Posted on 09/23/2004 9:29:57 PM PDT by Lando Lincoln
I have an online friend who recently retired as a professor of history at a prestigious international university. He is a scholar of impeccable credentials, the author of numerous highly-regarded and painstakingly-researched volumes of history. He is, unsurprisingly, quite liberal, and over the years we have debated a number of issues. As some may note from my style, I like to wade into facts and draw my conclusions from them (or at least buttress my opinions with some facts). Often he would say, ''I don’t have the command of the facts as you seem to on this issue, but I believe…'' He would then go on to state some superficial generalization about politics, such as ''As we all know today, there was no need to go to war in Iraq.''
Last week I sidestepped the issue we were currently debating, acknowledging that we would probably never see eye to eye on it. But I posed the following question to him: Why are you willing to form political opinions based upon a lack of facts that you would never accept as an historian? Here is a scholar that I respect immensely, and have no qualms about deferring to in matters relating to his expertise. Yet he fails to apply even a modicum of the same rigor to supporting his fundamental beliefs about politics, society, and economics.
When you survey the debate in the United States today, you see this repeated wherever liberals state their case. They parrot positions that don't stand up to the simplest factual test.
Can you imagine the Republicans in 1944 blasting FDR for the fact that women were being forced to leave their families to work in factories, or about the scarcity of automobile tires and gasoline, or the rationing of sugar? ''Are you better off today than you were in 1940?'' ''This President has overseen the destruction of the American Family--wrenching mothers from their children, fathers from their homes.'' ''This war in Europe is the wrong war, in the wrong place, at the wrong time.'' Such political statements would have been rejected and condemned, because people were aware of the facts, of how their lives were intertwined with history.
I have a hard time understanding the ignorance of (or the refusal to acknowledge) facts that underpins liberal thought today. Liberals constantly call for more money for education when every statistic shows that money is not the answer (just look to Washington, D.C.’s schools and the $13,000 per child spent to achieve some of the nation’s lowest test scores). Libs talk down the economy when indices like home ownership, real income, and unemployment are better than the average in any of the past three decades. They claim that we are no safer today, ignoring the fact that we have not had the expected major terrorist attacks since 9/11/01 and the government has thwarted dozens of plots. They ignore the disclosure of Libyan WMD programs and the dismantling of the Pakistan nuclear proliferation cabal. They ignore how terrorist have struck even those countries who tried to block Coalition efforts in Iraq.
I have a theory that I am not willing to test--that people who exhibit such willful blindness to reality are simply making decisions based upon what they hear from the main stream media. While I admit that science would be served if I limited my news intake to the New York Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, and ABC/CBS/NBC, I simply cannot steel myself to do so. We have tremendous news assets available today, from the cable networks to talk radio to internet news sites to the pajamahadeen bloggers. There is no excuse for ignorance. Yes, it consumes time to get a decent grasp of facts, but we waste so much time on trivial pursuits (Survivor or The Apprentice, anyone?) that we really have no excuse.
Most liberal opinion that I hear or read is based upon ignorance of facts that gets repeated ad nauseum. There was a time when I attempted to debate liberals in the contentious newsgroup soc.culture.usa--but the silence was deafening. There was a lot of bomb throwing and chest-beating, but when I staked out factual positions and called for rebuttal, all that could be heard were crickets chirping. Satisfied to post their rants against the administration (or capitalism, or the United States in general), when challenged these intellectual girlymen slipped silently into the night.
The events of 9/11 thrust factual reality into the faces of many Americans (I among them). Many learned the lessons and stripped the liberal burkas from their minds, seeking to understand the world as it really is. Those who faced the facts became impatient with an intellectual orientation supplied by John Lennon’s ''Imagine.'' The world became uglier and more complicated, but the alternative was deadly--enough of us needed to come to grips with the world as it is or we would literally be buried. Too many slipped back into a lazy liberal mindset where ''should be'' replaces ''is.'' The Democratic Party is home to those who prefer to dismiss the inconvenient realities of life. Fortunately, there appears to be enough of us who think differently to protect them and their fantasies for the time being.
It is ironic that the liberals who dominate education in this country insulate themselves from the facts and seek to silence others who disagree (witness the attempts recently at U.C. Berkeley to prevent Michelle Malkin from speaking). My father would attribute the following philosophy to these folks:
''Don’t confuse me with facts, my mind is made up.''
The Democrats are to truth what kryptonite is to Superman. They can't exist in the same room.
To paraphrase Dick Armey, "A Republican's biggest fear is that the people just won't understand. A Democrat's biggest fear is that they WILL understand."
When someone 'knows' something or thinks something is correct, they only hear what confirms that thought. Anything that corrupts it is dismissed and not listened to seriously.
I see conservatives doing the same thing, for example on the issue of drug legalization. I see libertarians doing it, on the issue of what's best for the Country right now. I see liberals doing it, on gun control and war.
Everyone has their own beliefs and it takes an epiphany to let facts in.
I work for a university, and agree completely with the article. Liberals just will not allow any competing view to be expressed, much less debated.
Naomi Wolf on O'R Factor tonight was particularly a riot. She lobbed bombs and Bill wouldn't have it, pressing her for specifics. She brushed her hair, complimented him on 'how smart he is' numerous times, cocked her head and tried to get by on, of all things, what's left of her sex appeal.
Bill didn't bite (I don't blame him - Wolf must arrive at tv studios with her own special trick camera lenses that make her appear 115 lbs). Wisecracks aside, it is unintentionally funny to see the avowed feminist voice try to flirt her way out of a jam, grin, blush, brush her hair back, etc. No specifics, no facts, just lobbing bombs and hoping to be treated with kid gloves.
It's really remarkable in that I don't think she is a great mind, nor a skilled writer. What did happen to the 'sexual harrassment' bomb she lobbed at one of her old profs?
Why are these people on my tv?
"The Democrats are to truth what kryptonite is to Superman. They can't exist in the same room."
That's peachy. :)
I think you can look at the track record of drug legalization in other countries (think The Netherlands) and see that there are many reasons why it is a bad idea. I am never against debate of issues, but conservatives being blind to the "facts" of this issue is ridiculous.
"I know that most men, including those at ease with problems of the greatest complexity, can seldom accept even the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as would oblige them to admit the falsity of conclusions which they have delighted in explaining to colleagues, which they have proudly taught to others, and which they have woven, thread by thread, into the fabric of their lives."-- Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910), Russian author, whose classic novels include War and Peace (1863-69) and Anna Karenina (1875-77).
bump
Those who faced the facts became impatient with an intellectual orientation supplied by John Lennon’s ''Imagine.''
That is so me. 9/11 woke me up and made me realize it was just a pretty melody, not a way of life.
Within 40 miles does not mean "in" Cambodia. It means outside of Cambodia. So Kerry saying he was in Cambodia is more than a mispeak. You can't be in say San Diego and say your in Mexico.
Lando
Liberals have gone past lies, they have created a full-blown mythology. You could talk to one all day and not even scratch the surface of it.
That, in fact, has become their defense mechanism. They have walls upon walls of lies that they have built up so that any instance of the truth being shown to them can be countered by another lie. They simply spew them out faster than they can be refuted and they are thus protected from the truth.
Most people inherit their politics. Social pressure keeps them in line and makes it seem like the thing to do is to go along with the crowd. Even though getting a PhD requires original thinking, most academics follow the crowd.
No,it is most assuredly NOT a minor thing at all,to claim to have been in Cambodia,sent there by President Nixon,when LBJ was still the president and ones writes about yearning for home,in a diary and then later claim to have been in Cambodia. There is nothing "minor" about such an outright,baldfaced,self-aggrandizing lie!
No...the 9/11 commission didn't state that at all and that commission is a fraud anyway.
Again,you are incorrect...there were NOT 10,000 blacks prevented from voting! The dead,felons,and the nonexistent were not allowed to vote in the 2000 election,in Florida.Do you have a problem with enforcing the law?
No 10,000 blacks were not prevented from voting.
Yes, the 9/11 commission found that there were contacts between Al Queda and Iraq. The OldDominantLiberalMedia tried to turn the finding that there were contacts and that there was no direct evidence of collusion on 9/11 into a representation that President Bush had claimed that there was direct evidence of collusion, which he never had. Direct lies by the media, specifically the NY Slimes, through misdirection and misrepresentation.
I'd bet if you ask most of their readers, they would say that the 9/11 commission found that President Bush lied about Iraq and Al Queda, when in fact, they found out he told the truth as best it could be known.
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