Peggy Noonan on torture and the IRS

I've mostly been avoiding politics on the facebook. But--I've had too much time sitting around in waiting rooms lately. I've been trying to place my thoughts in context about this IRS thing and I finally figured out what was bothering me. Here's Peggy Noonan in 2004 exonerating Rumsfeld for Abu Ghraib and here she is today pinning the IRS scandal directly on Obama. And therein lies my distaste for the political handling of this.

In 2004 the Vice President issues a memo which leads damn-near directly to US troops breaking Geneva Conventions and torturing Iraqi prisoners and in the end--we put the entire blame on a Private.  This time around a fairly low level IRS worker makes some poor decisions regarding how to systematically sort through thousands of applications and it is supposedly clearly the President's fault? How is that explained other than by having two different standards by which to judge?

Why Ben Shapiro is wrong

So, here's a quick overview of what I see happening here--

conservatives, of the little "c" variety (since the big "C" Conservatives like Barry Goldwater were for LGBT equality) spent years and decades trying to keep LGBT people in the closet. They forbid us from having organizations to help our young adapt to society, they boycotted when we tried to come out, they boycott when any LGBT person is shown in a light other than evil, and...they lost. We won. The statement "we're here, and we're queer; get over it" has come to pass.

But, rather than recognize that we are at a tipping point where it is growing increasingly acceptable to be LGBT, and that there are still areas of society where such is not accepted--particularly those areas of life which have been dominated by masculine and conservative norms (boy scouting, football, politics etc.), these same people now want to point to the very success of the movement they tried to stymie as reason to marginalize further.

See Ben Shapiro here tryinig to argue that being the first openly gay professional sportsman is decidedly NOT heroic. Why? Because America is such an accepting place, if you find anything special about him coming out, it means you have no faith in America's general goodness.

His argument, in a historical context, can be viewed as such:

twenty years ago--if you're LGBT, we hate you.

ten years ago--if you're openly LGBT, we hate you.
Today--if you think it's special that you're not hated for being gay, you hate America

See how that works? Despite spending decades and decades making America a place where LGBT people were decidedly un-equal.  Despite fighting tooth and nail to keep us out of the military. Despite trying throw us out of schools and rejecting our blood from the Red Cross. Despite not allowing us in churches, or to marry in most states. Despite not allowing our families to immigrate legally--despite all that--if you think it's special you've overcome all of that hate directed at you--then you (get this) hate America. Why do you hate it? Because you don't see past all the hate directed at you to see how wonderful and accepting it is apparently by nature.

Oh, and for the record, the list of people he DOES consider "real" heroes? Here you go: Mark Levin (for discussing how liberals are bullies) Adam Carolla (for?? Being a jerk on the radio?) SEN Ted Cruz (for general nuttiness I guess) and Josh Mandel (for losing an election)