For the longest time I’ve puzzled over this conundrum: if liberal intellectuals are so smart and so well-read, why so some have so much trouble with the mere expression of conservative views.
Now, to be sure, there are many (many, many) pundits, politicians and academics on the left who welcome spirited discourse and engage regularly in exchanges with their ideological adversaries (on the right). But, there is a significant mass of supposedly very smart liberals who regularly disdain a philosophy they show no evidence of understanding who regular seek to discredit its advocates with mean-spirited (and frequently) slanderous slurs, accusing their adversaries of sinister motives while working energetically to prevent the public expression of their ideas.
They don’t just see conservatives as wrong-headed, but as evil. Having perused the archives of the Journolist, Jonathan Strong of the Daily Caller provides evidence of this narrow-minded animus:
On Journolist, there was rarely such thing as an honorable political disagreement between the left and right, though there were many disagreements on the left. In the view of many who’ve posted to the list-serv, conservatives aren’t simply wrong, they are evil. And while journalists are trained never to presume motive, Journolist members tend to assume that the other side is acting out of the darkest and most dishonorable motives.
Assuming the worst of conservatives, no wonder they regularly criticize FoxNews which regularly airs those views. In his piece, Strong provides yet another piece of evidence that rather than confront the conservative ideas which Fox covers more thoroughly than do its broadcast rivals and cable counterparts, a fair number of supposedly broad-minded liberal journalists wish to have the FCC shut the news network down:
The very existence of Fox News, meanwhile, sends Journolisters into paroxysms of rage. When Howell Raines charged that the network had a conservative bias, the members of Journolist discussed whether the federal government should shut the channel down.
“I am genuinely scared” of Fox, wrote Guardian columnist Daniel Davies, because it “shows you that a genuinely shameless and unethical media organisation *cannot* be controlled by any form of peer pressure or self-regulation, and nor can it be successfully cold-shouldered or ostracised. In order to have even a semblance of control, you need a tough legal framework.” Davies, a Brit, frequently argued the United States needed stricter libel laws.
“I agree,” said Michael Scherer of Time Magazine. Roger “Ailes understands that his job is to build a tribal identity, not a news organization. You can’t hurt Fox by saying it gets it wrong, if Ailes just uses the criticism to deepen the tribal identity.”
Jonathan Zasloff, a law professor at UCLA, suggested that the federal government simply yank Fox off the air. “Do you really want the political parties/white house picking which media operations are news operations and which are a less respectable hybrid of news and political advocacy?”
But Zasloff stuck to his position. “I think that they are doing that anyway; they leak to whom they want to for political purposes,” he wrote. “If this means that some White House reporters don’t get a press pass for the press secretary’s daily briefing and that this means that they actually have to, you know, do some reporting and analysis instead of repeating press releases, then I’ll take that risk.”
Scherer, to his credit, objected to shuttering FoxNews. But, yet his ideological confrères prefer to censor a news network they find objectionable. If they’re so confident in their ideas, how come they’re so unwilling to tolerate opposing viewpoints?
Not just that, at least two members of the list Bloomberg’s Ryan Donmoyer and Richard Yeselson, “a researcher for an organized labor group who also writes for liberal magazines,” compared Tea Party protesters to Nazis.
So broad-minded these folks, so understanding of the ideas of their ideological adversaries.
*Briefly considered titling this, “The Latest from the Journolist Archives:/Some left-of-center journalists favor shuttering FoxNews.”
Just got back from a stroll through Alan Colmes’ Liberalcesspool. Ain’t no smart and well-read liberals over there. At least the GayPatriot liberals pretend they know what the hell they’re talking about. ACL libs are just dumb as bricks. It’s too easy.
Well I’ve heard, and often said that “Conservatives think that Liberals are wrong. Liberals think Conservatives are evil.” Just more proof of that I guess.
I dunno, it goes both ways. Rhetoric quickly gets out of hand, especially online. Its a lot easier to say meaner things when the person is not right in front of you.
Liberals know they see the world with clarity and a full understanding of the forces at work. They know that conservatives hate change and pine for the discredited bigotry of the past.
Now, when you are so certain of yourself, what room is there for discussion?
Political correctness is a wonderful example of how liberals think. They pull some “offensive” (to them) idea out of the miasma of their minds and put government authority behind it. As a result, colleges are staffed with race relations police who monitor what is said and read body language. Infractions are handled with reeducation or expulsion.
The fetus is property and just cells.
Enforcing immigration law is profiling.
Opposing Obama is racism.
Tax cuts are only doing the bidding of the super rich.
Supporting business is crushing the employee.
Fox News is Faux News.
And the list goes on. There is no intelligent debate in these nuggets of liberal truth. You just dare not challenge them without proving to the world that you are an idiot.
Picking up on heliotrope I’d submit that for most on the left it starts and ends with the core belief that they are the intellectual superiors to the rest of the world. They have delved deep into the weeds and determined that only when the best of the best are in charge can any true progress occur. All others that may by dumb luck or through treachery become elected are beneath contempt and are to be destroyed. They will pay lip service to the notion that all are equal and entitled to equal treatment. Its just that some folk have a more ‘true’ understanding of how life works and how the rest of us should live that the treatment of all is to measured out and modified as necessary to allow the ‘betters’ to maintain their edge.
What was that line in Animal Farm? All are equal, its just some are more equal than others.
It’s funny how left-liberals do not even *understand* the basics of what conservative and/or small-government ideas are, let alone tolerate their expression. From the Daily Caller piece, one Journolister says:
Uh, wrong. That Journolister doesn’t have a freaking clue what he’s talking about. Clearly, he’s never been to a Tea Party rally.
Though liberals do a great deal of talking about hearing other points of view, it sometimes shocks them to learn that there ARE other points of view.
It’s even more funny when you consider that Obama is running deficits 4 times those of Bush.
Committed lefties want a deficit-driven economy. Because they want it, they must avoid self-knowledge. They avoid self-knowledge by accusing the Tea Parties of wanting deficits – which is the exact opposite of the truth; Tea Parties exist primarily to protest Obama’s insane deficits.
Likewise, committed lefties want a State which is all-powerful, excepting personal choices about sex, drugs and music. Wanting a near-all-powerful State makes them near-fascists. They must avoid that knowledge. They do it by projecting their fascism onto others.
Passion, emotional hatred, ignorance on the subject, nihilism, & moral relativism usually are the elements to create a liberal; therefore, they have a cartoon of a conservative in their minds that they cannot reconcile with reality. Liberals function in group think much like the Borg from Star Trek.
Exhibit A could be the Daily Beast’s Communist Manifesto proclaiming that the porkulus wasn’t enough and demanding we throw even more money down the shitter. Their panties are all wet because they got 40 liberal “economists” to agree with them. Two of them even have Nobel Prizes, as if that has any meaning.
Apparently, the object lesson of Jornolist is that liberal journalists spend half their time fretting about Bush’s “fascism,” and the other half fantasizing that Obama will use the Government to shut down FoxNews.
Would be interesting to see the whole archive to see how much time they actually spend making arguments against Republican policies and for Democratic ones.
This is where I take issue – I completely understand the conservative philosophy and you can put that to the test. I could morph into a Republican if I wanted to, all I’d have to do is change my name in the above field and you guys would be agreeing whole-heartedly with everything I said. It’s not a difficult philosophy to understand and it’s not a challenge to see why so many people are pesuaded by it.
Watch this; “The United States has every right to use enhanced interrogation techniques because of the unprecedented special circumstances that we have been put in as a result of the Islamic attacks that have been perpetuated against us over the past few decades. Terrorists aren’t a part of a military or recognized command structure and thus the Geneva Conventions do not apply, rendering any POW argument invalid out-of-hand. Further, traditional methods for dealing with terrorist networks are ineffecitve and inefficient, and we mustn’t be squeamish in developing methods to counter their efforts – we know that they won’t be. The radical religious fanaticism that drives Isalmic terrorists renders less intense interrogation methods completely useless, and we need the information they possess to further disrupt their terror networks and to save innocent American lives. Indulging our sensitive sides and affording these monsters Constitutional protections that don’t apply to them is not only foolish, it’s reckless, and I would question the values and patriotism of anyone that argued a contrary position.”
See that? I wrote that off the top of my head, just now, and I could just as easily do the same for the conservative position on any other issue. Do any of the die-hard conservatives on this board take issue with anything in that statement?
Now for my next performance, I’d like to impersonate a conservatives’ characterization of any and all liberal positions;
“Well, I’m a baby-killer that wants the government to take care of me. I hate Republicans for no reason and think that the terrorists make a good point. Above all else, I’m a communist that longs for the collapse of the United States economy and the capitalist world order, because I like the idea of living in a box in a shantytown and lazily living off of other peoples’ hard work.”
Sorry fellas, if anyone has a hard time wrapping their heads around the opponents’ viewpoints, it’s you. And conservatives are as predictable as clockwork.
Levi,
Flatulence is never a becoming attribute. Fatuous flatulence is even less becoming.
Your imitation of conservative principles comes fully wrapped in the moral relativism of a liberal mouth breather. Stick to your own game. It becomes you.
There are so many things wrong with that assumption, I scarcely know where to begin, but please allow me to correct you…
Progressives are, at their core, self-absorbed bullshit artists. They are convinced of their moral and intellectual superiority, and above all, take whatever action they feel necessary to achieve whatever goal they decide needs to be achieved. Disagreement is tantamount to an admission of profound ignorance, and must be thoroughly silenced, lest the other primitives be persuaded.
The Constitution is a “living” document, written by well-meaning, but unenlightened misogynists who couldn’t have foreseen the wreckage that ordinary men, left to their own devices, would have caused.
You’re not a communist, Levi…simply a sociopath in search of like-minded fools.
Levi, you’re amazing: you got the conservative position on interrogating terrorists correct! I’m not sure what objection liberals have to any of that.
It is demonstrably true that terrorist organizations are not signatories to the Geneva accords. It is also demonstrably true that those accords define circumstances where combatants must be treated as POWs and when they may be executed, and terrorists fall into the second group.
I am well aware that the powers implied here are terrible and must be used only when necessary, but to simply take that option off the table unilaterally is to handicap one’s country and increase the danger in a dangerous world. The problem and paradox that government must grapple with is that it must have the power to do some things which many might find distasteful, but it must exercise that power with great discretion. Use it too much, and you get Pol Pot. Forswear it entirely, and you are perceived as weak by other countries which have no such inhibitions.
Ideally, if the country plays the game right, they may never have to use that power at all – the mere idea that they would if necessary may be enough.
That said, you got the conservative view of liberals almost completely wrong.
No conservative thinks that you WANT to be a baby-killer, or that you want the government to take care of you. Conservatives don’t think that most liberals want the collapse of the United States economy and the capitalist world order, or that you like the idea of living in a box in a shantytown and lazily living off of other peoples’ hard work.
Conservatives simply recognize that that’s what liberal policies lead to. Liberals seem incapable of thinking…well, I was trying to qualify that, but let it stand as is.
Example: we see plenty of examples online of liberals basically saying “Obama’s not a socialist, ’cause he (or one of his supporters said he wasn’t!”. Yeah, that convinces me.
I prefer to look at who his influences were (all socialists of one type or another), who he listens to and appoints now, (all socialists of one type or another), and what the effects of his policies will be (all socialistic of one type or another). There’s only one rational inference to be drawn from the above, and “he’s a free-market maniac” isn’t it.
For a group that claims to be the intellectual cream of the crop, you’s think they’d demonstrate that brilliance occasionally. I’m still waiting.
If my stated position is that torture is always wrong no matter who is doing it and why, how is that moral relativism? It seems to me that this would be the consistent argument.
If that’s not what you’re getting at, and if you’re instead trotting out that same old ‘liberals empathize with the terrorists’ nonsense, I can’t say I’m surprised. Here again we have conservatives refusing to understand the argued liberal position and inventing another out of whole cloth that is easier to defeat, i.e., ‘you want to coddle the terrorists!’ Any efforts of anyone to discover the reasons behind terror attacks are met with such a response by conservatives, who deliberately confuse understanding with justification. Conservatives are content to believe in soundbite platitudes as the reason that terrorists attack the United States, like ‘because they’re evil!’ or ‘because they hate us for our freedoms!’ and will shrug off any offered explanation of blowback due to US foreign policy as some kind of effort to justify terrorists actions, because, of course, liberals hate America.
Conservatism is easily understood as the most juvenile set of thought processes on the planet.
“Any efforts of anyone to discover the reasons behind terror attacks are met with such a response by conservatives, who deliberately confuse understanding with justification.”
Child, we already know the reason. It is well established that radical Islam deems non-Muslims to be worthy of only dhimmitude, conversion to Islam, or death. Liberals can’t seem to see this, despite all the fact that radical Islam proclaims this at every opportunity.
“Conservatism is easily understood as the most juvenile set of thought processes on the planet.”
Yeah, right. As compared to the lofty intellect of liberalism, which claims that if we just talk to everybody the right way, all problems will disappear? Only a liberal could simultaneously believe that all cultures are unique and different and must be treasured for that difference, yet at the same time hold that all these diverse cultures want the same things we do, in the same way.
I am constantly amazed that liberals believe themselves to be intellectually and morally superior beings while never demonstrating ant evidence of same.
Thanks for proving my point. Conservatives treat radical Islamists like cartoonish James Bond villains, bent on destruction for destructions’ sake, not motivated by the same kinds of emotions and reasoning that other people use. They’re just crazy, they just hate us, and that’s all you want to know.
And that’s all you want to know because further exploration of the issue reveals that United States foreign policy is one of the biggest motivators in converting someone to radical Islam. One of the most infuriating aspects of conservative behavior since they launched their wars in the Afghanistan and Iraq is their reflexive tendency to either minimalize or outright ignore the recruitment opportunities that our invasions have provided for terrorists. While you may be able to chalk up some inadvertent civilian casualties in Iraq as collateral damage, or dismiss pictures of detainee abuse as harmless interrogation techniques, these events create feelings of anger, resentment, and vengeance towards the United States among Arabs and it primes them for radicalization.
Now, this is where you’d like to pipe up with some insult about my patriotism, that I’m blaming us for all the worlds’ ills and that I think the actions of the terrorists are justified, but that’s not what I’m doing. Understanding the reasoning behind radicalization is not the same as justifying that radicalization, and acknowleding that the US is contributing to this cycle of perpetual violence is not the same as saying that we’re at fault for every bad thing that happens in the world. Understanding the history and the reasoning behind the actions of all parties involved is an important step in problem-solving, which is what I’d like to do; solve this problem. It doesn’t seem to me that conservatives really want to solve the problem, they just like the idea of being cast as the heroes in some ultimate battle of good versus evil.
Again, the belief that all liberals want to do is ‘talk to everybody the right way’ is a right wing propagandistic trope designed to make you guys feel tough. If anyone expresses any distaste for the idea that you can spread democracy through invasions and occupations, conservatives will typically just start beating on the chests and calling everybody else a p*ssy. It isn’t that I would never under any circumstances support the idea of using the military, I just don’t support using it in this way, because it takes a terrible toll on the local population and is completely counter-productive to our goal of reducing the threat of terrorism. As much as you’d love to believe otherwise, I don’t want to have a press conference with Bin Laden where we talk about the things we have in common.
“Conservatism is easily understood as the most juvenile set of thought processes on the planet.”
– – – –
It was understood for centuries that the sun orbited the earth.
The core of economic conservatism – the part that separates it from modern-day progressivism – is embodied in the belief that, for a society to survive and prosper, everyone within that society who is able must contribute in some manner to the performance of the necessary work for that society. As man is naturally (generally) a bit lazy and self-centered, incentives must be offered to induce everyone to make that effort.
Then, as a trade, the value to others of whatever effort you’ve made on society’s behalf is offered back to you in the form of credits which you can use to induce other people to perform their own work on your behalf.
Without such an incentivising structure, many people would simply stay home, watch the soaps, and await the next meal delivery. Sadly, our societies have not reached a point where the continued production of goods and the continued performance of necessary work could be accomplished in such a drained condition.
The most successful method of raising the living standards of all people in a society centers on this incentivising – the more people who get off the couches and go out and perform work that yields a result that someone else desires, the more we can satisfy everyone’s needs.
Progressivists likely would prefer that everyone has enough to eat just as much as I, a conservative, prefer that everyone has enough to eat. Our main difference lies in the fact that they seem to believe
that this incentivising focus is immoral – but they’ve not discovered or developed any other means of convincing people that their efforts are needed to keep the society viable. Allowing people to opt out of this system and produce nothing of value to anyone else while convincing them that everyone else is obligated to satisfy their needs and desires leads to economic failure, and then it turns out that these people always take the brunt of the harm from the stagnant economy.
We actually share the same goals. We just don’t think you’re any good at realizing them.
a sustainable societal structure that lacks this arguably coercive incentivising paradigm
As in Scrabble, the last line of the preceding post is just my pile of leftover unused words.
If my stated position is that torture is always wrong no matter who is doing it and why, how is that moral relativism?
Because your stated position vanishes when it comes to condemning the activities by the Obama administration that you used to scream were torture.
So again, moral relativism. Torture is fine as long as you declare it to be. War is fine as long as you declare it to be. Barack Obama can do the same things as you demanded that Bush be impeached for and they’re wonderful.
Meanwhile, Levi, you are a baby-killer. You demand that Federal dollars be spent to murder over one million babies annually because “progressives” like yourself can’t be bothered to be responsible. You have no problem killing people if they are inconvenient to your sexual promiscuity.
Before what I’ve excerpted above, there really isn’t a thing I would disagree with, aside from your description of that economic model as conservative. That’s capitalism, and liberals have every right to claim it as their own as conservatives do. I love capitalism, and I can recognize its benefits, and I fully support the idea of incentivising people to work.
I don’t know of any progressives who view the incentivising scheme as immoral. I don’t know of any progressives who want to replace the system that you’re talking about and just let lazy people mooch off of the productive people for 75 years. This is what I’m talking about – conservatives simply don’t understand the liberal perspective, so they argue against these absurd caricatures that simply don’t exist.
What’s different about the progressivism is the view that a society needs to do more than simply worship a purely free market economic model to thrive. It’s completely unrealistic to expect that in a country with this many people, from so many different places, with so many different histories, everyone is just going to be able to hit the ground running with a work-hard-for-your-rewards ethic. So progressives support the social safety net, an idea that is designed to help people that are disadvantaged or need some temporary assistance so that they can one day be productive members of society, working for their own incentives and giving new incentives to others.
Part of this has to do with empathy for your fellow man, and part of it has to do with protecting the stable and productive parts of society. It simply isn’t the case that everyone in the country is born with the same opportunities and advantages as everyone else. Some people are born wealthy, some people are born poor, some people have great parents, some have terrible parents, there are good communities, there are not-so-good communities. Success stories can come from anywhere, but you can make a lot of really precise predictions about what kind of life someone is going to have based on where they’re born and who they’re born to. The social safety net is intended as a way of equalizing this playing field someone, to give a poor kid a chance to go to college or to allow someone who has been laid off to not worry about defaulting on their mortgages. The programs aren’t meant to be used as substitutes for work, they’re meant to be used to make work accessible to more people.
Now for the other part; there are barriers-of-entry to the work-hard-be-rewarded economic system, and if people get frustrated by those barriers, they could turn to crime, which undermines social stability as a whole. Sure, a high school drop out might work at McDonald’s and save up enough money to pay for college, but they also might decide to just start stealing cars. People need to eat, and if they can’t find work or don’t get paid enough, they’re going to steal and rob and murder. Social programs can reduce these kinds of desperation, and are far less expensive as tiny taxes distributed countrywide than the alternative; the staggering economic costs of crime.
It would be great if there was absolutely no need for welfare or social security or unemployment and everyone was able to make it fine just by themselves, but that’s an unrealistic expectation.
I don’t know of any progressives who view the incentivising scheme as immoral. I don’t know of any progressives who want to replace the system that you’re talking about and just let lazy people mooch off of the productive people for 75 years.
Oh really?
While the federal government sinks deeper into debt than any time since World War II, former White House “green jobs” adviser Anthony Van Jones said it was time to stop worrying about budget deficits and pressure Washington to take more money from American businesses to fund larger social and infrastructure projects.
Or how about your Obama Party and “progressive” propagandist Michael Moore, who says, quote, “Capitalism is an evil”?
So what do we think, folks?
Is Levi a pathological liar, or just really, really stupid?
Oh, and it gets better: Levi “Nazi-Style” and his fellow progressives are now openly stating that black people who attend tea party events are the same as Jewish Nazis.
I don’t see what the fuss is about. If you don’t like how professionals in academia and journalism talk, don’t read them. Been like this for almost a century. It’s not as if these are new or unusual opinions. Reminds me of Walter Duranty, John Reed, Izzy Stone, C. W. Mills, et. al., admired professionals every one of them.
Tehag,
The opinions floating around in academia and journalism are those that influence our entire culture.
If we accept that there will always be an editorial bias in journalism, simply due to limited space and time, wouldn’t it worry you that the information deemed valuable enough to enter into that limited space is all from the same direction?
Heck, I know people who rely on the traditional media and academia for their information, and interestingly enough, they’re the folks who are convinced there are about 12 conservatives in the US, and they all live in a bunker in Utah.