Obama Tells The Right To Tone It Down

In an interview with CBS News, President Obama was asked what he thinks of his critics on the Right.

From Politico's coverage of the CBS story:

"I’ve been listening to talk radio, the kindest of terms is a socialist, worst of which I’ve heard is you called a Nazi, are you aware of the level of enmity that crosses the airwaves about you?" asked Smith.

"Well I think that when you listen to Rush Limbaugh or Glenn Beck, it's pretty apparent, but keep in mind that there have been periods in American history where this kind of vitriol comes out," said Obama. "It happens often when you've got an economy that is making people more anxious, but that's not the vast majority of Americans. I think vast majority of Americans know that we're trying hard. I want what's best for the country. They may disagree on certain policy issues but I didn't buy all the hype right after inauguration where everybody was only saying nice things about me and I don't get too worried when things aren't going as well because I know that, over time, these things turn.

"I do think that everybody has a responsibility — Democrats or Republicans — to tone down some of this rhetoric, some of these comments. …It used to be that someone who said something crazy, they might be saying it to their next door neighbor or it might be on some late night AM station at the very end of the radio dial and now with the blogs, it ends up getting a lot more attention and you guys end up covering it a lot more. It's not as if there haven't been a lot of crazy things said out and about over the years, it's just that it gets much more magnified much more quickly."

In a nation that was founded on values of Freedom and Liberty, where the nation was born when the people rose up in revolt against government tyranny, excessive taxation, and a government that would not listen to the people, we have seen the government increasingly spending more and more money on wasteful programs, redistributing wealth based on their arbitrary standards of who is deserving and who isn't, taking over private industry, and constantly increasing the size and power of government.

The Right has been criticized for not standing up in opposition to George W. Bush like they have stood against Barack Obama, even though they are committing many of the same offenses against the Constitution.  Well, Barack Obama is to many on the Right what Abraham Lincoln was to the South.  The difference between then and now is that when Lincoln was elected, the South secceeded because they believed in their right to own slaves.  Today, the Right is standing against the government's attempt to enslave the populace.  The government has been buying the people off, little by little, through government programs and so-called "entitlements."  It has gotten so bad that today, large portions of the population will support a candidate solely on the basis of what handout they can expect that candidate to give them - bribery for votes, all with taxpayer dollars in the name of compassion and charity.

The leftist progressives in our government, with the aid of the mainstream media's pro-left propaganda machine, have set themselves up as the modern-day Robin Hood, taking from the rich and giving to the poor.  They seem to forget the fact that in the tale of Robin Hood, the rich were the fat-cats in government, and the poor were the citizenry living under oppressive taxation.  Over the long run, all their socialist policies will lead to is a universally poor populace, enslaved by the government, while those in power live as kings.  We've seen it before - the only difference between modern America and Soviet Russia is that while Russia transformed their society very quickly through revolution, the United States is going about it more slowly, through the use of propaganda and government policy.

And now, in the face of a socialist revolution undertaken and led by those in the government who will benefit the most from their own policies, we are told to tone it down.  Never mind that we see more and more of our freedoms slip away on a daily basis, this kind of "vitriol" has no place in American politics.  Never mind that those on the Right are constantly made out to be racists, bigots, and even criminals because of our opinions, it's wrong for us to speak our minds.

When George W. Bush was president and the anti-war activists were shouting all kinds of crazy things, up to and including comparing Bush to Hitler and expressing how they would like members of the Bush administration to die, we were told by the Democrats that "protest is the highest form of patriotism" (Nancy Pelosi herself said paraphrases of this several times).  Now that the Left is in power, protests are no longer patriotic.  Protest is dangerous, insidious, and wrong.

As freedom-loving Americans, we should not allow this kind of rhetoric from the President to slow us down.  We have just as much freedom of speech as the rabid leftists who turned out in droves to protest the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck have First Amendment rights, whether those in the government like it or not - after all, the whole purpose of the First Amendment is to protect the people when the government doesn't like what they're saying.