The coverage at the third-tier cable outlet MSNBC this week has been no less than a hysterical fit over all the perceived "racist" slights that might possibly be construed from criticism of the president.  The Democratic Party's attempts to color the Republican Party as a cohort of racist wind-talkers, brandishing everything from "golf" to "Chicago" as a kind of racial code, smacks of the kind of paranoia one might hear from a gang of choom-smokers watching A Clockwork Orange in their college dorms.

Yet what else would a gathering of conservative Republicans do but criticize the leftist leader of the opposition party?

But that was the point of the pro-Democrat media elevating Barack Obama to president of the United States from seemingly out of nowhere: to place him above criticism.  The problem is that in a two-party, center-right nation, divisive politics are as old as the Republic itself.

Political opposition to the Democratic Party cannot be based on race if it pre-existed the presidency of Barack Obama.  The same issues that were fought over when race was absent from the prominent national discussion cannot suddenly be racially motivated just because we now have a black president.  Opposition to socialized medicine, for example, cannot be based on racial antipathy toward Barack Obama when it was just as fierce under presumably white President Bill Clinton (all hallucinated insults to the Congressional Black Caucus aside).

Speaking of Bill Clinton, America's first "first black president," he is slated to speak at the Democrat convention.  This is the same man who said, "A few years ago, this guy would have been carrying our bags."  But let's not single out Bill Clinton, because there are plenty of other arguably race-based comments by Democrats (and if they were Republicans, those remarks would be trumpeted as right-wing "racist dog whistles").

There is Vice President Joseph Biden's line: "I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy."  And let's not even touch Biden's outrageous comment that Romney will "put y'all back in chains."  We have Senate majority leader Harry Reid's phrase about Obama being a "light-skinned" African-American "with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one."  This is not to mention those of former Klan member Senator Robert Byrd, who was eulogized and excused for his remarkably racist past by Bill Clinton and by Barack Obama.

But what else could we expect from a party that excuses itself for its own deeply racist history?

The difference between these Democrats, who are excused and dismissed by the media the second they apologize for anything that might be perceived as racist, and Republicans who are run out on a rail for uttering cryptic words like "macaca" or even alluding to support for a past segregationist candidate for president, is that Democrats strive for what can euphemistically be referred to as "social justice."

What is "social justice"?  It is a construct of the New Left that argues that America is inherently racist and that it is the job of the left (what can nearly always be substituted in a sentence for "the government") to control the economy and society to make things "fair."

That is the real meaning behind the stupid, ubiquitous charges of racism.  This is a tactic from a very old leftwing playbook called "critical theory."

This tactic seeks to criticize America to death without offering real substitutes that themselves can be criticized.  That is why the left is avoiding economic issues like a vegan hippie avoids Tony Roma's -- once one gets into the red-meat issues that most Americans care about, the Democrats have a striking record of failure.

But why race?  Well, race is the eternal blot upon the soul of the republic, according to the secular religionists of the left.  UCLA's School of Public Affairs describes the variant Critical Race Theory (CRT) and what those who espouse it believe:

CRT recognizes that racism is engrained in the fabric and system of the American society. The individual racist need not exist to note that institutional racism is pervasive in the dominant culture. This is the analytical lens that CRT uses in examining existing power structures. CRT identifies that these power structures are based on white privilege and white supremacy, which perpetuates the marginalization of people of color. CRT also rejects the traditions of liberalism and meritocracy.

So those who hold to Critical Race Theory explicitly reject liberalism (in the classical or moderate sense) and meritocracy.  What is left is an all-encompassing state that attempts to achieve perfect equality between all individuals using race, gender, and other characteristics as pretenses for complete control, regardless of one's behavior or "merit."

David Horowitz describes the practical reasons why the Democrats use critical theory (which in the academic sense is very obtuse) very well:

Without its adherents noticing, the theoretical argument of the Left has been emptied of content by the failures of socialism. For what is the practical meaning of a socialist critique in the absence of a workable socialist model? In fact, there is none. By adopting an impossible standard, it is easy to find fault with any institution or social system under scrutiny.

For media personalities like MSNBC's admitted socialist Lawrence O'Donnell, who uttered a tortured chain of reasoning that "golf" is a code word tying Barack Obama to spousal cheater Tiger Woods, race is merely a way of weaponizing minorities and turning them against the system.  And while 1960s radicals are obsessing about the eternal racial struggle and the war on women and all manner of conjured causes, re-casting each in new form after America overcomes them to become a less bigoted society (due in large part to the Enlightenment vision of our Founding Fathers), the leftists are not talking about the economy or other issues that Americans consider of vital importance.  It's what might be called the race-bait-and-switch.

America's first post-racial presidency has predictably descended into baseless, unhinged charges of "racism" over all forms of effective conservative resistance to President Obama's markedly leftist program.  There is a host of real problems facing this country, and for the Democrats to act as if we should be talking only about identity politics is an admission of failure.

As the president contrives the most cryptic comments about the GOP convention resembling something from the era of "black-and-white TV," showcasing failed ideas from the last century, we know exactly what he means.  Obama implies that the Republican Party is not "diverse" and that its ideas are neither new nor successful.  Democratic Mayor of Los Angeles Antonio Villaraigosa even told Chris Wallace of Fox News Sunday that the Republican Party espouses "a platform from another century, maybe even two."  Thus, it isn't a surprise that the Democratic Party beacon MSNBC dropped coverage of most "minority" speakers at the Republican convention, because it would be a real narrative-breaker for the left.

What do these bizarre comments actually mean?  America still has the world's most powerful economy due to market capitalism and constitutionally limited government, and America also still has the most effective military.  We live in a diverse society of immigrants who came to the United States seeking freedom and opportunity, and the great majority received just that.

But these inducements to come to the land of liberty won't last long if the Democrats' older-than-dirt statist and collectivist ideas are fully put into place.  And to achieve un-freedom, the Democratic Party must pose as a group of emancipators, even if the party's causes are largely imaginary, and even if its program entails state enslavement.