THE ROBERT W. WHITAKER ARCHIVE

ENGLISH WORKS! | 1998-09-26

When Bob Whitaker and Joe Sobran agree on a point, all decent men agree that it therefore be the truth.

Joe and I were talking recently, and we agreed that old-fashioned liberalism is no longer the problem. Liberalism is discredited. Liberalism is dead meat.

Our real problem today is the one thing that keeps liberalism from being laughed off the national stage completely. What is saving liberalism today is Respectable Conservatism.

For example, Bob Barr just lost any chance he ever had of being declared a Respectable Conservative by the national media.

Congressman Barr was a guest on CNN's Burden of Proof when Greta Sustern quoted Monica Lewinsky as saying that Clinton had never actually offered her a job in return for her testimony.

Good, what a stupid statement! OF COURSE Clinton wasn't stupid enough to make a flat offer of a job in return for testimony!

But no respectable conservative is going to point out how incredibly stupid that remark was.

There are several absolute rules you have to follow if you are going to be an Official Respectable Conservative. One of the biggest is that you must treat every liberal as a Serious Intellectual, no matter how ridiculous he is.

No Respectable Conservative will ever point out that Official Liberal Intellectual Alan Derschowitz is a nasty little bastard who has made a career out of getting repeat criminals back on the street. All Respectable Conservatives defer to Derschowitz' Deep Morality and his Official Brilliance.

Greta Sustern is also an Official Brilliant Liberal Theorist. No matter how silly she gets, you NEVER point out that she is being silly.

But Barr did.

Barr looked at her the way an intelligent man looks at any moron, and he said,

"Look, I was a prosecutor for many years, and I won hundreds of obstruction of justice cases. Never once did anyone say...." And here he slowed down to a mechanical repetition to make fun of Sustern

"If-you-say-what-I-ask-you-to-say-I-will-give-you-money-and-a-job."

Barr continued, "The person obstructing justice does NOT say, "ATTENTION, this-is-a-quid-pro-quo. REPEAT-this-is-a-quid-pro-quo."

Sustern had said something really stupid and Barr nailed her with it.

He went on

"The way it works in the real world is that a person like Clinton calls a Betty Curry into his office and says, "Now, you were with me all the time I was with Lewinsky, right? She came onto me but I wouldn't go along, right?"

Unlike Barr, a respectable conservative NEVER calls a leftist down when he is being moronic. If he did, the conversation would be very short and the leftist wouldn't stand a chance.

Only respectable conservatives allow liberalism to continue to dominate our national dialogue.