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It’s A Real-World Problem

The Critic, Part I

Original story here.

The White House is firing back at Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell after he told the National Journal that “the single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.”

With his usual sarcastic tone, spokesman Robert Gibbs told reporters “maybe Senator McConnell is interested in running for President.”

In other words, only he who is the equal of the President, may criticize the President; only he who is willing to accept the burden and responsibility of a President, may be taken even minimally seriously in criticizing a President for his own selfish, purely political gain. Everyone short of that is just a whiner, an irresponsible child.

This is the standard real-world response to criticism. Criticism is wrong, even if it is right, purely because the critic is not superior to the criticized.

And so dialogue and debate withers on the vine, and dies.

This is not personal to any of the players mentioned above. It is a problem in Western civilization in general.