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A prison “created by their own conceit”

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In his monologue yesterday, Rush Limbaugh reflected on a theme which John Podhoretz considered in his column on the Supreme Court arguments over Obamacare and, as I put it yesterday, “the failure of all too many in the chattering classes to appreciate the merits of conservative arguments“.

On the astonished reaction of liberals to the poor arguments the administration made before the Supreme Court in defense of the president’s signature initiative, the talker explained:

It’s eye-opening.  I really want to be serious about this.  They’re a bunch of overhyped know-nothings who do not have an expansive view of the world.  They’re in a prison that’s created by their own conceit.  They’re in a prison that’s the result of their own arrogance and they live in a place where there is no reality.

. . . .

Now, let me go through some of Hayward’s piece here to try to be illustrative of what I’m talking about.  “The Terrible, No Good, Very Bad Month for the Left.”[*]  I’m not gonna read the whole thing.  I’m gonna take excerpts here.  “It is typical for politically engaged people to note the weaknesses and defects of their own side…” No, that’s what’s remarkable; they don’t.  There are no weaknesses. There are no defects, until they’re confronted with them.  They do not conceive them. (Continuing reading excerpt) “…while overestimating the strength and prowess of their opponents.”  That’s us.  That’s what we have always done, and hopefully no more.  There’s no reason to ever feel inferior to these people.  There’s no reason to grant them superior or elite status in any way.

Via Powerline picks.  And Rush invites the question:  why do some on the left refuse to acknowledge the weaknesses in their own arguments?  Or the merits of their opponents’?

*Link not in original.

Comments

  2. As the saying goes, conservatives think liberals are misguided; liberals think conservatives are evil.

    Conservatives, raised in an environment of accountability and mistakes, learn the value of seeing all sides, of changing one’s mind, and of accepting the opinions of others.

    Liberals, raised in an environment of curved grading, participation trophies, and grievance-mongering, learn only that they are always right, that everyone else should yield to them, and that if something bad happens, it’s someone else’s fault.

    Conservatives learn how to argue and debate. Liberals learn how to throw temper tantrums.

  3. There’s an old story about a film critic for the NYT or WaPo who, on Nixon’s victory, said she didn’t know how Nixon could’ve won – she didn’t know anyone who voted for him.

    I’ve spent some time here and there reading comments on liberal blogs (I’ have my limit, though) and it’s occurred to me that, more often than not, they don’t have an argument.

    What many do have is a high opinion of themselves and their ability to run the lives of other people; or utter contempt for people not like them (e.g. southerners or people from ND, NE, KS, MT…); or deep-seated jealousy of others they believe are better off.

    The Trayvon controversy is a good example: a liberal can’t explain why, in this case, a mob lynching of the shooter is a good idea – they just rant about white(-Hispanic) privilege and racism on the part of those who think the case should be fairly investigated like any other, without political interference – with the chips falling where they may.

  5. I’m not sure they’re fundamentally dishonest so much as fundamentally deluded. Don’t get me wrong. I do see a great deal of dishonesty on the left. I too struggle to understand the leftist mindset. Like many who read and comment on this blog I have good friends whom I love and respect – and they are leftists. I struggle to understand how someone who is so groovy much of the time can become obtuse – occasionally mean – when it comes to politics.

    On another note = I tried to track down the “no reason to ever feel inferior” quote and had no success. Is there a link to Rush? or is this a personal transcription? It’s a good quote and I’d like to know where to find it.

  7. The Left lives in a perpetual fantasy world of their own making; in Obama & the Obama Democrats’ case, it’s ObamaLand. They refuse to acknowledge reality even when their fragile fantasy is crumbling all around them.

  8. Rick 67: Here is the Rush transcript-

    Reality Confounds the American Left
    March 29, 2012

    All Audio & Video »
    BEGIN TRANSCRIPT

    RUSH: Well, it’s all over now, folks, except for the voting at the Supreme Court, which could be as soon as tomorrow. The health care decision could be finalized tomorrow. We won’t know about it ’til late June, but they already know what they’re gonna do. The oral arguments rarely change anything, but we’ll find out.

    Great to have you back here, folks, Rush Limbaugh, the Excellence in Broadcasting Network, Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies. Telephone number, 800-282-2882. The e-mail address, ElRushbo@eibnet.com.

    For all intents and purposes, the Supreme Court’s gonna vote tomorrow, or soon on whether to strike down Obamacare, whether to strike down the mandate or to uphold it as constitutional. There won’t be much discussion of the vote, as I have learned. They don’t debate. They don’t discuss cases with each other. They write. They circulate their opinions. To whatever extent those are persuasive, the justices might change their minds, but it rarely happens. In fact, throughout the media today you’ll find constant references to Kennedy and maybe one of the conservatives changing his mind. You never read about the liberal justices being forced to or being asked to rise above it and change their minds. But it has been an incredible week. This has been just an amazing week, folks.

    I was reading a blog post today at Power Line, Steven Hayward, who has written some books on Reagan. We’ve interviewed Steven Hayward here at the program for the Limbaugh Letter, the most widely read newsletter in American politics. I was going through this and, you know, one of the themes that we’ve had this week is what is real, who is really smart, who is really engaged, who is it we are really up against. This has been an eye-opening week for so many people. The idea that liberal elites are smarter and run rings around other people intellectually was exposed as an abject fraud this week. The idea that they’re open-minded, the idea that they’re even aware of competing points of views, that was blown up as well. The level of arrogance that they possess is such that there are no opposing ideas except when they are confronted with them.

    But would you like to know something? Every argument advanced by Paul Clement, who is arguing for our side at the Supreme Court, every question asked by a justice, every answer, every point about Obamacare that was made in opposition to it has been made for years. You could read the briefs in the appellate cases. You could have listened to this program. You could have read any number of blogs. It’s no secret. Conservatism is no secret. Constitutional Americanism is no secret. It’s out there. Anybody in the world can discover it. I am still blown away by how utterly shocked people like Jeffrey Toobin and others in the liberal media were that it went the way it went.
    They were shocked out of their clothes, folks. They were stunned.

    Just this week Jeff Toobin was on Charlie Rose predicting a slam dunk for constitutionality. And all it took was 90 minutes of oral arguments and he’s in a full abject panic as though he had never heard any of these objections to Obamacare and he’s then scaring Wolf Blitzer to death. Poor Wolf I think had to take a day off one day this week to deal with his shock over the fact that this thing has some problems. Toobin was out there talking to Wolf Blitzer one day, and Wolf carried his shock and dismay into the night. The next day Toobin was put on with Don Lemon and Wolf wasn’t anywhere to be found, so he might be wearing a little white jacket somewhere here until he gets his equilibrium back.

    It’s eye-opening. I really want to be serious about this. They’re a bunch of overhyped know-nothings who do not have an expansive view of the world. They’re in a prison that’s created by their own conceit. They’re in a prison that’s the result of their own arrogance and they live in a place where there is no reality. And that’s what hit them right between the eyes this week. They were confronted with reality, which they regularly, purposely avoid. They have instead constructed in their minds this socialist utopian idyllic dreamland, fantasyland that doesn’t exist, can’t exist, won’t ever exist. And when they are confronted with the reality of anything up against their own constructs, it is the equivalent to you and I of being surprised by a bear in our backyard. It’s the last thing you expect to happen.

    Now, let me go through some of Hayward’s piece here to try to be illustrative of what I’m talking about. “The Terrible, No Good, Very Bad Month for the Left.” I’m not gonna read the whole thing. I’m gonna take excerpts here. “It is typical for politically engaged people to note the weaknesses and defects of their own side…” No, that’s what’s remarkable; they don’t. There are no weaknesses. There are no defects, until they’re confronted with them. They do not conceive them. (Continuing reading excerpt) “…while overestimating the strength and prowess of their opponents.” That’s us. That’s what we have always done, and hopefully no more. There’s no reason to ever feel inferior to these people. There’s no reason to grant them superior or elite status in any way.

    The point I made yesterday, this Verrilli. They’re dumping on this guy. The libs are dumping on this guy, the solicitor general who argued for the government, they’re dumping on this guy left and right. He is from Columbia University Law Review. That equals, in their world, Einstein. Just like Obama was at Harvard law review, this guy is Columbia University Law Review. That’s Einstein. That’s Mensa. That’s as smart as you can be, and we see that he’s not anywhere near as smart as you can be. They’re dumping on him for a very simple reason.

    They refuse to admit that he had nothing to defend. He was trying to defend the indefensible. He’s trying to defend a piece of legislation — look at what Scalia said yesterday. Antonin Scalia asked the associate solicitor general, (paraphrasing) “Do you really want us to go through these 2,700 pages? Do you really expect the court to do that? Do you expect us to give this function to our law clerks?” They do. This is exactly who the left is. They’ve got a 2,700 page health care bill, and they expect the court to go through it and determine what’s okay, what isn’t, to give it its final imprimatur.

    And they know. They count on Sotomayor, Ginsburg, Breyer, and Kagan — who ought to have recused herself. That’s another thing we discussed. She shouldn’t even be there because she helped put together the arguments that were made yesterday and this week by Verrilli. She shouldn’t be there. In an ethical, sane world, she shouldn’t even be there. So you have 2,700 pages, and Scalia says, “You expect us, the Court to go through these 2,700 pages?” Well, folks, here’s the reality: Somebody’s gonna have to. If it ever is fully implemented, somebody’s going to have to go through those 2,700 pages. Every time you go to the doctor, somebody’s gonna have to consult those 2,700 pages.

    And you know who it isn’t gonna be? It isn’t gonna be your doctor and it isn’t gonna be your insurance company. It’s gonna be people like those who argued for the government at the Supreme Court. Incompetence on parade. Nameless bureaucrats who thrive on power over average people. They’re the ones that are gonna be going through those 2,700 pages if this is declared fully constitutional. Somebody’s gonna have to go through them. It’s an outrage. It’s a boondoggle. It is an absolute disaster. “Kennedy expressed surprising skepticism that the court was competent to make health policy.” He said, “I don’t understand your position.” He was talking to Edwin Kneedler, who is the deputy solicitor general.

    “I don’t understand your position. Are you saying we have the expertise here on the Court to decide which provisions should stay in and which should be thrown out in the mandate’s overturned? It seems to me,” Kennedy said, “it could be argued at least to be a more extreme exercise of judicial power to keep the rest of the law intact than strike the whole thing. I just don’t accept your premise.” He’s saying: You mean we have the expertise to decide which provisions in these 2,700 pages should stay in and which to be thrown out if we get rid of mandate? It seems to me that it can be argued that’s a more extreme exercise of judicial power than just getting rid of the whole thing.

    And he’s right! Stop and think what the regime asked them to do. It’s quite telling. They wanted the Supreme Court to go through this thing page by page and rubberstamp it. Separation of powers, anyone? But these justices realize that’s not their job. They’re not the experts here. And the point is that if this thing is fully implemented, not one expert will be going through those 2,700 pages. Bureaucrats will. The Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius. Some nameless, faceless bureaucrat — not your doctor, not your nurse, not your surgeon, not even your evil insurance company — is gonna be going through those 2,700 pages.

    Somebody’s going to be going through them, and Scalia said (paraphrased quotes), “I don’t want to do it, and I’m not gonna let you make my clerks do it.” And Kennedy said, “I’m not taking that much power away from the Congress.” And the regime lawyers are shocked, because they can’t believe that government officials, judges, would reject this kind of opportunity to wield power. Because to them that’s what this is all about, the immense power in those 2,700 pages, and here we had judges say: “I don’t want that power.”

    And they’re shocked! Somebody’s gonna have to if this thing survives. Somebody is gonna be going through those 2,700 pages — and it isn’t gonna be you.

    It isn’t going to be your doctor.

    It’s not gonna be your nurse.

    It’s not gonna be anybody responsible for your treatment.

    It’s gonna be a bureaucrat deciding whether or not you are worth it.

    Some utopia!

    BREAK TRANSCRIPT

    RUSH: President Obama, ladies and gentlemen, wants to raise taxes on Big Oil, and he wants to use the money for his failed green energy buddies. That’s coming up. But I want to go back to this Steven Hayward piece: “The Terrible, No Good, Very Bad Month for the Left — First came the Sandra Fluke controversy. What looked like a well-staged triumph for the Left because of a rare overreach by Rush Limbaugh resulted instead in a ferocious blowback against Bill Maher, Louis C.K.,” and he goes on and on to describe that. “Second, Obama is in full retreat and panic mode over gasoline prices, and energy generally. …

    “Then came the Trayvon Martin incident. But what looked like a by-the-numbers drill…” Listen to the way Hayward writes this: “[W]hat looked like a by-the-numbers drill for the racial grievance industry has started to collapse beneath certain inconvenient facts that don’t fit the narrative such as Zimmerman’s ethnicity and political party registration (Democratic),” and so forth. “Then of course we have the Obamacare argument in the Supreme Court this week. … Finally, yesterday the House voted down Obama’s proposed budget for next year by a vote of 414-0.” He has details on all these. The point is I went through and I read all of these incidents and reviewed them that constitute “The Terrible, No Good, Very Bad Month for the Left.”

    What strikes me about every one of them is that none of what they constructed was real. What they said about me, what they said about this program, what they said about advertisers, none of it was real. What they have said about the Trayvon Martin case, nobody knows what’s real there. Every one of these incidents represents an opportunity for them to implement a page from their playbook, none of which is based in reality. It’s all based on stereotypes and cliches that fit the construct of the Democrat Party which is this bunch of different constituent groups that all have to be kept happy. But once again, reality is what crushes liberalism. Reality is what crushes Obama. Reality is what’s crushing Obamacare. Reality is what’s crushing energy policy.

    They cannot and do not live in the real world.

    They can’t survive there.

    END TRANSCRIPT

  9. “Well, the trouble with our liberal friends is not that they’re ignorant; it’s just that they know so much that isn’t so.” – Ronald Reagan

  10. I’ll say it again – complaining about your opponent not accepting the merits of your argument is the surest sign that your arguments are incredibly weak, if they can even be considered arguments at all. Take the conservatives’ arguments against evolution – what merit do they have? Scientists can belly up to the table with 2 centuries worth of observations, conclusion, evidence, and fieldwork, and all conservatives can do is beg to be taken seriously because their religion is very important to them and it hurts their feelings when people suggest their God may not exist. Oh yes please, I’ll be right over here acknowledging the merit of that argument.

    How about supply side economics? That’s blown up in our collective faces, and here conservatives treat us to some kind of half-baked conspiracy theories about how it’s all the fault of Democrats who, despite being in the minority, were able to force the government and the banks to hand out free houses to poor minorities because they wanted the poor minorities to vote for them because as we all know Democrats do absolutely horrible with the poor minority constituency every election…. or something? Too much government regulation resulted in the economic collapse? Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction? Sarah Palin is an intelligent human being that should be the Vice President? Which of these conservative arguments would you consider meritous?

  11. I’ll say it again – complaining about your opponent not accepting the merits of your argument is the surest sign that your arguments are incredibly weak, if they can even be considered arguments at all.

    And here goes the misogynist projecting again.

    Scientists can belly up to the table with 2 centuries worth of observations, conclusion, evidence, and fieldwork

    Kepler, Galilio unavailable for comment. Neither was the Piltdown Man.

    These scientists might have something to say though.

    Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction?

    Confirmed, yet Levi keeps trotting out the big lie.

    Sarah Palin is an intelligent human being that should be the Vice President?

    So now she’s not even human? Does your hatred of women know no bounds little boy? Of course Levi can’t answer. Since I have years “of observations, concluson(s), evidence, and fieldwork” to prove my point. It must be true, by his standards.

    Now hush Levi, the adults are talking.

  12. complaining about your opponent not accepting the merits of your argument

    It is not so much complaining as it is pointing out their ignorance and myopia.

    Take the conservatives’ arguments against evolution

    Again, Levi conflates conservatives with people who don’t believe in science.

    How about supply side economics? That’s blown up in our collective faces

    When was this? Also, please cite an example of an instance in which Keynesian economics didn’t.