The Protocols of the Elders of Liberalism

William Kristol writing in The Weekly Standard:

"Protocols.” You can’t turn on your TV without hearing about them.

The last time the word featured so prominently in American public discourse was when Henry Ford took it upon himself to pay for and distribute half a million copies of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion almost a century ago. History, of course, isn’t repeating itself.

The publication of those Protocols was designed to foster fear and loathing of Jews.

The invocation of these “protocols” by Obama administration officials as they bungle the Ebola crisis is designed to shield themselves from justified fear and loathing on the part of the citizenry.

The bungling is a result of a toxic confluence of two major strains of contemporary liberalism—the bureaucratic ineptness of big government and the political correctness of the nanny state. Characteristically, the strains seek to conceal themselves.

Bureaucratic ineptness hides behind the “protocols” that Tom Frieden of the Centers for Disease Control and his colleagues endlessly cite.

Political correctness hides behind edifying exhortations like that of White House press secretary Josh Earnest that “we live in a global world.”

But the protocols and the exhortations have been mugged by reality.

It turns out protocols can’t substitute for sound policy and real leadership. It turns out the global world can’t substitute for the nation-state.

Government officials like Frieden and Earnest swear an oath to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic” and to “well and faithfully discharge the duties” of their offices.

They owe allegiance to the nation more than to the world, and they owe the nation their judgment more than their protocols.

They are not faithfully discharging their duties of office when they make their priority protecting bureaucracies and enforcing orthodoxies....
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Link: http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/protocols-elders-liberalism_816389.html