The other day on his local radio program, RedState.com blogger and CNN Contributor Erick Erickson delivered a 13 minute segment on the census and the lengthier, American Community Survey (ACS). It was a solid bit of talk-radio monologue, including extensive recitation of an excellent article at The Weekly Standard by Daniel Freedman. Freedman’s piece details his personal experience with the ACS, the highly personal and intrusive questions and most vividly, the dogged “follow-up” by an ACS bureaucrat who visited his house unannounced, demanded entry and threatened punishment.
Erickson included in his monologue this: (Full audio is here)
Come on, people. It’s a Constitutional obligation. How can a 21st century society function without knowing how many people are actually living in the country, legally versus illegally for that matter? What’s the harm with filling out the census? The Constitution — for those of you who say I’m not filling out the c — it’s in the freaking Constitution. You got to fill out your census.
He also spent some time mocking the members of extreme groups who fear giving information like this to the Government will lead to a New World Order. He even mocked the paranoia of these conspiracy fringe groups by pretending to hear black helicopters.
He then went on to distinguish between the constitutionally mandated census and the extensive and over-reaching ACS. Over nine minutes into his monologue, Erickson expressed his incredulity over the harassment from the Commerce Department employee who was so dogged in her pursuit of the valuable information about Mr. Freedman’s toilets:
What gives the Commerce Department the right to ask me how often I flush my toilet? Or about going to work? I’m not filling out this form. I dare them to try and come throw me in jail. I dare them to. Pull out my wife’s shotgun and see how that little ACS twerp likes being scared at the door. They’re not going on my property. They can’t do that. They don’t have the legal right, and yet they’re trying.
So, of course, over the past few days the headlines have not been “Erick Erickson Admonishes Listeners to Obey the Law and Fill Out Census”. And, the headlines have not been “Erick Erickson Details Don Freedman’s Harrassment at the Hands of the Commerce Department”. They aren’t even: “Erickson Threatens to Scare ACS Worker at Door if They Come to Put Him in Jail”
No, the headline we see from HuffPo is: Eric Erickson Threatens To ‘Pull Out Shotgun’ At Census Worker. And Media Matters gives us: CNN’s Erickson: I’ll “[p]ull out my wife’s shotgun” if they try to arrest me for not filling out the American Community Survey. (see how they cleverly make it look like he said it on CNN?)
This is all part of an ongoing campaign to paint Erickson as a wing-nut on the fringe. If pressed though, of course, the critics at these sites would be hard pressed to find any effective conservative commentator with whom they respect or find worthy of network or cable air time. They attempt, through their distortions, to intimidate the network in question to either fire their current employee (Beck, Erickson, etc.) or to intimidate the network from hiring another “controversial” figure from the right.
Even Newt Gingrich was called out today from the left. According to them, it is not appropriate for NBC to have him on their network. The left is not only trying to dictate their policy on the country, they are also trying to dictate who their legitimate opponents should be. And, if they don’t like you, you are to be silenced.
So, NBC should not have Gingrich on the air. Fox should not have Beck on the air. And now, even the White House has expressed that Erickson’s remarks “should concern CNN“.
And, so it goes with Rush and O’Reilly and Beck and Hannity and Coulter and Ingraham and Prager and Hewitt and Breitbart and Palin and now Erickson.
They do not want to debate the facts or the issues, they want to render their opponents as unworthy of the public’s attention. And, they attempt to delegitimize our arguments by delegitimizing our arguers. If Erickson is a racist scum then he is unworthy of debating. And, if you site something he said in a friendly water cooler debate, then your friend on the left can easily delegitimize the argument by responding: “Him? He threatened to pull a gun on a census worker!”
See how it works?
The President has recently gone after Rush and Beck as examples of incendiary rhetorical rabble-rousers. And other critics on the left are painting them as fomenting a militia movement on the extreme right. This is the same playbook used in the days after the tragic Oklahoma City bombing. Somehow conservative politicians and commentators were held up as being partly to blame for the singular act of evil by that scum, Timothy McVeigh. No it appears to be a pre-emptive strike. The narrative from the left, and the White House, is that the Tea Party movement is fomenting rage and racism and conservatives are to be held responsible if something happens. And you should be ashamed for listening to them.
This is what they do. They do not create anything. They do not start with a white page and creatively express what they believe. They do not go on the air for hours at a time and articulate in an engaging and entertaining way a philosophy for the direction of our nation or a constructive critique of those in power. No, they do not create, they destroy.
They sit at their cubicles listening to hours of Rush and find a sentence or paragraph they can pull out and mock or lampoon. They read pages and pages of conservative thought on the internet and extract minutiae to prove their pre-conceived agenda. They watch hours and hours of extremely successful people on television reaching audiences greater than they will ever dream of reaching, and they twist the meaning of their message into something unrecognizable.
They tear down and destroy. And they are paid handsomely for doing it.
Erickson is the latest target. Who will be next? Me? Maybe you.