Chris Matthews, host of the MSNBC program “Hardball,” (a venue which rivals “Air America in popularity) was on his high horse last week castigating conservatives who followed Rush Limbaugh’s directive to cross party lines and vote for Hillary Clinton in the Indiana and North Carolina primaries. According to Matthews, they should be “ashamed of themselves” for ostensibly sullying the alabaster institution of American democracy which, he reminded us, was bought by “the Founding Fathers and all of the soldiers who fought for this country’s freedom” etc. and should not be thus trivialized.

 

In truth, it is Matthews and his kind who ought to be ashamed, first for his sanctimony, but even more so for his hypocrisy. Matthews is able to conduct his program as he does because those same “Founding Fathers and soldiers” secured for the citizens of this Republic the rights of a free press. The Founders well understood the critical importance of information in the hands of the public as the ultimate check on government action.

 

Yet Matthews, perhaps more than any other modern pundit, thoroughly trivializes this great institution by supplanting any serious consideration and discussion of the current issues with his rapid-fire rudeness.

 

Moreover, the value of the press to a free people is contingent upon the dissemination of truth. However, the modern liberal media relentlessly seeks to suppress truth in order to present the “news” in a manner that might promote its inarguably leftist agenda. In so doing, it becomes little more than a willing propaganda wing for the Democrat Party. So much for a worthy embodiment of the founding principles of the country.

 

Nevertheless, all of the sanctimony and phony outrage from Matthews and his kind is understandable, given their intense frustration with Rush Limbaugh’s advocacy of Republican crossover voting which he dubs “Operation Chaos.” That the effort has continued to date is proof of the disintegration of the nation’s governing principles, as evidenced chiefly among the Democrats.

 

Free speech, even from so powerful an individual as Limbaugh, could do little to upset a well defined and established political movement. And the current discord among the Democrats merely confirms that they can hardly claim to be such.

 

Against Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama and their consuming ambition, the increasingly frantic calls for “reason” and devotion to the Party above their individual interests, even when voiced by party chairman Howard Dean, are exercises in futility.

 

Rush Limbaugh clearly identified and seized the opportunity to fan the flames of the current Democrat Party havoc as a result of his insight and genius for analyzing the political landscape. Ultimately however, it is the very nature of liberalism itself that created the sordid tinderbox for him to ignite. And with each passing day that it continues, “Operation Chaos” provides the nation with a excruciating glimpse into the realities of liberalism and the mindset of the American left.

 

Hardly anything new, this liberal “crack up” has been coming for quite some time. But to put it into proper perspective, “democracy” or our representative republic, should be considered as it was originally intended, and then as it has degraded at the hands of corrupt politicians in general, and the current crop of liberals permeating government and the media in recent years.

 

To begin with, the framers of the Constitution knew that self-government would only function among a people who clearly understood that the welfare of the nation must supersede their own blind ambitions and interests. Thus all citizens of the nation could actually have a stake in the process of elections as well as their outcomes. But while this process was under attack from the earliest days of our nation, its degradation has accelerated in recent years.

 

Ultimately, the fortunes of such a government will rise or fall in direct proportion to the honor and integrity of its participants. Voters can go to the polls in “banana republics,” but the ballots they cast do not necessarily portend a bright and glowing post-election future for their nations. Nor can the American electoral system provide any guarantee of a worthy outcome as its process increasingly departs from the worthy manner in which it was originally devised. A few recent examples present alarming evidence of how far things have descended.

 

Americans across the political spectrum well remember the pandemonium that ensued in Florida in the aftermath of the 2000 presidential election. Rarely mentioned by the liberal media is that the overriding reason that matter was not settled with a single recount was that Democrat operatives, including the Florida Supreme Court, were desperately seeking to concoct a scheme by which to count votes from those areas of the state that might shift the outcome to Al Gore.

 

So ingrained is this manner of thinking among Democrats that they are no longer even quiet about it. Hillary and Obama, as well as their cadre of supporters, even including Democrat National Committee Chairman Howard Dean, are openly pondering the inclusion and/or exclusion of the Florida and Michigan delegates in the upcoming Democrat convention, based not on what is a proper assessment of the votes, but on which candidate might benefit from the particular decision rendered. In the midst of such machinations, any regard for “the people” is of absolutely no importance.

 

Meanwhile, both candidates continue to play their respective versions of the “race card,” proving to the public at large what conservative America has known for a very long time. In the minds of liberals, “minorities” are highly valued only insofar as they can be utilized to empower the “ruling class.”

 

So, while the Clinton camp points with palpable derision towards Obama’s nearly monolithic support from black voters as proof that he cannot garner a win among the middle American electorate (read: white voters), Obama likewise reverts immediately to some suggestion of prejudice among any opponents who find his brazen leftist philosophies and allegiances repulsive. In the end, each seeks to gain an edge in this theater of the contest on the basis of victimhood.

 

At the onset of this election cycle, one Democrat camp sought its place at the top on the basis of inevitability and experience. The other made its case on stirring but empty oratory about “hope” and “change,” without a whit of substance to the soaring words. Now the political and intellectual bankruptcy of both camps has been made known to the American people, by the hands of the competing camp.

 

Neither saw any reason to put party or country ahead of its own ambitions. Nor could the party leadership persuade any of its underlings to end the bloodbath by retooling the campaign season for a quick finish.

 

Eventually, this issue will be decided, but the damage to the Democrat facade during these past few months can never be undone. Any “bloom” is long gone from either of these would-be “roses.” Liberalism, in its stark ugliness, is on display for all America to see.

 

It is a crying shame that, in the face of what should be such a momentous opportunity for the GOP, John McCain is squandering it by conducting his own “Operation Chaos” within the Republican Party.