The Voice of Reason: A V.I.P. Pass to Enlightenment (7 page)

know all of you have been waiting for me, your New Champion of All Things Conservative, to start taking aim at President Obama. Although there are many verbal shots to take, there is something I’d like to share that will hopefully enlighten Obama Bashers and Obama Supporters alike. Regardless of my personal feelings, he is, first and foremost, President Obama. He was elected by the people of my country—the country I love, support, and would die for. He has chosen to take on one of the most difficult, time-consuming, stressful, and poorly paying jobs on earth. And personally, I believe his intentions are honorable and that he is doing his very best.

Out of respect for the man, and the office, I call him president. I do not agree with many of his policies; I am philosophically opposed to many of his political positions; and he and I hold radically divergent opinions on most topics. But as a man, and as an American, I feel it is incumbent upon me to support him, even if that means being a member of the “loyal opposition.” My support may come in the form of silence. It may come in the form of respectful dissent. But it will be supportive, for the sake of my country.

I would like you readers to give that a moment of thought. Then, I would like you to compare my approach with that of President Obama’s supporters in the years prior to, and even during, the election he won over John McCain.

Answer me this: Were they behaving as members of the “loyal opposition” when:

 

• They were ridiculing, mocking, and belittling George W. Bush?
  
 

• They used every means, fair and foul, to malign Bush, question his intelligence and decision-making capabilities, and describe not only him, but also his wife and children, in terms of contempt, cruelty, wickedness, and anger?
  

Why was it then (and still is now) that those on the left, the so-called progressives, always seem to fight the dirtiest? Why is liberal politics always the most cutthroat? Where was that type of personal, vicious attack on President Obama’s character, his intelligence, his very worth as a person, from the Right during the campaign? It didn’t exist.

For eight years the liberal Democrats put their own feelings, their own hatred, and their own viciousness in front of the needs of their country. Because they hated—absolutely hated—President George W. Bush. And yes, ladies and gentlemen, liberal politics is the policy of hate and aggrievement, first and foremost. Just listen to liberals speak. Watch their actions. You can literally hear and see the hatred leaching out of their bones, forming a poisonous cloud that infects everyone around them. Let me make a few things very clear:

 

• Liberals don’t love the poor; they hate the wealthy.
  
 

• Liberals don’t respect justice; they hate and seek to destroy anything they perceive as unjust.
  
 

• Liberals don’t even love their own ideas; they just hate everybody else’s.
  
 

• Liberals do not respect the rule, or even the intent, of law as a construct of civilization; they see it only as a weapon to dismantle their ideological opponents—to punish those with different ideas, different circumstances, different objectives.
  
 

• Liberals hide behind the ever-shifting, amoral curtain of “social justice” to attack, destroy, and scatter the bones of industry, wealth, individual excellence, and personal achievement.
  
 

• Liberals use the Darwinian concepts of natural selection and survival of the fittest (even though they are actually the ideas of Alfred Russel Wallace, one of his contemporaries) to force-feed the theory of evolution down every child’s throat as a government-mandated absolute in public schools. Then they discard the notion completely when it comes to human beings who work harder, achieve more, and succeed in favor of a very hazy, nonscientific, constantly shifting notion of “equality” and “social justice,” both codes for “hate,” which they then use to strip from the fittest among us all the benefits of being fit. (“See that guy with the Porsche? He’s better than all of you. Elect me so I can get rid of him, so we can all be the best together!”)
  

Don’t just take my word for it—listen to them
yourself
. Listen to how they always come out
against
something—some perceived injustice, some wrong
they
must make right. And while you’re at it, watch how politically selective they are about it. Watch how they hold a press conference to denounce, ruin, and utterly destroy a broadcaster who inadvertently used a phrase or term that they perceive as “insensitive” to a particular race or ethnicity, all the while ignoring the fact that their lack of concern over that phrase for the past twenty years allowed it to slip back into the cultural mainstream through records produced by members of that particular race or ethnicity. Listen to how limousine liberals like Rosie O’Donnell rant about the fact that you are allowed to own a gun to protect your family, while she has
armed
bodyguards protecting her children. Listen to the hatred erupt from the bowels of her liberal guts as she hisses and screeches at everyone with differing opinions on same-sex marriage, gun control, or any other topic.

Is that how the conservatives act?

I have Democratic and liberal friends. In the eight years that President Bush was in office, eight of the most trying, painful years this great nation has been faced with—the attempted genocide of our people on 9/11, an international enemy with no face and no name trying to kill as many Americans as possible with no respect for humanity—I never once heard any of my enlightened, liberal friends refer to George W. Bush as “President Bush.” I never even heard them call him
George
Bush.

It was always, without fail, simply the name Bush, spat out like a rotten grape. No respect for the man, his efforts, or the office itself. The same liberals who would lie on the carpet in the Oval Office to shine President Obama’s shoes would intentionally spill red wine on it if President Bush were in office. But it’s the
same carpet
, and the
same office
, and that’s the difference I see in liberals and conservatives.

In assessing President Obama’s job performance, liberals have been quick to deflect attention (and its subsequent and inevitable criticism) from some of the president’s disastrous policies by sneering under their breath, “Well, he got Bin Laden.” They do this as if all along they were hawks on the parapets of the nation, howling for the blood of that war criminal. They weren’t. They were up on the parapets howling for blood, but it was the blood of a wealthy American or a conservative politician or a comedian who used an ethnic slur—not for the blood of the ideological architect of the mass murder of their fellow Americans. They steered clear of that, so afraid of “how the world perceives us” that they became declawed kittens lying on their bellies whenever anyone in the world raised the slightest stink about what we do to defend ourselves.

But once it was done, once that serial killer was sent to hell, where he belongs, the liberals used his justified death as a way to give President Obama a big “attaboy,” while bypassing questions about his other atrocious policy decisions. And let’s be real here for a minute. It’s not like the president fast-roped out of a chopper with the SEALs team himself, with a knife in his teeth and a SIG P226 on his hip. And it’s not even like it was his idea. (It
might
have been, had President Bush not already bravely instituted the policy of our nation as it applies to terrorists by saying, “We will bring you to justice, or we will bring justice to you.”) But to be perfectly fair and honest, when the time came, when the question was put to President Obama about what do when Bin Laden’s whereabouts were discovered, when the moral weight was on his shoulders and his shoulders alone, President Obama
did the right thing
.

Let me go on record here and say:

“President Obama: When they told you they had Bin Laden pegged, trapped in that filthy rat hole of a house, and they asked you to make a decision about what to do with him, you
stepped up
. You ordered the Navy SEALs to kill him. You did the right thing. You showed the courage, resolution, and conviction of the leader of the free world. I was
proud
of you, and proud to be an American with you as my president. I don’t agree with many of the things you do or believe in, but you are my president and I want you to succeed for the sake of my country. I would prefer you to succeed and for me to be wrong for the sake of this nation. But I reserve the right to disagree with you, and feel safe, and comfortable, and free from the fear of reprisal should I publicly or privately support different candidates with different ideas in the future.”

I love my country.

hen I was young I needed great people to help me realize my own potential. These people often came in the form of wrestling coaches. My first coach, Dave Sanville, did more than train me; he beat any shreds of indifference I might have had into submission. Don’t forget that I coach wrestling on a daily basis, and I can say from personal experience that a lot of the kids who appear, to the untrained eye, to be mediocre actually have truckloads of talent. The reason they seem so average is that they don’t care, and more to the point, they don’t see a
reason
to care. The moment you give a kid a reason to give a darn, you have opened the door to his infinite potential. Dave went a step further; he opened the door, put up a welcome banner and gave me a set of keys, and then kicked me straight through the doorway before apathy could set in.

My college wrestling coaches, the great Ron Finley and Roy Pittman, built on that solid foundation and inspired me to know no limits.

Let me share a short anecdote about the sort of man who has the vision to shape a future generation into greatness. Awhile ago I was informed that Coach Finley was in the hospital, and his condition looked pretty grave. I dropped everything I was doing and drove hundreds of miles to his bedside. I brought him some cookies the size of Frisbees as a “don’t die on me” incentive, and I walked into his room expecting to see my frail coach, mentor, and early adulthood hero for the last time.