A tension always exists between the cocky rhetoric of the left
and its undemocratic tactics. Were left-wing ideas as popular as
they claim, liberals wouldn’t need to advance them in such an
underhanded way. “Progress” on the causes most dear to them usually
take place not at the ballot box but in judicial chambers, or, as
it happens this week, in an undemocratic lame-duck session of
Congress.
A smug and beaming Obama declared at the signing ceremony
for the repeal of the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy on Wednesday
that people will look back and wonder why homosexuality in the
military was a “source of controversy in the first place.” But
people are more likely to look back and wonder why such an arrogant
president who enjoyed total control over Washington for two years
had to wait until a lame-duck session after his party got
pulverized at the polls to pass the repeal.
That just shows the repeal is an elitist, not populist,
victory, one which a future Edward Gibbon will mark down as yet
another illustration of an insular political class’s delusion and
decadence at a time of terrorism. This elite has long wanted to
tear down the military and turn it into a laboratory of political
correctness, and Obama has smuggled this gift to his friends
through the backdoor of a lame-duck session.
In his remarks on Wednesday, he said that gay soldiers
will no longer be forced to “live a lie.” Never mind that one can’t
be forced to join an all-volunteer army. Moreover, he showed no
concern about the new deception a majority of combat troops who
object to the repeal will now have to live. Those soldiers must
swallow the lie of political correctness. In order to stay in the
military or get promoted in it, they will henceforth have to
pretend to accept all the pro-gay propaganda and pro-gay
reeducation sure to follow the repeal. They are now expected to be
as enthusiastic about brotherly lust as they had formerly been
about brotherly love.
Obama revealed in his signing-ceremony remarks what was
foremost in his mind during his very first meeting with his
generals: not defeating America’s enemies at a time of war but
liberalizing the military. “Ending ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ was a
topic in my first meeting with Secretary Gates, Admiral Mullen, and
the Joint Chiefs. We talked about how to end this policy. We
talked about how success in both passing and implementing this
change depended on working closely with the Pentagon. And that’s
what we did,” he said.
So, while insurgents and terrorists trained, Obama was
sitting around with his generals and worrying about how to make the
U.S. military gay-friendly. The irony of this “historic”
democratizing of the military is that he had to use the
undemocratic means of threatened court decisions and a lame-duck
session to achieve it.
“We are on the side of history,” liberals like to burble,
especially after a moment of “progress” such as this one. But this
bragging sounds suspicious this week, since the big news from the
Census is that Americans are migrating to parts of the country the
left regards as racist and homophobic.
Under the new numbers of the Census, liberal bastions like
New York and Massachusetts will lose congressional districts, while
conservative states like Texas and Arizona will pick new ones up.
Most of the shrinking states that are losing congressional
districts voted for Obama.
To blunt these population trends, the left will have to
resort to the undemocratic tricks afforded them by judicial
activists, one of which is the Voting Rights Act.
“With Republicans in control of many state legislatures
and governorships after November’s historic election, the GOP will
have the upper hand during the politically charged battles that
take place in the states every decade over the redrawing of
congressional boundaries,”
reports the Washington Post. “This does not give
Republicans the ability to draw the lines anywhere they choose.
Certain states with a history of racial discrimination are required
by the federal Voting Rights Act to draw boundaries in a way that
does not put minority populations at a disadvantage.”
A movement that relies on politically correct
gerrymandering, judicial activism, and lame-duck legislation for
its victories speaks not for the people but only for an
increasingly manipulative and arrogant elite.
