All You Evil Right-Wing Pastors......

The Democratic National Committee has elected former Presidential candidate and former Governor of Vermont John Dean as its Chairman. Many political conservatives thought that his appointment would be self-destructive for the Democratic Party, feeling that Dean was too far "left" to be representative of the Democratic center. I appears that they were right.

Last Friday, on his first foray into Democratic fundraising and morale-building, Dean spoke to enthusiastic crowds in Lawrence, Kansas. Among his comments was this:

"The issue is not abortion," Dean told the closed-door fund-raiser. "The issue is whether women can make up their own mind instead of some right-wing pastor, some right-wing politician telling them what to do."

Huh? Dean is afraid that women will only do what right-wing pastors tell them to do? Does Dean feel that woman are so brain-dead that they will, like robots, allow themselves to be programmed by their pastors? What an insult to women...and to pastors, too. Has it crossed his mind that maybe there are millions of women who agree with what their pastors are saying? That they have the ability to read the Bible on their own and consider the value God has placed in human life, especially the weak and defenseless? Are "right-wing" pastors some sort of demons, like the boogie men that hide under children's beds? Who are these "right-wing" pastors, anyway? Pastors like me? Like Billy Graham? Like Pope John Paul II?

A bit later, Dean added this comment:

"Moderate Republicans can't stand these people (conservatives), because they're intolerant. They don't think tolerance is a virtue," Dean said, adding: "I'm not going to have these right-wingers throw away our right to be tolerant."

Now that's a tolerant attitude! Sort of like, "I have the right to be tolerant and I will destroy anyone who disagrees with me!" Is this the level of rational discourse to be found at the highest levels of the Democratic Party today? Whatever happened to the eloquence of men like the much admired (by Republicans as well as Democrats) Adlai Stevenson? Or the intellectual idealism of a John F. Kennedy? Or the charismatic vision of a Bobby Kennedy? Or even the down-to-earth, folksiness of a Hubert Humphrey? Why has the party of the blue collar worker morphed into a parody of the worst stereotype of ivory-tower, intellectual elitists? Does Dean really believe that his unintelligible rants will win over a single "moderate Republican?"

At the end of a busy day in Lawrence, while speaking at private rally in a supporter's backyard, Dean added (according to the Lawrence Journal-World) this observation:

And concluding his backyard speech with a litany of Democratic values, he added: "This is a struggle of good and evil. And we're the good."

Oh, oh. Republicans are now evil, to be listed in the same class as the tyannical Iranian Ayatollahs and Kim Jong Il of North Korea. Everyone who voted for George W. Bush is now to be viewed by the Democratic party as "little Eichmanns," perhaps? Or Saddam Husseins? Or Osama bin Ladens? Has the word "evil" any objective meaning at all for John Dean? Or is it merely rhetoric without meaning at all? Simply mindless emotions expressed through meaningless words? It is as if Shakespeare anticipated John Dean and carefully described him when he wrote the famous soliloquy for Macbeth, which ends with these words:

"...a poor player/ That struts and frets his hour upon the stage/ And then is heard no more: it is a tale/ Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,/ Signifying nothing."