teapartysamurai
Gold Member
- Mar 27, 2010
- 20,056
- 2,562
- 290
Former President Bill Clinton last week inadvertently demonstrated Karl Marx's shrewd observation, "History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce." The historical event in question is the attempt to deter by smearing a broad-based, popular, American anti-high-tax, anti-big-central government movement as likely to induce seditious violence against the government.
The historic example of this calumny was Alexander Hamilton's slander against Thomas Jefferson and James Madison's emerging Republican/Democratic Party. The first repetition, as tragedy, was Bill Clinton's attack on the Republican Contract With America rhetoric following the Oklahoma bombing in 1995 - which resulted in deflecting the upward progress of conservatism from the summer of 1995 onward.
The second repetition - this time as farce - occurred last week as, once again, Mr. Clinton went back to his once-trusty playbook and implied that this time, the Tea Party rhetoric might result in political violence.
By coincidence, I have found myself involved in both of Mr. Clinton's attempted repetitions. As Newt Gingrich's press secretary in 1995, I received the calls of reporters asking me to respond to Clinton White House-generated accusations that our Contract with America rhetoric had caused Timothy McVeigh to bomb the Oklahoma City government building. As preposterous as the charge was - advocating constitutional, limited government is inherently nonseditious, nor did we ever call for violence of any sort - the charge had its intended effect and put Mr. Clinton back in the political driver's seat in Washington after the drubbing he took the previous November.
EDITED- to a few paragraphs per copyright policy of USMB
Care
More here: BLANKLEY: There Bill Clinton goes again - Washington Times
So history comes full circle and now the party that resulted from a backlash of this kind of slander falls prey to using the same kind of smear tactic.
Bill Clinton has been using this tactic since the OK City bombing.
But we have had a year of the tea party and the only violence has come from the left. Whether it's beating up black men handing out "don't tread on me" flags or the disputed beating of a couple two weeks ago (still debate on whether it was political or not).
The point is, there has been NO violence from the tea party nor will there be. It's not about violence. It's about beliving in the Constitutional political process to return this country to it's Constitutional limits.
They see the Obama government as an out of control attempt to do away with the Constitutional limits on government and they want to put a stop to it.
The fact that all the left can answer with is smears, is solid evidence of on which side the truth lies.
The side with the truth doesn't need smears, and obviously that's all Obama's side has.