Sunday, May 26, 2013

Do Not Disturb? Or, Service, Now!

William Kristol writes in the Weekly Standard

Harry Truman famously kept a sign on his desk in the Oval Office, “The Buck Stops Here.” Sixty years later, President Obama hangs a sign on the door to the Oval Office, “Do Not Disturb.” In 1978, about halfway between the two liberal presidents, Harvey Mansfield, as we’ve noted before, diagnosed the decline: “From having been the aggressive doctrine of vigorous, spirited men, liberalism has become hardly more than a trembling in the presence of illiberalism. .  .  . Who today is called a liberal for strength and confidence in defense of liberty?”

Not Barack Obama. He’s the Do Not Disturb president, presiding over a Do Not Disturb liberalism.

But today's liberals are disturbed about some things:

They’re disturbed about sexual harassment, politically incorrect speech, any resistance to the right to kill unborn babies, and Islamophobia, to pick a few items more or less at random. On these occasions, the Do Not Disturb sign is removed, and the front desk is bombarded with whining and insistent calls: Service, Now!

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