Dude, Where's My Country_ - Michael Moore [75]
—Ann Coulter (on September 11 terrorists)
“I WILL TELL YOU, WHEN MICHAEL MOORE SAYS THAT THIS PRESIDENT IS AN ILLEGITIMATE PRESIDENT HE CROSSES THE LINE, HE CROSSES THE LINE . . . HE CROSSES THE LINE INTO ANARCHY ALL RIGHT.”
—Bill O’Reilly
“IT IS TRUE THAT IF YOU ARE POOR AND CAN’T AFFORD A GOOD LAWYER, YOUR ODDS OF GOING TO PRISON SKYROCKET. BUT YOU KNOW WHAT? TOUGH!”
—Bill O’Reilly
“FEMINISM WAS ESTABLISHED SO AS TO ALLOW UNATTRACTIVE WOMEN EASIER ACCESS TO THE MAINSTREAM OF SOCIETY!”
—Rush Limbaugh
“YOU GUYS ON THE LEFT, YOU WEREN’T THERE IN THE COLD WAR, YOU’RE NOT HERE NOW. IF WE EVER LISTEN TO YOU, WE’RE ALL GOING TO BE BOWING AT THE FEET OF SOME DICTATOR SOMEPLACE ELSE!”
—Sean Hannity
“THEY’RE A BUNCH OF GUTLESS, SPINELESS COWARDS!”
—Sean Hannity (on Hollywood leftists)
“CANADA IS A LEFT-WING, SOCIALIST BASKET CASE. WHAT KIND OF FRIENDS ARE THEY?”
—Sean Hannity
One day, I was talking to the actor Tim Robbins—often an object of the right’s bellicose babbling—and he said, “Why is it that they are so mad and angry all the time when they already control the White House, the Senate, the House of Representatives, the Supreme Court, Wall Street, all of talk radio, and three of the four cable news channels? They got their war, they got their tax cut, and their commander in chief has a 70 percent approval rating! You’d think they’d be happy, but they’re not.”
It does seem pathological to be unhappy when you are in charge of just about everything. Imagine how we would behave if Jesse Jackson were president, the liberal Democrats controlled both houses of Congress, Mario Cuomo and Ted Kennedy sat on the Supreme Court, and The Nation had the biggest news channel on TV. Man, we would be in seventh—no, eighth!—heaven, and you’d hear the joy in our voices and see the smiles on our faces.
And that’s when it hit me: The right wing is so upset precisely because they know they are in the minority. They know Americans, in their hearts, do not really agree with their side, and they never will. Americans, like most humans, don’t want to be around people who are filled with hate and meanness of spirit. And that is why they are so angry, because they know they are a dying species. They know the chicks and spics and the fags are taking over and so they are trying to get as much damage done as possible before their political breed becomes extinct. They howl the howl of a dying dog and they wail as the dinosaurs must have in their final days. Instead of fighting them, we should pity them.
Of course, most Americans would never describe themselves as “liberal.” In the last two decades, it has become the dirtiest word in American politics. All a Republican has to do is brand an opponent “a liberal,” and that’s supposed to be the end of that loser. It hasn’t helped that liberals have played right into their hands, first by stopping their own use of the word and then by acting as minimally liberal as possible. Liberals have acted and voted conservatively so often that they have redefined the term “wimp.”
This is why Americans usually hate to vote for liberals. A “liberal leader” is often an oxymoron—liberals don’t lead, they follow. Conservatives are real leaders. They have the courage of their convictions. They don’t bend, they don’t break, and they never give in. They are relentless in pursuit of their ideals. They are fearless and they take shit from no one. In other words, they actually believe in something. When’s the last time you ran into a liberal or a Democrat who stuck to a principle just because it was right?
That is why most Americans don’t trust liberals. You never know which way they will bend. At least with Republicans and conservatives, what you see is what you get, and in these scary times, that reassurance is comforting to millions.
The other problem is that many liberals aren’t much fun and they certainly don’t look like they’re having a very good time. Who wants to hang out with that crowd?
But Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary defines the word liberal this way: “Not narrow or contracted