Ready, Aim, Coulter!

Somewhere in my Internet travels, I have come across an picture of Ann Coulter in cutoffs, sitting on a rather dilapidated porch, with what appears to be a bolt action rifle up to her shoulder sighting on something off camera. If the rifle had been a submachine gun, it would have made the perfect jacket photo for Ann’s new book, Slander: Liberal Lies About the American Right.

Coulter, ever known for her rapier wit and relentless defense of conservatism, is in finest form in this recent work, which ironically, just ascended the New York Times bestseller list. In a homey yet biting voice, she skewers the Left’s weak attempts to project an outmoded, irrational agenda.

“The liberal catechism includes a hatred of Christians, guns, the profit motive, and political speech and an infatuation with abortion, the environment, and race discrimination. … The most crazed religious fanatic argues in more calm and reasoned tones than liberals …” And that’s just on the first page.

Liberals can’t argue because their positions are not the result of reasoned analysis or a calm weighing of the facts. They come to their conclusions through the rote commitment of a litany, itself the product of hysteria, fear, and a calculated appeal to emotionalism. It’s hard to defeat the statistics on concealed carry laws, for example, but that doesn’t stop the Violence Policy Center from publishing such jeremiads as License to Kill, which assails Texas’ gun culture for sowing mythical urban killing fields. The intent is not to educate, but to stimulate, to quicken the pulse of frightened soccer moms and direct their inchoate angst against guns and the men who own them.

The techniques have ample precedent. Josef Goebbels used them quite successfully.

Coulter’s background as a constitutional scholar shows through, as she cuts through the thicket of liberal argle-bargle and reduces the counterpoint ad absurdo. In May of 2001, former Clinton lackeys James Carville and Paul Begala detailed their battle plan for Democrats in an editorial to the New York Times. The core of the piece was that the Left had to start attacking George Bush and his agenda: “First, call a radical a radical. [Peculiar advice coming from two of the most conscienceless radicals in the arena.] Mr. Bush’s agenda is neither compassionate nor conservative; it’s radical and it’s dangerous and the Democrats should say so.”

Coulter’s summary of that strategy: “That’s the new plan. It’s the same as the old plan. Call Republicans names.”

And she proceeds to list countless occasions on which Democrats – or their lap kitties in the media – slap labels on Republicans in a transparent attempt to forestall further discussion of perfectly valid points. In fact, she says, one of the cornerstones of Democratic rhetoric these days is to point out that conservatives are all either stupid, ugly, or stupid and ugly. Katherine Harris was pilloried for wearing too much eye makeup (as if Helen Thomas is a thing of beauty); Linda Tripp’s ethical conundrum was reduced to irrelevance in light of her physical shortcomings (like Hillary Clinton is a lingerie model); and Ronald Reagan was a doddering fool who made foreign policy between naps and consultations with Obay seers.

Odd how the lamentable physiognomy of Bella Abzug and her legion of gargoyles didn’t diminish the incalculable beneficence of her message. And Al Gore’s repeated failures in post-secondary education don’t seem to disqualify him for the presidency, although George W. Bush’s mediocre performance at Yale seems to indict his mental acuity.

These aren’t the reasoned arguments of informed debaters, Coulter declares, but the playground antics of frustrated children. The liberal cause attracts only those people who are willing to ground their philosophy in puerile epithets, which explains why more and more, the Left is home to the unbalanced, the marginal, and the closet psychotic.

The Left also attacks conservative culture in similar broad strokes. Rush Limbaugh is a favorite target of the venom-spewers, who are livid with frustration because they can’t catch him in a lie. The New York Times, liberalism’s knee-calloused handmaiden, commits egregious errors of fact in virtually every edition, not even including those omissions calculated to disinform or the bias that saturates their pages with Right-Wing Follies. Yet a minor error in language on a Limbaugh show had the harpies of the Left howling “Slander!” and “Fiction!”

When NBC News staged an explosion in a pickup gas tank, or when ABC entrapped a Food Lion store in a “news” report, the Left’s silence was deafening. But when Dan Quayle implied that perhaps Murphy Brown was a poor model for motherhood, he was roundly racked for taking television too seriously. Coulter lists pages of similar incidents in which liberal champions march so frequently into their own maws that they give themselves athlete’s tongue.

Yet still the duplicity thrives: still candidate Bush is expected to know the leaders of five of the world’s more obscure countries, still candidate Quayle is supposed to know that “potato” is the preferred spelling, while “potatoe” is a symptom of right-wing incompetence.

Worst of all, Ann says, is that substantive issues disappear behind these clouds of inanity. Does Quayle’s addition of a “e” render him unfit for the Chief Executive? What of his other strengths? What of his plan for foreign policy, or a cap on fiscal expenditures? What of his governing philosophy, his regard for the sanctity of home, hearth, and family? Sorry, but those aren’t important beside his clumsy handling of grammar and an occasional spelling faux pas. Since Phyllis Schlafly isn’t one of the Beautiful People, her one-woman crusade against the Equal Rights Amendment is of little import, while Gloria Steinem’s repeated business failures and trivial epigrams make her a guiding light for modern women.

In the end, Coulter says, the Left has little to resort to except slander. Their lies have become their substance, even as their house of cards grows shakier every day. The Internet – Free Republic is mentioned prominently as a bellwether of the Brave New World of communications – and other technological developments have freed the captive audiences of the mass media, and truth is creeping into the discourse like kudzu after a rainstorm.

“This isn’t merely to say that liberals have near-exclusive control over all major sources of information in this country, though that is true. Nor is the point that liberals are narrow-minded and parochial, incapable of seeing the other fellow’s point of view, though that is also true. And it’s not that, as a consequence, liberals impute inhumanity to their political opponents and are unfathomably hateful and vicious. That’s true too. The point is that conservatives in America are the most tolerant (and long-suffering) people in the world. The already have ‘met and spent time with’ liberals. They do it every day, day in, day out, their entire lives.”

The result is that they are slandered by the Left, who have only lies to rely on and hatred as their redemption.

On second thought, maybe that rifle should have been replaced with a shotgun. Or a flamethrower …

Ann Coulter's book is excellent, and constitutes a definitive refutation of liberalism, and the liberal mindset.

After reading it, I was struck by several points she makes:

that liberals adhere to a fanatical pseudo-religious belief system
that liberals manifest certain psychological impairmants, i.e.: complexes, insecurities, neurosis, etc. more than the average person.
I was also struck by how closely Coulter's observations mirror my own. For the last year and a half, whenever a thread comes up discussing how liberals think and act, I've been posting the following:
"Liberals are also emotionally quite insecure. They pursue the politics of persons with an acute insecurity/inferiority complex. This is why they like to call themselves “Progressives". They appropriated this moniker to feed their egos."
"Liberals essentially suffer from a sense of inadequacy and self-loathing. They invent a set of internal rationalizations to make themselves feel good about themselves. This sense of inadequacy, of inferiority, causes them to develop a façade of worth and virtue. They begin to believe that they, and only they, have a monopoly on virtue."
"Being emotionally immature, and being supremely selfish, they have no use for or any understanding of religion. Religion, means giving in to a power greater than their own. This they cannot do. They transfer the innate human need for religion into another form of authority – themselves (and ultimately the highest expression of themselves – government). They, rather than religion, become the final arbiter of right and wrong, good and evil. They, of course represent “good" and all that is good. Remember, they have a monopoly on virtue."
"As well, anything dealing with the “self" and satisfaction of the self is a priority. This is why most, if not all liberals are essentially selfish. Their own emotional needs come first. Luckily, the law, and societal rules prevent them from exercising the most egregious examples of these pursuits. Liberals are hedonists, and hedonistic values have a high priority in their lives. They like laws that give license to hedonistic values, and that which exalts the human body. They dislike any legislation, which limits what can be done to the person, particularly with respect to sexual activity, and it’s consequences. Think about this. This means everything from sexual activity right through conception and beyond. To the liberal, the human body is the altar, and the temple of their faith. All meaning, all law, all spiritual sources begin with the self and its physical being. What this means is that liberalism ultimately demand the atomization of society. True community, based on religion, cultural tradition or family, is replaced by ultra-individualism, ultra-selfishness. Community becomes defined by a selfish, narcissistic, vain elite, who place themselves in charge."
Snip
"So, ultimately, with liberals, it comes down to the pursuit of the “Hip”, the avant-garde, the “progressive” idea. Their intense need for validation and a sense of self-worth means that liberals will commit the worst moral crimes and accept the most immoral acts as normal all in the pursuit of this ephemeral progressive idea. Liberals have an obsessive need to be “hip”. Always keep this in mind. This is key to understanding the liberal mind. To a liberal, the worst crime conservatives commit is that of being “square”. To a liberal, no conservative can ever be “hip” enough. This is why liberals are attracted to artists, Hollywood types, musicians, and the like, and vice-versa. Entertainers, artists, actors, etc. consider themselves ultra-hip; thus, the only logical political idea for them is liberalism, which is of course, quite hip. "
Snip
"Ultimately, liberals are so morally arrogant, so elitist, that they automatically disqualify and dismiss conservative arguments and ideas from the sphere of consideration. Like religious fanatics (which in a sense, they are) they dismiss and reject blasthemous and heretical thought. Thus, conservative ideas are ignored, even rendered invisible. Untill it's too late. This is why liberals never learn. For, if they are rarely, if ever exposed to conservative thought, they never really get a grasp on what and how we think. They dwell in a world of myth and folklore, trading on their superstitions about the right. Furthermore, since they believe only they possess a monopoly on virtue and goodness, conservatives must therefore be evil. So, to liberals, since we are evil, there's no point hearing us, arguing with us, or even considering our arguments."
Snip
"The problem with liberals is that they are constantly searching for the “hip”, the “progressive”, the avant-garde. They honestly believe that only G-d, or some galactic spirit, or maybe “gaia” imbues them with a monopoly on virtue and goodness. Only liberals have this progressive wisdom, this hipness, and this sense of being the social avant-garde. Thus, it can only be that their opponents, conservatives, must be the possessors of “evil”. Thus, they render conservatives illegitimate and their ideas, beyond the pale. This moral and cultural arrogance prevents them from truly understanding their adversaries, conservatives. If conservatives’ ideas are illegitimate, nay even evil, there’s no point studying them, or examining them. The result is that liberals are essentially ignorant about conservatives and what they believe. They trade in liberal-spawned myths about conservatives and conservatism, and the live in a world of false-hoods and shibboleths, constantly spinning the same tired clichés about conservatives. "
Basically, a key source of leftist thinking is a combinations of arrested emotional development, ultra-narcissism, and total self-centred focus and selfishness. Me, me, me. The exhalting of the self to a position of virtual self-diety.
These are misguided people who are using leftist politics as a crutch for their own inadequacies. Whether it's a simple case of arrested adolescent develoment, or the internalization of social rejection in their youth, or gender issues, it's all played out as a search for meaning in their lives. They seek "empowerment" through the weakening of their perceived enemies. They work under the delusion of being "The Annointed". Add to that a childish and romantic attachment to the socialist fantasy, and there you go. The politics of fantasy.
There is another aspect to liberalism. A form of cultural elitism and prejudice that in it's most extreme form, is a form of cultural imperialism. Urban liberal elites, believing that their culture, ideas, and lifestyle is superior to all others form opinions and prejudices against those who they perceive to be their "lessers", those who they perceive to be of a lower culture or lower social class. This includes their cultural and political opponents. This definitely means that there exists a culture war between liberals and non-liberals. For many liberals for whom liberalism is a secular faith, this implies a form of pseudo-religious war, a jihad, in a sense. If you think about this culture war in the terms of a jihad, then the actions of liberals, and their reactions to conservative ideas begins to make sense.
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exerpts from "The Liberal Mind", to be published ~~2001~~ 2002(?).
Copyright 2001

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After seeing Ann Coulter's almost identical observations in print, I'm now convinced of it's truth.

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