Cory Booker Hits a Homer
I didn't agree with absolutely everything he said, but I really like that guy, and thought he did a great job. I think he'd have been just as good or better than Kaine as a VP candidate...but I guess it's pretty obvious that you gotta have a white dude on the ticket if you're trying to elect the first female POTUS.
posted by Winston Smith at
10:06 PM
2 Comments:
I like Cory Booker, and think the man has an exceptional heart. But his speech showed some of the elements I find most troubling about progressivism these days. I started getting the heebie-jeebies around when he said:
"We cannot devolve into a nation where our highest aspirations are that we just tolerate each other. We are not called to be a nation of tolerance. We are called to be a nation of love."
Uh-oh.
Called by whom, to be what now? A nation of love? I'm getting some serious cult vibes here. And when I hear the left say that "tolerance" is no longer good enough, my ears prick up.
"That’s why that last line in the Declaration of Independence says it so clearly. It says that we must — to make this nation work, we must mutually pledge to each other our lives and our fortunes and our sacred honor."
Huh? It doesn't say that.
(Goes to make sure it doesn't. It doesn't.)
"Tolerance is the wrong way. Tolerance says I’m just going to stomach your right to be different, that if you disappear from the face of the Earth, I’m no better or worse off."
This is bad... why? Why is it not enough just to tolerate someone different?
"But love — love knows that every American has worth and value, that no matter what their background, no matter what their race or religion or sexual orientation, love, love recognizes that we need each other, that we as a nation are better together, that when we are divided we are weak, we decline, yet when we are united, we are strong, when we are indivisible, we are invincible."
Like a thrown brick covered in gift wrap. What he's describing is the end of disagreement. This is what it has come to. The progressive movement now demands that you must not only accept leftist ideals but that you must *love* them. Modern progressives don't just want your body, they want your soul.
Do they not get that the universal conformity they describe is literally the opposite of freedom? A free country is not one in which every single person "loves" every other person. That dream will never happen except at gunpoint.
Disagreement is good. It's the very nature of freedom. We should welcome disagreement and celebrate tolerance. Not demonize it.
"Tolerance is the wrong way." The fact that these words were the theme of one of the key Democratic party speeches this year does not bode well for the country.
Yo, I agree with all of of these points and was making the same complaints while watching the speech. I decided to cut him slack...probably just because I like the guy.
Of course the historical point is incontrovertible. The *Founders* mutually pledged to each other their lives, fortunes and honor...but there's never been any suggestion that the rest of us must do so.
As for the tolerance point, it's a common one, and I'm torn. Mostly, I'm with you: the relevant obligation we have to each other is to tolerate behavior that doesn't harm anyone. Our political obligations in that respect don't go beyond that. And agreed: to pretend that we have an obligation to love each other, or admire each other's projects or choices in life or whatever...no. Down that road lies something crazy.
But you can also interpret what he said more like: we have no such obligations, but we have a long history, in general, of going above and beyond what we are absolutely obligated to do as citizens in many ways. And one way we can do this, and have a better country, is to look upon our disagreements in a good-natured way rather than a grudging way, when possible.
All my Christian neighbors are obligated to do is leave me alone. They needn't talk to me, catch my dog when it gets out, etc. They could decide: we will tolerate the atheist but nothing more. But life will be better for everyone if mere tolerance errs on the side of good-natured, friendly, co-existence.
I decided to give him that one, despite having exactly your worries.
I like Booker probably more than I should because he's pissed off the "progressives" at several points in ways that please me. But really, it was a mistake to not discuss these gripes, and I'm glad you brought them up.
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