For Every Gracious Moose, There is a Culture Warrior….

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Just when you thought the hope was infectious enough to reach all sorts of people, or individuals would be gracious in defeat, we find this garbage:

From First Draft, via Atlas Shrugs: President Fraud

For my own part I do not recognize Obama as my President, nor will I refer to him as such. He has no legal right to serve in office nor has he won a legal election. Nor do his cronies have any right to serve in any position they are appointed to.

We have a long journey through dark lands ahead of us. Let us hope to soon once again emerge into the light.

This was the least onerous part of the post. What was illegal about this election? Why doesn’t Obama have a “legal right” to serve? Unlike 2000, there were no legal challenges, no hanging chads to parse out. They’re discussing Voter Fraud, a problem as mythological as chupacabra. At least the goat-sucker leaves behind evidence.

I’m not sure exactly how one responds to these allegations. They are calling for war:

The battle against them must be twofold, first to limit the damage they can do while in power, and secondly to plan and prepare to retake Congress and then the White House in a coherent and orderly manner without the chaos and backbiting that has characterized the last year of this campaign. It will be all too easy to fall into the blame game and to let it devour us, too much of the conservative movement and the anti-jihad blogsphere is already fractured. The goal now must be to heal those fractures, to create unity around a single purpose, to liberate America again.

And while they speak of unity, they are addressing party unity, not the problems facing all of us. The attitudes behind these statements scare the hell out of me. It doesn’t matter if McCain calls for Unity. It does not matter if Obama opens his addresses with Christian Prayer, they have bought into the lies of the Right. In short, these individuals believe that the culture war is still worth fighting. We don’t need a war, we need discussion.

I would like to think that if Obama lost, I would be willing to swallow my pride and give McCain a chance to do his job and govern the country. While I haven’t had to swallow my pride, I have not been an asshole in victory. I don’t expect the “Culture Commando’s” to let up, listen to reason or work from a rational position. Their shrill cries will be an attempt to drown out the progress we are working to for all Americans. I, for one, am not willing to let it happen.

I’m not going to take their bent. I’m not going call their patriotism into question. I’m not going to insult their intelligence. I will question their judgment, their tactics, their beliefs and the attitudes behind their beliefs. If, on occasion, I slip up and use unkind words, I apologize. We have worked too hard and waited far too long for a CHANCE at fulfilling the promise that is America to let people who are so consumed with cynicism and hatred take it away from us.

There will not be a Second Republican Revolution. There will not be a return to Clinton Era Bickering. I refuse to allow the factually inaccurate rhetoric of the WingNut Right to dominate my political lexicon. I want a country where debate can occur without a devolution into name calling. I’m willing to fight for that cause.

There will be a fight for our values–one that we liberal’s didn’t start–and I’ll be damn sure I’ll be one of the individuals who will end it.

7 thoughts on “For Every Gracious Moose, There is a Culture Warrior….”

  2. I’m split on your two quotes. I have no problem with Obama’s legitimacy as President. The whole “birth certificate” thing was a distraction (although his campaign could’ve shot it down much faster than they did), just a straw that some of the conservative blogosphere would not let go of. Vote fraud? Well, we’ve been around the mulberry bush on this before…we’ve seen and documented voter registration irregularities all over the place. Have they led to vote fraud? Aside from a few small isolated incidents (like Fox finding some guy who admitted he’d voted twice in Philly), no, nothing widespread, and certainly not enough to change this election. So Obama is our legitimately-elected President-elect. I have no qualms with that.

    As for the second quote…what’s wrong with it? What’s wrong with those of us on the right wing politically dropping back, licking our wounds, and coming up with ways to get back into power? We believe our stands are the correct ones–why wouldn’t we do our utmost to bring them before the American people and try to convince them of that correctness? Yes, I do believe the culture war is worth fighting. I plan to keep fighting it, strongly. I’m going to keep pushing like hell for that Second Republican Revolution, because I think it’s the right thing for America.

    I am no less of a conservative today than I was before the election. I will be no less of a conservative tomorrow. My core beliefs haven’t changed a bit. Where I break with that reader on Atlas Shrugs is that I’m not going to sit and throw a fit about Obama being President. That’s reality, “it is what it is” as athletes say, and hoping for some deus ex machina to descend with a Kenyan birth certificate for Barack Obama is nothing more than a stupid distraction from looking forward–forward to bringing our ideas back in front of the American people in a coherent and intelligent manner. If our roles were reversed, and President-elect McCain were picking his cabinet today, I would expect nothing different from the left. You reform, reflect, and then come out of the huddle ready to get it on again.

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  3. My problem with the second quote stems from the
    “liberate America again.” Given the entire article–easy to read, impossible to grok–the connotation is that “real Americans” are now being held hostage by “Islamofundamentalist Black Church Socialist Terrorists.”

    I also have an issue with the term, “culture war.” We are not at war with each other Lewis. We never have been. I slip up on this point a lot, but I respect your opinions and I do believe that you have the right to them I want you to discuss and debate them. I don’t see the need for the rhetoric of war.

    Discussing conservative ideas in an intelligent and coherent manner would be a refershing change. Yet this is not what Pam Atlas is doing. The author of this piece is, instead, invoking fear and lies about the next four years. That isn’t fostering debate, its setting up an overly hostile environment that will end up harming the country more than they realize.

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  5. I’m not a fan of Pam Geller’s blog. The layout’s too hard to read, takes forever to load. And occasionally, yeah, there’s some screeds.

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  6. I just want to say a few things that may or may not have to do with this post or its comments. It is just what I have been thinking for the last 24+ hours. First, I was only in 8th grade when Bush took office. Elections didn’t really mean much more to me than a sporting event; I had my guy and hoped he won. I was pulling for gore for the same reason I pulled for the bears on sunday or the cubs during the summer– my family did, so I did. Still, despite being admitedly politically unaware, I still sensed a certain feeling in the country, that we had to pull together and give the new guy a chance, even if it seemed like I was more capable of delivering a decent speech than he was. And obviously 9/11 had everything to do with it, but in the days after the buildings went down, we were truly one nation (united in our blinding, blood thirsty desire for revenge, but united just the same)

    Today, I am hearing a lot from the left about uniting as one country and supporting our new president for the good of the union and a lot from the right asking where this good-of-the-union stuff was the last 8 years.

    Well, it seems to me bush DID get a chance. He actually got TWO chances and squandered them both. From September 11th, 2001 to November 4th, 2008 (at 11 pm central time, on the dot), we have witnessed the most stunning fall from presidental grace since the Fluctuating Popularity of Harry Truman. So, to say Obama doesn’t deserve your support just because george bush squandered his hurts us as a nation.

    That is not to say, however, that I feel the left is totally free of hypocrisy. At Grant Park on tuesday night, I was ready to tear the arm off the person next to me to secure one of the (most likely) chinese made american flags that were being distributed near the stage. It is not something I especially like to admit, but this I know is true: had ‘McCain defeats Obama’ come to pass Tuesday night, the sight of his joyous supporters waving those flags would have made me physically sick. “How disingenuous!” I would have growled.

    What I am saying is, feeling patriotic on the night your guy wins is the easiest thing on earth. I mean, there is probably something wrong with you if you don’t. I can understand why those on the right feel hurt and disenfranchised by gleeful obama supporters on the streets and in the media because THE LEFT FELT THE SAME WAY LAST TIME.

    We have got to rise above this.

    For those who supported Barack Obama, democratic nominee, on november third, you must rise above this how-does-it-feel sneering and posturing and remember how you felt in the hours and days after the Election Nights in 2000 and 2004. It sucks to lose and a little empathy would go a long way. It seems like the same people who were outraged by the “love it or leave it” mentality of the right in years past could not have moved fast enough to throw it right back in a republicans face.

    We’ve got to rise above it.

    For those who supported John McCain, republican nominee, on november third, you are going to have to take a deep breath and live with it for a while. Predicting gloom and doom for the president-elect might make you feel better now, but it hurts our country. No matter who you voted for, the office of presidency deserves your respect. This is not, in any way, meant to be taken as “you had your chance, now sit down and shut up”. I believe that dissent and respectful disagreement is the nervous system of a democracy. Hear the new guy out, give him a fair shot, and then go back to raising holy hell. No more, no less.

    As a nation, we just cannot afford to treat politics like a crosstown, cubs-sox weekend series. Are we going to be nation of children chanting “scoreboard!” every four years, or can we be adults about this stuff? Come January 20th, will the left be big enough to turn down the party music? Will they remember the way they felt when they were given a choice between supporting the president at every turn and being patriotic OR being baby killing, terrorist sympathizers who hate freedom with nothing in between? Will the right feel the same love and respect for our country and its instituions as before, or are those feelings only reserved for when their guy is in charge?

    As it stands, we have a chance for real change. It isn’t BY THE GRACE OF PRESIDENT AND SAVIOR BARACK OBAMA, but by the grace and strength of our democracy. Is this the start of a new age of america, or is it simply a role reversal? I think we can do it, but it is going to take the left being big enough to truly include the right and the right being big enough to accept. For everyones sake, we’ve got to, man, we’ve got to!

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