IN YOUR INBOX.

Sorry, self-abasing liberal pundits: If you go by actual deeds, liberals and leftists are the ones with empathy. We want everyone to have health care, for example, even those Tea Partiers who in the debate over the Affordable Care Act loudly asserted that people who cant afford treatment should just die. We want everyone to be decently paid for their labor, no matter how low they wear their pantssomehow the party that claims to be the voice of working people has no problem with paying them so little theyre eligible for food stamps, which that same party wants to take away. We want college to be affordable for everyoneeven for the children of parents who didnt start saving for college when the pregnancy test came out positive. We want everyone to be free to worship as they pleaseincluding Muslimseven if we ourselves are nonbelievers.

What should matter in politics is what the government does. Everything else is just flattery, like George H.W. Bushs oft-cited love of pork rinds. Unfortunately, flattery gets you everywhere.

Continued here:

Lack of Empathy Is Not the Problem - The Nation.

If the media werent so desperate to beat their anti-Trump drum, the only headlines wed see today would deliver harsh indictments of the Obama Justice Department.

In his testimony yesterday, former FBI Director James Comey dropped the bombshell that former Attorney General Loretta Lynch asked him to publicly lie to the American people about the investigation into Hillary Clintons emails.

Yet Democrats and liberal talking heads are solely focused on twisting Comeys testimony to impose their own negative narrative when the facts that just dont support them. Despite the huge disappointment to the liberal media machine, the testimony Thursday reaffirmed exactly what we already knew: at no point has there been any evidence of the alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian actors, nor any effort to impede the FBI investigation into the matter.

In a political atmosphere driven by unsubstantiated leaks it is often hard to cut through the constant, deafening din of unsourced rumors often reported as facts. The only way to cut through the noise was to have Comey himself to speak openly about the facts of the case. President Trump knew this, which is why he didnt invoke executive privilege and members of the administration encouraged Comeys testimony.

Democrats across the board have criticized Comeys decision making abilities, questioned his fitness for the job, or outright called for removal from his post. A large part of this, in the words of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., was due to the fact that they believed he had caved to political pressure in ways that might make him unfit to lead an independent FBI.

My friends on the left are right about one thing: an FBI director must insulate himself from political winds. Thursday, James Comey further underscored his inability to do just that. In fact, even members of the media admitted that Comey was extremely political and knew exactly what he was doing during his testimony in order to get a desired outcome.

What was even more alarming was Comeys admission that he intentionally leaked the memos he wrote in an attempt to compel the Department of Justice to appoint a special counsel. This outright confession of his manipulative intent is as out of the ordinary as it is proof that Comey has become nothing but another D.C. political operative.

This just reinforces that President Trumps decision to remove Comey from his post at the FBI was based solely on the overwhelming lack of public confidence in his inability to carry out the job.

From his gross misstatement of facts regarding evidence to his showboating throughout the entire Clinton email investigation, this is not a man that instills confidence in his judgment.

In fact, the most potentially damning indictment of Comeys judgment is the allegation that he used a crucial piece of information related to the Hillary Clinton investigation that he knew to be fabricated by Russian intelligence.

The pernicious influence of James Comeys carelessness has eroded all trust in his integrity and ability to lead.

For months Democrats have demanded answers from James Comey and Thursday they got the answer they are still reluctant to accept: there is no there there.

Yet they will continue to fan the flames of faux outrage, and their allies in the liberal media will dump fuel where there is no fire.

Brett M. Decker is a member of the White House Writers Group and best-selling author of The Conservative Case for Trump.

See the original post:

Comey testimony: The liberal media ignores big questions about Obama's Justice Department - Fox News