|
|
|
The Free Congress Commentary:
By Paul M. Weyrich
It was the Hitler regime which perfected the big lie technique. Take a matter with some truth to it, then distort it beyond recognition, then repeat the distortion again and again and again. The lie becomes the "truth." The Soviets carried on in Hitler's tradition, although they were usually so clumsy in doing so they were not as effective. Still, the technique works and I am afraid it is being employed again in our time in a shameful exploitation of racial politics. The Presidential vote in Florida, we are told, was tampered with. Not merely that there is a dispute over some ballots where there is subjective judgment as to the intent of the voter and thus who won and who lost a certain precinct. No, the terminology being used is "tampered with." That suggests overt action on the part of someone to actively steal the election. Who is the culprit? It depends on the audience. For some it is Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris. For others it is Florida Governor Jeb Bush. For still others it is the U.S. Supreme Court. And so it goes. Minority voters are to believe that there was a conspiracy to deprive them of their rights. Because they were deprived of their rights, Al Gore is not President. Because Al Gore is not President and George W. Bush IS President certain benefits to which they would otherwise be entitled are not forthcoming. Now if any of this were really true, mind you, there are mechanisms for dealing with these charges all the way up and down the Constitutional process. No one exercised these mechanisms. Indeed, Vice President Gore himself put down the attempt by some House Members to raise objections to the Electoral College victory of George W. Bush. Even with the gaggle of ultra-liberals just elected, not a single Senator was willing to join with House Members in raising an objection. If they had a shred of evidence that the charges of election tampering were true, at least one of them would have been pleased to blow the whistle. Yet now these same Senators sit in silence and permit the newly elected leader of their party, and other party spokesmen as well, to repeat the big lie again and again and again. When called on it by the media, the best they can say is "there is a lot of anger out there. I'm not going to second guess how people feel." No, because these Senators and their Congressional leadership have convinced themselves that this is the way they come back into power in the 2002 Congressional elections and the way they take back the White House in 2004. Perhaps it is true that this is the way to regain power. But if that is the only way back, what does that say about that political party? It has to stoke up a big lie and inflame minority groups in order to win. What a prescription for leadership! What does that say to the rest of the nation, not angered by a supposed deprivation of rights and entitlements? It says that they ought to look long and hard at the people who are orchestrating the big lie and the people who are tolerant of it It says they ought to ask whether they want these folks running their nation in the next couple of years. If they are capable of contriving to inflame minority groups to keep them angry enough so they will blindly support their party in the next election, what are they capable of telling the rest of the nation to keep themselves in power once they are back in? Once you get in the habit of lying, it gets easier and easier to do so. Paul Weyrich is president of the Free Congress Foundation.
|
