The Big White Lie

City Journal ^ | Spring 2007 | Andrew Klavan

[plsjr]

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. I don’t 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.

[plsjr]

I found this as a result of looking into Rush's reference to Klavan's remarks comparing "The Dark Knight"'s Batman to W.

Straight Talk (may I say encouragement?) for conservatives who shrink from being right to be considered "polite".

[Candor7]

And the cost of conservative candor these days is? Liberal ridicule.

WEAR IT LIKE ADORNMENT, A BADGE OF HONOR!!!!

[singfreedom]

........the Left’s increasingly elaborate sensitivities.

That has a lovely ring to it—and it's true to boot.

[singfreedom]

Misquote. It should be sensibilities, not sensitivities. Similar, yes, but not similar enough.

[Bahbah]

I’m glad you found this.

[raybbr]

I like this article. It’s so true. When you have five or six liberals (or even the uninformed) in front of you and opposing you it’s sometimes tough not to just capitulate. It means having no real friendship with those people.

[grannie9]

Excellant and thanks, you did my work for me. Was impressed by Rush’s reading of Klavan’s article. Have bookmarked the site.

[iopscusa]

It means having no real friendship with those people. Yep, you can't trust Lieberals and they do lie with impunity

[ReleaseTheHounds]

I think my tagline (from HL Mencken) says it all about liberal demagogues — it’s almost the very definition of “Democrat leaders” these days.

[Popman]

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.

There was at one time a society where people could disagree politically, even diametrically so, and still be civil and respectful of one another view point and to each other, it was being called civil and polite, as opposed to gulags and re-education camps for the "unenlightened"

But today with the politics of the extreme left, Marxist in it's core and thinly veneered bitterness and hate of everything not in it's collective (community), which puts opposing views in the prison like confines of "hate speech" and "politically correctness".

When crimes of "hate speech" and "politically correctness" can't reform us, we are only a few steps away from the gulags and re-education camps if the forces that want to reign with powers obtain it

[Eric in the Ozarks]

This is great. Thanks.

[Kolb]

Good read, thanks.

[ottbmare]

Straight talk, all of it, but this is probably the most important part:

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.

So true. I hate it in politicians but I do it myself.

[Crawdad]

Liberals accept lies from their own as truth, yet deny truth from conservatives as lies.

[LowOiL]

Simular... Basically saying the same thing is Biblical...

Christian Today are Nicer than God

[P.O.E.]

It’s not really nice, you know, to describe things as they are.

This is the guilt-trip the left has laid out to pre-emptively disarm its critics. And it's a bunch of horse-hockey, too. Look how dark, cynical, and gutter-mouthed Hollywood and music is. Look at leftist protesters and self-appointed spokesmen. I could go on, but you get my drift.

[Donald Rumsfeld Fan]

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.

who ya gonna call when ya wanna bust a liberal?

[JZoback]

Bump

[Popman]

bump