The Black Republican

If you are a patriotic American who loves this country and is disgusted and frustrated with the leftward direction she has been pulled for the past six decades, I can see how you might be tempted to follow a man who wraps himself in the Constitution and preaches lower taxes, smaller government, border security and immigration reform, and is not afraid to state that Jesus Christ is his personal Savior, that he seek His guidance in all that he does, and states categorically that our freedoms come not from man, but from God. I mean, on the surface, what red-blooded American wouldn't get behind such a man?

But this is shaping up as an important chapter in our nation's history, and when dealing with history you really cannot afford to be bedazzled by the marketing glitz of Souza marches and patriotic balloons. You need to get past the public relations spin, get past the cover that has the Constitution emblazoned on it (or, for that matter, a picture of the World Trade Center on 9/11, or Jesus on the Cross, or the Hanoi Hilton, or the Winter Olympics, or an episode of Law & Order) and crack open the book to see what is written on the pages.

To us conservatives, the guys with the WTC on 9/11, Jesus on the Cross, and the Hanoi Hilton on their campaign books have to many liberal chapters for our tastes. To others, the guy with the Law & Order campaign book is just not exciting enough to read and the guy with the Winter Olympics cover is just a bit to slick and 'marketed'. But no matter what minor objections there may be after reading these books, most people would be willing to accept any one of them.

The guy with the Constitution covered campaign book, however, has dozens of great chapters. So many that you might be willing to read just those chapters and conclude that this is the one for you. But what happens when a friend tells you about a really, really bad chapter in this book, a chapter hidden by the author and either ignored by or not spoken of by other readers. A chapter so bad, in fact, that no matter how much you might agree with all the others, no matter how great the book had been up to that point, this one chapter either proves that all those other chapters are unimportant in comparison, or that, as the author himself claims, he did not write this chapter at all (even though it appears with his approval and with his name on it) proving him not only to be a fraud but clueless about how to write history.

Would you ignore your friend's suggestion to read that chapter yourself and go ahead and buy the book anyway, or would you have the courage to admit that you have been duped by a charlatan and choose another author? Or could it be that you don't want to read it because you are afraid that you might secretly agree with what is written in that chapter?

Either way, you have some soul searching to do. Read it and run the risk of being dispirited about the book and it's author, or not read it and hope that in four years none of the issues addressed in that chapter ever arise. Or perhaps, after reading it, you will need to accept that you believe some, most, or all of what is written - and then ask yourself if you are actually the fair, tolerant, patriotic person you always believed yourself to be.

Tough choice. You either need to courage to read on, or the courage to ignore what could be damning realities. Your choice. The key here is that nasty word "courage."

It's quite an irony that Ron Paul has actually used this Sinclair Lewis quote to criticize a competitor:

"When fascism comes to America it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross."

I happen to agree with that statement, but Ron Paul using that quote seems to me to be a quite extraordinary example of Psychological Projection. Well Mr. Paul, I call your Sinclair Lewis and raise you a Friedrich Nietzsche:

"He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And when you gaze long into an abyss the abyss also gazes into you."

This is not to say that some of the other authors vying to have our permission to write the next chapter in American history have not also have written or said things that are as yet undiscovered. We should be diligent to look for every nugget that can give us insight as to what history our next President will write. No candidate will get a pass on things that may be unearthed, nor should they. But we also cannot ignore the 10% of vileness in a man just because we agree with 90% of his other views. After all, Germany in 1939 was - in the eyes of the Germans - almost a perfect place.

Ed. Note: The folks at HotAir pile on...