Jeffrey Lord
Jeffrey Lord is a Contributing Writer for NewsBusters. Lord is a former White House political director in the Reagan White House and aide to HUD Secretary Jack Kemp. After graduating from Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania he went on to work for the Pennsylvania State Senate Majority Leader, then going on to serve on Capitol Hill as a press secretary and legislative director for Congressman Bud Shuster (R-Pa.)
Anyone whose memory has not been washed clean can recall the liberal media’s not-so-long-ago frequent warnings about threats to democracy.
Hop in the time machine and take a brief trip into the not-so-long-ago headlines from the liberal media.
The New York Times, 2022:
Democracy Challenged: A Look at the Historic Test on Democratic Norms
The New York Times, also 2022:
DEMOCRACY CHALLENGED ‘A Crisis Coming’: The Twin Threats to American Democracy
PBS, 2021:
2 out of 3 Americans believe U.S. democracy is under threat
The Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin in 2021:
Democracy is backsliding across the globe. The U.S. is part of the problem.
The Washington Post analyst Dan Balz 2022:
A year after Jan. 6, are the guardrails that protect democracy real or illusory?
CNN, 2021:
Yes, democracy *really* is in danger
One could go on – and on and on – with similar headlines from the mainstays of the liberal media fretting about the supposed dangers to democracy laid at the feet of Donald Trump and/or his supporters.
But now? When millions of Americans perceive with the conviction of the former President that democracy in America is in fact in serious trouble?
Here’s some sample liberal media headlines since the Trump conviction:
The New York Times:
Biden Declares Trump Verdict a Victory for the Rule of Law
The New York Times, editorial board:
Donald Trump, Felon: The former president’s conviction in a New York criminal trial revealed, yet again, why he is unfit for office.
Washington Post columnist Alexandra Petri mocked:
Donald Trump needs YOUR HELP to get vengeance on the evil RULE OF LAW
CNN:
In a grievance-filled speech riddled with falsehoods, the ex-president insisted he did nothing wrong after his historic conviction
And on and on went these headlines post-conviction.
Notice anything missing? Like, maybe, just maybe, the palpable concern for democracy that existed in all those earlier headlines?
Nope. They aren’t there.
Could it possibly be that all that concern for democracy from the liberal media wasn’t – newsflash – real at all?
Now, when millions of Americans perceive the Trump conviction – the conviction of a former President of the United States – as a decided threat to democracy? The headlines about a threat to democracy have – lo and behold – vanished.
Which illustrates in vivid form that all those earlier, panicked, headlines in the liberal media were not about a vanishing democracy after all. They were really about the latest defeat in the day of the latest items on the liberal media agenda. Defeats delivered by decidedly democratic means.
Now, when millions of Americans, are decidedly alarmed at the prospect of a president being arrested and convicted because he happens to be a conservative? The liberal media yawns and ignores.
All of which brings back the memory of these words of wisdom from the long ago 1961 by a then-future President of the United States – Ronald Reagan.
Said Reagan:
But freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it on to our children in the bloodstream.
The only way they can inherit the freedom we have known is if we fight for it, protect it, defend it and then hand it to them with the well thought lessons of how they in their lifetime must do the same.
And if you and I don’t do this, then you and I may well spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it once was like in America when men were free.
Not for nothing did Reagan’s staff nickname him “The O&W” – The Oldest and Wisest.
