Paul Burgess Hates Americans

I sincerely doubt that former White House speechwriter Paul Burgess could hate this much if he weren’t predisposed to it. As heated as the political debate has been over the past eight years in the United States, what I suspect we’re seeing here is Paul showing his true colours, more than anything else.

Friends, neighbors, and countrymen of the Left: I hate your lying guts

WHEN I WAS speechwriting at the White House, one rule was enforced without exception. The president would not be given drafts that lowered him or The Office by responding to the articulations of hatred that drove so many of his critics.

That task was left entirely to Karl Rove and the party’s attack machine.

This rule was especially relevant to remarks that concerned the central topic of our times, Iraq. Having left the White House more than a year ago, I conclude that the immunizing effect of that rule must have expired, because I now find that I am infected with a hatred for the very quarter that inspired the rule—the deranged, lying left.

And my connections with the deranged lying right bears absolutely no responsibility for my attitude.

I never used to feel hatred for people such as Cindy Sheehan, Harry Belafonte, Danny Glover, or other pop-culture notables who, for example, sing the praises of Central American dictators while calling President Bush the greatest terrorist on earth. I do now.

One wonders to whom he is referring when he talks about Central American dictators. Fidel Castro? Yeah, there are hypocrites out there who still idolize his leadership while condemning that of Bush (see Oliver Stone’s documentary), but if you’re referring to Hugo Chavez, while he may be a bit out there in his political views and leadership, he is no dictator. He’s been just as democratically elected as George W. Bush. Moreso, even.

And though these figures might be dismissed as inconsequential, their views seem mild compared with those of some of our university professors charged with the “higher” education of our youth.

Thus have I come to hate Ward Churchill, the University of Colorado professor who called the Sept. 11 victims of the World Trade Center “little Eichmanns”; Nicholas De Genova, the Columbia professor who loudly wished “a million Mogadishus” on American troops in Iraq; and Kevin Barrett, the University of Wisconsin professor who teaches his students that President Bush was the actual mastermind behind the Sept. 11 attacks.

I used to laugh these people off. Now I detest them as among the most loathsome people America has ever vomited up.

I have also grown to hate certain people of genuine accomplishment like Ted Turner, who, by his own contention, cannot make up his mind which side of the terror war he is on; I hate the executives at CNN, Turner’s intellectual progeny, who recently carried water for our enemies by broadcasting their propaganda film portraying their attempts to kill American soldiers in Iraq.

I now hate Howard Dean, the elected leader of the Democrats, who, by repeatedly stating his conviction that we won’t win in Iraq, bets his party’s future on our nation’s defeat.

I hate the Democrats who, in support of this strategy, spout lie after lie: that the president knew in advance there were no WMD in Iraq; that he lied to Congress to gain its support for military action; that he pushed for the democratization of Iraq only after the failure to find WMD; that he was a unilateralist and that the coalition was a fraud; that he shunned diplomacy in favor of war.

No doubt there are individual professors who have said objectionable things, but those are just a few dozen individuals, if that. Instead, Paul extends his hatred to nearly half of the voting public; individual Americans whom he has never met like my wife and her parents. Say what you will about Cindy Sheehan, but if Paul isn’t a little bit deranged, here, then the word has little meaning.

These lies, contradicted by reports, commissions, speeches, and public records, are too preposterous to mock, but too pervasive to rebut, especially when ignored by abetting media.

…besides, I’m feeling lazy, and to actually engage in a constructive debate would kill my argument by acknowledging that my opponents have a point. So, I’ll instead motion aimlessly at so-called evidence that I will not name, and hope that nobody notices that I’m cutting and running on the argument.

Most detestable are the lies these rogues craft to turn grief into votes by convincing the families of our war dead that their loved ones died in vain. First, knowing what every intelligence agency was sure it knew by early 2003, it would have been criminal negligence had the president not enforced the U.N.’s resolutions and led the coalition into Iraq. Firemen sometimes die in burning buildings looking for victims who are not there. Their deaths are not in vain, either.

Second, no soldier dies in vain who goes to war by virtue of the Constitution he swears to defend. This willingness is called “duty,” and it is a price of admission into the highest calling of any free nation—the profession of arms. We have suffered more than 2,300 combat deaths in Iraq so far. Not one was in vain. Not one.

True. But most people on “the Left” haven’t said what you’re accusing them of, Paul. Their doubts over the invasion of Iraq were on a number of issues, not just the presence of weapons of mass destruction or the lack thereof. Check out these posts to see the content of the real debate over the invasion of Iraq rather than the debate you’ve set up as a convenient straw-man argument. And here’s a final assessment of the outcome of the Iraq invasion.

The fact is, Paul, we live in a democracy, where dissent is allowed. And dissenting over the conduct of the war, or the thinking behind it, does not translate into a lack of patriotism or a lack of support for the troops. You don’t like the fact that people called your motives in question; you don’t like the fact that you had to defend your activities? Well, as the saying goes, if you don’t like the heat, get out of the kitchen.

These are the people I now hate—these people who seek to control our national security. The best of them are misinformed. The rest of them are liars.

Basically, anybody who thinks differently from me, I hate. Because I have the monopoly on truth, and don’t feel the need to debate dissenting opinion and anybody who dares challenge me earns the wrath of God. I would much rather live in a dictatorship where my views are paramount than accept a judgement of democracy that I disagree with.

So I intend to vote on Nov. 7. If I have to, I’ll crawl over broken glass to do it. And this year I’m voting a straight Republican ticket right down to dog catcher, because I’ve had it. I’m fed up with the deranged, lying left. They’ve infected me. I’m now a hater, too.

PAUL BURGESS of Spotsylvania County was director of foreign-policy speechwriting at the White House from October 2003 to July 2005.

You know, Paul, the level of hate you are showing for your fellow Americans is far out of proportion over any hatred “the Left” has expressed against you. First of all, with Bush’s approval levels still in the 35% range, that’s a lot of centrist, and even right-leaning Americans disapproving of the administration — disapproving, not hating, just so we’re clear. And while I too disagree with Bush hatred — overstated though it is by certain Republicans — it is still “hatred” over the activities of one man, a politician, whose job it is to serve all Americans and who arguably might be making a hash of things. Your hatred is over the opinions of millions of Americans, who have an absolute right to their opinions and to express those opinions, for expressing their opinions.

And I would be wary of making too many “broken glass” references, if I were you, given how the last “Night of Broken Glass” went.

Hat tip to Digby and the Vanity Press.

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