Posted on 01/10/2012 7:25:15 AM PST by Kaslin
Only a fool believes that all those with whom he differs are bad people. Moreover, just about all of us live the reality -- often within our own family -- of knowing good and loving people with whom we strongly differ on political, religious, social and economic issues.
That said, I have come to believe that the more committed one is to leftism, the more likely one is to become meaner.
Two examples in just the past week offer compelling evidence.
Prominent left-wing commentators used the way in which Rick Santorum and his wife handled the death of one of their children to attack -- make that mock -- the former Pennsylvania senator.
In a lifetime of observing and participating in political debate, I have seen a lot of meanness. But one just assumes that some things -- not many, just some -- are off limits to political pundits and activists.
Among these few things, one has to believe, is the death of a child.
But I was wrong.
In 1996, Karen Santorum gave birth to a premature baby boy who died two hours later. After spending the night in the hospital with their baby son between them, the grieving parents brought the lifeless infant home for a brief period because, Santorum explained, it was important to them for their other children to "know they had a brother." The Santorums didn't want Gabriel Michael Santorum to be an abstraction to his siblings.
First, Alan Colmes on Fox News: "Once (voters) get a load of some of the crazy things he's said and done, like taking his 2-hour-old baby who died right after childbirth home and played with it for a couple of hours so his other children would know that the child was real ..."
Colmes was then interrupted by Rich Lowry: "You are mocking him. They lost a child, Alan. That's very serious and it's not something you should be mocking on national TV."
Colmes' response: "I'm not mocking the losing of the child. But what I'm saying is I think it shows a certain unusual attitude toward taking a 2-hour-baby home who died to play with his other children."
In addition to engaging in a cheap and mean shot, Colmes simply made up the notion that the Santorums had brought the baby home for their other children "to play with."
The next day, Eugene Robinson, Pulitzer-Prize winning left-wing columnist for The Washington Post, said on MSNBC, Santorum is "not a little weird. He's really weird. Some of his positions he's taken are just so weird that I think some Republicans are going to be off-put. Not everybody is going to be down, for example, with the story of how he and his wife handled the stillborn child whose body they took home to kind of sleep with and introduce to the rest of the family. It's a very weird story."
Four times Robinson calls Santorum "weird," using the story about the death of the child as evidence. He was wrong on an important detail -- the child was not "stillborn." And, like Colmes, he made up a mocking detail -- that they took the child home "to kind of sleep with."
The meanness of these comments is self-evident, as Alan Colmes realized and later apologized to Santorum. Robinson, on the other hand, never apologized -- as RealClearPolitics, which has no political agenda, correctly reported -- even though repeatedly challenged to do so on MSNBC.
I raise these issues for only one reason: to provide further evidence of my belief that leftism makes more than a few of its adherents meaner people.
I have had many interactions with Alan Colmes, and while we always differ, I never found him to be mean-spirited. I still don't think he is mean-spirited, and though I am not the directly offended party, like Santorum, I accept his apology, because I believe he meant it.
So why did he say what he said?
Because leftism fills many of its adherents with contempt and hatred. It takes a person of great character and self-control to continually imbibe and mouth the mantras of the left -- that everyone on the right is sexist, intolerant, xenophobic, homophobic, islamophobic, racist and bigoted -- and not become a meaner human being. If I believed just about everyone with left-wing views was despicable, I would be meaner, too.
In a previous column, I wrote about Thomas Friedman making one of the classic anti-Semitic libels when he wrote that the reason the Senate and the House gave Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu standing ovations was because "that ovation was bought and paid for by the Israel lobby."
How does a Jew write an anti-Semitic libel? Because he's on the left.
That was the reason Rep. Andre Carson said that members of Congress who support the Tea Party want to see blacks "hanging on a tree." Because he's on the left.
Leftists' meanness toward those with whom they differ has no echo on the normative right. Those on the left need to do some soul-searching. Because as long as they continue to believe that people on the right are not merely wrong but vile, they will get increasingly mean. The problem for the left, however, is that the moment it stops painting the right as vile, it has to argue the issues.
Liberals are quick to label you as a racist, uncaring, etc. They tend to pat themselves on the back as being more enlightened, especially when it comes to using your money. You see, what their’s is their’s but what’s your’s is everyone’s in their minds - you are cruel if you want to keep your’s. Liberals prey on those who are logical.
It takes a person of great character and self-control to continually imbibe and mouth the mantras of the left -- that everyone on the right is sexist, intolerant, xenophobic, homophobic, islamophobic, racist and bigoted -- and not become a meaner human being. If I believed just about everyone with left-wing views was despicable, I would be meaner, too.
Most conservatives (myself included) believe most liberals are well-meaning but wrong.
Most liberals, at least the louder ones, believe all conservatives are either stupid or evil.
This causes asymmetric political warfare.
Most liberals I know or have met were bitter, angry, jealous, selfish, and manipulative types.
Colmes is just a silly ass who occasionally shows his mean streak to bolster his leftist credentials. Robinson, on the other hand, is a mean, nasty and bitter leftist. I wouldn’t use anything he wrote to line a bird cage - unless the bird was a vulture!
We underestimate the Daily Show. Stewart drives the Mean Stupid Liberal vote.
This guy *teaches* our kids how to be mean, and how to be liberal.
He didn't use a dead infant for laughs, but he did set up a Google-bomb on Santorum's name during a search, turning his name into a body fluid generated by homosexual behavior. It's gross in the extreme. Most of Stewart's writing team, dozens of writers, are gay.
Liberals deal in feeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeelings.
Libs project onto others who they are.
My favorite is listening to when one of them is pretending to be a “moderate” or even some of them claim to be Republicans and then they say something like how they don’t like meanness. Until they get to the guy they don’t like (always a republican and never Obama) and then all of a sudden they become mean and calling him/her childish names..haha
It hasn't been too far back in the American past that it was customary for the deceased to be brought home.
The Left certainly has an appetite for the bizarre.
This is so true. It applies to homosexuals who “come out” too. I think Wanda Sykes and Rosie O’Donnell used to be funny until they “came out”. Then they turned mean and nasty and NOT funny.
The Left is about replacing freedom.
The Left's philosophy is that "smart" people in Washington know what's best for us in all the matters listed above. We don't, however, see much that's smart coming out of Washington. We see the results of a political process that pits smart people of one persuasion against smart people with opposite views. If one philosophy is dominant at a given time, their smart people may get to decide but usually there's a lot of compromising and other distortions. The Left is also constantly confusing "smart" with "wise". But at their core is a fundamental mistrust of the wisdom of the People. As Laura Ingraham says: "They think you're stupid".
Litmus test: If the people in Washington are smart, how come they've spent $15T more than they've taken in and everyone hates them? If you or I spent say, $30T over fifteen years we could make a lot of people pretty happy.
I agree.
My boss is all extremely liberal.
I am sure that she is Liberal BECAUSE she has no compassion and certainly NO CLASS!
I had to be off work for two weeks because my mother was dying in the hospital.... she was daily, hourly at death’s door. It was a gut wrenching struggle for me to stand there and watch what she went through.
In the end she survived (thank GOD) and is still with me (we live together now). Her health is not good and is declining, but we go from day to day.
Anyway, on the day I returned to work after my mom’s hospital stay and subsequent problems, the first thing my boss went out of her way to come and tell me was: “You forgot to turn on the copier when you came in this morning!”
She was angry when she said it and walked away from me after she cast this into my face.
I stood there with my mouth open and I was stunned.
Not: “Good morning, welcome back” or “How’s your mom?” or “Is everything OK?”
I am convinced Liberals have NO class and would’t know class if it fell on them from the 10th story!!
To this day she NEVER asks how my mother is doing, even though she knows I live with my mom and take care of her.
“Leftists’ meanness toward those with whom they differ has no echo on the normative right.”
Let me add that leftist’s meanness has no grounding in substance. Conservatives do not express, nor hold, the views used to stereotype conservatives. The left simply imagines these things, making leftists especially dangerous to the safety of those who do not agree to them. Leftists’ views of others are so hateful they would hurt and even destroy conservatives without remorse. This is difficult for conservatives to understand because we are not the stereotype and don’t hate other people. Just try to politely express an opposing opinion to a leftist sometime and watch the venom spew forth. It isn’t based on the opinion you express but on the leftist’s belief that you are the monster they imagine you to be. Theory of psychology offers some insights into leftist thinking.
It's called projection.
Your boss reminds me of a few (liberal) relatives we have. “;^(
BTW, your tag is WONDERFUL!
They don’t want to recognize the 2 hour old baby for what it is - a human, further, a human created in God’s image.
If they did, then it starts to undermine their whole worldview.
This is why he was so disdainful about this issue.
If you see a leftist’s motivations as greed and feeling good, you can explain a lot of their preferences and decision making. They direct their anger toward imagined boogeymen—people who disagree with their self-gratification ranging from their parents to conservatives. They gin up evil images of their opponents in their minds to provide a foil to themselves and make their opponents as evil as possible so their own transgressions are never as bad as their opponents’. If you have done what many leftists have done, such as their treatment of children, your imagined opponents have to be really, really evil to make yourself feel like a better person.
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