Coulter: Liberals are assaulting America

In what might be her most controversial book yet, New York Times best-selling author Ann Coulter calls out liberals for playing the victim, arguing that they are in fact the victimizers. In "Guilty," she posits that when it comes to bullying, no one outdoes the liberals. Here is an excerpt from chapter one.

Chapter 1: Liberal motto: Speak loudly, and carry a small victim

Liberals always have to be the victims, particularly when they are oppressing others. Modern victims aren’t victims because of what they have suffered; they are victims of convenience for the Left. There’s no way to determine if an action is offensive by looking at the action. One must know who did it to whom, and whose side the most powerful people in America will take. Republican senator Trent Lott committed a hate crime when he praised former segregationist Strom Thurmond at a birthday party, but a year later, Democratic senator Chris Dodd did nothing wrong when he praised a former Ku Klux Klanner, Senator Robert Byrd — who was also a sort of “community organizer.”

Playing the game of He Who Is Offended First Wins, the key to any political argument is to pretend to be insulted and register operatic anger. Liberals are the masters of finger-wagging indignation. They will wail about some perceived slight to a sacred feeling of theirs, frightening people who have never before witnessed the liberals’ capacity to invoke synthetic outrage. Distracted by the crocodile tears of the liberal, Americans don’t notice that these fake victims are attacking, advancing, and creating genuine victims.

Just as we’re always told that schoolyard bullies are actually deeply insecure, liberals rationalize their own ferocious behavior by claiming to have been wounded somehow. What about the little guy our poor, insecure bully is beating the living daylights out of? How’s his self-esteem coming along? That is the essence of liberals: They viciously attack everyone else, while wailing that they are the victims.

Liberals’ infernal habit of accusing others of what they themselves are doing distracts attention from who is really being attacked. No one is victimized by a mouse: Real victims are those who are called the oppressors by the powerful. Just as Nazi mythology made ordinary working Germans believe they were victims of Jewish oppressors — in order to oppress the Jews — today’s media-certified victims are the true oppressors, and the alleged aggressors are the real victims. To find the authentic victims in most situations, one can simply refer to the people the mainstream media urge us to hate, beasts such as George Bush, the Duke lacrosse players, Joe McCarthy, Jesse Helms, Tom DeLay, the Swift Boat Veterans, and Sarah Palin. But often the victims are nameless, faceless victims of repellent liberal policies that are promoted on behalf of counterfeit victims, such as single mothers or “the poor.” Media-anointed victims inevitably create actual victims who became so the old-fashioned way: They earned it.

Fake victims have become so crucial to liberal argument that you need a pathos-meter to follow politics in modern America. Every policy proposal is launched or opposed on the stories of victims. When Senator Hillary Clinton sought more federal money for New York City in 2007, she made a big show of attending Bush’s January 2007 State of the Union Address with the son of a New York City police officer, Cesar A. Borja, who had died that very day of a rare lung disease he had allegedly acquired from working “16-hour shifts” at the World Trade Center after the 9/11 attacks.

The New York Daily News had told the tear-jerking story of Cesar Borja a few weeks earlier in an article claiming that “when the twin towers fell,” Borja “rushed to ground zero and started working long days there.” Now he was dying of a rare lung disease, a result, the Daily News suggested, of his having “volunteered to work months of 16-hour shifts in the rubble, breathing in clouds of toxic dust.”

Senator Hillary Clinton seized on the 9/11 victim’s story, parading Officer Borja’s 21-year-old son at the State of the Union Address. She even sent President Bush a letter — made available to the press — inviting him to meet Officer Borja’s son, at the same time requesting more federal funding for New York’s emergency workers. The federal money allocated thus far, she said, was “only a down payment in repaying our debt to those who came to assist us in our hour of need.” She asked the president to “honor” Officer Borja’s memory and those who had “lost loved ones as a result of the 9/11 attacks.”

Bush met with Officer Borja’s son and agreed to the additional federal funding for those suffering nonspecific health problems related to the 9/11 attack. Senator Clinton then released another letter noting “our responsibility to take care of those who took care of us” — those who, she said, “selflessly risked their lives and their health at Ground Zero.”

Then it turned out the story of Officer Borja’s glorious heroism on 9/11 was a complete hoax. Borja had not “rushed” to the disaster site after the attack. He only started working there, directing traffic, near the end of December 2001, by which time much of the rubble had been cleared away. He was not a volunteer — this was his job. Indeed, the only reason he was working 16-hour days was to boost his pension just before he retired. In all, Borja had worked 17 days at the World Trade Center, most of them in 2002.4 Borja retired in June 2003 and did not begin to develop pulmonary fibrosis until 2005. There were other possible explanations for his rare lung disease, such as his pack-a-day cigarette habit until five or six years before the 9/11 attack. Officer Borja had done nothing dishonorable, but he had not selflessly risked his life at Ground Zero, as Hillary Clinton claimed in order to beg for more taxpayer money for New York City.

Asked about its make-believe reporting on Borja’s undaunted heroism, the Daily News observed that “the paper had never explicitly said Officer Borja had rushed there soon after Sept. 11, only that at some point he had rushed there.” No matter — he had served his purpose and New York City got its federal funding.

All the Left’s seminal imagery keeps turning out to be a hoax.

MORE FROM TODAY BOOKS: HISTORY POLITICS

What was the greatest moment in sports history?

What was the greatest moment in sports history? ‘A History of Ghosts’ explores paranormal past David Alan Grier: Is beige the new black? Is price gouging in wake of a hurricane wrong? New book places blame for Pat Tillman’s death Blagojevich tells his side of story in ‘Governor’ Geraldo on Hispanics’ new era of prosperity Ousted Ill. governor explains self in new book Michelle Malkin: Obama’s team is corrupt Book: Obama turning slump into socialism   Add Today Books: History Politics headlines to your news reader: