You know things are really getting weird when Newt Gingrich's former press secretary compares the president's health insurance reform to the Kansas-Nebraska Act. So how long will it be until Tony Blankley belts out a chorus of "Marching Through Georgia"? Bleeding Kansas, anyone?
That the cause of abolition is being used to tout the neo-secessionism of Blankley, Gingrich and his cohorts is not just hysterical but also anti-historical. In no responsible way can the liberation of 4 million people in human bondage be compared to regulation of the insurance industry. It's like comparing the Holocaust to Sunday closing laws.
The irony of a white proponent of states' rights using Civil War imagery to attack a black president is lost on no one. It is ludicrous for Blankley to label President Obama, the literal fulfillment of Abraham Lincoln's promise to America via the Thirteenth Amendment, as the moral equivalent of slaveholders. Mr. Blankley writes books on American history; perhaps he should try reading some.
It is at times of national crisis that true leaders and statesmen are forged. This includes members of the media as well as political leaders. Can anyone imagine the Civil War without Mathew Brady's searing images, or World War II without Ernie Pyle's dispatches from the trenches? To turn a searchlight on truth without distortion, there is the mark of a real journalist. Clearly, Mr. Blankley does not meet this test.
Many Americans have questions and reservations about the health insurance bill that has just passed Congress. I certainly do. I still believe that a public option is the best solution for those who lack health care coverage. The Supreme Court, when it rules on this bill, may eventually require such a measure as a matter of constitutional law.
But to fan the flames of American outrage with a specious and virulent attack that compares President Obama to a slaveholder goes beyond the pale of criticism. It is incitement. And then I must ask, along with Joseph Welch at the infamous Army-McCarthy hearings: "Mr. Blankley, have you no decency, sir?"