By

With Democrats girding for John Ashcroft’s confirmation hearings, you have to wonder: Are they the real racists?
The Sunday political shows were brimming with “enlightened” Senate Democrats like Barbara Boxer, Patrick Leahy and Paul Wellstone, each ready to skewer their former Senate colleague in his nomination as President-elect George W. Bush’s choice for attorney general. Each stopping just short of using the “R” word — as in racism.

What were Ashcroft’s alleged crimes? Well, he opposed confirming to the federal bench a judge who was lenient towards, and opposed the death penalty for, cop killers. But since the judge happened to be black, then, of course, Ashcroft must be a racist. No questions, though, about whether the black judge was racist against the dead, white cop victims and their families.

Then there’s the speech Ashcroft gave to the much-maligned Bob Jones University, an easy and undeserving target favored by liberals. Since, until recently, Bob Jones — a private university no one is forced to attend — didn’t allow interracial dating by students without written parental consent, Ashcroft must be a racist for speaking there. And worse, Ashcroft actually had the nerve to talk about his Christian religious beliefs and those of the colonists, the founders of our country. He actually had the nerve to state his religious beliefs and his view that “Jesus is King.”

As a Jew, though I don’t share Ashcroft’s religious beliefs, I think it’s great that he’s a man of faith and faith-based values. I am not at all bothered by his intonation of them, and strongly support his constitutional right to speak them freely. Apparently Boxer, Leahy et al. haven’t read that Constitution lately. You know, the one that Ashcroft would have to enforce as attorney general? The one that guarantees not only free speech, but freedom of religion and religious assembly.

Using the “R” word is really only appropriate when these suddenly indignant senators are describing themselves. But an even more appropriate word they should be using is the “H” word, as in hypocrisy. As in their own hypocrisy.

Remember Joe Lieberman, their candidate for vice president? Remember when he said, “As a people, we need to reaffirm our faith and renew the dedication of our nation and ourselves to G-d and G-d’s purpose” at the Fellowship Chapel Church in Detroit. Or when he told a Chicago interfaith gathering, “We are citizens of the same awesome G-d”? Or when he spoke of G-d on Jesse Jackson’s CNN show?

Why was he allowed to do so, but Ashcroft is not? Could it possibly be because Lieberman is Jewish, and he spoke to black churches and to Jackson, a prominent black? Now, that double standard sounds like racism to me. Or maybe when you’re a liberal Democrat you get a pass to do that which white conservative males are not allowed in the ludicrous current conventional political correctness.

Another case of the same confirms it. When Bush said, in December 1999, that Jesus was his favorite philosopher, he, too, was attacked by virtually every institution on the left. Lieberman wasn’t. Ashcroft is.
As for Bob Jones University, Boxer, Leahy, Wellstone and their ilk said it was wrong for him to make a speech at an institution that shares its allegedly discriminatory beliefs. Hmmm, where were they when Joe Lieberman said he wanted to meet with Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan? When he said that he “respected” Farrakhan.
Yes, Louis Farrakhan, the same man who said, “Hitler was a very great man,” that “Judaism is a dirty religion,” a man who has shared the stage with Ku Klux Klan leaders remarking that they share common interests in their support of racial separatism and hatred of Jews. Minister Farrakhan, a man who honors and apologizes for Muslims who, right now, sell blacks as slaves. And his Nation of Islam, featuring such “honorable” spokesmen as Khalid Muhammad, who called the pope and white people “crackers” and who, during the Million Youth March, called upon marchers to attack and injure police.

In liberals’ warped logic, this is not racism, but Bob Jones University is? Well, Farrakhan is black as are his Nation of Islam followers, so they get away with spewing the most vicious hate. And Lieberman, the former Democratic Presidential nominee, gets away with “respecting” it. Now that’s the real racism.

But, unfortunately, the people who share in this illogic — senators like Boxer and Wellstone — are the inmates now trying to run the asylum. And it’s ironic that, by their own newly strict standards, none of them could qualify for confirmation. Boxer was one of the biggest check-bouncers in the House banking scandal of the early ’90s. Leahy violated national security by breaching CIA confidences and publicly disclosing top secret information for political gain, for which he lost his seat on the Senate Intelligence Committee and was nearly censured by the Senate. And Wellstone chaired Jesse Jackson’s Minnesota Presidential campaign. You know Jesse Jackson — lover of “Hymies” and “Hymietown” and good friend of Farrakhan. So much for Wellstone being able to pass the test of not associating with racists. Except that his racists pass the test of being politically correct.
Nobody said there was a shortage of hypocrites in Washington.