Jimmy Carter and Maureen Dowd have accused opponents of socialized medicine of being motivated by racial animosity toward Barack Obama. It’s unclear if this was just another case of intellectually challenged leftists hurling vacuous insults when frustrated by their inability to win an honest debate, or if it’s a crude tactic to suppress dissent by intimidating their opponents, but either way they’ve forfeited the health-care debate, in my opinion.

Under leftists’ rules of debate, whenever they’re losing an argument they can instantly halt the debate and declare victory by feigning outrage, pointing to their opponent and shrieking, “Racist”. Their rules require the accused to freeze like a deer in headlights, cower, and tearfully grovel, begging forgiveness for anything he said that might have been “racially insensitive”. The accuser then rebuffs the desperate pleas for mercy, and all who witness this charade are required to declare victory for the morally preening accuser and forevermore exclude the accused from polite society. In the preposterous world of left wing politics, being labeled a “Racist” – an infinitely malleable and capacious epithet – is the ultimate indictment, worse than being called a Nazi, fascist, traitor, homophobe, misogynist, redneck, child-molester, and all of those combined.

In a world of sane and intelligent grownups, the rules are different: anyone shrieking “Racist” is immediately declared guilty of an ad hominem fallacy and loses the debate. We suspect that the accuser is not only guilty of logical fallacy, but also lacking valid evidence for his position.

The  increasing tendency to regard Race as the paramount issue in our society is highly corrupting to our culture and politics. It’s easy to see how this could account for Obama’s presidency: the very narrow margin by which he won the democratic nomination over Hillary might easily be attributable to legions of insecure voters flaunting Obama pins, bumper stickers, yard signs, etc. as ostentatious declaration of their own moral purity (if not superiority), and certainly ironclad immunity against any charge of racial transgression.

We need a concerted effort to restore matters of race to their proper and very limited place in society, and firm and consistent rebuke for those who engage in illegitimate efforts to manipulate us with racial distractions. I hope that opponents of socialized medicine will not only vigorously resist these contemptible attempts at intimidation, but will intensify their efforts to resist socialism, thereby demonstrating that the “race card” is no longer a trump.