Munchhausen Democrats

by Paul R. Hollrah, Contributor to Lincoln Heritage Institute

Baron Karl Friederich Heironymous von Munchhausen was a German cavalry officer who lived from 1720 to 1797. He was such a renowned teller of tall tales about his exploits in peace and in war that a collection of his stories was published in the early 1780’s. Other writers used the Munchhausen tales in their writings, enlarging and expanding on them until his name ultimately became associated with “the amusingly preposterous story or the lie winningly told,” as it has been described.

In 1951, a British physician named Richard Asher associated the Munchhausen name with a medical condition, coining the term “Munchhausen Syndrome.” According to medical dictionaries, Munchhausen Syndrome is a “psychological disorder characterized by patients demanding treatment for acute and often dire illnesses that are, in fact, not present.” Munchhausen patients usually give plausible and dramatic medical histories – all of it entirely false.

And now, as we enter the 21st century, we find that one of our two major political parties, the once-great Democratic Party, has become the party of Munchhausenism. The first symptoms appeared in the 1930’s when Democrats set out to convince the American people that Republicans favor the rich and the “corporate interests” at the expense of the poor. And then, in the late 1950’s, Democrats undertook yet another intensive propaganda campaign designed to convince African-Americans that Republicans were opposed to black social and economic progress. 

None of these charges were true, of course, but lies repeatedly and “winningly told” soon take on the ring of credulity. 

More recently, Democrats have blamed Republicans for high gasoline prices, claiming that Republicans are so beholden to big oil companies that they have followed a policy of creating shortages to drive up prices. But when Democrats are reminded that spikes in gasoline prices are more a function of a lack of refining capacity than of shortages of crude oil, they blame the major oil companies for not building refineries and Republicans for failing to make them do it. The truth is, it is Democratic opposition to new refinery construction, dictated by radical environmentalists, that has caused us not to build a new oil refinery in the United States in more than twenty-five years.

And when Democrats demand, instead, that we concentrate our efforts on renewable energy sources, such as wind power, they quickly abandon even that fanciful idea when bird-lovers complain that the giant wind turbines might kill a few careless or suicidal birds.

When Republicans propose changes to the Social Security system that would protect the benefits of everyone over age fifty while saving and improving the system for everyone under age fifty, Democrats call on their AARP attack dogs to run TV ads depicting a woman with a clogged sink and a plumber who tells her that it will be necessary to tear down her entire house to fix it. That “amusingly preposterous story” is intended to convince the American people that the president’s well-reasoned proposals for saving Social Security will actually destroy it.  

Finally, when Democrats filibuster the president’s judicial nominees for four years, refusing to allow senators to vote on judges who enjoy clear majority support in the Senate, Republicans have little choice but to force Democrats to return to traditional filibuster rules – the so-called “nuclear option.”

Again, Democrats trot out the “willful lie,” telling the American people that, in the past, Republicans have used the filibuster to block judicial nominees. Not true. In 1968, following Earl Warren’s retirement from the court, Republicans lead a four-day filibuster to block Lyndon Johnson’s elevation of Associate Justice Abe Fortas to be Chief Justice.  

Fortas was a longtime member of the National Lawyers Guild, described in a House Un-American Activities Committee Report as the “Legal Bulwark of the Communist Party.”  He was clearly not the man to be Chief Justice. Nineteen Democrats joined with twenty-four Republicans in voting not to cut off debate. Fortas’s promotion to Chief Justice had minimal support in the full Senate and he quickly asked the president to withdraw his name from consideration. 

It is a rare occurrence these days to hear a comment from a Democratic official that is not an outright lie, heavily nuanced, or just downright dumb. So it is at least amusing when a Munchhausen Democrat takes the time to display his/her actual knowledge of current events. Such was the case when Munchhausen Democrat, Congresswoman Sheila Jackson-Lee (D-TX), asked recently whether or not the Mars Rover could be made to move to the location “where the astronauts planted the American flag.”

For most knowledgeable Democrats, the fact that the flag was planted on the Moon, not on Mars, is a mere technicality. After all, they do look so much alike in their photographs, all of them being round, floating around in space, and all that.