Disrupting the Narrative of the New Left, its allies in Academia, Hollywood and the Establishment Media, and examining with honesty the goals of cultural Marxism and the dangers of reactionary and abusive political correctness.
THE NARRATIVE AND POLITICAL CORRECTNESS
“Threats to freedom of speech, writing and action, though often trivial in isolation, are cumulative in their effect and, unless checked, lead to a general disrespect for the rights of the citizen.”-George Orwell
Here is the problem: low-information voters [LIV] are a big chunk of the electorate, especially in the Democratic Party, but the Republican Party isn't free of them either. These are the voters who could not tell you if the national debt is $16 million or $16 trillion. They don’t know anything about the criticisms of how our government handled Benghazi. Ben Ghazi? Isn't he an actor? Fast & Furious is a movie, not a scandal. They know that gay marriage is a good thing because all their favorite actors and musicians think it is so cool! And "assault weapons" are those guns they see in movies, firing hundreds of rounds a minute.
I hope by now that you are beginning to get the picture of what defines an LIV: he or she does not read PJ Media or, for that matter, the Huffington Post or any political publication, left or right. The better-informed LIVs read Us or People. Most of an LIV’s knowledge of economics, politics, and history comes from watching movies, television shows, The Daily Show, and stuff that one of his leftist friends posts on Facebook. You know why President Obama won the election? He was doing local radio shows and The View. He was being promoted by rap musicians and actors.
I get very frustrated with the number of Republican congressmen unwilling to put up a serious fight against the Democrats. Yes, some of them really stand for nothing, and some of them have been corrupted by the knowledge that if they don't support amnesty for illegals, they won't get agribusiness support at the next election. But a lot of congressmen are facing this harsh reality: LIVs are a big part of the electorate, even in fairly safe Republican districts.
If you start saying things that are contrary to conventional wisdom (you know, like the fact that murder rates are less than half of what they were in 1980, and assault weapons are used in a tiny fraction of 1% of U.S. murders), you will quickly become a kook to the LIVs.
It is not at all surprising that when Republican congressmen have to choose between the 30% of voters who are grossly misinformed or the 5% of voters who can actually tell you what the Kelo decision found or how much deficits increased after Democrats took over Congress in 2006, many members of Congress have no choice but to go with the ignorant ones. They have us outnumbered.
In a rare, traditional filibuster, Sen. Rand Paul vowed to speak on the Senate floor “as long as it takes” to draw attention to his concerns about the Obama administration’s policy regarding the targeted killing of American terrorism suspects. But as Ben Shapiro at Breitbart points out, it wound up being so much more than that:
On Wednesday, Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) served notice to both the Republican establishment and to the Democrat-Media Complex: conservatism isn’t gone. It’s not even on vacation. The new wave of conservatives is here, and they know how to play the game.
At approximately 11:47 a.m. EST, Paul took to the floor of the Senate to filibuster the nomination of counterterrorism czar John Brennan for CIA Director. Paul stated his reason specifically and clearly: the Obama administration has refused to answer question as to whether they believe it is acceptable under the Constitution to kill American citizens on US soil using drones if those citizens are not engaged in an immediate terrorist threat. Paul was broader than that, actually – he simply asked the administration for a set of rules that could be used to limit their power to execute American citizens here at home. Over and over again, the administration refused to turn over the legal memos detailing its policies.
And so Paul talked. And boy, did he talk. For nearly 13 hours, he talked, taking breaks only when spelled by Senators including fellow Tea Partiers Mike Lee (R-UT), Ted Cruz (R-TX), Marco Rubio (R-FL), and Pat Toomey (R-PA). Even an honest Democrat – apparently the only one in the chamber – got into the act: Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR). Citing everyone from left to right, Paul pointed out the hypocrisy of an administration ripping into waterboarding of terrorists but happy to target them for death from the skies. He asked repeatedly why the administration could not answer his simple question about the boundaries of government power. And the American people listened.
Courageous effort by Rand Paul today. He made believers out of some people and shined a light into the darkness. #StandWithRand
— Cenk Uygur (@cenkuygur) March 7, 2013
One of the remarkable things about Paul's filibuster was that he's a Tea Party guy. He's so Tea Party that he gave the Tea Party response to the President's SOTU speech. And yet he was getting support from true Leftists such as Van Jones, Cenk Uygur, the ACLU, Code Pink!Amazing.
Now, do they support Rand Paul as a politician? Of course not. But that's the brilliance of what he did. He took a principled stand on an issue that many Democrats would have embraced if it wasn't Obama in the White House. He created a situation in which allies of Obama were forced to abandon him and take sides with a Tea Party senator from Kentucky in order to stay true to their own beliefs on the issue. What a spectacle it was!
And it had to be very uncomfortable for many liberals to have to stay silent because they couldn't bring themselves to support Rand Paul but in their heart of hearts they can't honestly support Obama. For 13 hours Rand Paul showed the GOP how to stand up and fight and in doing so created an opportunity for his peers to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with him. And as somebody pointed out, it was 13 hours of policy discussion, not a reading of the telephone book or some other stunts.
And when Dick Durbin tried to muddy the waters by asking questions that had either already been answered or never asked in the first place, many of the senators who had already spoken came back to speak again in order to refute and defeat Durbin's cynical efforts.
John Sexton at Breitbart has the transcript of the first hour of the filibuster here. National Review live-blogged the filibuster and have several clips of various speakers here.
Thank you to my colleagues in the House & Senate, and to all the Americans who stood w/ me tonight in support of preserving civil liberties. — Senator Rand Paul (@SenRandPaul) March 7, 2013
