Why do some conservatives still assume Obama and the Left are acting in good faith?

(originally posted at NewsReal blog)


Why is it so difficult for some conservatives to accept the idea that the left is hellbent on destroying America as we know it? It’s not like it’s a far-out conspiracy theory. It’s a well documented ongoing process. These people have been at it for decades. The Cloward-Piven Strategy, which is one piece of the subversive puzzle, is real. We’ve proven it here at NewsReal and I’ve proven it in my upcoming book Subversion Inc. Since the culturally catastrophic 1960s elements within the left have been more or less open about their movement’s desire to overthrow the American system of government and capitalism it’s not a secret. Read a Noam Chomsky book –if you can do so without throwing up– and feel the anti-American venom leap right off the page and splash you in the face.
Yet Bill O’Reilly and the more libertarian John Stossel don’t think that malice lurks in the hearts of American leftists. Courtesy of my favorite clipping service, Media Matters for America (their motto might as well be “We clip everything cool that conservatives say on TV and radio.”), here’s a discussion O’Reilly and Stossel had on Fox News last night:



In the clip above O’Reilly bashes conservative talk radio for accusing the left of malice and Stossel just shrugs and says leftists just like spending other people’s money too much. Move on: Nothing to see here, folks. Why the assumption of good faith? Are they afraid to call out people who hate America because it might be impolite? Is it Polite Company Conservative syndrome? (See a great piece by the coiner of the phrase Tunku Varadarajan.)
A more egregious offender is Michael Medved who stridently denounces his fellow conservatives for questioning the intentions of leftists. Just a few days ago Medved lectured conservatives for daring to think that President Obama may not mean this country well. Medved can’t even bring himself to use the word radical to describe Obama. He opined that

Republicans—especially in the tea party faction of the GOP—frequently charge that the current incumbent counts as an unprecedented, frightening fanatic with an alien, un-American agenda. But this view of Obama can’t possibly survive an honest examination of the record of his Democratic predecessors. Newt Gingrich, as a former professor of history, ought to know better than to characterize Obama (fatuously) as “the most radical president in American history.”
In what sense does Obama count as more radical than FDR, the patron saint of the modern Democratic Party?
Where does he advocate government intervention and expansion more sweeping, costly or constitutionally questionable than the programs of the New Deal—or, for that matter, of Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society?
President Obama not only conforms to the big government, tax-and-spend traditions that have characterized his party for nearly a century; he stands squarely in the center of the Democrats’ current coalition.

Does Obama advocate more expensive, more sweeping programs than Franklin D. Roosevelt did? You betcha. Look at Obamacare, the wealth redistribution program that will bankrupt the nation — unless entitlements such as Social Security beat it to the punch. And Medved suggests Obamacare is constitutional. How can forcing people to buy a product that might not want possibly be consistent with the nation’s great charter?
The only part on which Medved has a bit of point is where he argues that Obama is in the center of the Democrats’ current coalition. It’s not exactly true but there is at least a grain of truth to it. Today’s Democratic Party isn’t much different ideologically than the Socialist Party of Eugene V. Debs.
Nevertheless, the typical Democrat nowadays is far to the left of most Americans. Democrats from previous generations would be embarrassed by today’s Democratic Party which is where radicals who are serious about getting political power hang out in America.

How many more of America’s free institutions will have to be destroyed before Medved and company finally get it?
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