I really don’t have anything of substance to add to the current NPR scandal. The bigotry and naked verbal venom exhibited by Ron Schiller, it would appear, aligns with the views that most Liberals have of those who hold opposing views.
What is a mystery to me, however, is why he voiced those opinions in the first place. It should have been common knowledge around the NPR water cooler that Conservative activists have been trying to get Liberals to say provocative things on camera now for years. James O’Keefe, the young man behind this latest effort, first gained fame with his devestating expose of ACORN. Why wasn’t it painfully clear that keeping such views quiet was the best policy possible?
The author of the op-ed linked to at the beginning of this essay points out something even more telling. The fake Muslim organization that skewered Mr. Schilling claims to have their HQ situated very close to the NPR offices. Why didn’t someone just walk over there before the meeting? Even if they didn’t have any inkling of foul play, the folks at NPR would have been able to see for themselves if the Muslim group was likely to have the kind of money they claimed they wanted to donate to public broadcasting.
It has long been claimed by the authors of this blog that Liberals make a great effort to construct a life that greatly resembles a hermetically sealed echo chamber. Surrounded by nothing other than fellow travelers constantly reinforcing the party line, they simply cannot entertain the notion that their dearly held shibboleths might run counter to the facts.
That explains why Mr. Schilling was so facile in dismissing both Consevatives and the Tea Party movement. There can be no other explanation for those who oppose Liberal groupthink except that they are bigots and ill-educated idiots. But to actually utter such vile pronouncements in a public setting, while in conversation with unvetted people only recently met, seems to me to be less than smart.
When 60 minutes or some other slanted mainstream media news organization exposes corruption and fraud on the right it is called ‘investigative journalism’.
When a young independent freelance journalist like O’Keefe exposes corruption and fraud on the left he is branded as a ‘conservative activist’.
Gotta love that kid!
When an organization like NPR has a page on their web site titled “How to speak teabag,” you know that self awareness is not a strength.
I would include a link but every comment of mine with a link goes to the spam filter. There is one at Patterico.
When you say we can see how all liberals think by viewing this clip are you speaking for yourself or is this how all conservatives think?
“When you say we can see how all liberals think by viewing this clip are you speaking for yourself or is this how all conservatives think?”
First off, I take full and complete responsibility for everything I write or say. That is why every one of my posts has my full and legal name clearly visible under the title. What “other Conservatives” say, feel, or think is of little interest to me. (I do, however, care very deeply about what they do!)
But you seem to have misread the essay above. What I actually said, Rough Cut, was that the hateful views Mr. Schiller voiced appear to align with those held by most Liberals.
I am certain that there are Liberals who don’t hate their ideological opponents, or see them as hateful and moronic bigots. I just haven’t come across any in the past 50 years.
Yes, I can see that if I were to take your views, which are your own and you take full responsibility for, and attribute them to a group of people, I would be in error.
RoughCut,
…or is this how all conservatives think?
I wouldn’t know, I’m not a conservative. However, I do think they decide all the things at their Tuesday night meetings.
I do know however, from studying nearly 200 years of Leftists and proto-Leftists writings that, yes, all Leftists do view others with condescension and hatred.
The condescension comes from hubris. As an ideology, Leftism has at its core the assumption that their exist an intellectual and moral elite whose decisions are so clearly superior to that of the rest of society that as many decisions as possible should be placed in their hands and that those infallible decisions should be enforced by the violence based power of the state.
When a Leftists says they are egalitarian or anti-Elitist, they mean they are an elite who makes decisions FOR the benefit of ordinary people. In the Left’s view, we could live in society governed by a despotic, hereditary aristocracy but as long as the aristocrats made decisions that the Leftists thought best for most, why then we would live in an egalitarian society.
Leftists don’t understand that egalitarianism isn’t about who benefits but about who decides. You only have an egalitarian society when ordinary people have the right to make their own decisions. If we lived in a society in which the great mass of people individually decided to give the majority of their wealth to some small group of hereditary aristocrats, we would still live in an egalitarian society.
Elitism is one of the emotional appeals of Leftisms. By embracing the current Leftwing fad, people can tell themselves they belong to an elite that deserves the highest possible social status. You can be pulling down minimum wage in a book store but if you parrot the current fad, you can convince yourself that you are intellectually superior to you customer who spends all his limited horsepower running a business and employing hundreds of people with all the material rewards that brings.
Hubris breeds elitism and frustrated elitism breeds anger and anger breeds hatred. The arrogance of Leftists tells them they should be on top and that it is a vast injustice that they are not. When they fail, they can’t accept that their ideas were flawed, that is unthinkable. Instead, they failed because of the mixture of stupidity and malice of others. Those others are almost always economic-creatives.
So, there is absolutely nothing new or interesting in Mr. Schilling’s comments. The Greater Leftists have for years carried out conversations just like that behind closed doors. Go to your local university library and grab any academic journal that has “social justice” in the title and you will see exactly these kinds of comments.
Or if you prefer, look at how quickly the Lessor Leftists were to swallow the contention that the then nascent Tea Party movement was composed of nothing but violent racist. People wouldn’t have fallen for such an easily disprovable lie if it did not mesh so neatly with their own pre-existing beliefs about people who disagreed with them.
You know, if think most Leftists aren’t hateful, it’s probably because you have been hearing the hatred so long that you no longer really see it for what it is. Leftists at all levels routinely and casually accuse non-Leftists of the worst moral failings and intentions. It is virtually reflexive for them to accuse non-leftists of racism, xenophobia, letting people starve to death, mass-murder for profit and a host of other crimes. Yet, somehow, people act shocked that anyone could think you were hateful.
The only parallel I can think of would be to harken back to my childhood in the 70s when the last generation of white people who had lived long lives under segregation were not yet died off. Those old folks would use the n-word casually, even in front of black people and then respond with genuine surprise and confusion that anyone took offense. They had been casual racist for 60+ years in a society of casual racist so they literally couldn’t understand what the problem was.
Leftists are the same way. You are so casually and routinely hateful and everyone around you is so casually and routinely hateful that you can’t even understand how you sound to other people.
“… Liberals make a great effort to construct a life that greatly resembles a hermetically sealed echo chamber. Surrounded by nothing other than fellow travelers constantly reinforcing the party line, they simply cannot entertain the notion that their dearly held shibboleths might run counter to the facts.”
“CULT” might describe the left in this respect. Their construct is known and fully comprehended only by those given the special enlightenment. Their core beliefs are based on accepted theology they learn in the halls/hills of Harvard and Columbia. Knowledge that comes down from on high trumps all outside argument. Even those that bother to learn the left’s own theology, have no chance of arguing against beliefs that are sacrosanct.
Outside the monasteries of “academia”, those that join this church watch PBS and know who the holy and anointed are. Join the church of PBS and the left and you are cleansed and set apart from the rest of the unwashed masses. The heathen can make any argument, but it will not penetrate the mind of the true leftist believer, who is endued with power from on high (PBS, or HuffPo) :)
In another life or two I’ve done some sales work and I have to say that I feel some empathy and….. wait….yes, I do believe that’s pity I’m feeling for the guy.
It’s certainly likely that the views he expressed while trying to score with some high-rolling “Muslims” aren’t exactly his home truths.
“Yes, I can see that if I were to take your views, which are your own and you take full responsibility for, and attribute them to a group of people, I would be in error.”
Nice try, Rough Cut, but we’ve heard the same old song from too many sources to believe that what Mr. Schilling said is not mainstream Liberal thought.
“It’s certainly likely that the views he expressed while trying to score with some high-rolling “Muslims” aren’t exactly his home truths.”
My contention is that he should not have voiced them in the first place, donation money or not.
Tyouth is correct that when one is involved in a high-stakes sales situation, there’s always a temptation to be very agreeable with anything the prospect says. (The common practice of giving “Vice President” titles to people who are basically senior sales reps, for purposes of customer relations, is IMO somewhat dangerous, unless one has great confidence in the integrity and judgment of those individuals.) This natural tendency, though, was surely amplified by NPR’s culture.
bill Says:
March 10th, 2011 at 4:50 pm
“CULT” might describe the left in this respect.
I disagree on a technical point. The working definition I have used for a cult involves a relatively contained, faith based group. Once that group a) spreads through conversion outside of its original core, and b) passes down through a second generation; then it becomes a full-fledged religion. That faith does not have to be theological, but it has to guide the lives of believers. The faith of the Left is a combination of some form of Marxist Material Dialectic theory of history, and the elitism noted above; be it a belief in a higher consciousness or a variant of Vanguard of the Proletariat. Those immersed in it for generations are no more conscious of it than a fish is of being wet. To the Left, listening to NPR is as normal as a 1930’s Southern Baptist listening to a fire and brimstone radio evangelist. It reinforces their faith. In this case, on our dime.
I would find the concept of saying whatever the customer [or donor in the NPR case] wants to hear to not be applicable. Gedankenexperiment: Assume a sales VP for a Widget company based in the “enlightened” environs of NYC. Let us say he/she goes to an NPR listeners most frightening image of a town in flyover country, full of bitter clingers to guns and religion. Let us further assume that said sales VP encounters a prospective customer for the Widgets who is [as he/she probably assumes all the locals are] a “Christianist” member of the KKK. Said member is quite up front about his KKK world-view, and liberally sprinkles the “N” word about, and lets it be known that he is willing to pay top dollar for a bunch of widgets that will be used to spread and impose Klan doctrine on the rest of the country. Further, he asks if it is possible to falsify the purchase record so that no one from the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division will find out the source of the order if the IRS happens to audit the Widget company.
Now is there a point where the sales VP should tell the customer that maybe they really don’t need his business? And where is that point? Or should the sales VP start verbally agreeing with KKK doctrine and the concealment for the sake of the sale, regardless of the consequences?
For the Left to use greed as a legitimate excuse for going along with what they were told was a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood dedicated to spreading and enforcing Sharia law in this country; and their constant vilification of anyone Conservative who makes any statement to the Right of Trotsky has to imply either world class hypocrisy, cognitive dissonance, or pure power seeking behavior. If it is the last; it is along the line of: ‘Radical Muslims are enemies of those bitter clingers to guns, Christianity, and the Constitution. I am an enemy of those same bitter clingers. Therefore these Radical Muslims are my ally.’. None of those excuses, regardless of which, is a justification to continue to pick the pockets of taxpayers.
Subotai Bahadur