Mona Charen: “The defamation of Paul Ryan as a racist for noting the multigenerational persistence of joblessness in troubled neighborhoods is more than just another episode of hysterical name-calling by the left. The episode represents, in microcosm, the left’s intellectual bankruptcy. … After referring to our ‘tailspin’ of a culture in which too many men are disconnected from the world of work and family life, Ryan said, ‘Everyone has got to get involved. So this is what we talk about when we talk about civil society, if you’re driving from the suburbs to the sports arena downtown by these blighted neighborhoods, you can’t just say: "I’m paying my taxes and government is going to fix that.” You need to get involved. You need to get involved yourself – whether through a good mentor program or some religious charity, whatever it is to make a difference. And that’s how we help resuscitate our culture.’ As Rich Lowry has observed, Ryan’s comments were indistinguishable in every respect from comments President Barack Obama has made many times. Ryan’s accusers know this perfectly well. Their grubby eagerness to engage in character assassination must be understood as part of a strategy. Demonizing the right is the only weapon that remains to them. … When Ryan talks about the poor with such evident sincerity, he threatens the carefully tended bogeyman so necessary to Democrats’ success – the evil, heartless Republican. I imagine that Ryan apologized – he said he’d been ‘inarticulate’ – to blunt the criticism, but I wish he hadn’t. Far better to turn the camera around and reveal the tactics of his accusers. They are hoping to intimidate him. They are trying to ensure that he hesitates before speaking about poverty again. They are attempting to box him into a corner.“