July 25, 2011 08:37 PM UTC

Appalling Silence

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• by: botw

In one of the best essays ever written, Martin Luther King, Jr. said: “We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people, but for the appalling silence of the good people.”

 

He was writing from a Birmingham jail cell and he was speaking of the far more profound issue of civil rights, but his words could apply to various political debates and decisions. The 2003 Iraq War is a good recent example. Most journalists, Democrats, and Independents were too timid to push back, cowed or at least unquestioning.

 

There seem to be a lot of Democrats in Washington right now who decline to call things by their name and who are too timid to stand up and be counted. Republican leaders and Tea Party types spew myths and falsehoods: Obama’s spending created the debt and deficit, taxes are higher than ever, the stimulus was massive and job-killing, and public unions are the root of fiscal problems, among others.  The myths and falsehoods now permeate the debate so thoroughly that many elected Democrats seem to take them as a given, a starting place from which to compromise, rather than push back on. So the prevailing wisdom has become that above all things, the deficit must be cut and it must be done right now.

There  are some strong voices calling out the falsehoods and the false givens: Paul Krugman, James Fallows, Ezra Klein, and a few others. But for the most part, we have a media that treats every statement as true and of equal value.  We have a President so hellbent on compromise and being reasonable that we get “compromises” that aren’t even remotely reasonable. And we have many smart Democrats and centrists in Congress wandering around complicit, submissive, and worse, silent.