Suppose it’s the championship basketball game and one player is committing foul after foul. Each time, he denies he’s committed any offense.
Eventually, he fouls out. But even as he heads to the bench, he’s protesting that he did nothing wrong.
That’s what we’re seeing today from Republicans who claim there is no “war on women.” The Republican National Committee chairman likened it to a “war on caterpillars.” The Senate Republican leader claims it’s all manufactured – even as female members of his caucus warn about the growing backlash against the GOP from women.
But whether it’s sports or politics, denials don’t change the facts. So let’s look at them
She cites as her basis for the "war" bills that would "restrict a woman's reproductive health care", including of course, abortion, family planning, violence against women, and preventive health care (e.g. mammograms, STDs etc etc). She cites the despicable opposition to Obamacare as yet more evidence that Republicans are anti-woman, hence the "war on women".
Republicans and conservatives, instead of saying that these issues have nothing to do with one segment of the population (i.e. "women" or "blacks" or whatever little victim group the left has split out from the whole) and that they have to do with important and crucial concepts and values such as limited government, individual freedom, and personal responsibility, seem eager to meet the left on its own turf.
Ramesh Ponnuru suggests that Mitt Romney should ignore this supposed "gener gap" because the whole notion is a myth:
Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign is obsessed with the women’s vote.EMPHASIS MINE.
On the day after Rick Santorum dropped out of the race and removed all doubt Romney would be the nominee, the campaign issued five press releases within three hours on the theme that President Barack Obama’s economic record has failed American women: one featuring comments by Romney, four highlighting remarks by female Republican politicians supporting him.
It might be a good strategy, if the women’s vote existed.
Romney and the Republican National Committee argue that Obama’s energy policy is making women pay higher gas prices; that his economic policy is disproportionately costing them jobs; that the Obama White House pays female aides less than male ones. The RNC has been especially eager to repeat former aide Anita Dunn’s claim (which she later said was taken out of context) that although Obama himself was blameless, his White House was “a genuinely hostile workplace to women.”
Everyone understands why Republicans are mounting this attack. They are responding to weeks of Democratic charges that they are waging a “war on women.” A recent USA Today/Gallup poll that found Romney losing support among women younger than 50 in swing states has especially alarmed them.
Ponuru is absolutely correct. Republicans are responding to weeks (years, decades) of Democratic charges on this issue. AND THE DEMOCRATS ALWAYS SEEM TO WIN THE DAY.
Not because they are actually correct or have truth on their side; not simply because they have the media referrees on their side, but because they always set the ground rules and they always insist on playing in their home court.
The "war on women" meme is not real, that is, it has no reality. Neither is the charge of Republicans being "anti-Black" or racist; or anti-poor. These memes are just a few of the ongoing, politically correct rhetorical strategies adopted by Democrats and the progressive postmodern left in general, to achieve their ends.
There is no desire for rational argument on the Democrats' part because Truth is not the objective of their rhetoric. Stephen Hicks in his book quotes Frank Lentricchia, a noted Duke University literary critic. Postmodernism, says Lentricchia, "seeks not to find the foundation or conditions of truth but to exercise power for the purpose of social change [emphasis mine]."
Postmodern rhetoric explicitly rejects truth, and because of this those who use it are completely indifferent to consistency and dismissive of reason.Hence they tend to loathe rational debate and make sure that any discussion of issues plays out with their rules.
Look past the superficiality of Boxer's "arguments" about Republicans. Why is government even involved in the issues she cites? When did we conservatives give up the fundamental fight about the role of government in our lives? When did we stop caring about individual freedom and personal responsibility?
Well, it began when the accusations of being "anti-woman", or "racist" or whatever, started being hurled around. These accusations--even if they are completely unfounded--are political poison for the person on the receiving end of them. So in the hysteria to respond, the accused almost always says, "NO! I'm not racist, sexist, [fill in your favorite here]! But by doing so, he or she has already lost the ability to have the debate be on the issues that are important, and have ceded the rules.
For the Republican or conservative the debate is about freedom vs slavery--it is about the right to pursue your own life, liberty and happiness. It is about the importance of every individual human life to be free to live their lives without the State telling them what to do.
Think about what the postmodern left's PC and multicultural gurus preach in their high-minded, superior rhetoric that inevitably brands anyone who dares to disagree with a racist label. Then WATCH WHAT THEIR RHETORIC ACTUALLY BRINGS ABOUT in real life. It is in the tribal and entitlement behavior that you begin to see the toxicity of this dogma; as well as the essential oppressive nature of the politically correct behavior that adherence to the religion of multiculturalism demands of us.
Having given up any objective standard by which to mediate the vastly different perspectives and world views that each disparate group brings to the table; having abandoned reason altogether in favor of expressing some feel-good platitudes about a supposedly essential "need to belong" to one's race, tribe, religion or group first and foremost; the outcome is what Hicks refers to as "group balkinization" --with all its inevitable and inescapable disunity, disharmony and conflict.
After that the complementary dogma of political correctness is used to stifle free speech and to further obscure reality.
This PC dogma is antithetical to the concept of the universalism of human experience that is the bedrock of civilization; and instead glorifies sexual, cultural and tribal differences, no matter how insane or irrational.
Multiculturalism teaches that what is truly important above all else is belonging to one's sexual, racial, ethnic, or religious identity, and not that one also belongs to the family of humankind. If the former is held superior, then "social withdrawal" from community and a pervasive distrust of other groups follows quite naturally; including conflicts between different nations, religions and ethnic groups.
What the Obama Administration and the Democrats are doing right now is to divide America up into as many victimhood groups as possible.
The only "universal" that is shared under such circumstances is a committment to disharmony and, lurking beneath the overt moral relativism, is a grandiose sense of entitlement from each group as it jockeys for postion in the victimhood status heirarchy.
Ponnuru comments, "Republicans deserve credit for resisting the idea -- the lazy instinct -- that what female voters care most about are "women's issues." The party should take the crucial step of seeing that women don't have to be courted on the basis of their sex at all."
But principled Republicans and conservatives should resist even more strongly. They should refuse to play the game the Democrats are playing and always bring the discussion back to the essential concepts and ideas that made this nation at one time the most desirable place for free men and women to live.
UPDATE: This cartoon, which I received in an email today seems appropriae somehow:
[Here are some other Glenn McCoy cartoons]
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