The Butler from Another Planet….

By Michael Reagan | Aug 22, 2013 | Townhall.com

There you go again, Hollywood.

You’ve taken a great story about a real person and real events and twisted it into a bunch of lies.

You took the true story of Eugene Allen, the White House butler who served eight presidents from 1952 to 1986, and turned it into a clichéd “message movie.”

“Lee Daniels’ The Butler’” stars Forest Whitaker as Cecil Gaines, a fictional character supposedly based on Eugene Allen’s real life.

But let’s compare the two White House butlers.

Guess which one grew up in segregated Virginia, got a job at the White House and rose to become maître d’hôtel, the highest position in White House service?

Guess which one had a happy, quiet life and was married to the same woman for 65 years? And who had one son who served honorably in Vietnam and never made a peep of protest through the pre- and post-civil rights era?

Now guess which butler grew up on a Georgia farm, watched the boss rape his mother and then, when his father protested the rape, watched the boss put a bullet through his father’s head?

Guess which butler feels the pain of America’s racial injustices so deeply that he quits his White House job and joins his son in a protest movement?

And guess which butler has a wife (Oprah Winfrey) who becomes an alcoholic and has a cheap affair with the guy next door? (I’m surprised it wasn’t the vice president.)

After comparing Hollywood’s absurd version of Eugene Allen’s life story with the truth, you wonder why the producers didn’t just call it “The Butler from Another Planet.”

Screenwriter Danny Strong says he was trying to present a “backstage kind of view of the White House” that portrayed presidents and first ladies as they really were in everyday life.

Well, I was backstage at the White House -- a few hundred times. I met and knew the real butler, Mr. Allen, and I knew a little about my father.

Portraying Ronald Reagan as a racist because he was in favor of lifting economic sanctions against South Africa is simplistic and dishonest.

If you knew my father, you’d know he was the last person on Earth you would call a racist.

If Strong had gotten his “facts” from the Reagan biographies, he’d have learned that when my father was playing football at Eureka College one of his best friends was a black teammate.

Strong also would have learned that my father invited black players home for dinner and once, when two players were not allowed to stay in the local hotel, he invited them to stay overnight at his house.

Screenwriter Strong also might have found out that when my father was governor of California he appointed more blacks to positions of power than any of predecessors -- combined.

It’s appalling to me that someone is trying to imply my father was a racist. He and Nancy and the rest of the Reagan family treated Mr. Allen with the utmost respect.

It was Nancy Reagan who invited the butler to dinner – not to work but as guest. And it was my father who promoted Mr. Allen to maître d’hôtel.

The real story of the White House butler doesn’t imply racism at all. It’s simply Hollywood liberals wanting to believe something about my father that was never there.

My father’s position on lifting the South African sanctions in the ‘80s had nothing to do with the narrow issue of race. It had to do with the geopolitics of the Cold War.

But facts don’t matter to Hollywood’s creative propagandists. Truth is too complicated and not dramatic enough for scriptwriters, who think in minute terms, not the big picture, when it comes to a conservative.

Despite what Hollywood’s liberal hacks believe, my father didn’t see people in colors. He saw them as individual Americans. If the liberals in Hollywood -- and Washington -- ever start looking at people the way he did, the country will be a lot better off.

Some say Oprah helping ‘The Butler’ attendance. No one asked how much Jane Fonda’s role kept people away – Updated

Jane Fonda opponent won't show 'The Butler' at his Kentucky theater

Heritage Foundation’s Ed Meese to Newsmax: ‘Butler’ Movie Wrong to Portray Reagan as Racist

Fictional History in ‘Butler’ Belittles Civil Rights Progress

In a story published on The US Report, about the casting of ‘Hanoi’ Jane as Nancy Reagan, the director acknowledges his political activism and admitted the insult was intentional…

Boycott Hanoi Jane Playing Nancy Reagan is on Facebook Page

The Butler (Kindle) is (would be) a terrific story that deserves to be told. Too bad it wasn’t told by honest people without political agendas who felt it necessary to use a traitor to portray one of our most beloved first ladies (insulting Vietnam Vets of all colors) and to distort much of history. Perhaps reading Wes Haygood’s book The Butler: A Witness to History would be a better option!?!  Or at least wait until the movie comes to (free) TV, if you watch it knowing the slant and bias the movie is based on.

Technorati Tags: The Butler,movies,Hollywood,liberal bias Hollywood,Vietnam,veterans,Michael Reagan,boycotts,History,Politics,Fonda,Oprah,Jane Fonda,Hanoi Jane,Nancy Reagan,Reagan,radicals,stand-up,wake-up,political activism,racebaiting,rewriting history,Hollywood malpractice,Paul Kengor,truth,Eugene Allen,divide and conquer,liberal agenda,Progressivism,Cold War,understanding history

A Big Pile of Donkey Droppings –> Derrick Bell From Another Perspective – A Must Watch

Andrew Breitbart revealed video of Barack Obama praising radical law professor Derek Bell. Zo tells you why this is proof that liberals are peddling hate and lies under the guise of tolerance and a clean environment. Hear more.

Video:  Obama Wants You to Open Your Hearts and Minds to Derek Bell, But…

Related:

Who Is Derrick Bell?  Why Did Team Obama Try to Hide Him?

 Derrick Bell On Reparations (video)

National Campaign to Vet Obama

h/t to Deonia Copeland & John Rolls

Rush Limbaugh Isn’t the Only Media Misogynist

Van Susteren Blasts President for Keeping $1 Million From ‘Serial Pig’ Bill Maher: ‘Is That the Obama Price Tag for Decency?’

Do you wonder if the Obama campaign is laughing with Bill Maher? Or worse…laughing at Americans?

Outspoken On The Record host Greta Van Susteren blasted President Obama, along with his senior campaign strategist David Axelrod, for what she sees as the clear double standard relating to Bill Maher‘s history of misogynistic comments and Rush Limbaugh’s remarks about Georgetown agitator Sandra Fluke.

On her blog Thursday, Greta lampooned the president for “looking the other way” and keeping Maher’s $1 million contribution to the Obama Super PAC. She asked if that was the president’s “price tag for decency.”

She also tore into Axelrod’s slated appearance on Bill Maher’s Real Time – directly after he criticized Mitt Romney for not condemning (to his degree of satisfaction) Limbaugh.

From Greta Wire:

Is everyone for sale? At least Ed Schultz and Rush Limbaugh apologized (which I think appropriate) for their boorish behavior and their boorish behavior is nothing like Bill Maher! Maher is a serial pig. And Maher, to get cover for continuous vile behavior, gives a million dollars to the Obama super Pac so that the President looks the other way and the President does. Go figure! Is that the Obama price tag for decency? Give a million and you can be as nasty to women as you want? How does President Obama – who dragged his daughters into this, I did not – handle this with his daughters when Maher is the quintessential woman degrader? The C word to women – Maher’s apparent favorite – is as vile as it gets. Do you wonder if the Obama campaign is laughing with Bill Maher? Or worse…laughing at Americans?

Greta adds a “PS” in which she says Maher “can’t hide behind, ‘I am comedian.’”

“Being a comedian is not license to be a bigot or degrade women. Seinfeld is more successful and never degrading,” she concluded.

Needless to say, many will cheer Greta’s candor in exposing the hypocrisy of the left, and in this particular instance, the administration.

(h/t Mediaite)

Rush Limbaugh Isn’t the Only Media Misogynist

Rush Limbaugh apologized on Saturday for calling a Georgetown Law student a slut for testifying about contraception and starting a firestorm of outrage. Kirsten Powers says the liberals who led the charge need to start holding their own side accountable.

Did you know there is a war on women?

Yes, it’s true. Chris Matthews, Keith Olbermann, Bill Maher, Matt Taibbi, and Ed Schultz have been waging it for years with their misogynist outbursts. There have been boycotts by people on the left who are outraged that these guys still have jobs. Oh, wait. Sorry, that never happened.

Boycotts are reserved for people on the right like Rush Limbaugh, who finally apologized Saturday for calling a 30-year-old Georgetown Law student, Sandra Fluke, a “slut” after she testified before congress about contraception. Limbaugh’s apology was likely extracted to stop the departure of any more advertisers, who were rightly under pressure from liberal groups outraged by the comments.

Let it be shouted from the rooftops that Rush Limbaugh should not have called Ms. Fluke a slut or, as he added later, a “prostitute” who should post her sex tapes. It’s unlikely that his apology will assuage the people on a warpath for his scalp, and after all, why should it? He spent days attacking a woman as a slut and prostitute and refused to relent. Now because he doesn’t want to lose advertisers, he apologizes. What’s in order is something more like groveling—and of course a phone call to Ms. Fluke—if you ask me.

But if Limbaugh’s actions demand a boycott—and they do—then what about the army of swine on the left?

During the 2008 election Ed Schultz said on his radio show that Sarah Palin set off a “bimbo alert.” He called Laura Ingraham a “right-wing slut.” (He later apologized.) He once even took to his blog to call yours truly a “bimbo” for the offense of quoting him accurately in a New York Post column.

Keith Olbermann has said that conservative commentator S.E. Cupp should have been aborted by her parents, apparently because he finds her having opinions offensive. He called Michelle Malkin a “mashed-up bag of meat with lipstick.” He found it newsworthy to discuss Carrie Prejean’s breasts on his MSNBC show. His solution for dealing with Hillary Clinton, who he thought should drop out of the presidential race, was to find “somebody who can take her into a room and only he comes out.” Olbermann now works for über-leftist and former Democratic vice president Al Gore at Current TV.

The grand pooh-bah of media misogyny is without a doubt Bill Maher.

Left-wing darling Matt Taibbi wrote on his blog in 2009, “When I read [Malkin’s] stuff, I imagine her narrating her text, book-on-tape style, with a big, hairy set of balls in her mouth.” In a Rolling Stone article about Secretary of State Clinton, he referred to her “flabby arms.” When feminist writer Erica Jong criticized him for it, he responded by referring to Jong as an “800-year old sex novelist.” (Jong is almost 70, which apparently makes her an irrelevant human being.) In Taibbi’s profile of Congresswoman and presidential candidate Michele Bachmann he labeled her “batshit crazy.” (Oh, those “crazy” women with their hormones and all.)

Interactive: 150 Fearless Women

Chris Matthews’s sickening misogyny was made famous in 2008, when he obsessively tore down Hillary Clinton for standing between Barack Obama and the presidency, something that Matthews could not abide. Over the years he has referred to the former first lady, senator and presidential candidate and current secretary of state as a “she-devil,” “Nurse Ratched,” and “Madame Defarge.” Matthews has also also called Clinton  “witchy,” “anti-male,” and “uppity” and once claimed she won her Senate seat only because her “husband messed around.” He asked a guest if “being surrounded by women” makes “a case for commander in chief—or does it make a case against it?” At some point Matthews was shamed into sort of half apologizing to Clinton, but then just picked up again with his sexist ramblings.

Matthews has wondered aloud whether Sarah Palin is even “capable of thinking” and has called Bachmann a “balloon head” and said she was “lucky we still don’t have literacy tests out there.” Democratic strategist Jehmu Greene, who is the former president of the Women’s Media Center, told Fox News’ Megyn Kelly in 2011 that Matthews “is a bully, and his favorite target is women.” So why does he still have a show? What if his favorite target was Jews? Or African-Americans?

But the grand pooh-bah of media misogyny is without a doubt Bill Maher—who also happens to be a favorite of liberals—who has given $1 million to President Obama’s super PAC. Maher has called Palin a “dumb twat” and dropped the C-word in describing the former Alaska governor. He called Palin and Congresswoman Bachmann “boobs” and “two bimbos.” He said of the former vice-presidential candidate, “She is not a mean girl. She is a crazy girl with mean ideas.” He recently made a joke about Rick Santorum’s wife using a vibrator. Imagine now the same joke during the 2008 primary with Michelle Obama’s name in it, and tell me that he would still have a job. Maher said of a woman who was harassed while breast-feeding at an Applebee’s, “Don't show me your tits!” as though a woman feeding her child is trying to flash Maher. (Here’s a way to solve his problem: don’t stare at a strangers’ breasts). Then, his coup de grâce: “And by the way, there is a place where breasts and food do go together. It’s called Hooters!”

Liberals—you know, the people who say they “fight for women”—comprise Maher’s audience, and a parade of high-profile liberals make up his guest list. Yet have any of them confronted him? Nope. That was left to Ann Coulter, who actually called Maher a misogynist to his face, an opportunity that feminist icon Gloria Steinem failed to take when she appeared on his show in 2011.

This is not to suggest that liberals—or feminists—never complain about misogyny. Many feminist blogs now document attacks on women on the left and the right, including Jezebel, Shakesville, and the Women’s Media Center (which was cofounded by Steinem). But when it comes to high-profile campaigns to hold these men accountable—such as that waged against Limbaugh—the real fury seems reserved only for conservatives, while the men on the left get a wink and a nod as long as they are carrying water for the liberal cause.

After all, if Limbaugh’s outburst is part of the “war on women,” then what is the routine misogyny of liberal media men?

It’s time for some equal-opportunity accountability. Without it, the fight against media misogyny will continue to be perceived as a proxy war for the Democratic Party, not a fight for fair treatment of women in the public square.

by Kirsten Powers – Originally Posted: Mar 4, 2012 10:00 AM EST – The Daily Beast

Read Power’s full piece:  Kirsten Powers Tells Megyn Kelly ‘Liberal Men Are Allowed to Be Misogynist, Apparently’

And to make this all ever more unbelievable is that has come to light that Sandra Fluke was absolutely a plant by the left with connections and direction from as high as the White House… through former WH Marxist operative Anita Dunn.

Related:  Fluke Spin

Actor Jon Voight: Obama is a disaster

June 10, 2009 - 10:51 ET

Jon Voight

GLENN: From Radio City in Midtown Manhattan, this is the third most listened to show in all of America. Hello, you sick twisted freak. Welcome to the program. I've got a lot for you today. We're going to go right to Jon Voight who is, you know, the big Hollywood actor and friend of the program. Hi, John, how are you?

VOIGHT: Hey, Glenn.

GLENN: So what are you doing, man? What, are you crazy? Saying that Barack Obama is a false prophet?

VOIGHT: Yeah, well, somebody's got to say it, Glenn.

GLENN: It's good not to be alone. It's good not to be alone.

VOIGHT: Well, you know, very important. Very important that people speak out because we're already in real trouble.

GLENN: You said at this big Republican fundraiser that Barack Obama is going to cause the downfall of the country.

VOIGHT: Uh huh.

GLENN: What do you mean by that?

VOIGHT: Well, I mean, you can see the evidence already. I mean, take a look at the unemployment figures, you know. They said they were going to top out at 8, you know, 8% and it's already up to 9.4%. And then, of course, as I said in a speech when they send Joe Biden out who is one of the great double talkers of our time, I said, who gives you a report that everything's fine and the figures are going in the other direction. But the fact is we're in real trouble.

GLENN: Have you been following what the Supreme Court did yesterday, they let this Chrysler deal go through, where we have abandoned our free market principles. I mean, George Bush said I've got to save the country by abandoning the country or the free market system, but this really is. Now we have abandoned the rule of law and who is going to be first in line with the bondholders, et cetera, et cetera. And John, last night I was watching the news unfold and I thought, we are headed towards all of the things that we've been talking about, that people have been saying for two, three years: Oh, Glenn, you're crazy, this is nuts. We're headed there. John, what is it going to take for people to wake up and say, we've got to stop going down this road?

VOIGHT: Yeah. Well, one really worries when people are going to wake up, they are so wed, the media generally is so wed to this liberal agenda and to backing up, you know, the hysteria that they got into in supporting Obama and brick him to the presidency. So they are going to hold onto that. But really you worry, you fear that something very staggering is going to have to happen. But it's already happening, Glenn. You just have to look at the evidence. We're in real trouble. And the answer continuously for Obama is to make another speech, to appeal to his, you know, to find out what people want, put it all in a speech, put it out to as many people as possible and that's his idea of governing the country.

GLENN: Are you more concerned about the economy and spending or are you more concerned about, for instance, the Middle East and Israel?

VOIGHT: Well, I'm concerned about all of that but I really, I'm really concerned about Israel. His attitude toward Israel really reveals that he knows nothing but the history of Israel and its importance to the United States. He spoke at Cairo University in a speech on June 4th and then he said there will be no dictating to other countries, you know, only forging partnerships and yet he certainly dictates to Israel to freeze all settlement activity which, you know, means no natural growth and that means strangling these towns to death, these thriving towns close to the 1949 armistice line that everybody, every negotiation over the past decade has envisioned Israel retaining. So he's really destroying their ability to negotiate and to give and recommending that Israel gives more land away. Hasn't he understood that every time Israel has given land in order to secure peace that all of the response has only been violence? Hasn't he understood all of this? That Gaza has attacked Israel, they gave Gaza as a peace gesture and, you know, Hamas has used it to attack the south of Israel? It's one wonders where he gets his information from and what his point of view is.

GLENN: John, why you're awfully passionate about Israel. I am as well.

VOIGHT: I am indeed, yeah.

GLENN: Why?

VOIGHT: Well

GLENN: Because there's a lot of people that will say, geez, these people having warring for 5,000 years, why should we even get involved? Why should we even care?
VOIGHT: Well, you know, certainly they are arguably our greatest ally in the world. We depend on their intelligence. We depend, we're very tied to them, and they are the only democracy in that part of the world. And there are other aspects as well. But when we look at, you know, what Hitler said, Hitler in Mein Kampf laid it all out, didn't he? There are some people who read Mein Kampf. Winston Churchill said, you know, they said, well, how did you know? He said, well, I read his book.

GLENN: Yeah.

VOIGHT: Well, we have heard Ahmadinejad and the Imam speak from Iran, wipe Israel from the geography of the land, from time. Israel is going to die they say. Aren't we listening? Are we taking them seriously or not?

You know, it's funny that you bring this up today because I was just meeting with the writers for television earlier this morning and I said this is where I'm headed today. And it's that very point. I was driving in this morning and I'm hearing all of the news and I keep seeing these signposts pass. Nobody has everybody is in denial on everything.

VOIGHT: Yeah.

GLENN: They are, "Oh, well, we're going to be able to grow our way out of it. Well, we'll have to spend some money temporarily here. Well, we can just make friends with these people and we are denying everything that people are actually telling us. Somebody said it was Gretchen Carlson from Fox News who I adore. She is going to be on later. She was on yesterday's show and she said, you know, Obama never said he would do these things. I said, yes, he has. Yes, he has. Nobody wants to say that the man is a Marxist. Okay, so he's not a Marxist. He's a progressive! This is semantics.

VOIGHT: Yes, it is.

GLENN: If you go back and you read what they said. What they said they were going to do in the early 20th century which Hillary Clinton in her own campaign speech said, you know, "I'm an early 20th century American progressive." If you read what they said they were going to do, they're doing it right now, and I feel like I read Mein Kampf as well, and when I read Mein Kampf, I read it because I wanted to know, did the German people know. Yes! Yes, they knew. Unless they were like, "Oh, well, no, he doesn't mean that," which is exactly what we're doing now. Everybody's just saying, "Well, no, they don't... Ahmadinejad really doesn't mean that." Or, "He's really not going to actually destroy the free market system." Yes, he is. Yes, he is.

VOIGHT: Oh, yes.

GLENN: So how do you wake people up, John?

VOIGHT: I don't know. I'm doing my best and you're doing your best for sure, Glenn. It really is frightening. I mean, when Obama says you don't know if you're hearing properly when he says that Iran is perhaps entitled to nuclear power. And after all of these statements.

GLENN: Yet we're not.

VOIGHT: We're seeing him head down this road. And you say, well, wait, we'll check in December and see how far it's gotten. It's so alarming, it's quite it's almost unbelievable that we're witnessing this kind of behavior.

GLENN: John, what is your life like

VOIGHT: Pretty good.

GLENN: Because you are in you're in the hornet's nest. You might as well just be covered in the honey.

VOIGHT: Well, you know, as I said in my speech and by the way, you know, it took me time to make a statement. I watched everything. But it's really, things are disastrous. Right now they are disastrous. Every move he's made has failed, and we're headed down this socialist road while, of course, you look at Europe. They have dipped their toe in it and they are turning around saying this is a dead end, this is disaster. And they are turning around and coming back. All of the elections in Europe now are returning conservatives to the seats and saying we don't want to go down that road

SPEAKER: I talked to a couple of experts on the progressive movement. I'm, I'm strangely making geek friendships with all these historians because I'm fascinated by the progressive movement because it's the roadmap for tomorrow. You will see your future. If you read the past, you will see the future. And they both said to me, you want to see our future; you look at Europe. There's no birthrates the birthrates, they're breeding themselves into extinction over in Europe. There's no religion over there. It's all dead religion. The healthcare is an absolute mess, the government's a mess. It's a world of political correctness where you can't say anything anymore. That's our future

SPEAKER: Yeah. Well, that's the situation here, no matter what Obama does. He's protected. Everything he does, no matter what they do or say, they're totally protected. Look at the black panthers in Philadelphia standing by the polling booths with, you know, with sticks. And they get away with it. With ACORN what ACORN has done, they are under indictment in 12 states for fraud. That's how he came in, under the back of a fraudulent behavior. And he gets away with it. No one's saying anything here. Everyone's covering because of their, you know, fastened to this liberal agenda which has proven to be a failure.

GLENN: There's a few people that are speaking out, there are a few. There's people like you, there's people like me, there are a few on television and radio that I think get it. Many people are still playing politics. When you were in this, when you were at this Republican fundraiser, you think they get it yet, John? Really get it?
Well, from the people I've spoken to, I think people are getting clearer and clearer, and I think this goes to the independent people and even people on the Democratic side. And I certainly, when I'm speaking, I'm hoping people are listening across the country, every citizen. We have to abandon this political correctness and start telling the truth. You know, people try to paint people like myself and you as, you know, rightwing looneys or something, you know. Whereas we're really speaking, most of the stuff we talk about, Glenn, is really actually classical liberalism.
GLENN: I know it is.

VOIGHT: Represented by Thomas Jefferson.

GLENN: It's freedom.

VOIGHT: And if we really want the answers, they have already been written. There's a document called the Constitution that's pretty well written. And if we can just go back to that and we can go back to the philosophy of the founding fathers, we've got a pretty good compass.

GLENN: Let me take you back full circle then at the beginning of the conversation. We had the Supreme Court yesterday pass on a case. Now, I have not heard. I've got a couple of people that are checking for me to see if we can get any inside sources. Maybe it's because they said this isn't the right case to overturn all of this nonsense, but they passed on it. There's no way to read what our government is doing as anything but hostile to the Constitution. You can't do what they've done with the GM and Chrysler deal, taking people out of line and playing right directly to special interests, special interests. I mean, you know, forget about the bondholders even. America, you bailed these people out against your will. Your representatives bailed them out and then they put the unions and the special interests ahead of even you getting your money back. They got double they got, what is it, 50 something cents on the dollar? What did we get? 24 cents on the dollar? Excuse me. I busted my ass and I have nothing to do with those companies. How come I'm paying? How come the average person is paying for that right now? It doesn't make any sense.

VOIGHT: Of course. So that's why the tea parties erupted. Because people are starting to get it, Glenn. They understand that this is

GLENN: Are you seeing anybody in Hollywood? And you don't have to name names. Are you seeing people in Hollywood waking up or more people willing to come to the table? I had a

VOIGHT: Yes, I do think more and more are I think those people who have been paying attention to it and understand are more willing to step out and I think that people are, you know, the, you know, their eyes are starting to see finally little by little what's going on. And they end up being confronted with questions. So let's see what happens. And obviously we're trying to there are many people out there that are speaking very eloquently and I listed a whole bunch of them at the speech. I don't know if you saw the entire speech at the convention.

GLENN: I didn't.

VOIGHT: At the House Senate dinner. But I mentioned your name, by the way. And I went through a whole litany of all the guys who are really

GLENN: What, are you crazy? I mean, you don't want to

VOIGHT: I want to be aligned with you, Glenn. Glenn Beck, I want them to

GLENN: I'm telling you, there will be a knock on the door and you'll say, "I don't know him. I swear to you I don't know him." John, it is good to be with you and talking to you. Thank you for everything that you've done.

VOIGHT: Thanks, Glenn. Thank you, too.

GLENN: You bet. We'll talk again.

VOIGHT: God bless.

GLENN: Jon Voight who is I think one of the only normal people in Hollywood and that's saying something, isn't it?

Source: GlennBeck.com

Posted: Knowledge Creates Power

Related Resources:

• Jon Voight Speaks
• Can Andrew Breitbart Save Hollywood?

This "American Freedom Thing" Makes People Uncomfortable

American freedom is spiraling out of control, and it needs to be reigned-in.  Right?… Wrong!

I don’t know any American who would actually say such a thing - at least not in so many words. But far too many Americans have succumbed to a certain “sickness” these days. It’s the perverse notion that their lives will be improved, and that they will be made to “feel better,” when the freedom of other American individuals and groups is diminished.

This nonsense not only makes for some nasty politics, but is also shaping the ways in which many Americans view the world around them.

Ever since the release of my first book “White House Confidential - The Little Book Of Weird Presidential History,” I frequently get asked if our modern-day politics are the nastiest in American history. The answer is clearly “no.” In terms of nasty behavior among politicians and candidates, things have been far uglier in previous generations.

For example, most Americans would be shocked to learn that a former U.S. Vice President (Aaron Burr) once got in such a heated argument with the former U.S. Treasury Secretary (Alexander Hamilton), that the V.P. ended up shooting and murdering the Treasury Secretary. And it may be “news” to some that while campaigning for re-election in 1828, President John Quincy Adams was so ugly in his attacks on his opponent‘s wife, Rachel Jackson became emotionally debilitated during the campaign, and died from a heart attack days after Andrew Jackson won the election (she was, quite literally, buried in the dress that she intended to wear at her husband’s inauguration).

But those are examples of politicians and candidates beating-up on each other. Today, private American citizens want to do damage to other private American citizens, and politicians are all-too- happy to “play” us for all we’re worth.

Our current President ran an incredibly successful campaign, driven in no small part by his promises of punishing certain groups of Americans. “Rich people,” “overpaid corporate executives,” “the oil companies,” and “pharmaceutical manufacturers” were all targets of Barack Obama’s vicious attacks.

And his message to the rest of us about these select groups of Americans was clear: I’ll make your life better, by constraining their freedom - - making “rich people” less free to create and possess wealth, making companies less free to produce a profit, limiting how much an individual can earn at their job, and so forth. These ideas make for absurd economic policy, in that no President, not even dear leader Barack, can simply re-distribute the nation into prosperity - at some point, somebody has to actually “produce wealth.”

But as political rhetoric, it resonates, which means that at least some Americans really like the idea of taking away other people’s freedom.

In my current hometown of Phoenix, Arizona, there is further evidence of this sickness. After the irrational run-up in Phoenix area real estate prices earlier this decade, followed by the devastating foreclosure crash over the past 18 months, homes in Phoenix are finally starting to sell again. But one of the challenges facing realtors and buyers is what to do with the “damaged” foreclosures.

It’s a bit of an epidemic. Americans, living in Arizona, who, upon losing their otherwise nice, suburban house, on their way out the door go about breaking all the windows, stealing hardware and appliances, and in some instances - - just to “get even,” I suppose - - urinating and defecating on carpets, and burning walls and cabinetry with matches and lighters. Once again, evidence of “the sickness” presents itself - -“I’ll feel better by restricting somebody else’s freedom” - in this case, the next owner’s freedom to enjoy the house.

The sickness also impacts the ways in which some Americans view the world. While hosting talk radio at Phoenix, Arizona’s Newstalk 92-3 KTAR, I spoke last Friday about Recording Artist Tyrese Gibson’s absurd performance of “The Star Spangled Banner” at the Los Angeles Lakers’ NBA playoff game the night before. Where the lyric reads “the bombs bursting in air, gave proof through the night that our flag was still there..,” Gibson sang “..that our Lakers were still there..” It was disrespectful, it was nonsensical, and I said as much on the show.

But talk show caller Darren, an Army veteran, declared that he fought for “everything that flag represents” - and then explained that Gibson should be “imprisoned for six months” for his stupidity.

“When you were in the Army, were you protecting and upholding the U.S. Constitution?” I asked.

“Of course I was” Darren explained.

“Did that include the First Amendment, or did you leave that one out?” I asked. After a few more seconds of discussion, I thanked Darren for his service in the Army, and assured him that constraining somebody else’s First Amendment rights - - even if that person is “an idiot” - - does NOT make his life any better.

Americans need to become “okay” with freedom again - - not only their own freedom, but that of their fellow Americans.  And they better do it quickly!!

by Austin Hill

Source:  TownHall.com

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