The biggest problem for Liberals in these current growing Obama scandals is they have been robbed of their usual favorite defense/justification of Obama: “Bush did it too!”
Perhaps you’ve seen this yourself over the past 4 1/2 years. The Obama White House will get caught doing something, and it gets talked about, and the Liberal in the room holds his hand up and goes “Wait a second. You can’t criticize what Obama & Co. did here because BUSH did the same thing!”
This logic error is called ‘tu quoque’ or the ‘you too!’ dodge. It’s an attempt to minimize or downplay the behavior by faulting others for doing the same thing. It provides in itself no justification or defense whatever for the actual behavior; it’s just an attempt to mitigate consequences by making an appeal to hypocrisy.
You can read more about the ‘tu quoque’ and other logic errors here and here.
The reason the IRS scandal is so awful is that the power of the Federal Government was used by political partisans to single out citizens for abuse based on their completely legitimate political views.
The AP/Fox News scandals are also important because abuse of Federal power threatens a free press, something that is vital to the survival of a democratic republic.
And it definitely puts a burr under the saddle of Liberals that they can’t use their usual tu quoque arguments to try to head off any consequences for what’s been done.
Their usual ‘Bush/Republicans Did It Too’ argument can’t be used.
When did Bush’s administration:
- lie about a terrorist attack?
- go after the Left with the IRS?
- spy on reporters using the DOJ?
- kill American citizens with no due process through drone strikes?
The things Progressives fear-mongered about, that Bush was going to have people thrown in jail for checking out the wrong library books, didn’t happen.
Now that the shoe is on the other foot, Liberals want to pretend the things that are coming to light only now, that went on from 2009-2013 are nothing, a sideshow, a circus, just a political witch hunt. Well it was a witch hunt.
Federal bureaucrats used the power of their offices to suppress & single out citizens & groups based on their political views when they weren’t busy spying on reporters. This is a subversion of the entire American governmental system.
Our electoral system has government power as the PRIZE of winning elections after arguments have been made on a level playing field. You cannot have a system in which one party is entrenched and using the power of Federal agencies to suppress all other political parties. Whatever kind of governmental system that would be, it would not be an American or a Constitutional one.
The Key To Understanding The Stupidity
Think about all the times you heard Progressives shriek Conservatives were witch-hunting them during the Bush years.
That was nothing more than projection. The moment Progressives got control of the Executive branch back in 2009, they set about using the power of the Executive to tilt the playing field back in their favor.
Everything they shrieked the Bush administration was trying to do to Progressive groups & citizens and the Press, Obama’s administration went out and DID it. And we probably STILL don’t know everything they’ve been doing.
From this we can learn the poker tell of Progressivism: projection. What they always claim their political opponents are doing or want to do to them, they will do themselves. They play act that the Big Bad Government is coming after them…until they ARE the Big Bad Government. They they’ll inflict on others what they claimed they feared themselves.
Here’s a Progressive MSM flack playacting about the Bush administration suppressing his speech & attacking him for his political views
Progressives in the media who claimed for 8 yrs Bush was trying to use the awesome powers of the Federal Government to suppress them & their views, notice these SAME media people are now trying to excuse EXACTLY THIS from the Obama administration.
Here’s the same MSM flack now experiencing genuine fear as he realizes he can’t successfully cover up everything the Obama administration did in using Federal agencies to go after Conservatives
A Progressive is a person who tells you what he’ll do if he gets in charge by accusing you of doing it to him first.
This is why up until now, we got the stupid ‘Bush too!’ arguments. It’s OK for Obama to do this because it’s ‘payback’ for the stuff Bush supposedly did. Right now I’ll bet you a bunch of Liberal MSM flacks are having a brainstorming session trying to come up with a new set of tu quoque defenses to apply to the IRS & AP/Fox scandals.
What Progressives claim Conservative will do in abusing State power to thwart their Utopian aims, Progressives will THEMSELVES do to ADVANCE those same Utopian goals.
Liberals spent 8 long years claiming Bush wanted to target them & suppress their speech and their views by using State power. Then a Progressive administration turned around and *did* what they accused Bush of wanting to do.
Once you understand how projection works with Liberals/Progressives, understanding a lot of their seeming contradictory acts and statements is much easier. And far more entertaining.
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