Posted on 08/05/2003 11:03:20 AM PDT by Timesink
A couple of weeks back, Randy Barnett wrote something to the effect that liberals live in a "culture of lies" while guest-blogging for Glenn Reynolds. Such statements set my teeth on edge. Whenever I hear anyone of a particular persuasion begin bloviating about how the reason that people of other political persuasions believe what they believe is that they are, as a group, much more [stupid/ greedy/ mean/ venal/ dishonest/ selfish/ hateful/ bigoted/ power-mad/ narrow-minded/ cruel/ careless/ hypocritical/ violent] than the blessed elite who share the views held by the speaker, I tune out.
But this sort of rampant silliness is certainly not, as I saw a number of commenters claim, confined to those evil bastards on the conservative side of the aisle, and it's just as grating when liberals do it. A couple of weeks ago I attended a luncheon given by The Week, where, packed more tightly than I have been since my high school friends and I decided to transport eleven people to Vermont in a Saab, I listened to Gary Hart, Michelle Crowley, Sid Blumenthal, and Ed Rollins (the Republican pollster) hold forth on whether or not the Democrats had a snowball's chance of beating Bush in 2004. The feeling was, generally, yes, Bush was beatable, but only if the Democrats offer some real alternatives that make Americans feel more secure both economically and national-security-wise. But as you can imagine, there was also a lot of gnashing of teeth from the Democrats, achingly familiar to anyone who remembers what the Republicans sounded like around about 1998, about their failure to make inroads into the President's popularity. One heard a fifth-grader's plaintive incomprehension in their questioning: why don't people like us?
When the Q&A came around, unsurprisingly, the majority of the questioner's turned out to be Democrats. And every single one of their questions started off something like this:
"I think that one of the major problems we face, as Democrats, is that our policies are all about nuance and deep intellectual focus on maximizing the welfare of the public at large, while Republicans are a pack of venal liars who want to kill poor people and minorities. The American public seems to be far too stupid to understand the subtle genius of our ideas. How do we, as Democrats, overcome that?"
The answer, from the Democrats on the dais, generally went something like this.
"While the rest of the American public may not actually be drooling lackwits who should herded into camps for their own protection, they are clearly struck insensible by the blinding power of our intellects. As their voting record demonstrates, they are constitutionally incapable of comprehending the overwhelming superiority of the Democratic platform on the merits. We will have to make sure that this election cycle we speak very slowly, and clearly, and make our visuals on very large sheets of construction paper with pictures of puppies. We may also consider lying, since after all, the shameless mendacity of the Republicans is the only reason anyone ever votes for them."
What is true is that Democrats, right now, have more ability to insulate themselves from being confronted with the views of the other side. Geographically, they can isolate themselves into coastal cities, which is why I never met any Republicans except my grandparents until I went to business school. And informationally, provided that they don't watch Fox news, don't subscribe to the Wall Street Journal, and keep the radio tuned to NPR, they can keep from ever hearing if the other side has a good argument.
They are thus prone to base their knowlege of the other side's ideas mostly on the work of ideologically simpatico opinion column writers, who are generally trying to make a snappy point for a column, not present their with a painstakingly unbiased account of all the salient facts. I know this will break your hearts, my little chickadees, but it is tragically true. Those columnists are just trying to sound clever in 1000 words. No matter which side of the aisle they hail from. That's not to say that they are wrong, or that they disbelieve what they write. But they are not going to present you with any contrary evidence that would take them more than two sentences to refute.
This is why the Democrats at that luncheon were so shocked and hurt. Not because they are stupid, or venal, or arrogant. But because they live in a bubble, and thus are genuinely not aware that the other side may occasionally have the better of the argument. The New Republic is about as far right as your average New Yorker generally goes, publication-wise -- and I am acquainted with a number of people who have dropped it because it's too right-wing these days. If the only explanation of conservatives beliefs you ever hear comes from the editorial pages of the New York Times, it is indeed incomprehensible that people out there could actually embrace such twaddle. I'd be looking under the couch for the Vast Right Wing conspiracy too.
An example: the 2000 presidential race. The entire City of New York seems to have collectively forgotten that the newspaper recount occurred. I mean, I spent quite a lot of time hearing about how when that recount came out, it was going to expose the Supreme Court as a partisan sham, and George Bush as the undeserving usurper who stole the election. Then the People would rise up as one body and throw the Republicans out, never to return.
Then the newspapers published their results. And everyone who had been anticipatng the outcome with only slightly less enthusiasm than a Trek convention waiting for William Shatner to come onstage -- all those people didn't just stop talking about it, but seemingly wiped the results from their mind. It is even now common at gatherings of New Yorkers to hear bitter recriminations about the Supreme Court stealing the election for Bush, even though the recount seems to have shown, as conclusively as anything can, that Bush would have won even if the Supreme Court had mandated the exact recount Gore's team wanted. It isn't disingenuous; they do not know this fact. And how do they not know it? Because there are five million or so other people around who constantly tell each other that the Supreme Court stole the election for Bush. And like anything that one hears over and over from sympathetic sources, it becomes true to them, just as most of us love our siblings even though we've never really stopped to consider the matter. Everyone says that people love their siblings; therefore it is so.
(Note: Nora, I really do love you.)
Not, mind you, that I think Republicans are more aware of Democratic arguments because they are naturally more intellectually curious. They are more exposed to alternative viewpoints only because they haven't got a choice. Most of their newspapers, weekly magazines, network news, etc. run liberal (even the ones with conservative editorial pages, as you'll find if you ever talk to Wall Street Journal reporters).
As a libertarian, I'm actually worried by the rise of Fox. It's nice to have an alternative viewpoint out there, no matter how pugnacious. But Fox represents an opportunity for conservatives to wall themselves off in their own intellectual ghetto so they won't ever have to ask themselves uncomfortable questions, or go through the coolie labor of reworking one of their political ideas.
Such insularity is awfully dangerous.
Any ideology must generally confront uncomfortable facts. I would like for tax cuts to raise tax revenue, but it is not so. Republicans who get their opinions on taxation only from conservative sources, however, tend to repeat this as if it were a known fact, rather than an unlikely assertion. My Democratic friends would like, for example, price controls not to decrease the supply of the items for which we are controlling the price, but they generally do, and there you are; we have to deal with the fact, not pretend it away. I oppose any movement that caters to the natural tendency of people to separate themselves from opinions with which they disagree in order to preserve their peace of mind.
(Although I should note that the phenomena of liberal types bewailing the fact that Fox will enable conservatives to get only conservative news does not impress me. It never occurs to them to suggest that perhaps their political compadres should add Commentary to their subscription stable; no, somehow it is only dangerous for conservatives to congregate with the like-minded.)
Which brings us, finally, to the reason I started this shaggy-dog polemic: Howard Dean. I find it hard to believe that he's going to be the Democratic nominee, but a number of Democratic political types whose opinions I respect seem to think there's a good probability he will be. He will be the nominee, they say, because base Democrats believe that the purity of their anger will ignite the population to throw out that evil pretender in the White House. They do not seem to realize that their anger is not merely not shared, but actively reviled, by the rest of the voting population. And they do not realize it because they do not know anyone who doesn't think like they do.
If they throw a tantrum and nominate Dean, they will need to hit a trifecta -- another recession, a disaster in Iraq, and a scandal in the White House -- in order to win. Better to lose honorably, say my Democratic pals, and I admire their spirit. Perhaps they can do what the Republicans did after Goldwater, and use the opportunity to build a base and some new policies and come back with a big win.
But not until they get in touch with the rest of the population. Find out what they're thinking, explain why they should think something else -- you can't do either if you're sitting around congratulating yourself on how gosh darn superior you are. And if the Republicans do sweep in 2004, I hope the lesson that they'll take from it is not that they're God's chosen people, but that it's dangerous to keep the dial tuned to Fox all day.
Posted by Jane Galt at August 3, 2003 02:53 PM
Ha ha! That was a great post, MoJo!
Sounds like her honest attempt to describe democrats later in the same essay.
As McCarthy said of Marshall, "If he were merely stupid, probability dictates that at least some of his decisions would be beneficial to his country." (Treason, Ann Coulter)
In this case, stupidity is insufficient to explain the skulduggery of democrats.
If it's the one I am thinking about, I figured out it was a hoax pretty quickly. They had W with an IQ of 91 and Bill Clinton with an IQ of 182. Now what are the odds that Bill Clinton's IQ would be EXACTLY twice W's IQ?
Here's something interesting to ponder. There was an episode of Seinfeld where Jerry insists that he spend twice as much on Elaine's birthday as George does. They both get her cash. Guess how much each party gets her? That's right...George gets her 91 dollars, Jerry gets her 182 dollars.
I noticed this after the hoax had been exposed. I kind of felt like the Chaz Palmienteri character at the end of "The Usual Suspects".
I notice the same problems online. In practically any online community you may visit that does not exist for an overtly political purpose, the political makeup of the community will almost invariably turn out to be the same sort of kneejerk default as at those pseudotrendy cocktail parties: "Democrats good, Republicans BAD! Oog, unga bunga!"
I have never been able to figure out why this is. Every time I ask, I generally get a response along the lines of "Well, Republicans actually work for a living and don't have time to play around online," which is an excuse that doesn't really cut it unless the community in question is made up mostly of college students or something. If anyone has a clue where the hell the conservatives are, I'd like to know. (And please don't say, "They're all on FR." I'm asking a serious question.)
He was so disappointed I waited until he left before pointing out the irony of calling someone stupid and using a hoax to back it up.
Most of the online communities I frequent are oriented around automobiles, and I find that older or project car people tend to be overwhelmingly conservative/republican. Corvette people tend to be all over the place with conservatives, libertarians, and liberals.
I've spent a lot less time in other online communities, but generally find the more numerous and quieter, more serious and knowledgeable types to be conservative/republican. There are always some liberals, and they tend to be fewer and more "noisy" about their beliefs. Some are quite knowledgeable concerning the subject at hand, but they seem less so because of their knee-jerk pronouncements.
In general, you can use the test of time.If you play back half-year-old, year-old, and two-year-old journalism you would expect to hear things that sound dated. The question is, how much of the dated-ness would reflect a Republican tint, and how much a Democratic slant? IMHO to ask the question is to answer it. Not because journalists are Democrats, but because (distinction but not a difference)
Democrats have no principle other than to go along and get along with journalists.And journalists are anticonservative because that's the way to attract attention (and, therefore, to get paid by advertisers). They don't call it anticonservatism, of course--but that's the obvious implication of the rules of journalism (including pretense of objectivity).
How else can you explain their support for biligual education (meaning, teaching spanish kids in spanish) as being better for the children? Any honest person will know that someone with complete non-accented english is far more likely to succede in this country, and that immersion at the earlist possible age is the only way to accomplish that. Math can wait a few months.
How can you explain their support for obviously unconstitutional issues like most gun control laws? Even liberal harvard professors have written conclusive articles that support the 2nd amendment (forget author; Title is "The embarassing 2nd amendment"). The lie here is in insisting that the 2nd amendment only applies to the National Guard.
"I never had sex with that woman" (self explanitory). Bill Clinton's lies would take up volumes alone.
How can the environmentalists insist in Arizona that leaving forests alone is the best policy, when that results in forests destroyed for generations and hundreds of burned homes? It was a lie, and they've recently changed their policy from "hands off the forest" to accusing Geo. Bush of not thining the forest fast enough. They still don't acknowledge that harvesting trees in national forests by loggers that pay the government money is the same as paying people to do the same thing, but they just destroy the trees and don't sell them.
I don't have time to make the complete case. But the left is entirely supported by lies alone. The character of the right is that demonstrable facts are acknowledged, and the right gives up unsupportable arguments.
The character of the left is that it doesn't have to--because it has the PR tailwind behind it.The whole idea of "public relations" is that we-the-people can be gulled into accepting anything.
This may not sound like a serious answer, but I've noticed that left-leaning boards pretty much shout down/ban anyone who disagrees with them. It's like that here as well sometimes if you post a libertarian POV. FR has definitely become a more shrill place since 9/11/2001.
Have you seen some of the contentious threads around here lately on the subject of IT outsourcing? You'll never see anything remotely similar on DU or any other hard-left sites. There are members here that are open avowed liberals, and we have a plethora of libertarians who have serious disagreements with certain Republican policies.
Oh, I agree with you totally. The level of political discussion on those "apolitical" boards is always of the lowest common denominator, and generally consists of "Bush is Hitler"-level commentary, with the same groups of haters on each board gang-rushing anyone who dares to utter a conservative opinion.
I would love to see a survey which breaks down Democrats versus Republicans by IQ, or even by education level. I just have this gut feeling that Democrats really are stupid, at least those who work and pay taxes, and (apparently) walk around with "kick me" signs taped to their backs. (The Democrat base, the parasites, know exactly what they are doing when they vote Democrat.)
The author makes a valid and interesting point in saying that the left is insulated. However, the members of the Democrat Party do indeed self-select for stupidity, venality, and arrogance. The Democrat Party and the Republican Party are ideologically based upon very different principles, and to equate them as equal but different is to reject the ideas of objective morality and absolute truth (nihilism).
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