Language abusers and their hypocrisy

I'll get back to blogs on I Don't Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist next time, but I wanted to cover something else first that recently appeared in the news. As an English teacher, I'm very interested in the use of language. I follow politics closely, and I was amused to see hypocrisy at work in regards to political rhetoric.

An Arizona Congresswoman was shot a few months back. Liberals blamed it on political language that inflamed her attacker (this was later discovered not to be his motive). They lectured conservatives to tone down their language in the future. How has that worked out? Well, glad you asked. You may have heard the latest--it's an attempt to smear Tea Party Republicans, thanks to liberals using abusive language. How's that for hypocrisy?

According to The Wall Street Journal, at a recent two-hour, closed-door Democratic Caucus meeting, Rep. Mike Doyle (D-Pa.) said (referring to the debt-ceiling talks) "We have negotiated with terrorists . . . This small group of terrorists have made it impossible to spend any money."

This sort of language is not just happening in Congress. It's become commonplace on the opinion pages of the New York Times, where one editorialist rants:
You know what they say: Never negotiate with terrorists. It only encourages them. These last few months, much of the country has watched in horror as the Tea Party Republicans have waged jihad on the American people. . . . Their goal, they believed, was worth blowing up the country for, if that's what it took. . . . For now, the Tea Party Republicans can put aside their suicide vests. But rest assured: They'll have them on again soon enough.

But it's not just this one editorial. Others have chimed in with the same message. Last Wednesday Thomas Friedman described the Tea Party as the GOP's "Hezbollah faction." The same day Maureen Dowd approvingly quoted "some Democrats" as describing the Tea Party as "the Republican 'Taliban wing.' "

And it's not just the Times that has launched this vicious talk. Liberal columnist Margaret Carlson said, "There's a nihilist caucus which is, 'Listen, we want to burn the place down.' I mean, they're not, they've strapped explosives to the Capitol and they think they are immune from it." Then there's a cartoon from David Fitzsimmons of the (Tucson) Arizona Daily Star depicting President Obama ordering Navy SEALs to stage a bin Laden-style raid on the House side of the Capitol. This same man took center stage when the Arizona Congresswoman was shot; he was on CNN blaming "the right in Arizona" for "stoking the fire of heated anger and rage" and making the attack "inevitable." Guess it's OK to use vitriolic speech when he wants to argue for his side.

So what's going on here? Simple hypocrisy? No, it's deeper than that. Barack Obama came to power with lefties all aglow. He was going to show liberalism at its finest with his Ivy League credentials, superior attitude, pseudointellectual prattlings, and adherence to lefty ideology. But something funny happened after the inauguration. He has been an utter failure both at winning public support and at managing the affairs of the nation. Obama's failure is the failure of the liberal elite, so they are reacting with desperation and anger. Their ideas, such as they are, are being put to a real-world test and found severely wanting. As a result, their authority is collapsing. Americans need to end this experiment with leftist ideology at the next election.