The amount of abuse, insults, slander, and death threats hurled at Ilhan Omar in recent weeks has been a sight to behold. The vulgarity of this mob is on full display, with their ignorant, unhealthy attachment to a foreign power compelling them to constantly police the opinions of any political leader who displays independence of thought when it comes to the topic of Israel. Yet in the face of the insults, attacks, and myriad death threats, Omar continues to stand firm, refusing to apologize and slink away, which is unforgivable to the Political Class. They aren’t used to dealing with vertebrates among elected leaders, and their only reaction is unbounded rage. But among people who admire principle, intransigence, and fearlessness in the face of bullies, Ilhan is a hero, an all-too-rare exception to the standard, mealy-mouthed politicians who flaunt the low price-tag attached to their integrity.
Chad Loder recently catalogued hundreds of death threats directed at Omar, only for Twitter to erase his list while allowing the threatening tweets themselves to remain online.
Trump has even piled on the parade of hate against Omar, saying that, “she’s got a way about her that’s very bad for this country”. Her plain observation that Israel’s influence on our government is bad for this country is somehow…bad for this country. It’s dangerous talk coming from a President, because it’s the same rhetoric used to prepare the soil for real violence against “enemies of the State”. She may be bad for the interests of the Political Class, for Israel’s stranglehold on their lapdogs in Congress, but she is very good for this country. The ability to stand against the entirety of the Israel Lobby without blinking betrays a degree of fortitude unheard of within the Washington D.C. swamp.
There is a bizarre irony in flag-worshipping nationalists becoming so upset over criticism of a foreign country. These are people who know nothing of history, or liberty, or the role they are playing in the destruction of their own country. These are people who have never read George Washington’s prophetic Farewell Address, and, having not read it, don’t understand that they are the betrayers that he warned about when he said this:
“So likewise, a passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils. Sympathy for the favorite nation, facilitating the illusion of an imaginary common interest in cases where no real common interest exists, and infusing into one the enmities of the other, betrays the former into a participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter without adequate inducement or justification. It leads also to concessions to the favorite nation of privileges denied to others which is apt doubly to injure the nation making the concessions; by unnecessarily parting with what ought to have been retained, and by exciting jealousy, ill-will, and a disposition to retaliate, in the parties from whom equal privileges are withheld. And it gives to ambitious, corrupted, or deluded citizens (who devote themselves to the favorite nation), facility to betray or sacrifice the interests of their own country, without odium, sometimes even with popularity; gilding, with the appearances of a virtuous sense of obligation, a commendable deference for public opinion, or a laudable zeal for public good, the base or foolish compliances of ambition, corruption, or infatuation.”
Our country needs politicians who can’t be bought. The lynch mob reaction to one of the few that do exist is a fairly accurate indicator of the extent of the decay of character not only within our governing class, but within the culture itself.
