If the title of Michael Barone's latest column doesn't make you scratch your head, it's contents certainly will.
In "Strangers to Dissent, Liberals Try to Stifle It", Barone argues that political dissent is a foreign concept to liberals (what?) and when faced with this strange concept, their reaction is to suppress it (really?).
Here's how Barone begins his argument:
It is an interesting phenomenon that the response of the left half of our political spectrum to criticism and argument is often to try to shut it down. Thus President Obama in his Sept. 9 speech to a joint session of Congress told us to stop "bickering," as if principled objections to major changes in public policy were just childish obstinacy, and chastised his critics for telling "lies," employing "scare tactics" and playing "games." Unlike his predecessor, he sought to use the prestige of his office to shut criticism down.
One of nature's evolved responses to opposition is to stifle it. Disregaurding dissent is human nature and certainly not unique to members one political affiliation as Barone attempts to argue when he ludicrously suggests that Obama, "unlike his predecessor, sought to use the prestige of his office to shut criticism down". I guess Barone forgot that Bush had a protester arrested for wearing a t-shirt he didn't like. Barone's plunge off the deep end doesn't end there.
A favorite target of conservatives is the mainstream media (which is of course, sympathetic to liberal causes). Right on cue, Barone cites the MSM as an example of liberal dissent suppression.
"Mainstream media" try to help. In the past few weeks, we have seen textbook examples of how MSM have ignored news stories that reflected badly on the administration for which it has such warm feelings. It ignored the videos in which the White House "green jobs czar" proclaimed himself a "communist" and the "truther" petition he signed charging that George W. Bush may have allowed the Sept. 11 attacks.
It ignored the videos released on Andrew Breitbart's biggovernment.com showing ACORN employees offering to help a supposed pimp and prostitute evade taxes and employ 13- to 15-year-old prostitutes. It downplayed last spring's Tea Parties -- locally organized demonstrations against big government that attracted about a million people nationwide -- and downplayed the Tea Party throng at the Capitol and on the Mall Sept. 12.
Unfortunately for Barone, not considering a story or a movement as important as he and his colleges do does not constitute suppression. Furthermore...
Read the entire article at Intershame.com...