Richard Cohen, Another Who Just Doesn't Get It

by Les Carpenter
Rational Nation USA


Journalist Richard Cohen, writing for the Washington Post is jumping on the progressive bandwagon to spread the word that the 'right' offers only hate. Of course when a progressive collectivist journalist or politician, void of any objective thought process, has nothing of value to offer they must resort to the emotionally charged and unfounded accusations their political opponents are angry, hateful, bigoted, individuals.

Having blogged for some time now, and spent much of it visiting the progressive collectivist camp if you will, I have come to realize that the hate thing is really the left describing themselves. The degree of childish and immature rhetoric witnessed in Left Blogistan is actually sickening. On many sights the language used is both hostile and HATEFUL. Having personally experienced many "hits" from the progressive collectivist left I cannot pass up commenting on articles such as Mr. Cohen's.

Cohen's article in WaPo offers no relevant or factual data to support his claim that the right, presumably the Tea Party specifically and conservatives in general are responsible for all manners of hateful behavior. His analogy to the Kent State riots of 1970 is at best foolish and nothing more than progressivism gone wild... once again.

A sampling of Cohen's WaPo article.


"Ohio" has been around for 40 years, and I have heard it over and over again. It's about the 1970 killing of four students at Kent State University during a demonstration against the Vietnam War. The killers were the equally young men of the Ohio National Guard. I was in the National Guard myself once. How did this happen? "This summer I hear the drumming. Four dead in Ohio."

The hills slow me. I grind at them, going so slowly that when the song comes on I can listen intently to the lyrics. The line about the woman dead on the ground hits with concussive force. I feel I knew her. One of the four killed was Allison Krause, and she went to school in the Washington area. Her father, Arthur Krause, sometimes called me. Arthur had devoted himself to seeking justice for his daughter. He should have known better. He was a Holocaust survivor.

Saturday, on the bike, I listened hard: "Tin soldiers and Nixon coming. We're finally on our own. This summer I hear the drumming. Four dead in Ohio."

I had been a reporter back when the killings occurred and it was a huge story to me. I longed for a chance to cover it, but I was young and raw, and the journalistic sluggers whooshed out of the newsroom, hailed a cab, jumped a plane and wrote the story -- the story. The story will keep you sane.

But it is a story no more and so, on the bike, the full horror of it came through: My God, American soldiers had shot American college students. This was not China, not Tiananmen Square, and not Iran and the pro-democracy rallies of last year -- not any of those places. This was America, just yesterday (take my word for it) and yet it had happened. How? I thought hard and then I remembered. Bullets had killed those kids, sure -- but they were fired, in a way, from the mouths of politicians.
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The governor of Ohio, James Rhodes, demonized the war protesters. They were "worse than the Brownshirts and the communist element. . . . We will use whatever force necessary to drive them out of Kent."

That was the language of that time. And now it is the language of our time. It is the language of Glenn Beck, who fetishizes about liberals and calls Barack Obama a racist. It is the language of rage that fuels too much of the Tea Party and is the sum total of gubernatorial hopeful Carl Paladino's campaign message in New York. It is all this talk about "taking back America" (from whom?) and this inchoate fury at immigrants and, of course, this raw anger at Muslims, stoked by politicians such as Newt Gingrich and Rick Lazio, the latter having lost the GOP primary to Paladino for, among other things, not being sufficiently angry. "I'm going to take them out," Paladino vowed at a Tea Party rally in Ithaca, N.Y.

Back in the Vietnam War era, the left also used ugly language and resorted to violence. But the right, as is its wont, stripped the antiwar movement of its citizenship. It turned dissent into treason, which, in a way, was the worst treason of all. It made dissidents into the storied "other" who had nothing in common with the rest of us. They were not opponents; they were the enemy: Fire!"

Cohen's article is journalism at it's worst. His article is nothing more than a desperate attempt in the final days of the 2010 campaign to somehow get potential voters to believe the Tea Party candidates and conservatives are akin to the events of 1970. He is, as the progressive collectivists in Left Blogistan so readily label conservatives... DELUSIONAL.

Tim Graham over at Newsbusters said it well.


Cohen makes no attempt to acknowledge that part of the "anti-war" movement that waved flags of the Viet Cong and openly wished for America to lose the war, and openly wished America would be the victim of a communist revolution. How is that not "the worst treason of all"?

Now try to place a violent leftist movement like the Weather Underground into this equation. Didn't their willingness to kill cops (and in acts of terror like bombing a bathroom) innocent Americans put them in a low place? But Cohen can only single out "the right" -- millions of nonviolent people who are horrified by the thought of violent revolution, as opposed to democratic change.

This was a column that someone at the Post editorial page should have walked over to Cohen and said, "This is too reckless." But apparently, no one did.

Cohen's been on quite a string of printed fits lately. Just two weeks ago, talk radio host Mark Levin pounded away at this bizarre Cohen attack on constitutionalists:

I suppose those of us who are for a constitutionally limited government, desire to see America return to fiscal responsibility and sanity, want a sane and reasonable immigration policy and our national borders respected, and desire to retain not only the fruits of our labor but our individuality as well are a threat.

We indeed are a threat. A threat at the ballot box to all the progressive left wing types that have no real message other than the right hates. Isn't it time to get off your hyperbole rants Mr. Cohen and provide something useful?

Cross posted to Left Coast Rebel

Via: Memeorandum

Comments

  1. Meanwhile his readers keep dwindling.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Donald Borsch Jr. chimes in.

    *ahem* To the progressives, liberals, Democrats, social activists, etc, etc, or whatever the hell you are calling yourselves today:

    Hate. Sure. Let's be honest here.

    I hate your stupid asinine emotionally-driven limp-wristed mindset that has served only to breed an entire generation of needy, arrogant, useless, and parasitical children.

    I hate the fact you decry raaaacism, but you enslave minorities under the umbrella of teaching them that they cannot fend for themselves and need all your civil-rights activist programs and organizations. I want minorities to be my equals. You need minorities to remain securely suckling at the teat of your raaaacist guilt. Morons. And woe be to the "african-American" who espouses, gasp!, Conservative ideals! Oh, that's right...didn't your media refer to Condaleeza Rice as a "house ni**er"? Tsk, tsk. It's funny, really. The only time I can use the word ni**er in conversation is when I am quoting leftists.

    I hate the fact you spend money, OUR money, like a spoiled millionaire's daughter at a Britney Spears fanclub outlet store. You epitomize selfishness and the "entitlement mentality" with your dangerous presumptions upon our bank accounts. We are not your personal fricking ATM's.

    I hate that you sign your names to every. single. welfare/bailout program out there and then deny it later, saying it really isn't your signature, and you never actually thought it was a good idea anyways. There's a word for folks like you: Hypocrites. Liars. Swindlers. Bamboozlers. Shysters. Politicians. (Take your pick.)

    I hate that you are raping this Nation with your America-hating policies, your apologist attitudes, your blatantly anti-capitalist agendas, and your immoral jackassery. Listen, I have seen Islamic POW's that had better manners and stronger character than you America-haters. Yeah. You heard me.

    I hate your liberalism. I hate your ideals. I hate your policies, agendas, and mindsets. Hate. Hate. Hate.

    Deal with it.

    And be prepared for the severest of backlashes at your arrogance come November 2010 and November 2012. You will have brought that upon your own heads because you refused to listen.

    Donald Borsch Jr.
    Bethel, CT

    ReplyDelete

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