Looking Back at the Past: Michael Bérubé: Health Care and Civil Rights
Note: Is it necessary to point out that Michael Berube is an English professor, which automatically makes him an unreliable narrator: when he says that he "asked Newt Gingrich to guest-blog at [his] place," he is saying something that is prima facie so unbelievable that nobody should for an instant take it to mean that he actually asked Newt Gingrich to guest-blog and that Gingrich accepted?
Why, it would be like saying that Newt Gingrich wrote a novel in which he was so incompetent that he is forced to surrender the entire Army of Northern Virginia to Grant long before Appomatox court House...
Michael Berube:
[R]eading Newt's remark that HCR will undo the Democrats just as LBJ's Civil Rights Act did, I went scurrying around the Internets for George Wallace's inaugural speech... and found, to my surprise, that there are absolutely no continuities between the anti-government rhetoric of segregationists and the anti-government rhetoric of the Tea Party hatters and dormice.
Oh no, wait, yes there are:
We can no longer hide our head in the sand and tell ourselves that the ideology of our free fathers is not being attacked and is not being threatened.... We are faced with an idea that if a centralized government assume enough authority, enough power over its people, that it can provide a utopian life; that if given the power to dictate, to forbid, to require, to demand, to distribute, to edict and to judge what is best and enforce that will produce only “good.” And it shall be our father—and our God. It is an idea of government that encourages our fears and destroys our faith; for where there is faith, there is no fear, and where there is fear, there is no faith. It is, therefore, a basically ungodly government; and its appeal to the pseudo-intellectual and the politician is to change their status from servant of the people to master of the people. To play at being God without faith in God—and without the wisdom of God. It is a system that is the very opposite of Christ...
And here's the Jonah Goldberg paragraph -- if Jonah could write:
Not so long ago men stood in marvel and awe at the cities, the buildings, the schools, the autobahns that the government of Hitler’s Germany had built.... But it could not stand; for the system that built it had rotted the souls of the builders, and in turn rotted the foundation of what God meant that men should be. Today that same system on an international scale is sweeping the world. It is the “changing world” of which we are told; it is called “new” and “liberal.”... As the national racism of Hitler’s Germany persecuted a national minority to the whim of a national majority, so the international racism of the liberals seeks to persecute the international white minority to the whim of the international colored majority...
Good stuff. So I asked Newt Gingrich to guest-blog at my place.
Special guest post by the intellectual leader of the Republican Party: Hello, American Airspace! It is a pleasure to speak to the readers of this patriotic blog. This is a very dangerous moment in the history of our Republic, and it is critical that conservatives get the word out.... It is very appropriate that today we sound the drum for freedom as have our generations of forebears before us done, time and time again through history. Let us rise to the call of freedom-loving blood that is in us and send our answer to the tyranny that clanks its chains upon the South. In the name of the greatest people that have ever trod this earth, I draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny, and I say: no health care reform today... no health care reform tomorrow... no health care reform ever.
We can no longer hide our head in the sand and tell ourselves that the ideology of our free fathers is not being attacked and is not being threatened.... We are faced with an idea that if a centralized government assume enough authority, enough power over its people, that it can provide a utopian life; that if given the power to dictate, to forbid, to require, to demand, to distribute, to edict and to judge what is best and enforce that will produce only “good.” And it shall be our father—and our God. It is an idea of government that encourages our fears and destroys our faith; for where there is faith, there is no fear, and where there is fear, there is no faith. It is, therefore, a basically ungodly government; and its appeal to the pseudo-intellectual and the politician is to change their status from servant of the people to master of the people. To play at being God without faith in God—and without the wisdom of God. It is a system that is the very opposite of Christ....
Not so long ago men stood in marvel and awe at the cities, the buildings, the schools, the autobahns that the government of Hitler’s Germany had built.... But it could not stand; for the system that built it had rotted the souls of the builders, and in turn rotted the foundation of what God meant that men should be. Today that same system on an international scale is sweeping the world. It is the “changing world” of which we are told; it is called “new” and “liberal.”... As the national racism of Hitler’s Germany persecuted a national minority to the whim of a national majority, so the international racism of the liberals seeks to persecute the international white minority to the whim of the international colored majority.... But the Belgian survivors of the Congo cannot present their case to a war crimes commission ... nor the Portuguese of Angola ... nor the survivors of Castro ... nor the citizens of Oxford, Mississippi.
Ahhhhh ... I seem to have lost the thread there for a moment, thinking about the evils of Hitler and the real victims of colonialism. (Note to self: the white man is the Jew of liberal fascism. That’s got a catchy ring to it!) I was supposed to be talking about health care, wasn’t I? Right. Yes, well. Obamacare is the most radical social experiment in modern times, and Democrats have destroyed their party much as Lyndon Johnson shattered the Democratic Party for 40 years. The South will rise again. Thank you.
