On March 20, 2011, President Barack Obama led a White House conference on a crisis plaguing America: the crisis of bullying.
In the middle of the greatest economic collapse since the Great Depression, with American soldiers involved in two wars overseas, with Iran on the brink of nuclear weapons development, the White House was focused, laserlike, on kids getting thrown into lockers.
This was a weird pitch to say the least. After all, America has the greatest anti-bullying record of any country in human history. America hates bullies. Over the course of the twentieth century, America defeated Nazism and communism abroad, Jim Crow and sexism at home. Why would Americans – Americans, of all people on earth – need a remedial course in anti-bullying?
We didn’t. We just needed a bit of Obama reeducation.
The strategy here was simple. Obama and his friends in the media and on the organized left picked the one thing all Americans can agree on: bullying. They strategically placed President Obama at the head of the anti-bullying cause. Then came the brilliant gambit: they appropriated bullying to apply only to anything remotely conservative.
The Tea Party? A bunch of bullies. Religious people? Bullies. Global warming unbelievers, defense hawks, venture capitalists, fans of voter identification or traditional marriage, opponents of affirmative action, right-to-work advocates, supporters of Israel, haters of Glee? Bullies. Those who dislike President Obama? They were the biggest bullies of all. Liberalism and anti-bullying, it turned out were – miracle of miracles!– one and the same.
Their twisted logic was deceptively easy. Liberals claim they are all about protecting victim classes from bullies. Conservatives oppose liberals. Therefore, by definition, conservatives must be bullies. And bullies must be stopped.
To that end, President Obama routinely plays the victim. He's told us -- even as he plays the race card -- that people treat him differently because he has a "funny name" and because if he had a son, he'd look like Trayvon Martin. He trots out race flaks like 9/11 truther Toure to suggest that white people -- the same white people who identically voted him into office -- have been turned violent by the rise of a successful black man. He's got Tom Hanks narrating a campaign video in which he suggests that Obama's failures are due to this naive, beautiful waif of a man facing down the harsh realities of scum-sucking Republicans who oppose Glorious Change. No wonder Obama looks like he's lost weight. He's been lugging that gigantic cross around for the last four years.
[Editor's note: Excerpted from the introduction of Ben Shapiro's brand new book, Bullies: How the Left's Culture of Fear and Intimidation Silences America.]
