Shamelessly pinched from the Accidental Talmuldist.
Accepting whatsisname's (that New Republic guy whose name escapes me) definition of gaffe as a politician accidentally saying what he thinks, Gov. Cuomo had a doozy Friday night-- in which he said that pro-lifers are among those who are "extreme" and "have no place in New York."
K-Lo says what needs to be said about that. Her best column ever, I think. And as she points out: there mustn't be crickets about the fact that when a man aspires to run for President as a Democrat, he does so not with some uniting vision of the common good, but by fantasizing about banishing arguably 80% of his home state (since that's the # of New Yorkers who favor at least some restrictions on abortion). As K-Lo says:
I try to keep my darker thoughts to myself, but this illiberal and tyrannical talk from elected officials does frighten me because....Notice who it is telling New Yorkers who believe we have to protect the most innocent – and we most definitely ought not be making their shot at seeing the light of day any harder – are not worthy of residence in the Empire State. It’s not Cardinal Dolan (who recently won a court victory on religious liberty). It’s not the Little Sisters of the Poor. It’s not pro-life Democrat Ruben Diaz. It’s not even National Review, a New York mainstay since 1955! The assault on religious liberty and conscience in America is coming from a radical secularist ideology on the Left. The narrowing of freedom is not coming from people who propose alternatives to the sexual revolutionary values, but from those, like Andrew Cuomo, who insist on doubling down on a culture of death, coercing submission and banishing dissent, all while using words like tolerance and choice.
Shamelessly pinched from American Digest. Click to enlarge.
For the record, I don't think the President plans or fantasizes about the result depicted in the cartoon. I think he's a sophomoric lightweight whose grad-school pieties aren't adequate to the real world. But the result of his policies is the same -- and we have an entire generation of spoiled citizens like him who think liberty just "is" and not something precious that must be thoughtfully maintained. It is deeply creepy to hear politicians speak openly about who is and isn't worthy of living amongst us. In a healthy society, a guy talking like Gov. Cuomo would immediately be in way more trouble than Chris Christie, and would have disqualified himself from the presidency by that single telling remark.
