The Dilemma of the War We Shrink from Facing

In previous posts I have been trying to come to grips with the dilemma of an Obama Presidency, the problems the country faces that need a coming together to solve, and the bitterness the left has engendered in me after eight years of trying to destroy President Bush and now Sarah Palin. Just as fanatic Islamists declared war on us, and we did not know it, the left has declared war on conservatives. We are just waking up to that fact, and the ground rules that they have set are that there are no ground rules.

Throughout all my adult years, and especially after serving as an officer in the Army Reserve, I have speculated that, if my President ever called on me, my answer would be, “Yes Sir”. That’s gone now. The eight-year long campaign of lies, smears and attempts to undermine Bush cannot now be set aside. It went well beyond ‘just politics’. There isn’t much I can do, but I will do what I can do to bring down this demagogue. Republican politicians should cooperate with any reasonable attempts to cure our economic ills (this does not include supporting a bailout of the auto industry), while fighting off all other policy moves - smiling and pretending to be non-partisan all the while.

If you do not think a war is going on, or if you think I am being overly concerned and an alarmist, read the following report, which mirrors thousands of incidents across the country recently (two Obama-stickered cars tried to run my car bearing a McCain sticker off the road on I75 in Florida – they were not just cutting in front of me – they tried to kill me):

Evil on a Minneapolis Campus

By Gary Larson FrontPage.com 11/20/2008 (Excerpt)

“Years ago youthful thugs murdered a young man for his high-priced sneakers. Decent, law-abiding folks wondered again What Is This Country Coming To? In another case, not long ago in Minneapolis, a youthful thug was murdered for his designer sports jersey. Evil happens, its very banality -- as political philosopher Hanna Arendt wrote in 1963, coining the phrase "the banality of evil" -- is taking on the mantle of practically normalizing once unthinkable events in a civilized American society.

On election night in Minneapolis, Minnesota, a blue state, comes a criminal horror story short of murder, but no less disturbing. It happened at Augsburg college, a private liberal arts school named after a place in Germany the reformer monk Martin Luther served in the 1500s.

After taunting 18-year old freshman Annie Grossmann for wearing her McCain-Palin campaign button at an election night get-together, and "getting in her face," four women beat her for political views which, obviously, they did not share. Grossmann took verbal abuse at the party, then left for her dorm after it was clear, about 10 p.m., that her candidates had lost. She was followed by the four women into the shadows of a nearby skyway.

There she was beaten. The four women, all black, called Grossmann a "racist." She knew none of them. Nor did they know her, to her knowledge. It was that damn campaign button that evidently caused their frenzy. Their earlier taunts proved that. They were, Grossmann said, "rubbing her face in Obama's win."

"Why do you call me a racist when you don't even know me?" she screamed. Made no difference. Grossmann was felled by the largest of the four. She hit her head on the brick wall, and staggered back to her dorm. The other three black women at the beating chucked at this dark manifestation of partisan evil. They walked away laughing, offering no help to their victim. The banality of evil had asserted itself. And at four-to-one, it was also a cowardly act of mindless violence which, presumably, the four thought "normal."

Right here, right here in these United States, it happened, in my home state. A cruel re-awakening to the excesses of partisanship, in this case mixed with racism. That it happened on a college campus is hardly surprising. Not today. Campuses ooze with crazed partisan intolerance, places mostly where left-wing academia hold forth, along with politically correct staff, inculcating students with staunch, impenetrable biases, often leading to violent confrontation.

(Not surprising at all, at another private "liberal arts" campus in Minnesota, a professor was recently dismissed for stealing McCain-Palin lawn signs and delighting in his crime online. Such is the hubris of the clueless left, maybe beyond redemption.)

Freshman Grossmann had been booed roundly at a freshman "mixer" when she identified herself (gasp!) as a Republican. She is from Delta Junction, Alaska, you see, where her mom is a Republican Party leader, a big fan of Gov. Palin. Annie considers her governor to be a role model, something the ardent left must deplore as part of their article-of-faith, damn-conservatives mind-set. Annie's mom, Dawn Grossmann, had sent her daughter a McCain-Palin sweatshirt. Just think: Imagine the consequences if she had worn that on campus, instead of just a McCain-Palin campaign pin.

Newspaper reports say the four attackers might not have been Augsburg students. Somehow that makes a difference. Well, to the college, perhaps, concerned with its image. But what were the four thugs doing hanging out at a campus election-night party taunting anyone disagreeing with their choice of Obama? Who stood up for Annie? For principle?

She is a member of the college's ladies' hockey team, a hockey player in her native Alaska. She was excused temporarily from practice after suffering a concussion and blurred vision from the attack. Thankfully her injuries are not thought permanent. Psychic scars will remain, though, along with a lesson in intolerance, at the clubbing hands of her hyena-like laughing attackers.” FrontPage.com

Moderate and decent Obama supporters, please note: these are the kind of thugs you have thrown in with and helped put into power, and I hope and pray that Governor Palin has a permanent security force assigned to protect her.