Hate Speech Makes a Comeback

By Patrick Buchanan

Well, it sure didn’t take long for the Tucson Truce to collapse.

After Rep. Gabrielle Giffords was shot on Jan. 8 by a berserker who killed six others, including a federal judge and a 9-year-old girl, and wounded 13, the media were aflame with charges the right had created the climate of hate in which such an atrocity was inevitable.

The Washington Post story on the massacre began, “The mass shooting … raised serious concerns that the nation’s political discourse had taken a dangerous turn.”

Following Barack Obama’s eloquent eulogy and call for all of us to lower our voices, it was agreed across the ideological divide that it was time to cool the rhetoric.

This week, however, hate speech was back in style.

After Donald Trump called on Obama to release his original birth certificate and produce the academic records and test scores that put him on a bullet train from being a “terrible student” at Occidental College to Columbia, Harvard Law and Harvard Law Review editor, charges of “racism” have saturated the airwaves.
To Tavis Smiley of PBS, this was a sure sign the most “racist” campaign in history is upon us. To Joy Behar and Whoopi Goldberg of “The View,” this was pure racism. To Bob Schieffer, CBS anchor, an “ugly strain of racism” is behind the effort to get Obama’s records.

Again and again on cable TV, the question is raised, “What, other than racism, can explain Trump’s call for these records?”

Well, how about a skeptical attitude toward political myths? How about a legitimate Republican opposition research effort to see just how much substance there is behind the story of the young African-American genius who awed with his brilliance everyone who came into contact with him? ...

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