October
4, 2005
This is the Free Speech Party?
By Richard
Cohen
There are
times when I sorely miss boilerplate -- those entirely predictable
statements made by politicians that often begin with the word
``frankly,'' then proceed to the phrase ``I don't think the American
people want,'' and conclude with a thundering banality that a
drowsy dog could see coming. That was especially the case last
week when I started reading what Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic
leader in the House of Representatives, had to say about Tom DeLay,
her Republican opposite. I fully expected boilerplate, something
about innocent until proved guilty. But Pelosi crossed me up.
DeLay, as it turned out, was guilty until proved innocent.
``The criminal
indictment of Majority Leader Tom DeLay is the latest example
that Republicans in Congress are plagued by a culture of corruption
at the expense of the American people,'' Pelosi said -- apparently
forgetting to add the boilerplate about the American system of
justice. If she had those thoughts, they're not on her Web site
and not mentioned anywhere. Instead, the reference to a Republican
``culture of corruption'' shows that when it comes to a punctilious
regard for the legal process, in this instance the Democrats ain't
got no culture at all.
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This is an
example of why the Democratic Party is in such trouble. Democrats
are aping what Newt Gingrich once did to them when he was speaker
of the House, a leader of the GOP and a self-proclaimed dazzling
revolutionary. His incessant cry of ``Corruption! Corruption!"
helped end Democratic rule of Congress but it was accompanied
-- Democrats seem to forget -- by an idea or two and emerging
Republican majorities in the country as a whole. Stinging press
releases alone do not a revolution make.
For prominent
Democrats, it seemed it was not enough to forget their manners
about DeLay. They then abandoned their party's tradition -- I
would say ``obligation'' -- to defend unpopular speech by piling
on William Bennett, the former education secretary, best-selling
author and now, inevitably, talk show host.
Responding
to a caller who argued that if abortion was outlawed the Social
Security trust fund would benefit -- more people, more contributions,
was the apparent (idiotic) reasoning -- Bennett said, sure, he
understood what the fellow was saying. It was similar to the theory
that the low crime rate of recent years was the consequence of
high abortion rates: the less African-American males born, the
fewer crimes committed. (Young black males commit a disproportionate
share of crime.) This theory has been around for some time. Bennett
was not referring to anything new.
But he did
add something very important: If implemented, the idea would be
``an impossible, ridiculous and morally reprehensible thing to
do.''
He should
have saved his breath. Prominent Democrats -- Harry Reid in the
Senate, John Conyers and Rahm Emanuel in the House and, of course,
Pelosi -- jumped all over him. Conyers wanted Bennett suspended
from his radio show. Emanuel said Bennett's comments ``reflect
a spirit of hate and division.'' Pelosi said Bennett was out of
the mainstream, and Reid simply asked for an apology.
Actually,
it is Reid and the others who should apologize to Bennett. They
were condemning and attempting to silence a public intellectual
for a reference to a theory. It was not a proposal and not a recommendation
-- nothing more than a possible explanation. But the Democrats
preferred to pander to an audience that either had heard Bennett's
remarks out of context, or merely thought that anytime that conservatives
talk about race, they are being racist. The Democrats' obligation
as politicians, as public officials, to see that we all hear the
widest and richest diversity of views was suspended in favor of
partisan cheap shots. (The spineless White House also refused
to defend Bennett.)
Because
I came of age in the McCarthy era, I have always thought of the
Democratic Party as more protective of free speech and unpopular
thought than the Republican Party. The GOP was the party of Joe
McCarthy, William Jenner and other witch-hunters. Now, though,
it is the Democrats who use the pieties of race, ethnicity and
gender to stifle debate and smother thought, pretty much what
anti-intellectual intellectuals did to Larry Summers, the president
of Harvard, when he had the effrontery to ask some unorthodox
questions about gender and mathematical aptitude. He was quickly
instructed on how to think.
A little
boilerplate would do the Democrats good. It's never bad to remind
the American people that an indictment is not equivalent to conviction,
and speech is not free if it's going to cost you your job. These
spitball press releases, these demeaning zingers, only tend to
highlight the GOP argument that the Democrats are out of ideas.
If so, I have one to offer them: Think.
©
2005, Washington Post Writers Group
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