The Ex-President Who Cried Wolf

September 16, 2009

http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/09/15/carter.obama/index.html?section=cnn_latest

Given the need for racial healing in America, it is inexcusable for short-sighted politicians to fan the flames of racial strife and trade decades of progress in race relations for the table scraps of questionable short-term political gain by affixing the motive of racism to all opposition. Do they really mean to say that all disagreement with the President is racist? Do people such as the ever more embarrassing Jimmy Carter not see that every time the word "racism" is misused, hurled indiscriminately, employed to end a losing argument or excuse bad behavior, it is further leached of its meaning and impact, like the unheeded warnings of the boy who cried wolf?

For the unjustly accused, the charge of racism is so hurtful, damaging and impossible to disprove that it ought to be handled like nitroglycerin. Instead, it’s flung about like the enamel in a Jackson Pollock painting. Actual racism is so ugly, despicable and worthy of extinction, that the word ought to have the impact of a freight train. Instead, people are so numbed to hearing it used for any and every reason that they treat it with automatic skepticism, which is most unfortunate.

As long as the Race Card remains the Left’s default response to even the most principled disagreements, the ideal of "not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character" will remain a quaint and naive sentiment from a receding past.