The Anti Choice Left

Originally published at www.conservativevoice.net on April 24th 2003.

As I read Tim Robbin’s whiny missive on the “unfairness” of being called to account for his public anti-war position, it occurred to me that the left is very quick to defend their own right to make any public declaration, no matter how egregious, while they take every opportunity to deny any number of choices to everyone else.

Every America has the right to states his views, no matter how onerous they may be. By the same token, the rest of us have every right to refuse to listen. How best to refuse to listen to an actor, actress, writer or artist? Don’t go to their plays, pay to see their movies, buy their books or hang their pictures on your wall. That’s our choice.

Don’t silence them! That wouldn’t be right. That would put us at the same level as the leftist fanatics that prevented Benjamin Netanyahu from speaking at Berkley. Remember that? What a fine example of advocating choice and freedom of expression, eh? I don't want to shout them down. I just don't want to give them my money.

Why is the left so ready to label a conservative boycott of their artistic products as “McCarthyism”, when the examples of similar leftist actions are so common? They reserve to themselves the decision for politically motivated action, but would deny it to their opponents?

Why do they condemn Nike for using inexpensive labor in Central America and Asia, refusing to buy that company’s products, without considering the denial of choice they are foisting on the poor laborers that see American companies as a way to achieve a higher standard of living?

What about school choice? The left, in the thrall of the teachers’ unions, opposes vouchers that give poor American families the choice to send their kids to far better schools than the products of Great Society socialism that pass for centers of education in our inner cities.

And taxes? President Bush is advocating tax cuts that will give most of us, not just the very rich, a choice in how we spend our hard earned dollars. Where are the liberals on that one? Stupid question. They’re against it, drumming up the same old, tired, class warfare arguments, whereby the middle class magically ascends to the status of “rich”.

How about Augusta? Are the screeching shrews of NOW at all interested in protecting the free choice allowed a private club in deciding who should be counted among its members? Never in a thousand years.

Let’s not forgot the Second Amendment. Everything the liberal anti-gun lobby can do to restrict our choice in that arena is being done. Heaven forbid we allow common, law-abiding, citizens to choose to own a firearm.

Did I say “heaven forbid”? Excuse me, that’s another choice the left would rather we not exercise. Can’t choose to worship the god of your choice, at least not in public. Might offend an atheist, who is, of course, allowed to choose to be an atheist and shove it in our faces.

I don’t even have room here for all the cases of political-correctness-run-amuck on our college campuses where conservative students and faculty are restricted from the free expression of their opinions by the very same tactics that Tim Robbins is pinning on the right.

What about the city employee in Norfolk, Virginia who was told to take an American flag off his wall, while our troops fought their way to Baghdad, because it was a partisan political statement? Where was his choice? It’s not as if he put up a picture of Hitler and started wearing a swastika armband. Apparently some liberals liken pride in Old Glory to latent Fascism.

The left, epitomized by Tim Robbins, condemns choice; unless it is their choice, in which case it is, logically, no choice at all for those who disagree with them.

At the core of their reasoning is an elitist ideology that claims first, and only, right to the truth. They know what is best! They know what is right! They define the moral high ground! The rest of us are peasants, slouching Neanderthals, which have to be guided by our betters, the moral purists who elevate the hypocritical liar Michael Moore and the pedophile Roman Polansky to the status of cultural icons. They’re joined by their fellow travelers, who gleefully call for the deaths of our own soldiers, while sitting in the comfortable safety of the halls of Columbia University.

The only choice the left feels comfortable with is a woman’s right to choose abortion. Here the liberals swan dive right off the cliff of reason onto the sharp rocks of ideological extremism. They’re so far gone on this one that the California chapter of NOW issued a letter apologizing to Scott Peterson for being indicted for a double murder; his unborn, full-term, son being the second victim. So desperate are they to maintain the choice to kill, that they’ll choose sides with a man who may very well have brutally murdered his pregnant wife and his own child. They have since stepped back from that appalling position, but only under intense public pressure. Any psychologist will tell you that the first response to a question is the most honest.

So, except for abortion, the liberal left despises choice. By extension, they despise all of us, the American mainstream. What did Michael Moore say from the podium at the Academy Awards? “We are against this war.” Which “we” was he referring to? It wasn’t my “we”. I’m sure, in his little mind, it was the American people, in spite of support for the war topping 70% at the time. Of course, what do polls mean? That’s only the people’s opinion, the clouded reasoning of the duped masses. The “real” America, meaning whoever goes to the same cocktail parties as Michael Moore and Tim Robbins, holds the Golden Scepter of Truth, handed down to them by the same group of traitorous yahoos that touted the joys of living under Stalin in the thirties.

Here we are giving the Iraqi people the first real choice they’ve had in their history. A million Shiites have been marching in Karballa for the first time in thirty years. They’re exercising so much choice that they even feel free to condemn our “occupation” in the face of a massive military presence. We, of course, are allowing them to finally act as free citizens.

You know what? This nation of ours, under the leadership of George W. Bush, has so effectively seized the moral high ground that all the left can do is sputter, squeal and whine.

We’ve demonstrated what real choice is.