Posted on 04/24/2007 6:10:56 PM PDT by shrinkermd
The thing I like best about being a conservative is that I don't have to lie. I don't have to pretend that men and women are the same. I don't have to declare that failed or oppressive cultures are as good as mine.
Nor do I have to say that everyone's special or that the rich cause poverty or that all religions are a path to God. I don't have to claim that a bad writer like Alice Walker is a good one or that a good writer like Toni Morrison is a great one. I don't have to pretend that Islam means peace.
Of course, like everything, this candor has its price. A politics that depends on honesty will be, by nature, often impolite. Good manners and hypocrisy are intimately intertwined, and so conservatives, with their gimlet-eyed view of the world, are always susceptible to charges of incivility. It's not really nice, you know, to describe things as they are.
This is leftism's great strength: It's all white lies.
That's its only advantage, as far as I can tell. None of its programs actually work, after all. From statism and income redistribution to liberalized criminal laws and multiculturalism, from its assault on religion to its redefinition of family, leftist policies have made the common life worse wherever they're installed.
But because it depends on — indeed is defined by — describing the human condition inaccurately, leftism is nothing if not polite. With its tortuous attempts to rename unpleasant facts out of existence — he's not crippled, dear, he's handicapped; it's not a slum, it's an inner city; it's not surrender, it's redeployment — leftism has outlived its own failure by hiding itself within the most labyrinthine construct of social delicacy since Victoria was queen.
This is no small thing. To rewrite the rules of courteous behavior is to wield enormous power. I see it in Southern California, in the bleeding heart of leftism, where I live. I've been banned from my monthly poker game, lost tennis partners, lost friends — not because I'm belligerent but because I've wondered aloud if the people shouldn't be allowed to make their own abortion laws, say, or if the world might not be a better place without the United Nations.
It's a rotten feeling. I sometimes think that I'd rather be deemed evil than a boor. Wickedness has some flair to it, even a whiff of radicalism. If you molest a child, there's always a chance that you can get the ACLU to defend you as a cultural innovator.
But if you make a remark at table about the destructive social effects of broken homes and then discover that your dinner partner is a divorcee — trust me, you feel like a real louse. It's manners, not morals, that lay the borderlines of our behavior.
This, I believe, is the reason conservative politicians so often lose their nerve, why they back down in debate even when they're clearly right. No one wants to be condemned as a brute — especially not conservatives, who still retain some vague memory of how worthy it is to be a lady or gentleman.
And because we've allowed leftists to define the language of political good manners — don't say women are less scientific; don't remark that black people bear the same responsibility for their actions as whites; don't point out that the gunman was a Muslim, it's not nice — the sort of person willing to speak the truth isn't always the sort of person you want to be seen with.
It sometimes takes, I mean, a Rush Limbaugh or a Sean Hannity to withstand the obloquy attached to stating the facts of the matter. If these people in their public personae seem harsh to more genteel conservatives, it may be because it requires that extra dollop of aggression to shatter the silence created by the left's increasingly elaborate sensitivities.
Still, mannerly as we would rather be, truth-telling continues to be both compelling and ultimately satisfying. There is, after all, something greater than courtesy.
"Firmness in the right," Lincoln called it, "as God gives us to see the right."
We find ourselves at a precarious moment in an endeavor of great importance: namely, the preservation of Western rationalism and liberty. It does mankind no good to allow so magnificent an enterprise to slip away merely for fear of saying the wrong thing.
Klavan is the author of such best-sellers as "True Crime" and "Don't Say a Word," both of which inspired major motion pictures. This column is adapted from the spring issue of City Journal.
AMEN !!
This guy is good.
It is one of the most blatant differences between today’s criminal liberals and patriotic conservatives. Liberal HAVE TO LIE — their agenda is NON-AMERICAN where conservatives are generally very PRO-AMERICAN, PRO-CONSTITUTION and very law abiding. Totally different than liberals.
Wow. Too much common sense. My mind is reeling.
Great article.
So true about leftist white lies....this is good.
This would be a useful quote to remember round these parts whenever some Prog icon finally does the world a favor and croaks, and some nice Nelly whines that “we don’t speak ill of the dead here at FR.”
btt
Thanks. Real good read, real good post. Never heard of Klavan prior to reading this but will definitely pay attention next time my eyes catch his byline.
Exactly right. Liberals cannot let their true intentions and beliefs be known or they will be rejected. They have to lie, deceive and pander.
Good riddance to dead commies, I say.
Ping for later read/reference. Thanks for posting it!
I haven’t heard of this guy previously, but he’s spot on.
How refreshing.
Thanks for posting.
Amen to that!
As someone who used to work in entertainment and is now a professor, I have experienced exactly what he’s talking about and agree with his every word.
You SURE that came out of Hollywood? That is awesome to hear, perhaps now more and more conservatives in Hollywood will speak out.
Sharp fellow and a good wordsmith.
... one, in particular, is that Alice Walker is NOT a great writer! She is AWFUL!!! She is AGONIZINGLY BAD!!! I have seen some of my daughters college friend reading that trash and I unload on them about what a hack Walker is. They usually are surprised that I even KNOW who she is. My daughter Meg just smiles and says her Dad is “pretty smart for an old guy!”
HA!
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