The Vietnam War is beloved by liberals, Ann Coulter once observed, because it's the only war America lost.
Looks like the Civil War could become the left's new fave, if it hasn't already. Not only have left wingers deluded themselves that Barack Obama is the second coming of the Great Emancipator (Steven Spielberg's unstated motive for filming "Lincoln"), they now view the partial government shutdown as comparable to the secessionist storm that preceded the Civil War. (Audio after the jump)
Jackson's remarks were so pithy that it's hard to believe they weren't practiced repeatedly in front of a wall-sized mirror before he uttered them over the airwaves (audio) --
SCHULTZ: What's your take on what we're facing right now in this country?
JACKSON: We're looking at the re-rise of the Confederacy, the same group narrowly conceived -- anti-labor, anti-racial justice, anti-gender equality, anti-the big American dream -- that tried to take us down in 1860. It was the Fort Sumter tea party, its progenitor, and Lincoln had to fight a war to establish the Union from them and to end slavery. This is the resurrection of the Confederacy.
Americans have suffered through a single Civil War, a conflict so immense in its carnage and destruction that only fools would want to revisit anything resembling it. But we've been through 17 government shutdowns since 1976, "the year the modern congressional budget process took effect," Boston Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby points out.
"Most of the shutdowns lasted no more than three days, but nearly half dragged on for a week or longer," Jacoby writes. "Shutdowns occurred under Republican and Democratic presidents (George W. Bush was the only modern president not to preside over a shutdown), and 15 of them took place when Democrats controlled the House of Representatives -- usually under Speaker Tip O'Neill." (emphasis added).
This most recent version is not remotely akin to the shelling on Fort Sumter that sparked the Civil War, regardless of Jackson wishing it so with his reckless, glib analogy.
