Saturday, July 16, 2011

Shorter Ron Johnson: What Should I Care if a Terrorist Kills Someone in New York? At Least it wasn't Me

Read the passage below, then, when you're done, read it again a little more carefully:


RoJo was recently on Bloomberg's "Political Capital with Al Hunt," a program that focuses on the federal government. Anyone who has followed Johnson knows the senator loves to say "Obamacare" is the single greatest assault on Americans' freedom in his lifetime. It is a Johnson classic; his "Stairway to Heaven."
For the record, in the senator's lifetime, America has endured segregation, the Cold War and the threat of terrorism. That fact was not lost on Hunt, who pressed Johnson about his oft-repeated refrain and asked him specifically about the threat of communism.
"I wasn't threatened under communism," Johnson countered.
"You weren't threatened by terrorism?" Hunt asked.
RoJo paused, then said, "I'm talking about things that are imposed on me by this, by our government in America."

So far, Chris Walker and Xoff have both pointed this exchange out. Walker points out the absurdity of the statement, something that Johnson clumsily tries to gloss over by restricting his statement strictly to domestic policy. But there's really something more astonishing about Johnson's tacit claim that he wasn't threatened by terrorism that worth exploring: namely, how unspeakably

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