William A. Jacobson
Legal Insurrection
10/19/2011
In December 2009, on the eve of the Senate vote on Obamacare, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) issued a blistering speech on the floor of the Senate lashing out at opposition to Obamacare, which was led by the Tea Party movement, in the most inflammatory terms.
Among other things, Whitehouse invoked the images of the use of the guillotine in the French revolution, Nazis who ran through the streets on Kristallnacht, and racists who lynched blacks from trees, while arguing that opposition to Obamacare was the new “paranoid” style of politics:
History cautions us of the excesses to which these malignant, vindictive passions can ultimately lead. Tumbrels have rolled through taunting crowds. Broken glass has sparkled in darkened streets. Strange fruit has hung from Southern trees. Even this great institution of government that we share has cowered before a tail-gunner having secret lists. Those malignant movements rightly earned what Lord Acton called “the undying penalty which history has the power to inflict upon wrong.”
And why? Why all this discord and discourtesy, all this unprecedented destructive action? They are desperate to break this president. They have ardent supporters who are nearly hysterical at the very election of President Barack Obama. The birthers, the fanatics, the people running around in right-wing militia and Aryan support groups, it is unbearable to them that President Barack Obama should exist.
…This speech, and Whitehouse’s refusal to walk it back, is what turned me against Whitehouse, someone I had not posted about prior to that speech even though he is my home state Senator. I wrote at the time of the speech that Sheldon Whitehouse Becomes Alan Grayson.
So I wondered what Whitehouse’s position would be on the Occupy Wall Street movement, which has seen numerous publicized incidents of anti-Semitism, which has the support of the American Communist and Nazi parties, and in support of which one celebrity demanded the return of the guillotine. The malignant, impassioned rhetoric surrounding Occupy Wall Street seemed to fit Whitehouse’s description of those opposed to Obamacare, except that as to OWS it was an accurate description.
All I could find was a statement by Whitehouse expressing support for Occupy Wall Street…
…Whitehouse owes the Tea Party movement and opponents of Obamacare an apology.
Read this entire article, with video, at Legal Insurrection.
Related: The Left Is at War
Remember last winter, when the liberal establishment absurdly accused patriots of inspiring the Jared Loughner shootings with supposedly inflammatory rhetoric? Here’s what inflammatory rhetoric actually sounds like:
Read the rest at Moonbattery.
The video notes at YouTube are worth reading, as well.
