Politics is a nasty business and always has been. This is clearly the case in Illinois. Democratic Senator Dick Durbin is definitely liberal. He represents Illinois, which in the last four presidential elections has voted blue. Maybe this is why Republican Senate nominee Steve Sauerberg’s campaign has a note of desperation about it.

On a Friday taping for a radio interview that aired Sunday, Sauerberg blasted Durbin as too liberal. “I think he’s an ultraliberal. Whether he hates his own country, I cannot determine for the gentleman,” said Sauerberg.

The ultraliberal charge is not entirely new. One of the Sauerberg for U.S. Senate websites writes of ultraliberals and flag burning:

Two years ago in a speech to the Roosevelt Institute, Senator Dick Durbin spent time mocking flag burning.  He scoffed at the notion of amending the Constitution to ban flag burning, pointing out that this nation’s founders did not include the ban in the Constitution.

Durbin’s lack of patriotism is astounding enough, but even more shocking is his claim that the Founding Fathers would not have cared either. The founders did not include a ban on flag burning in the Constitution because they never had to deal with ultra-liberal Americans who hate their own country. They also never anticipated an activist Supreme Court that would extend the freedom of speech to cover action, somehow classifying the physical act of flag burning as political “speech.” 

 
Sauerberg is right. The Founding Fathers did not have to deal with ultraliberal flag burners that hated their country. However, the Founding Fathers did have to deal with royalist Americans who backed Great Britain against the new country. Contrary to Sauerberg’s version of history, opposition or hatred toward one’s country is not a modern phenomenom.

While the ultraliberal charge on the website appears to be directed only at the flag-burners, the radio interviewer specifically asked Sauerberg if Durbin was one of those ultraliberals. Sauerberg agreed and went further, much further than necessary with the hate comment. Frankly, to suggest that a U.S. Senator hates his country is ridiculous.

There are Democrats, Republicans and Independents in the U.S. Senate from liberal to conservative. Each of these men and women choose to run for the Senate because they believe they can make a better nation. Outside of some pro-Confederate Senators before the Civil War, it is doubtful if anyone has ever been elected to the U.S. Senate who hated his country.

This is not just questioning someone’s patriotism. It is not hating the policies of the government. No, Sauerberg didn’t distinctly say “hates his own country.” Yet Sauerberg protects himself a bit, suggesting that he is unsure if Durbin hates America. That is quite charitable of Sauerberg to consider that Durbin might have a few nice feelings about this nation.

Hate is what is expected in the mind of a terrorist, a criminal or someone guilty of treason, not a U.S. Senator. No Senator deserves that.

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