The Obama Inquisition
By Daniel Greenfield
SultanKnish.Blogspot.com
If you want to infuriate a liberal, question his
patriotism. He’ll sneer, mock and ridicule the
question. And then when he is up against the wall,
he will mumble that the real patriots don’t need to
wear flag pins because they covertly perform their
patriotism in the dead of night when no one is
looking.
He
may even trot out that fake Jefferson quote about
dissent being the highest form of patriotism. No,
Teddy Roosevelt didn’t say it either. He did however
say that “Patriotism means to stand by the country…
It does not mean to stand by the president... save
exactly to the degree in which he himself stands by
the country.”
And he meant it, ruthlessly attacking Woodrow Wilson
until Democratic Senator William J. Stone called the
former president “the most seditious man of
consequence in America”.
Dissent stopped being patriotic the very second that
Obama entered the Oval Office. Suddenly it became
unspeakable treason and racist sedition.
Patriotism could be questioned again, but not for
the love of country, only for the love of a
president.
The patriotism practiced by Republicans was the
patriotism of Teddy Roosevelt, standing by the
country rather than by a man. And standing by him
exactly to the degree in which he stood by the
country. That is what Giuliani did. To this the
Democrats answered with the patriotism of Obama,
launching witch hunts against anyone whose love of
Obama appeared to be lacking in sincerity and
enthusiasm.
Now the media is questioning Scott Walker’s
patriotism. Not his love of country, but his love of
Obama.
The Washington Post's Dana Milbank fumed that Scott
Walker had replied to a question about whether Obama
was a Christian with “I don’t know.” “This is not a
matter of conjecture. The correct answer is yes,”
Milbank angrily prompted like Orwell’s O’Brien
lecturing Winston Smith about the virtues of
Doublethink.
Of course the correct answer is, “I don’t know.” Or
as Walker put it, “You’ve asked me to make
statements about people that I haven’t had a
conversation with about that. How [could] I say if I
know either of you are a Christian?”
No one knows whether Obama is a Christian, loves the
country or wears ballet slippers to bed. These are
hypothetical questions. Milbank wants them to be
prerequisites for getting elected, writing that
Walker’s confession of ignorance on Obama’s inner
faith “disqualified him” from being president.
The question was ridiculous and asked in bad faith.
Candidates are not normally interrogated about the
religions of other politicians. The only reason to
ask it was to force Walker to affirm Obama’s
virtues. Instead of providing testimony for his own
faith, he was asked to provide testimony for Obama’s
faith.
Call it the media’s Obama Inquisition. No one
expects it, but by now everyone probably should.
Obama doesn’t need to love America. That would be
one of those vulgar displays that our bicoastal
elites sneer at and class together with Wal-Mart and
country music. But Republicans still need to
verbally profess that Obama is a Christian who loves
America, motherhood and arugula pie.
We no longer have a political test based on the
love of the country, but we do have one based on the
love of Obama. We don’t have to wear flag pins; we
have to wear Obama pins. Showy displays of
patriotism are for tacky flyover country types.
Obama holograms, alongside Jesus holograms, are sold
on the streets of every inner city. The upscale
version of that is the ubiquitous Obama logo that
can be spotted on the back bumper of every
ecologically conscious Subaru from San Francisco to
Boston.
And there’s nothing showy or tacky about those
expressions of Obamatism.
Politicians no longer have to demonstrate love of
God and country. Instead they, as Scott Walker has
learned, have to affirm their faith in the verities
that have replaced them; Obama and evolution. These
are what a serious candidate in the non-exceptional
Post-American nation of ours must believe.
To question them, even implicitly by failing to
affirm them, is progressive Post-American blasphemy.
And the Obama Inquisition is relentless in ferreting
out even the mildest inquiring eyebrow of heresy.
Nobody knows what is in Obama’s head except the man
himself and his team of psychiatrists. But it
doesn’t matter what is in Obama’s head. It matters
that we believe particular things about Obama.
We must have faith in Obama.
The left has replaced nationalism with a cult of
personality. And cults of personality are fragile.
We accept flaws in a nation because it includes our
own flawed selves. But to believe in a man, he must
be perfect. The naked emperor cannot be challenged
because everyone is only one loud exclamation away
from realizing that not only isn’t he wearing any
pants, but that everyone else sees it too. And then
the cult shudders under a wave of laughter traveling
at the speed of sound from coast to coast.
The left whined that displays of patriotism singled
them as if they were part of some lurking seditious
force out to undermine America. Which is a perfectly
absurd notion as Professor Bill Ayers could tell
you. But now the media rants that Scott Walker’s
lack of faith in Obama’s patriotism and faith are a
“wink” and a “dog whistle” to the nefarious
anti-Obama forces lurking in the heartland.
Paranoia about enemies of the country who must be
stamped out has been replaced with paranoia about
enemies of Obama who must be stamped out. It is not
enough that a politician does not personally
question Obama’s patriotism. He must also testify to
Comrade Obama’s patriotism. That is what is truly
being demanded of Scott Walker.
He must denounce the idea that Obama, who thinks the
Bible has a verse in it about not throwing stones
when you live in a glass house, is anything but a
Christian. He must verbally assert that Obama loves
America as that is the new post-American pledge of
allegiance. It is not enough not to question Obama.
Scott Walker must have faith in Obama’s goodness.
And that demand is as Un-American as Bill Ayers and
Jeremiah Wright.
Americans have never been forced to bow to a man.
They have never been forced to believe in a man.
They have never been forced to pledge their
allegiance to a sovereign, rather than to the
nation.
For six years, America has suffered under a
hysterical atmosphere of media paranoia about dark
forces spreading hate and undermining Obama. Not
even the most zealous anti-Communist ever spent as
much time fulminating about secret subversives as
the average MSNBC talking head. Even the mildest
criticism has to be relentlessly stamped out and
exposed as part of a vast anti-Obama conspiracy.
It
has reached such a point that the failure to praise
Obama disqualifies a candidate for public office.
It’s not a completely unprecedented state of
affairs. Woodrow Wilson’s administration saw men
jailed for everything from private conversations to
making a movie about the American Revolution. Teddy
Roosevelt, a former president, was threatened with
prison by Democrats, both subtly and unsubtly, for
his articles attacking the administration’s
policies. But there was still no cult of personality
of Wilson.
Democrats no longer have patriotism at their
disposal. They can’t rally the nation for love of
country. They don’t even believe in the government
unless they’re running it. That just leaves them
with a man.
The cult of personality is no longer just an option.
It’s their only option. Obama is all they have.
And if you don’t believe in Obama, you’re a racist
enemy of all that’s good and progressive who is
going to liberal hell. Or as they call it, Portland.