I was never a fan of Barney Frank, the retired, long-serving Massachusetts Democrat. Not because I didn’t find him particularly honest – I did – but because I vehemently disagreed with what he supported. Weirdly, however, I never really disliked him. I thought he was crazy and Left-Wing and wrong on everything, but I never got the sense that he was deliberately lying. As he enters hospice care at the end of his life, the Democratic Party he used to be a leader in has turned on him because he, rightly, is pointing out how insane they have become.
When I say I never got the idea that Barney was deliberately lying, it’s important to point out what that means. There is a difference between being wrong and lying, and it’s important we don’t lose sight of that. Anyone can be wrong; people are wrong all the time. Lying comes into play when you know you’re wrong and you insist you are not.
Asked if it is raining and you say it is not without looking because it wasn’t the last time you saw out a window, even though it is currently raining, you are wrong, not lying. Watching the drops fall and answering it is not a lie. In politics, people are wrong all the time, so much so that you have to wonder if these people are paid based on how wrong they can be sometimes. They also lie a lot. It’s the difference between being stupid and being evil. A lot of Democrats are stupid, and a lot of Democrats are evil. A great many Democrats are both.
Barney Frank was more stupid than evil. That’s not to say he’s a dumb man; he was just wrong and didn’t learn from his mistakes very quickly. But he wasn’t willing to lie for the “greater good” of the party the way modern Democrats are. He wasn’t afraid to call out Democrats for various failings, and he wasn’t afraid to discuss with conservatives the issues on which he disagreed with us.
Barney wasn’t smart enough to always come to his senses, but given how there aren’t any Democrats left today capable of discussing with anyone who strays from their acceptable thought plantation, Frank was one of the last few true “liberals” who would happily appear on Fox News.
Now that he’s entering his last stage of life, he’s issued a warning for his old party – you’ve gone too crazy! And that warning, that reality, is going over like a fart in a car.
“Many of us fought to get inequality on the Democratic agenda,” Frank told CNN Sunday, “But the problem was, as we succeeded in bringing the mainstream of the left into a concern with inequality, we also enabled people who wanted to use that as a platform for a wide range of social and cultural changes, some of which the public isn’t ready for.”
Frank added, “I think, in the interest of the transgender community, as well as others, it would be better to go at that in a more granular way, and not simply announce that, if you don’t support it, you’re a homophobe.”
“It’s one thing to advocate something knowing that you’re going beyond the current viewpoints, and another to make it a litmus test,” Barney, who is dying of heart failure, told Politico.
As wrong as he is, he’s right about that. And I’m thankful that his party isn’t heeding his warning.
Social media leftists pounced, with vitriol on Twitter, reading, “he’s a disgraceful apologist for genocide even when at death’s door” because he didn’t condemn Israel. “This is the perfect pic of the Dem party. Old white dying pieces of s**t who won't let go of any power.” Frank retired in 2013 and is 86, the exact same age as Nancy Pelosi.
I could go on. The comments are vile and endless simply because Barney Frank said maybe calling everyone who doesn’t want to pretend a man in a dress is a woman and Israel has a right to exist, is Hitler, might not be the best way to win over voters, but there is no real point to it. He is no longer in Congress, therefore he has no value to the Democrat Party or its rabid radical base, so he can just die now. The first openly gay Member of Congress – he came out in 1987- was a hero to the left for that, now he’s just an old white guy who needs to shut up and die to them.
Liberals only care about people, even their own team, insofar as they’re useful to them. Outlive that usefulness and out come the long knives, to use an analogy from the history of “progressives.” You only matter to the left as long as you can serve them; after that, you are disposable.
Derek Hunter is the host of the Derek Hunter Show on WMAL in Washington, DC, and has a free daily podcast (subscribe!) and author of the book, Outrage, INC., which exposes how liberals use fear and hatred to manipulate the masses, and host of the weekly “Week in F*cking Review” podcast where the news is spoken about the way it deserves to be. Follow him on Twitter at @DerekAHunter.