Time for major parties to take out the trash, again

Vocal people who hold an ideological orthodoxy lying outside the broadly accepted bounds of political debate are an inevitable consequence of the First Amendment.

We grudgingly accept the presence of such extremists, knowing that it would be easiest to simply laugh at their antics and pay no further attention.

Americans do this on a daily basis with LaRouche kids, the Westboro Baptist Church, neo-Nazis, liberation theologists, “proud Asians against white supremacy” and sundry communist activists. These groups tend to occupy the political periphery, making lots of noise but gaining no serious influence. In the absence of violence or other illegal behavior, it would be thoroughly un-American for the government itself to crack down on a group simply because 99 percent of us rejected its fringe ideology.

As respectable parties that account for 99 percent of the electorate, the Republican and Democratic parties have a responsibility to periodically purge their ranks of radicals so that the national house, however divided, shall be free of pollution within its walls. Today is garbage day, and it is Barack Obama’s turn to take out the trash.

He will join the pantheon of illustrious members of both parties who have undertaken this duty in the past. When conservative icon and National Review founder William F. Buckley passed away, editors eulogized him in part by describing the late commentator’s editorial use of his influential magazine to purge anti-Semites, conspiracy theorists, populist isolationists and other rabble-rousers from the Republican Party. Ronald Reagan solidified these efforts by building a coalition of mainstream voters and ignoring the fringe elements that Buckley had neutralized.

Likewise, the War Democrats of the Civil War era turned against their pro-slavery comrades when the latter group treasonously endorsed secession. Many prominent Union officials in the Civil War were War Democrats, including Secretary of War Edwin Stanton and Sen. Stephen Douglas, Lincoln’s opponent in the 1860 presidential election.

Like mainstream Democrats today, the War Democrats sometimes disagreed with the president’s war strategy. But in the end, they stayed steadfastly loyal to the Union itself in their words and actions, permanently marginalizing their secessionist counterparts.

Both parties still contend with fringe elements: Republicans have Michael Savage, James Dobson and Pat Robertson, while Democrats have Michael Moore, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), Markos Moulitsas and Dennis Kucinich. However, because of our two-party system, anti-American extremists like Fred Phelps on the right and the Sept. 11, 2001 “truthers” and terrorist sympathizers on the left have been denied a voice in our government.

There remains the looming matter of Jeremiah Wright, whose inflammatory anti-white polemics have no place in civilized political discourse. Barack Obama has so far carefully chosen his words to “strongly condemn” Wright, but he has failed to unequivocally disown him.

Democratic primary voters and superdelegates should accept no less of a response to this fiasco than absolute and permanent repudiation. Obama has the duty to make the Democratic Party better by excoriating Wright in the strongest terms possible and thus disassociating the racist madman from his party.

Though he can never completely eliminate the stain of his past acquiescence to Wright’s poisonous sermons, the senator can also go a long way toward establishing his own post-racial credentials by taking that one last step over the line. Only then can Wright’s worthless hate speech be consigned to history’s hazardous waste dump. Obama is in the damage control hot seat for his campaign and party. Democrats, and the nation as a whole, have an interest in demanding that he do the right thing.