On Friday, former president Bill Clinton delivered a speech at the seven-year-old Center for American Progress, a left-wing advocacy organization based in Washington, in a symposium on the 15th anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing and what lessons can be drawn from this tragic event.
In his address, Clinton proved why he is still the George Jessel of American politics, mixing just the right proportions of disingenuous self-deprecation and “good old boy” Southern charm with presidential gravitas in a 6,000-word political mint julep. And not unlike a good strong mint julep, you may think it tastes pretty good while it’s going down, but before long you realize you’ve been slipped a mickey and are nursing quite the skull-cruncher.
Throughout his speech, Clinton consistently returns to the theme that “the words we use really do matter.” Toward the end of his oration he reiterates: “words have consequences just as much as actions do.” (Italics added.)
Really, Mr. President? Just as much? But that flies in the face of what I learned at my mother’s knee: “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me.”
Interestingly, this is the same strategy the MSM adopted from the git-go in its dismissal of the Tea Party movement, as well as in its similar dismissal of the raucus Health Care town halls meetings in August 2009. Last summer those perpetually “deeper-digging” MSM journalists kept warning us of impending violence and likely brutality of the vociferous protesters. Passionate dissent, we were incessantly reminded, is the prelude to inevitable corporal injury. These were, after all, enraged grandmothers on the war path!
In his CAP speech on Friday, Clinton merely continued the meme:
But when you get mad, sometimes you wind up producing exactly the reverse result of what you say you are for…doing things when you are mad is, by and large, a prescription for error. So the only thing I’m saying is, have at it, go fight, go do whatever you want. And you don’t have to be nice, and you can be harsh. But you’ve got to be very careful not to advocate violence or cross the line.
The Romans were fond of a delicious rhetorical device called praeteritio, in English, preterition. It works like this. You talk about how you’re not going to talk about some real (or more often, imagined) weakness in your opponent, thus firmly planting the existence of that weakness in the listener’s mind. For example, “I refuse to make this campaign a referendum on my opponent’s drinking.” Suddenly, whether true or false, in the minds of the voters your opponent is now an alcoholic. And you didn’t even say he drinks at all.
Rhodes Scholar and no stranger to rhetorical tropes, Clinton perpetuates — not without guile — the familiar MSM fallacy, namely that the type of honest political dissent voiced by the Tea Party movement or anti-Obamacare protesters is prelude to violent acts such as those perpetrated by the likes of Timothy McVeigh.
Clinton and the mainstream media would do well to realize what Horace observed two millenia ago: “Vixere fortes ante Agamemnona“–Brave men were living before Agamemnon.” And so were lunatics. Right speech is not ipso facto fright speech. Just as we learned at our mother’s’ knee, actions still do speak louder than words, and have legal consequences to go along with them.
To suggest that McVeigh-style violence is an inevitable by-product of Tea Party constitutionally-encouraged dissent is a clever but shameful form of political preterition, a pre-emptive attempt to link legitimate anti-Big Government protesters with nuts-in-trucks like McVeigh.
Of course, Mr. Clinton conveniently failed to mention in his speech that Bill Ayers, the unrepentant left-wing bomber-turned-professor, was a product of the same Vietnam War protest movement the former President himself supported. Conclusion: Right-wing dissent is a stepping-stone to mass murder, but Left-wing dissent will get you tenure.
President Clinton has every right to try to pull the wool over our eyes — why should he be any different than the MSM? But it’s a little disappointing that he would choose the anniversary of an American tragedy to trot out this tired, illogical canard one more lame time.
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