By David Harsanyi
Wednesday, October 07, 2015
On Fox News this week, Democratic operative Brad
Woodhouse accused National Review
editor Rich Lowry’s criticism of President Obama’s foreign policy of being
“almost treasonous.”
“Rich, you sound like an apologist for Putin and almost
treasonous against the United States,” Woodhouse exclaimed. “I mean, my God.”
Almost.
Woodhouse later walked back his comment (sort of), but let’s be honest,
questioning the patriotism of conservatives is nothing new, especially when it
comes to foreign policy. If you were a Republican — or even someone temporarily
and tepidly allied with Republicans, like Chuck Schumer — who opposed the Iran
deal you were treated as someone actively working to undermine U.S. security.
And if you happened to be a senator who signed a strongly worded letter to Iran’s
leaders, well, hundreds of thousands of Americans would sign a petition
demanding you be prosecuted for sedition.
This kind of accusation isn’t just bubbling up from a
passionate left-wing base that was once rightly irritated by Ari Fleischer’s
warning that Americans should watch what they say. It’s the president, too.
“It’s those hard-liners who are most comfortable with the status quo. It’s
those hard-liners chanting ‘Death to America’ who have been most opposed to the
deal,” Obama, confusing incidental alignment with a shared purpose, once
claimed. “They’re making common cause with the Republican caucus.”
Throughout the 2012 presidential race, Joe Biden and
others regularly accused Republicans of “betting against America” because they
have different ideas about unions, cronyism, regulatory schemes, and higher tax
rates (which many Democrats believe is form of patriotism). During the debate
over the debt ceiling, liberals regularly accused Republicans of attempting to
sink the entire economy just to hurt the president’s prospects. “Unfortunately,
it’s pretty much a certainty that republicans are trying to damage the economy
to deny Obama reelection,” tweeted Josh Marshall. Many senators, including
Harry Reid and Barbara Boxer, offered almost identical sentiments.
Patriotism is nationalistic devotion to one’s country and
the values that make it great. What are those ideas today? Liberals are a bit
uncomfortable with overt displays of nationalism, which they tend to view as
jingoistic, but they have no problem attaching the label “patriotic” to their
own pet partisan causes. Instead of a Patriot Act we have “economic
patriotism.” And if a person vigorously opposes “patriotism,” then logic
dictates that he is contesting ideals that make this nation great.
So it makes complete sense when someone like David
Plouffe feels comfortable accusing the GOP of committing “economic treason” or
Hillary Clinton—who was once “sick and tired of people who claimed that if we
debate and disagree with an administration somehow we are not
patriotic”—compares Republican candidates to terrorist groups.
Democrats get away with these kind of ad hominem attacks without any
hyperventilating media reaction for obvious reasons. Many editorial boards use
comparable rhetoric. So do columnists in almost every major paper. Paul
Krugman, who writes for the most revered newspaper of the educated liberal,
regularly alleges that free-market advocates are hoping to institute disorder.
Does the average liberal believe a major political party that represents around
half of American voters is maliciously working to destabilize the United States
and rooting for us to fail abroad?
No doubt, there are some Beltway types cynically using
this formulation because it’s an effective weapon, even though they know full
well that Republicans have the same motivations Democrats do — winning
elections. And no doubt the GOP isn’t innocent in this regard, either.
Part of the problem is that we no longer truly have
common definition for patriotism. Maybe we never did. What’s an American ideal
these days? Immigration. Diversity. Equality. Diplomacy. Whatever the topic of
the day, the Left’s position is exactly what makes this nation great. When
Obama speaks about our long-held principles, I don’t recognize them. If I were
to accept his Osawatomie, Kansas speech, probably the president’s most potent
attempt at retroactively integrating the progressive ideal into the broader
American cause, I’d probably believe free-market conservatives were a Fifth
Column, too.
So partisans convince themselves that anyone who
confronts their president, or their future president, is engaged in acts of
subversion. When you make no distinction between your ideology and your
patriotism, what else can we expect? When engaging in politics is tantamount to
patriotism, when the state is solution to all our problems, anyone who
obstructs the consecrated agenda must look like an enemy of decency.
Then again, maybe most Republicans are just rooting for a
better president and against a Slavic
autocrat? Maybe, just like Harry Reid, when he argued that the Iraq War was
lost and the United States couldn’t win it, Lowry was just being a pessimist or
a realist. Maybe pointing out a president’s foreign policy failures is not an
act of sedition? But as long as there really is no price to pay for throwing
around this kind of language, charges of treason and dual loyalty are only
going to become more frequent as the Left become more frustrated and foreign
policy failures continue compound.
Unless, of course, a Republican wins the presidency and
dissent once again becomes a valued aspect of American politics.
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