{"id":697,"date":"2009-09-21T14:29:35","date_gmt":"2009-09-21T18:29:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/?p=697"},"modified":"2009-09-21T15:28:47","modified_gmt":"2009-09-21T19:28:47","slug":"with-cfif-making-enemies-like-thomas-frank","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/697\/with-cfif-making-enemies-like-thomas-frank\/","title":{"rendered":"With CFIF Making Enemies Like Thomas Frank&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Leftist author and weekly <em>Wall Street Journal<\/em> columnist Thomas Frank called CFIF out by name in his commentary last week, entitled <a href=\"http:\/\/online.wsj.com\/article\/SB10001424052970203917304574415232884495424.html#mod=todays_us_opinion\" target=\"_blank\">&#8220;The Left Should Reclaim &#8216;Freedom.'&#8221;<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Continuing his Wednesday morning habit of superficial analysis and juvenile critique, Frank attacked the previous weekend&#8217;s taxpayer march on Washington, D.C. that drew hundreds of thousands of everyday Americans.\u00a0 The opening sentence of Frank&#8217;s denunciation summarizes his angst well, as he stated, &#8220;[t]here are few things in politics more annoying than the right&#8217;s utter conviction that it owns the patent on the word &#8216;freedom.'&#8221;\u00a0 Nothing torments Frank more than the reality that everyday, middle-class Americans disfavor his leftist political agenda, so the taxpayer march had to be particularly painful for him.<\/p>\n<p>He then identified CFIF by name in his futile attempt to justify reclamation of the term &#8220;freedom,&#8221; and engaged in his typical straw-man argumentation when he asserted, &#8220;that our ancestors could ever have understood freedom as something greater than the absence of the state would probably strike protesters as inconceivable.&#8221;\u00a0 First, Frank should take a moment to contemplate the difference between anarchists, who seek &#8220;the absence of the state,&#8221; and conservatives.\u00a0 And second, which &#8220;ancestor&#8221; does he cite as proof of his assertion?\u00a0 Thomas Jefferson?\u00a0 James Madison?\u00a0 Abraham Lincoln?\u00a0 John Locke?<\/p>\n<p>No.\u00a0 Norman Rockwell.\u00a0 Now, we love Rockwell&#8217;s artistry as much as anyone, but one would think that even Frank could do better than that.<\/p>\n<p>Paraphrasing Winston Churchill, we at CFIF can take pride in counting Thomas Frank amongst our antagonists.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Leftist author and weekly Wall Street Journal columnist Thomas Frank called CFIF out by name in his commentary last week, entitled &#8220;The Left Should Reclaim &#8216;Freedom.&#8217;&#8221; Continuing his Wednesday morning habit of superficial analysis and juvenile critique, Frank attacked the previous weekend&#8217;s taxpayer march on Washington, D.C. that drew hundreds of thousands of everyday Americans.\u00a0 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[112,35,28],"class_list":["post-697","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts","tag-9-12-march-on-dc","tag-obamacare","tag-tea-party"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/697","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=697"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/697\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":711,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/697\/revisions\/711"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=697"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=697"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=697"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}