There is no constitutional requirement for a rebuttal to the State of the Union Address, and in fact we only started getting them in the Lyndon Johnson administration. This time around it was delivered by Arkansas’ new governess, Sarah Huckabee Sanders.
Mrs. Sanders is just 40, the youngest governor in the country, a pointed contrast with our octogenarian president. I’m willing to cheer just on that account. I know what I could do twenty or thirty years ago and I know what I can do now. I do not want people my age running the country.
I thought Governor Sanders did a decent job of the rebuttal. She leaned hard on the Cultural Revolution and the determination on the part of our ruling class to enforce the new revolutionary standards by, as the saying goes, any means necessary. Quote from the governess:
The dividing line in America is no longer between right or left. The choice is between normal or crazy.
Yes it is; and thank you for saying it, Ma’am.
And that’s increasingly what our Cold Civil War looks like: Normal versus Crazy.
Normal: A very tiny, tiny number of physical abnormalities aside, human beings are either male or female. Crazy: Men can have babies!
Normal: Criminals and lunatics should be kept in humane but firm confinement away from law-abiding and sane people. Crazy: Criminals and lunatics are the victims of an oppressive society. They should roam free.
Normal: Applicants for work that is physically or mentally demanding should be rigorously tested for the necessary abilities. Those who fail the tests should not be employed in that work. Crazy: Applicants for these jobs should be hired in numbers corresponding to the proportions of races and sexes in local populations.
Normal: Fossil fuels supply the energy of civilization. A nation blessed with them in its soil should take full advantage of the fact. Crazy: In thrall to some dubious claims about climate change, switch your nation’s economy to less effective, more expensive, not-very-well-tried alternatives whose source materials need masses of energy to extract.
Normal: Faced with an armed police officer who wants to detain you, or with an armed citizen who wants to detain you until police arrive, be polite and passive. It’s very unlikely you’ll suffer harm. Crazy: Thus faced, try to wrest away the weapon. You’ll likely get killed; but if you’re black you’ll be counted a hero and a martyr.
Normal: When a foreigner wants to come and live in your country, oblige him to satisfy certain reasonable conditions — healthy, law-abiding, employable without displacing citizen workers — before granting permission. Crazy: Let in anyone who shows up and lavish them with benefits.
Normal: Defense of one’s property and family against unwanted intruders is essential to liberty. Defenders should be given the benefit of every doubt. Crazy: If the defender is a white citizen while the intruder belongs to a privileged group — black, illegal alien, or political radical — the defender should be criminally charged.
Normal: If you are a powerful, civilized country and some way less powerful barbarous country commits or enables an atrocity against you, practice gunboat diplomacy. That is, go there in force for a couple of weeks, break their stuff, kill their leaders, then come home, the lesson taught. Crazy: The same: but instead of coming home, hang around there for twenty years promoting social-engineering fads while the barbarians pick off your troops.
Normal versus Crazy, that’s our Cold Civil War; and all the powers of the state and nation, all the media and universities and schools, all the judges and bureaucrats are on the side of Crazy.
