House of Eratosthenes

Gerard Alexander: Why are liberals so condescending?

Every political community includes some members who insist that their side has all the answers and that their adversaries are idiots. But American liberals, to a degree far surpassing conservatives, appear committed to the proposition that their views are correct, self-evident, and based on fact and reason, while conservative positions are not just wrong but illegitimate, ideological and unworthy of serious consideration. Indeed, all the appeals to bipartisanship notwithstanding, President Obama and other leading liberal voices have joined in a chorus of intellectual condescension.
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This condescension is part of a liberal tradition that for generations has impoverished American debates over the economy, society and the functions of government — and threatens to do so again today, when dialogue would be more valuable than ever.

Alexander provides many examples to support this, most of them recent. If he had the space to do so, he could put together an elaborate treatise supporting the fact that this has been a prominent trait of progressive liberalism within each and every single decade since…maybe World War II. Awhile.

Do all revolutions call for reactionary dismissal of the opposition’s ideas? I doubt it. As I read through the writings of the Founding Fathers, the most frequently recurring theme seems to be outrage with regard to the status quo — much like liberals with our health care, interestingly — but I don’t recall a single peep out of them about those “stupid” Tories and how they’re out to snooker everybody (or have been snookered by somebody). No, the Founding Fathers were fixated on what a viewpoint of one’s own birthright and responsibilities does to his way of looking at life itself; what it does to his way of living it.

Liberals, to the contrary, must avoid any discussion of that. America’s builders wanted people to stop living like dependent veal calves. Our post-moderns want us to start again.

For Adams, Jefferson, Madison et al, there was no need to even acknowledge the opposition, let alone formulate some “cowcatcher” idea to push them out of the way. We, the big “we,” were simply meant for grander things than to plow and harvest the fertile soil on behalf of the King Great Britain. And so there was no need to propagandize against the opposition. Maybe there were some caricatures of King George himself, but I see no evidence of anyone putting forth the argument that if you were a loyalist, you were automatically stupid, a nitwit, a dimbulb, a halfwit…even though that was a revolution too. So what changed?

Maybe it’s the secularism. If we were intended to govern ourselves…someone, somewhere, must have been doing that intending. To dwell upon such an idea nowadays in a public school setting, of course, would be an offense to our overlords and career suicide to the district employee. And so it is out of the question, and liberals don’t seem to be enthused about monotheism of any kind anyway. Other foundational concepts are similarly off-limits to them. Precedent is typically out of their reach. Quick, when’s the last time the earth was in danger, and we cut our carbon emissions and saved it? Actually, being a liberal seems to be mutually exclusive from doing anything anybody ever did before, whether it was found to be a winning strategy or not.

And so I think the process is one of elimination. DO IT MY WAY — because — these other guys did exactly the same thing over here and it turned out to be a smashing success? Liberals can’t say that. Do it my way because if a Higher Power put you here, then that Higher Power must intend for you to take on the responsibility? They cannot say that either. And so all that remains is some litmus test for intelligence, invented on the spot, but the progressive recruiter must pretend it is ancient, established, and canonical.

If you don’t do it my way, you’re a nitwit. According to something…some establishment of True North, some conception of it that is sacrosanct, bigger than you or me. Something cosmic. But not anointed or blessed or any of that “god” stuff. Something secular, something scieyuntifikal, something undeniable.

Do it my way or you are — mathematically — a dumbass.

It’s a messy hodge-podge, because it is the result of grasping at straws.

Actually, being a liberal seems to be mutually exclusive from doing anything anybody ever did before, whether it was found to be a winning strategy or not.

I must disagree with you on this minor point, Morgan. I understand where you’re going with this and what you’re trying to say, but isn’t it a major point of the conservative platform that socialism does not work? We say it does not work because of feelings or intuitions or any of that crap. We say it because it has been tried and found wanting.

The major gripe we have with Obama, Reid, Pelosi, & Co is that they seem hellbent on re-trying the same tired old debunked crap that’s been tried and tried and tried and which has never lived up to its promises or delivered the intended results. Most of the world has spent the past century or so tinkering with socialism, trying to perfect it, re-define it, and re-invent it. Here, we scrapped it early on and surprise, surprise, we soon saw the rest of the world as tiny specks in our rear view mirror, despite most of them crawling on in spite of themselves for centuries longer than the USA has even existed. An early version of communism (a collectivist agricultural policy, to be precise) was tried in the Plymouth Rock colony in the early 1600’s, actually…and if you can believe it….it did not work then either.

The Left, by contrast, seems convinced – despite all empirical evidence, common sense, and casual observation – that socialism and its cousins have failed (if you can get the Left to admit that they did fail) simply because the wrong people were in charge.

As I always say, “If only leftists had the kind of faith in God and in free markets, that they do in government.” (Yeah, I actually came up with that one on my own.)

And so I think the process is one of elimination. DO IT MY WAY — because — these other guys did exactly the same thing over here and it turned out to be a smashing success? Liberals can’t say that.

Oh, yes they can. Well, no they can’t truthfully…but they say it anyway – loudly and often. As you have astutely pointed out on many occasions, failures of a capitalism-socialism mix are blamed on capitalism…while “successes” (however minor and far-between) of same are credited to the benevolence of our overlords and the wisdom of their central planning schemes.
- cylarz | 02/11/2010 @ 01:01

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CondescendingWednesday, February 10th, 2010

Condescending
Wednesday, February 10th, 2010