ADL REPORT SMEARS TEA PARTY CONSERVATIVES
Americans have been awakened. It's not ok to lead the "Leave It to Beaver" lifestyle anymore (with the added adjustment of Working Moms). It's not ok to rest on our laurels and expect our government to govern the way our forefathers intended. We live in the "Wall Street" age of "greed is good", and power is infectious. Until term limits become law, politicians will fight to stay in power term after painful term, and live the good life on our dime.
Once Americans became in engaged to reign in government, they became a threat, and how do the left-wing radicals handle this new threat? Demonize them, slience them with fear-mongering and misrepresentation, and use the ever accommodating mainstream media to spread the lies.
Liberalism is a mental disorder.
Orit Sklar writes an excellent piece in PajamasMedia:
ADL Report Smears Tea Party Conservatives
The Anti-Defamation League's paper on right-wing "rage" succumbs to the paranoia and fear-mongering it purports to decry.
by Orit Sklar, December 3, 2009
The report recently published by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) titled Rage Grows in America: Anti-Government Conspiracies unwittingly describes itself, rather than the object of its contempt, in its own opening paragraph: “fueled by paranoia and conspiracy theories.”
While it would be easy to dismiss the ADL report as the commonplace liberal propaganda it has been producing for decades, in the age of Obama it is unwise to ignore what at any other time is properly ignored. Its implications are of much greater consequence today to every American who is taking a stand against the “remaking” of America.
The report has been all the “rage” in the Obama PR machine — a.k.a. the mainstream media — which has exhausted any remaining trace of objectivity by spending a summer and fall crudely mocking average Americans who’ve shown up at town halls and tea parties in a true exercise of “community organizing” that the Beltway-Greenwich cocktail axis just can’t stomach. “Group Finds More Anti-Government Sentiment” on the Caucus blog of the New York Times. “Rage Nation 2.0” on CBSNews.com. And “Crossing the Lines” on the Jerusalem Post website. News outlet JTA more or less reprinted the press release, which is, naturally, filed under “extremism” on the ADL website.
Let’s be clear. This execrable document is not meant to inform; it is meant to stoke the very fear and paranoia it pretends to abhor. The report is saturated with misrepresentation by anecdote and unsubstantiated fear-mongering, so it is quite obvious that ADL means it to be used as a wave-around tool to silence dissent and slide cement shoes on free speech.
If rage is growing, it’s because Americans are waking up to the threat of a White House and a congressional majority intent on exponentially increasing the power of the state and gashing individual liberty. Such things seem not to bother the ADL much. Neither did the sustained two-term assault by the left against President George W. Bush, which makes any current criticism of Obama look like a toy tug-of-war between toddlers.
Under the cloak of exposing “extremism,” ADL is exposing its own antipathy toward limited government and individual liberty, especially the First and Second Amendments. A perfect fellow traveler for an administration working overtime for the same.
Americans are protesting big government, not government. As government grows, individual liberty vanishes. And, as government spending increases, the debt accumulated will create a nightmare for future generations. And our leadership knows this, but just doesn’t seem to care. That is the prime mover of Main Street America’s disaffection with the object of ADL affection.
With Barack Obama’s approval rating in a free fall, it’s as if the ADL had been hired by the White House to help turn the tide, and what better way to assist their leader than to conduct a libelous study attacking the majority of Americans who protest Obama’s intention to “fundamentally transform” America? The report is everything and more White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs has been saying for months from the podium — dismissing the concerns of the American people and boogey-manning Fox News as the communications wing of the Republican Party. Number one on the ADL hit list is “fearmonger-in-chief” TV and radio host Glenn Beck.
“In the year since we marked the historic election of the nation’s first African-American president we have seen a tremendous amount of anger and hostility,” said Abraham H. Foxman, ADL national director. “There is a toxic atmosphere of rage in America being witnessed at many levels, and it raises fundamental questions for our society.”
“While not all of America has bought into these conspiracies, they seem to be seeping more and more into the mainstream,” added Mr. Foxman. “And since many of these expressions are interconnected in some significant ways, we wanted to try and connect the dots and ask the basic questions of why the anger, why now, and where might it lead.”
Foxman and the ADL are far removed from reality and maestros of projection. It’s as if they are living in an alternative universe. The overriding demand at the tea parties, town halls, and indeed among a growing number of Americans of all stripes is individual liberty, a free economy, and that elected officials who take an oath to support and defend the Constitution should govern according to it. As a reminder, tens of thousands of pocket U.S. Constitutions and Declarations of Independence have been distributed nationwide at these events, acts that the ADL obviously sees as indicators of “extremism.” How can the ADL protest this?
The only answer can be that the holy liberal scripture embodied in the false messiah is not to be questioned. The doctrine of liberalism is far more important than any constitutional or first principles the nation was founded upon. With Barack Obama and the Democrat-controlled Congress on the verge of imposing state-controlled health care against the will of the people, anxious liberals feel called to step up the attacks on Americans who’d simply rather not have their health care decisions made for them by unionized DMV-style bureaucrats.
The ADL would like us to believe based on its mission statement that it is acting in good faith, but this report underscores that it is simply an organization driven by a proven failure of an ideology that is at best another annoying voice of the left and at worst severely harmful to the cause for freedom.
Which is why it is important to remember that the ADL has always labeled conservative and libertarian speech as “hate speech” or “extreme.” This latest document is just another attempt to muzzle the voice of freedom.
Message to the ADL and other leftists who have been successful silencing Main Street Americans in the past: the worn-out propaganda doesn’t intimidate the millions of courageous Americans at the grassroots level who’ve spent countless hours organizing and educating their friends, families, and neighbors. Yes, the ADL may still wield influence in the media, government, and on campus, and may get ink for its transparent attempts to extinguish the flame of inquiry and critical thinking. But average Americans are now awakening to the threats to our freedom posed by the pied piper president and his shrinking troupe.
As Ronald Reagan said, “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same.” Day by day, a compromised-beyond-repair media and ideological thugs speak to smaller and smaller audiences. Americans are on to the left’s game. That game is about to end.
Orit Sklar is a graduate of the Georgia Institute of Technology, where she received her Bachelor of Science degree in civil engineering. Orit is known nationwide for her advancement of First Amendment rights and academic freedom on American university campuses, and is the co-recipient of the 2009 Ronald Reagan Award from the American Conservative Union. She can be reached at orit@oritsklar.com.
