Michael Kent Curtis: Just Another Sold-Out Leftist Professor
by Warner Todd Huston (8/25/09)
Michael Kent Curtis, the Donald Smith Professor of Constitutional and Public Law at Wake Forest University, has not only proven his ignorance of the facts, but he has also shown that truth does not matter a whit to him if it gets in the way of common liberal propaganda. He proved this in his blather in the Houston Chronicle on August 22(1).
Curtis, just another prosaic left-wing professor infesting an institute of higher learning, started his opinion piece off with an outright lie by claiming that “[O]rganized mobs recently have disrupted public meetings.” By this the lefty prof means the thousands of angry citizens that have shown their contempt for Democrat lawmakers at townhall meetings all across the country are not real. They are but dismissible false fronts for anti-Obamacare groups. This refrain is assumed by such as professor Curtis and his fellow leftists so that they can comfortably ignore the outrage against this socialist takeover of nearly 20% of our economy by Obama’s government bureaucrats. Consequently, this refrain of “organized protests” is the left’s talking point du jour.
But have you noticed that we haven’t seen any proof that the angry Americans that have taken the time out of their lives to confront their federal representatives at townhall meetings are not common citizens acting on their own initiative, but are merely “organized mobs”? Have you noticed that no proof of the purported “organized” nature of the protests has once been presented? Have you noticed that the left has not bothered to detail how these protests were organized, that they have not bothered to try and connect the dots? These leftists simply say it is true and then move on as if their case is self-evident.
Are there conservative organizations urging people to go to townhalls and speak their minds? Have they issued talking points? Of course. Most famously, Dick Armey’s group FreedomWorks has been involved in fighting against Obamacare. So has Grover Norquist’s American’s for Tax Reform, so has the new group American Liberty Alliance, not to mention the stalwart Heritage Foundation.
But sending out mass emails and talking points and holding press conferences is something that all these groups have always done on every issue that they find important. These actions do not amount to “organizing” specific meetings at particular townhalls. In fact, no nationally situated conservative organization has put any money to organizing particular townhalls. No buses have been rented, no groups put together, no operatives appointed to round up like-minded protesters has been arranged. Truthfully, that really isn’t how these groups have generally operated in the past.
As a matter of fact, the AFA has only just this weekend (August 22) made its first attempt to organize any sort of protest using the townhall debate as a platform. The ALA brought off what they called recess rallies this weekend whereby supporters were encouraged to protest outside the offices of Democrat lawmakers that refuse to have townhall meetings on the healthcare issue. But no protests at actual townhalls have been organized by ALA or any other national conservative group.
The truth of the matter is that the Americans that have attended these raucous townhall meetings have done so on their own initiative. They are average, every-day citizens that are frightened by Obama’s underhanded plans to force a government takeover of healthcare and angry that our representatives would bend over for this socialist program. Sure they’ve gotten information from some of the national conservative groups, but organized by them? Not at all.
Now, back to Professor Curtis. Throughout Curtis’ piece he decries these “organized protests” and claims that they destroy the democratic process. It is clear by his piece that he means the Democratic Party process, but that is as it is. Curtis goes on to claim that these so-called organized protests are somehow “just like” the pro-slavery mobs of the 1830s that went about the country breaking up abolitionist’s meetings organized to advocate the elimination of slavery.
With that bit of doggerel, Curtis goes from being merely disingenuous to demagogy. To compare the average, every-day Americans that have come out to protest Democrat overreach at these townhalls to the violence perpetrated by pro-slavery mobs of the 1830s is simply absurd. In fact, there had been no violence at these townhalls at all until Obama’s union thugs came out to start beating up the folks that are against Obamacare.
Interestingly and surely by accident, Curtis has hit on something with this antebellum era/healthcare debate comparison. If we look at the antebellum era we find that the two main ideologies were anti-slavery and pro-slavery. We also find that, while there were regional aspects to the debate, both the pro and anti ideas were spread throughout the country with many northern Whigs on the pro-slavery side and some southern abolitionists on the anti-slavery side. The preponderance of supporters for either side, though, clearly were regional, north vs. south.
With that recalled we can see that the anti-socialist healthcare and pro-socialist healthcare ideologies exhibit a similar distribution. Some supporters of either position are spread to every corner of the country, but the bulk in regional sections. Only this time it is the south and Midwest against the two coasts.
It should also be pointed out that one side of the antebellum argument was essentially an immoral and anti-American argument. The pro-slavery argument was, as we can see from our vantage point, clearly immoral. Naturally, the clarity wasn’t as clear for its supporters then as now. And, similarly, one side of today’s argument stands on the immoral, anti-American side. The fact that learned people like Curtis aren’t aware that they are on the immoral, anti-American side of the argument truly does mirror that of the pro-slave argument. After all, slavery to government is precisely what Curtis is arguing in favor of.
Another tactic that Curtis employs is to act as if the protesters obviously have neither the right nor the justification to be as upset as they are. There is an obvious assumption underlying Curtis’ nonsense that there is no reason for American’s to be so darn upset that Democrats are attempting to re-make the U.S.A. in the U.S.S.R.’s image. Of course, that is because he wants such and endgame to come to fruition.
The truth is that there are growing numbers of Americans that are alarmed by this repudiation of the American way and it is spurring them to action. There are also many Americans that want the U.S. to be Europeanized further and they are similarly being spurred to action. The resulting conflict is called a national debate, something Curtis wants to see quieted so that his side may simply move forward unopposed.
But, heck, opinions are like—well, you know—and lefty prof Curtis has his, uninformed and blinkered as it is. I’d have more respect for his blather if he’d have written the same sort of piece against the violent anti-WTO protests of several years ago or if he’d have scolded the anti-Israel protests and anti-war protests this country has seen. I wouldn’t bet money, though, he’s ever been as scornful of the violence and hatred espoused by his friends on the extreme left as he is of the common, average Americans that have taken time out of their own lives to get involved to fight these attempts to turn American into a socialist state.
So, what we end up with here is Curtis’ foolish claim that anti-socialist healthcare protesters are somehow just like slavery lovers and his uniformed, unproven assertion that these spirited townhall meetings are not being attended by real Americans. They are but fake, “organized” efforts being put on by shadowy conservative organizations in the opinion of Curtis and his comrades. Sadly neither he nor any other leftist names any of these behind the scenes groups nor do they take the time to investigate.
Like every leftist, Curtis simply takes his preconceived notions and builds his entire case around them without taking even a few minutes to do any research to see if his hackneyed ideas prove out.
Not only does Curtis prove the ignorance of the left but he proves once again why a diploma or degree from an American university is increasingly worthless as any guide for educational status. With “professors” using such slipshod research methods as Curtis has here, it is obvious that our institutes of higher learning have devolved into simple-minded, leftist indoctrination centers that make no effort at all to teach anything of lasting value.
Warner Todd Huston
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