There has probably been more talk about courage (or lack of it) in Washington since the Senate failed to pass the Manchin-Toomey compromise on expanded background checks for gun purchases than at any time since John F. Kennedy’s Pulitzer Prize winning Profiles in Courage.
The cri de coeur of the day coming from the Democrats and their press is that those who agree with them are courageous and those who don’t are craven cowards. A few (but only a few) examples, starting with President Obama’s shrill accusation that those regarding whom his allegedly valued empathy fails him, those in whose shoes he lacks the ability to walk, could offer “no coherent arguments” and simply “caved to the pressure” from the NRA, which had “willfully lied”:
- Washington Post: “a cowardly minority of senators”
- Los Angeles Times: “Cowardly Senate runs away from gun background checks”
- Newsday: “the cowards of Senate…”
- Kansas City Star: “Cowardly U.S. Senate thwarts will of public”
- Gabby Giffords, New York Times OpEd : “a minority of Senators gave in to fear” … “the cowardice these senators demonstrated…” (James Taranto eviscerates this piece here, describing Giffords now as “a practitioner of incivility and unreason.”)
- Ron Fournier, editor of the National Journal: “I don’t have the words to describe the cowardice of Congress or the depravity of the gun lobby….” (He was right; he didn’t.)
- Piers Morgan/CNN: “gutless Senate cowards”
Leave it to Joe Biden, however, to accuse his opponents of cowardice with an unwitting display of self-parodying humor. Just before the vote he told a bunch of mayors: “I hope to God that there are 60 people up there who have the courage to stand up and understand that this doesn’t take much courage….”
For just one example from the courageous side of the aisle (except for the four cowards on that side who voted with the enemy), take (please!) Sen. Barbara Boxer‘s condemnation of “the cowardice of the Senate.” As usual there was nothing distinctive, nothing not utterly predictable, about Sen. Boxer’s vote and her implicit praise of her own courage for casting it.
I apologize for singling out Sen. Boxer, since she is so typical of the moral superiority so many Democrats so often see in themselves these days, but I would appreciate it if some reader far more knowledgeable than I could point out in a comment one single example of her courageously voting in opposition to the clear preferences of a strong majority of her constituents.
Unlike today’s Democrats, Sen. John Kennedy at least recognized political courage when he saw it (even though he never had the courage himself to admit that it was his speechwriter, Ted Sorenson, who as the primary author of Profiles in Courage should have received its 1957 Pulitzer Prize).
“…one single example of her courageously voting in opposition to the clear preferences of a strong majority of her constituents.”
I don’t know, was the outcome of California’s Proposition 8
a STRONG majority before the democratic voice of a majority was taken to SCOTUS for nullification?
Or was it a simple majority that wasn’t allowed to carry the day?
Kinda’like the recent complaints of the “unintended consequences” of (ahem)Democrat renewed filibuster.
(Only now it’s ACTUAL fillibuster, rather than personal “hold” or mere “threat”,by “the minority party”)
What it reminds me of is Chesterton’s observation about the literary world:
Any man living in complete luxury and security who chooses to write a play or a novel which causes a flutter and exchange of compliments in Chelsea and Chiswick and a faint thrill in Streatham and Surbiton, is described as “daring,” though nobody on earth knows what danger it is that he dares. I speak, of course, of terrestrial dangers; or the only sort of dangers he believes in. To be extravagantly flattered by everybody he considers enlightened, and rather feebly rebuked by everybody he considers dated and dead, does not seem so appalling a peril that a man should be stared at as a heroic warrior and militant martyr because he has had the strength to endure it.