Kyle Smith of National Review Online challenges left-of-center pundit Ezra Klein’s assertions about the Republican Party.
He believes conservatives are getting driven off the rails by fears of black people and Muslims and documentation-challenged immigrants and maybe feminists and abstract art. Going back a bit, we had an “inordinate fear of Communism,” in Jimmy Carter’s famous words. Klein is chill about all of these things and urges us to be as fear-free as he is. As all the smugprogs are. As the Democratic party inherently is.
All Klein is actually doing here is proving his status as a bubble boy who never sets foot outside his comfortably furnished, intellectually climate-controlled living space. He is so intellectually dishonest that he is able to fool even himself.
In fact, Klein and his party are all about fear. The Democratic party is defined by fear of climate change, of the police, of incipient theocracy, of white supremacists with tiki torches. It fears that the American Dream is dead, that the next generation will be far worse off, that abortions will have to be performed with coat hangers, and that capitalism is corrupt. It fears fascism, racism, Donald Trump, and the millionaires and billionaires who are hogging all the wealth. It fears GMOs and fast food and food deserts and that people are eating too much meat and that the planet will run out of food. It fears toxic masculinity, rape culture, and college fraternities. It fears gentrification and charter schools. It fears that fake news and Fox News and the Russians are going to steal the next election.