Are Conservatives a Little Paranoid? The Obama Administration has ‘Richly Earned Citizens’ Distrust’, says David French

Posted: May 11, 2015 | Author: Pundit Planet | Filed under: Censorship, Think Tank, War Room, White House | Tags: 9/11, Al Gore, Berkeley, Bush Administration, Conspiracy, Coup, Dissent, George W. Bush, Global warming, Hillary Clinton, IRS, Mark Halperin, Misconduct, Paranoia, Pope, Sedevacantism, University of California |Leave a comment

US President Barack Obama attends a military briefing with US Ambassador to Afghanistan James Cunningham (L) at Bagram Air Field, north of Kabul, in Afghanistan, May 25, 2014. Photo: SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images

No, the Obama administration isn’t going to invade Texas

David French writes:

…Let’s not forget that more than half of Democrat voters thought it was “very” or “somewhat” likely that the Bush administration either “assisted in the 9/11 attacks or took no action to stop the attacks because they wanted the United States to go to war in the Middle East.” Let that sink in: panic-man For all the elite’s disdain of allegedly gullible conservatives, a majority of the Left believed that an American president was complicit in mass murder.

[Disagreement as Mental Illness]

[Cultural Conservatives Have Barely Begun to Fight]

[The P.C. Thought Police Aren’t Fragile; They’re Vengeful and Malicious]

But extreme paranoia wasn’t limited to the Democratic rank and file. As National Review’s own Rich Lowry pointed out, Naomi Wolf (former campaign consultant to Bill Clinton and Al Gore) actually wrote a book explaining how the Bush administration was mirroring the early actions of dictatorships like those in Germany, Russia, and China. Harper’s Magazine published breathless stories about a barely averted Bush administration “coup” or “military dictatorship.” Even as recently as 2013, the National Journal published an article claiming that military officers were considering “staging a coup” against President Obama — the basis for the claim was a series of statements by a retired non-stop-panic-pearls general who specifically declared that no coup was being contemplated.

[Democrats Push to Criminalize Dissent]

[The War on the Private Mind]

[The Burdens of Thought Policing]

In this atmosphere of earned distrust, it is appropriate for elected officials to ask questions about even benign and well-meaning military exercises. No, the Obama administration isn’t going to invade Texas or Utah. Yes, there are some bottom-dwelling, opportunistic conspiracy-mongers who’ve done their best to whip up public concern. But when the Obama administration has done so much for so long to express its disdain for conservative citizens, when it has turned one of its most powerful bureaucracies — the IRS — into a weapon against domestic political opponents, and when it has stonewalled through every meaningful investigation of admitted misconduct, it has richly earned citizens’ distrust….(read more)

National Review Online