CNN’s Fareed Zakaria is a sanctimonious elitist and a plagiarist besides. Yet he still has a worldwide audience via Global Public Square. And so his rantings do merit comment from time to time, especially when they spread rabid anti-conservative propaganda to the far corners of the globe that do not have anything like the Fox News Channel to provide a mildly alternative perspective on U.S. affairs for an international audience.
Zakaria contended on Sunday’s program that the Tea Party is an extremist group, akin to “radicals, anarchists, Black Panthers or other revolutionary movements.” He claimed that the Tea Party used “extreme rhetoric” (without providing proof) and that conservatives in general had talked about “decay, despair, and decline” for decades. (The opposite is true: conservatives tend to be more optimistic than liberals, who prefer metaphors like the “two Americas” or the Dickensian “99%,” only taking pride in the country when taking power.)
Predictably, Zakaria arrived at his point–copied, unsurprisingly, from the rest of the mainstream media: conservatives are racists, bitter clingers who cannot deal with a diverse modern society, “misty-eyed in their devotion to a distant republic…passionate in their dislike of the messy, multiracial…democracy,” etc.
Zakaria ended with an admonition to conservatives: “[Y]ou cannot love America in theory, and hate it in fact.” What an amazing accusation, even from Zakaria.
The idea that political opposition is a form of sedition has left the fever swamps of the far-left and has infested MSNBC and now CNN–and through CNN, the world. Gone are the days when dissent was patriotic. Now it is evidence of hatred, treason, thoughtcrime.
Speaking of hating America “in fact,” Zakaria is among the many on the left who evince a strong dislike for the Constitution and wish to change it fundamentally. Yet the Tea Party–whose guiding principles are that the government must adhere to the Constitution and spend within its means–are somehow the racists who hate America. The fact that Ted Cruz, public enemy #1, is a foreign-born Hispanic is somehow discounted.
Zakaria’s rantings are what pass for thought in much of the liberal intelligentsia. Typically, he is not really expressing his own original thoughts but repeating much of what is echoing in elite media circles.
Say what you will about Cruz’s tactics, but the fact that he is loathed by such people is the clearest evidence that he is doing something right. They hate the Constitution and fear the diverse, dynamic movement that defends it.