It has often been said that one of the separating factors between Liberals and Conservatives is that Liberals are more consciencious of the words they select to describe someone, whereas Conservatives are a little more callous, a bit more apt to use the �politics of personal destruction�, as described so well by our former Commander-in-Chief. How can you ever argue the fact of this? After all, isn�t it the great movement on the left that is responsible for the current purveyance of politically correct speech, leading to referring to people through their heritage (African-Americans, Italian-Americans, French-Canadian-Americans, even though most of these people have gotten no closer in their lives to these hyphenated places than through National Geographic)? It is with no small amount of shock that I read Bill Keller�s New York Times column in which he described Republican U.S. Senators Jesse Helms, Phil Gramm, and Strom Thurmond as belonging to the �Taliban wing� of the conservatives. To be fair, maybe I took him out of context. Let�s check the entire quote: (his complaint about the Senators was) "that they harnessed their collective century of seniority to the Taliban wing of the America right." Nope. Guess I read it correctly after all.
Actually, this comment, like many others, is no surprise to many of us who hold right-leaning views when it comes to politics. We have already had to stand quietly by as the media virtually ignored such loaded statements as Conservatives being accused of wanting to starve children and poison our drinking water, and who can forget the fact that that most politically correct of statesmen, Mr. Al Gore stating that anyone who leans towards the right is part of that �extra chromosome party�.
Then again, I guess it wasn�t so much of a shock after all. |
