Listening to the contemporary American left’s views of the rest of us is increasingly like listening to a paranoid schizophrenic slip farther into delusions that they are surrounded by malevolent people. Just as we have to worry that the schizophrenic might act on their delusional beliefs and strike out violently against the evils they imagine, we have to be increasingly worried that leftists will strike out against the rest of us based on their delusional fantasies about what we non-leftists believe.
And make no mistake about it, leftists do harbor dark delusions about non-leftists. The fact that so many leftists fell completely for the Limbaugh quote hoax proves it.
The first rule of a good con or hoax is to appeal to the preconceptions and prejudices of the mark. The scammer weaves a story shot through with details that the scammer knows the mark already believes to be true. Conversely, this means that you can determine what a mark actually believes by observing what cons and hoaxes they fall for.
Watching so many serious journalists and leftist political figures fall for the fake Rush Limbaugh quotes tells us something very frightening about what leftists believe true about non-leftist America. I say, “frightening,” because we evaluate the level of threat that others pose based on our understanding of the amorality of their beliefs. Then we rationalize the harshness of the methods we are willing to employ against them based on our threat assessment. We are much more willing to use draconian methods against people we view as extremely evil than we are against people we judge less evil. As a nation, we were willing to employ much more draconian methods to defeat fascism than we employed to fight anyone else. The same basic principle applies to our internal conflicts as well. The more extreme and dangerous we view our political and social opponents as being, the more tolerant we become of extreme measures to oppose them.
Given this, what does it portend for American non-leftists that a wide and powerful swath of the American left apparently believes it quite credible that a major media figure with an audience in the tens of millions looks back fondly on slavery and approves of political assassination? What draconian methods could those leftists rationalize using if they really believe they are fighting people with such values?
As I have written before, immersion in fantasy is a defining aspect of leftism. As they move progressively towards the left pole of the political spectrum, the realities become more and more immersive while becoming more and more detached from reality. At the far end of the spectrum, the leftists become delusional to the point they believe they are trapped in a gotterdammerung struggle of good versus evil that justifies any action they might take in fighting that struggle. When dangerous fantasies, once the providence of the 5% most radical left, become accepted as true in the 40% just to the left of center, the rest of us are in great danger.
So we have to ask: Just how seriously deluded is the mainstream American left that they believed it credible that Limbaugh actually said the things attributed to him in the fake quotes?
Let’s be clear about what they believed Limbaugh actually said:
I mean, let’s face it, we didn’t have slavery in this country for over 100 years because it was a bad thing. Quite the opposite: slavery built the South. I’m not saying we should bring it back; I’m just saying it had its merits. For one thing, the streets were safer after dark.
You know who deserves a posthumous Medal of Honor? James Earl Ray [the confessed assassin of Martin Luther King]. We miss you, James. Godspeed.
How can anyone believe that a mainstream American figure would believe such things, much less speak them aloud? As a practical matter, how do they imagine that a celebrity such as Limbaugh, who is one of the most recorded people in America, managed to keep these quotes hidden for so long? Why isn’t there audio or video of him making these or similar statements? How has he managed to be on the air for 20+ years without making more than these two slips?
Only someone seriously immersed in a deep fantasy about Limbaugh’s beliefs would swallow such quotes without checking them or thinking about the practical possibility of Limbaugh making such statements without every person in the world knowing about it within the hour. More troubling, not only would they have to believe that Limbaugh thinks that way but that his audience does as well.
They fell for the hoax because their fantasy about the evil of non-leftists tells them that most non-leftists think this way. They didn’t need to check on the provenance of the quotes any more than the rest of us need to check an assertion that the sun came up in the East this morning. It was just that obvious to them.
So, we come back to the main question: What methods could these deluded leftists justify using against the rest of us if they really believe we hold such beliefs and values as are inherent in the fake quotes? What couldn’t they justify doing to drive such people from politics or even the nation itself? We even have to ask, what level of violence could they justify using against us?
This isn’t about Limbaugh. They clearly view Limbaugh as just the most visible manifestation of tens of millions of Americans pining for the good old days of slavery. Make no mistake. They aren’t just targeting Limbaugh as someone so evil that they can justify any extremity in fighting him.
They are targeting the rest of us as well.
Those on the right think that the left are mistaken; the left think the right are evil
what if: the left is truly evil? can i have some ddt here in africa please?
The christian socialist parties of the interwar period universally cleaned house and became christian democrat, in large part because of their tactical alliances with the forces of fascism. I think that the call was right to let them reform and move on. But socialists, communists, and liberals have made the same sorts of tactical alliances. And once the gulag records came out, there was no introspection, no reform, no serious change. This does not serve society well. It does not even serve the left well.
In St. Louis Post Dispatch blogs, there’s heated battle – like everywhere else. The left keeps pointing to various websites that “prove” Rush said these things. When I contests the many “racist” labels they (the left) toss at anyone opposing them, they then claim I don’t know what racism is. My point is that it’s not merely that they really think we’re racists, they just hate us and “racist” is as good a label as any; they could just as easily use the middle finger (if it were a face-to-face encounter) – with all of the same meaningless meaning.
Let’s take this one step further. Many members of this administration, as well as the intellectual left generally, openly admire genocidal monsters as long as they kill in the name of equality, social justice and the working class. The above two groups also seemed to think it unworthy of more than passing notice during the Bush administration, that there were books and plays about assasinating their political opponent.
Fake, but accurate!
“How can anyone believe that a mainstream American figure would believe such things much less speak them aloud?”
They believe it because they know very well that B&M Obama listened to, approved of and supported a viciously anti-white and anti-American demogogue for twenty years because Bam needed that black street cred to claw his way up in Chicago politics.
They believe it because they know that in Illinois Bam never had to win an election. Somehow his opponents were always disappeared before election day.
They believe it because they’re living in 2008 and they think that calling someone a “racist” is this great big horrible condemnation. But it’s 2009 and we all know now that we’re all racists. So who cares.
Not being a sports fan I can’t actually understand why anyone would want to put that much money into football but maybe Rush is better off. Why deal with the race extortionists if you don’t have to.
Egoist,
What you’re running up against is people who have never seriously thought about morality, in a secular or religious context. So they take what they are given at K through 12 school, where the only kinda absolute evil that emerges from that swamp of skepticism and relativism is racism (maybe also harming the environment.) So to them racism and evil are pretty much co-extensive.
Which is pretty stupid, even on the terms of the examples typically given. Hitler’s primary sin was murdering a lot of people, not hating the Jews. It would not have been an bit less evil had Hitler killed millions who constituted heterogeneous, representative sample of the German people.
Shannon;
the reality is that the interwebs, as long as we have them, are the antidote to the bias. It is amazing the fact checking, the counter programming and the excellent reportage that is forcing the MSM to lay off more and more parasites.
Look at Breitbart’s impact in a few short weeks. The Left is still saying “what’s a Breitbart?”. the creative, intellectual Conservative movement is just as adept at counterbattery as the Left ever was. keep it up! Keep the Faith!
Hit ’em where they ain’t!
This is an observation that I’ve made as well. I live and work among people who typically regard themselves as Progressives, or Liberals. They aren’t doctrinaire Leftists, more so cultural Leftists. That is, their worldview and aesthetics arise from Leftist social and cultural criticism and ideology.
What I’ve noticed over the past 30 years is that this cohort has become increasingly paranoid and chauvinistic towards the rest of society, with the exception of racial minorities, homosexuals, and others whom they consider exotic for one reason or another. But when it comes to whites who are not like them, their attitudes have become pretty ugly. Any genuine sympathy for The Common Man is long dead. Now he’s seen as a predatory bigot who’s too ignorant and superstitious to be trusted to participate in a democratic society.
Like an earlier commenter said, they’ve drifted with the dominant leftward flow from academia and the media. One single point of view, the propagated talking points. Being told what to think and how to feel, never to struggle with moral issues, never to face the many impossible contradictions right in front of their faces.
In other ages the fault was on the right with excessive slavish conservatism. Now the show is on the left foot, with the perfect president for showcasing the phenomenon.
You already know the answer to this question.
1. Intimidating and, in some cases, even physically attacking, political opponents.
2. Use of White House resources to collect personal information on those disseminating information critical of the administration.
3. Open warfare on the media (or at least the sectinos of the media unwilling to operate as a de facto arm of the government).
And that’s in just the first 9 months. In the next 27 months, there’ll probably be even more outraeous examples.
I think Shannon gives too much credit to these people. I believe they KNOW he didn’t say it, but freely used the quote anyway. An on-air apology after the fact doesn’t change a thing.
Chicago rules – “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.” Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people and not institutions; people hurt faster than institutions.” In rule #12, I don’t see anything that says you should still speak the truth about that target.
Anyway, damage done. Rush was shut out. Mission accomplished.
TV (Harry)
My personal experience with radicals in college was scary. They don’t mind threatening others, regardless of the academic setting or discussion.
Leading the People
I don’t think this is that new though. Look at a lot of the stuff that Sarah Palin supposedly said. She was often being mixed up with her portrayal on Saturday Night Live, too.
And anyway, it worked. That’s why you’re going to see more and more of it. While know you grudgingly get some admissions that he didn’t say those things, it’s too late, he was kicked out of the ownership group.
Anonymous
You are so right. I know legions of middle aged, greying, white women who swooned over Obama. He was their dream exotic black man. Elegant but not really there. Chris Matthews and the rest of the MSM also loved that elusive hint of passion that never was to be actually engaged in real life.
Which is good luck for the Bam because he’s really just a sociopathic kid from a worthless family who caught the eye of some big money interests who needed someone to put into high office. When Ayers and Axelrod shopped him to Soros he was nothing. Now he’s president. Interesting times.
Shannon: You are hitting on something here. Amongst the designated oppressor groups, the Leftists have so much antipathy for whites in the South. I marvel at how off kilter their worldview is of Southern whites. That view is that the South is still the land of Bull Connor (Democrat) and George Wallace (Democrat) and that all the old Democrat racists just put their KKK costumes in an attic trunk and started voting Republican to hide their latent racism. That is why they believed the Limbaugh quotes were true. That is why they are so desperate for the Republican Party to be a “regional” party. It means that it can be ignored because it represents an illegitimate, discredited, racist, rearguard rump ideology.
Too bad for them that is not true. If they want to see real haters they need but look in a mirror.
If one has not been taught how to be a proper human being,at some level one knows what a sorry human speciman one is; in other words, an immature loser. Hence the need for “victims”to condescendingly use as props in their war against a world which doesn’t properly recognise how superior they are.
Real people carry on their lives without having to play these self aggrandising ,vile little games.
It is ironic the Negroes (as known then) were barred from purchasing things they wanted in the past, because their hard-earned money was tainted with their identity.
They fought so hard to overcome this and now they are throwing it away in the name of revenge, based on libel.
The funniest part of it all is that Leftists love to turn everything into a sexual slur. Teabagger just being one of many examples.
The point is they are looking for the lowest denominator in which to hit an individual with. Its a pretty ugly scam. It gives them the feeling of individual power while portraying that impulse as somehow tied in with sympathy for the greater good. Its a great way for a misanthrope to hide in plain sight.
We really need to stop being surprised at the behavior of those of Marxist pedigree. Given an ideology that requires an Other to hate, blame, attack, isolate, rob, rape and kill (to account for the intrinsic failures of Marxist philosophy), Conservative White is the new Jew or Negro. German national socialism appropriated the Jew as its other to great success to which the Obama administration certainly envies. White House Honored Philosopher Mao kept political factions at bay by shifting the other around (with such a population, Mao correctly pointed out that the loss of 300 million or so would not even be felt and was well worthwhile in ensuring the political unity and cohesion of his power).
This is America’s new master. Backed by Marxist globalists, Obama is smoothing the way for unchangeable power and control. This is the signature language of that mechanism, seen in China, Cambodia, Vietnam, Italy, Germany, Russia and elsewhere. America, you’ve run out of warnings and honestly, 52% of your population deserves the fate of tyranny for its complicity in this fate by selling off its more affluent neighbor for trinkets.
The reason the Limbaugh incident is important is that Limbaugh was actually denied ownership to something for racial speech violations.
So what happens when this starts happening to people who can’t hire lawyers and get 3 hours on the radio every day to try to set the record straight?
How far away is the United States from “hate speech” laws?
What is the metric for measuring when it goes over line?
Excellent observations. Hoffer wrote something similar and interestingly so did Nietzsche:
“…the other, on the contrary, will not be responsible, for anything, to blame for anything, and out of an inner self-contempt wants to be able to shift off his responsibility for himself somewhere else. This Latter, when he writes books, tends today to espouse the cause of the criminal; his most pleasing disguise is a kind of socialist sympathy. And the fatalism of the weak-willed is indeed beatified to an astonishing degree when it can present itself as ‘la religion de la souffrance humaine’: that is its ‘good taste’.”
BGE, I:21
P.S. Sartre also has a scene in Nausea which echoes Nietzsche. The protagonist disdains the socialist sympathies of a person who turns out to be a pedophile.
My point being that the Left is so immersed in its own false consciousness that it simply cannot see straight. They are deluded and it can only end badly for them. The question is, how will they react when their side loses in 2012?
Has it occurred to anyone that Liberals are conviced of right-wing racism due to some sort of psychological projection?
chilling observations. I spent some time among the radicals in the sixties. They will do whatever it takes to achieve their goals and they are VERY capable of draconian measures, in fact, they are probably working on that right now.
Tim, yes it has.
Why else would someone like Maureen Dowd imagine she heard the word “boy”? Why else would Matthews think of Limbaugh as a black villain? Sometimes it is easy (if uncomfortable) to see what is in others’ minds.
Thirty years ago, when we first came to this town, another faculty wife, from Alabama, was the first person I ever heard launch into racist (I mean really dark, stereotyped, strange) comments when she’d had too much to drink. We were all generally appalled, I guess, but really awfully surprised. Her parents had run the kind of store where the locals had bought on scrip and always owed more. She and her sisters had gone through private schools, even though at that point their county was the poorest in Alabama and one of the poorest in the country. Her culture seemed pretty exotic to someone like me from flyover territory – but not very attractive, to be honest.
A brutal murder took place (a young father stopped to help three guys and a girl who seemed stranded by the roadside; they beat him so ferociously that parts of him were across the side of the road). That woman (someone who most of the time I enjoyed talking about nineteenth century lit with, etc. etc.) became active in the local ACLU and complained of local racism. (There was never and has never since then been any doubt about what was done or by whom. This is not a project ripe for the Innocence group. But tempers were high – the crime was so vicious, the life destroyed so close to many people, etc.) The point I remember most clearly was listening to her being interviewed on television: she claimed Texas was forty years behind the rest of America. (There is Texas & Texas; this area held onto segregation longer than some others but it isn’t east Texas, either.)
I can see where it is probably inappropriate to stigmatize the south, but I’d just as soon southerners didn’t wander around the country projecting on others.
Oddly enough, the only person I’ve seen and heard deliver a racist rant about blacks, this person, too, was from Alabama. Racist rants about others, OTH, seem universal.
“she claimed Texas was forty years behind the rest of America.”
So Texans don’t have to suffer through the delusional sixties like California? Knowing the next forty years of incompetence, admiration of Castro and Mao, idiotic health fads, and the like, Texas can avoid it? No long, hot summers? No days of rage? No Detroit, Newark, or LA race riots? No Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, or Jeremiah Wright?
Being 40 years behind seems like a blessing to me, fifty even better. Can we kick aside Fabus and Wallace, then take a different course? How can I reach this potential paradise?
As for racism in Texas, I went to white minority school in Texas. I was beaten up (not badly) every day for months. My school locker was vandalized. My stuff stolen. Girls would tell me to my face they wouldn’t date me because I white-skinned. I know what kind of racism there is in Texas.
“A young father stopped to help three guys and a girl who seemed stranded by the roadside”
Armand Yramategui?
Conservatives are either evil, or from another planet:
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/politics/Carville-sees-conservatives-as-alien-creatures-8409109-64827157.html#
The mindset described above certainly isn’t limited to leftists. For instance, Shannon Love herself once threatened to take my site offline simply because she and other readers of Reason don’t appreciate the comments I leave there. Most of those comments are followed by suggestions that I “STFU”, and in a couple cases similar comments were left on another site from a computer in Knoxville TN and a computer at the Univ. of Tennessee.
And, while this incident does show a limited version of what Shannon Love discusses, it also shows the general incompetence of many of Rush’s defenders. I contact the publisher of the book way back in June, and if I’d gotten any help with that this might have been cleared up months ago. And, more importantly, those who repeated the quotes would look much worse than they do now.
[From Shannon– Actually, I mentioned ugly things might happen to your server because of your overt thread jacking that was clearly just a poorly disguised attempt to spam Reason’s Hit and Run blog in order to drive traffic to your site. If you do the same thing here, I will delete your post. Stay on topic. Further, you aren’t allowed to post links to your website. You lost that privilege by being a jackass.]
From The Virginian 10/24/2008 … the people who were the Weather Underground a that time are now the government and the media elite.
Genocide Is The Wet Work of Intellectuals
Richard Fernandez views the world of “intellectuals” and realizes that they are the most dangerous part of humanity. Mere murderers and thugs can kill, at most dozens or hundreds. To create a truly efficient extermination machine required an intellectual.
Undercover agent Larry Grathwohl discusses the Weather Underground’s post-revolution governing plans for the United States on a YouTube video. The video is taken from the 1982 documentary “No Place to Hide”. The Weathermen’s plans included putting parts of United States under the administration of Cuba, North Vietnam, China and Russia and re-educating the uncooperative in camps in located in the Southwest. Since there would be holdouts, plans were made for liquidating the estimated 25 million unreconstructable die-hards.
The most interesting moment of the video comes when Grathwohl asks the viewer to imagine what it’s like to be in a room with 25 people, all of whom have master’s degrees or higher from elite institutions of higher learning like Columbia, listening to them discuss the logistics of killing 25 million Americans.
With all the words thrown about regarding Ayers and the Weather Underground, about bombs at the Pentagon, etc., no one has captured the essential evil of these people until I saw this video. Bill Ayers and his group were planning an American “Killing Fields.” They were dead serious. They have not changed their views. And they have their defenders in the Democrat party, in the media and on college campuses.
This was my main reaction to the whole Limbaugh brouhaha as well, and you’re the first commentator I’ve seen who has addressed it at any length. The big, long-term problem isn’t that Limbaugh was targeted and denied an NFL stake; the problem, as you point out, is that the left takes for granted that he could say such things (and have a receptive audience for it).
It reveals just how difficult the debate truly is, when it comes down to it. It shows why our arguments are seldom accepted on their face, why our motivations are continuously questioned. I’m not sure how the case for individualism and liberty can be successfully made when we’re not even allowed to get first base, because of such wildly misguided assumptions about what we are.
That was the most dismaying takeout from this whole thing.
When Doonesbury was still funny, (I believe in the late oligocene), the residents at Walden farm, specifically Zonker Harris fooled “tough, cynical reporter, just back from Vietnam”, Roland Burton Hedly Jr, into believing there were still hippies at Walden rollicking in free sex and rampant drug use. When asked if he checked out the story, Roland said, “I didn’t have to, they assured me it was true.” And when asked what he covered in Vietnam, replied “Sports”.
Has it occurred to anyone that Liberals are convinced of right-wing racism due to some sort of psychological projection?
They can’t imagine anyone of greater moral fiber than themselves. Which is why they’re always so angry and miserable.
“Any genuine sympathy for The Common Man is long dead. Now he’s seen as a predatory bigot who’s too ignorant and superstitious to be trusted to participate in a democratic society.”
I still argue that much of this is a class issue, and that’s the reason the hatred is so vicious. They don’t hate others for what they believe – they hate them for who they are.
I couldn’t stomach either group if I believed everything the left said about the right and vice versa.
It’s not to great a stretch to expect the lefties to set up concentration camps and extermination squads to take care of us. Remember, the Weatherundergound thought it would be necessary to exterminate 25 million Americans once they took power.
I think a lot of this has to do with status anxiety. Imagine someone who has taken out big student loans to get an advanced degree in a squishy-soft and not very marketable subject. Now he’s working as an adjunct professor with no realistic hope of tenure (if he’s lucky) or at Starbucks or Borders (if he’s not). It is a *huge* threat to his self-esteem that there are people without advanced degrees who make much more money than he does and (at least in his mind) enjoy higher social status. The psychological response to this is to demonize those Others as essentially subhuman.
I think the phrase “the realities become more and more immersive” should be “the fantasies become more and more immersive.”
Excellent post regardless.
The problem with the growing paranoia of the left is that it ultimately becomes a boot-strap rationalization for oppression of others and — if that doesn’t work — violence.
I recall during my undergrad days back in the early 80s going to a Jackson Browne concert, which featured as one of the opening acts a guy ranting into a microphone to the effect of, “THEY are out THERE, and WE must get THEM before THEY get US!” He never did get around to clearly identifying who “they” were, but the impression was strong that anyone not of a leftist persuasion was suspect.
Sooner or later, the leftist paranoid will reach the point where he becomes convinced that his “enemies” (who in his imagination are capable of anything) are going to do something horrible — it’s just a matter of time — and the only way to avoid it is to strike first.
The combination of leftist anathematization of “the Other” with an irrational fear that auto-justifies taking preemptive action against him is the socio-political volcano that is rumbling beneath our feet. The clumsy efforts of the present administration and Congressional majority to de-legitimize and criminalize what they used to call “The Highest Form of Patriotism” is just the leading indication of what’s to come if their hold on the reins of state is not broken.
I think that a lot of us were thinking just this, lately, and it is good that someone has finally crystallized it into a coherent series of printed words.
This essay really needs to get out into circulation. It is massively relevant to all Americans. Probably should be required reading somehow.
A
You are right about left wing liberals having an active fantasy life. Hilary Clinton recently claimed that when she and the President stay at the hotel Europa in Belfast that “then there were sections boarded up because of damage from bombs”. The hotel had been bombed by the IRA but the damage had been repaired 2 years before the Clintons booked a 100 rooms for themselves and their servants.
Remember it was a liberal who shot Truman, another liberal shot President Kennedy, and yet another shot his brother. A liberal shot George Wallace. A liberal tried to kill Ford and another Liberal shot Reagan. The Columbine shooters embraced liberal viewpoints in their diaries. It is well documented that liberals repeatedly called for the assassination of the President Bush. (Google “kill bush”)
Liberals don’t have respect for individuals or for their lives. They care about groups, but they don’t care about individuals EXCEPT as as ways to dramatize their views.
Liberals live in a fantasy world that governed by the philosophy de jour. Because they divorce themselves from reality, they can never understand objections to their plans. They pass of objections to “health care reform” and “global warming” as lies by insurance companies and oil companies (a perfect Marxist counter-attack). Liberals respond to objections by attacking the critic. Liberal plans always cost more than planned and create hardship and suffering. We think Liberals know they have underestimated cost and know people will suffer and die – but in the Liberal fantasyland Liberal policies bring nothing but joy and happiness and always end up under budget.
Liberals continue to get re-elected because both Liberal politicians and Liberal MSM believe strongly in the Liberal dreams and because they blame the rest of us for their failures. Liberal foreign policies often lead to war, and Liberal war strategies always lead to pointless death and destruction.
Liberals pave the Road to Hell.
Brilliant post!
People want to believe the worst in Limbaugh/ Republicans, that is their premise and anything that adds to it, they put alot of weight in, anythings that detracts from their premise they put little weight into it. It is like buying a stock any bad news you put less weight into and the goods news you put alot of weight. The left is not objective and is willing to believe anything that supports their premise. Look at people who hate Israel, they adore bad stories about Israel, does not matter if they are true.
Someone in the comments said the right thinks the left is mistaken but the left thinks the right is evil.
Well, I for one do think the left is evil.
My evidence is the 262,000,000 people murdered by totalitarian/authoritarian governments in the 20th century.
The farther left one goes on the real political spectrum the more powerful the government and the farther right one goes the more freedom the individual enjoys.
The litany of evil includes the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, Communist China, Communist Vietnam, Cambodia, Cuba, Iraq, Afghanistan, etcetera.
The American left-wing, as embodied by the Obama administration, sees a government “solution” to every real or imagined problem.
Unfortunately, government is pure brute force and, as the article implies, the left-wing has no qualms about using that brute force to destroy their political enemies.
Americans are in danger of losing their country because the extremists the media helped get elected hate the free enterprise system that allowed this country to do more good for more people than any country in history.
Shannon,
This is nothing new.
The difference is both a matter of scale and a matter of wider recognition on the Right side of the political spectrum of what the Left is and believes.
See below from a June 22, 2000 David Horowitz piece and replace “Hillary Clinton” with “Obama.”
http://97.74.65.51/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=24376
Hillary Clinton and “The Third Way” How America’s First Lady of the Left Has Bamboozled Liberals and Conservatives Alike By: David Horowitz
FrontPageMagazine.com | Thursday, June 22, 2000
…Their cynicism flows from the very perception they have of right and wrong. They do it for higher ends. They do it for the progressive faith. They do it because they see themselves as having the power to redeem the world from evil. It is that terrifyingly exalted ambition that fuels their spiritual arrogance and justifies their sordid and, if necessary, criminal means.
And that is why they hate conservatives. They hate you because you are killers of their dream. Because you are defenders of a Constitution that thwarts their cause. They hate you because your “reactionary” commitment to individual rights, to a single standard and to a neutral and limited state obstructs their progressive designs. They hate you because you are believers in property and its rights as the cornerstones of prosperity and human freedom; because you do not see the market economy as a mere instrument for acquiring personal wealth and political war chests, to be overcome in the end by bureaucratic schemes.
Conservatives who think progressives are misinformed idealists will forever be blind-sided by the malice of the left—by the cynicism of those who pride themselves on principle, by the viciousness of those who champion sensitivity, by the intolerance of those who call themselves liberal, and by the ruthless disregard for the well-being of the downtrodden by those who preen themselves as social saints.
Conservatives are caught by surprise because they see progressives as merely misguided, when in fact they are fundamentally misdirected. They are the messianists of a religious faith. But it is a false faith and a self-serving religion. Since the redeemed future that justifies their existence and rationalizes their hypocrisy can never be realized, what really motivates progressives is a modern idolatry: their limitless passion for the continuance of Them.
There isn’t anything scarier in democratic politics than a bunch of people coming to do something to you “For your own good” when you don’t want it, because there is no evil they won’t sink to in order to implement it.
Whatever the “it” is.
The issue here is at root cultural.
The American Left and the Right have more than just disagreements on facts. They hold different realities to be true.
The Left provides the super-majority of Media, Academia and non-government agency ‘Activists’ but the Right provides the majority (possibly super-majority) of Private small business, Military and Law Enforcement.
That is why you see reporters noting racial overtones where there aren’t any — like the recent Rush Limbaugh libel — and saying that an opponent of the president’s plan, and their plan, are racist, because in most cases they really believe that.
They really believe that conservatives are just ‘confused’ about the president’s health plan.
They really believe that the town hall opposition to public option is fomented by a vast (and rich) right-wing conspiracy.
They really believe that criminalizing guns will reduce the death rate in inner cities and anyone who opposes gun control simply wants the wars to continue.
Sometimes they are simply cynically using these charges as tactics to destroy debate. But many of them, in the media and government, believe it.
They are as unconnected to reality as flat-earthers.
Given that they run 20% of the American public, and a similar number of conservatives have issues as well, this is a major issue for free and open debate.
And when debate gets so clogged you can’t talk…
Those who make peaceful change impossible make violent change inevitable.
Quote:# Jack Says:
October 21st, 2009 at 11:31 am
It’s not to great a stretch to expect the lefties to set up concentration camps and extermination squads to take care of us. Remember, the Weatherundergound thought it would be necessary to exterminate 25 million Americans once they took power.
There’s stupid and then there is, “Jack Says”, STUPID! Stretch this!
This is nothing new with the left. They long have held others to standards and rules that they may ignore at will. Since their way is the right way and their ends just, any means to attain them are justified. Whatever it takes; no holds barred.
I’m reminded of one the periodic interviews silly journalists (in this case, IIRC, Barbara Walters)do with The Bearded One. She asked Castro why he didn’t allow a free and independent press (gee, Babs, since when do dictators allow a free press???). He answered quite honestly that a free press wasn’t conducive to his revolutionary goals and the revolution was all (this was some 40 years after the “revolution”–gosh, I think there’s a good follow-up question somewhere in there). That’s the left in a nutshell.
“But socialists, communists, and liberals have made the same sorts of tactical alliances. And once the gulag records came out, there was no introspection, no reform, no serious change. This does not serve society well. It does not even serve the left well.
… not quite true. Whitaker Chambers was one of the first perhaps but many followed repented and reformed. Many of those who did so engaged in serious introspection and became some of the most determined and brilliant and successful anti-Communists. They became the Left’s most feared and hated heretics. They became the NeoCons.
This post tells us a lot about projection.
A person would have to be a paranoid to believe that he lived in a world of evil leftists, who were mentally ill, and frightening, and that this was somehow illustrated by a couple of fake quotes about Rush Limbaugh.
Get a grip. Seriously.
So lew, you are denying ayers and co. weren’t planning to murder millions of Americans? Proof against?
Take a look at far left governments and tell me murder of opponents is or wasn’t a tool used.
Whether or not it will be used here remains to be seen. I’m not ruling it out after seeing the posts at KOS, Huffpo, and DUNG. Before you say they have no power, but there are multiple members at those sites that have direct connections with the White House. On top of that we have mao/communist/fascist loving extremists in charge saying how they are going to “fix” things. By fix they mean turn America into a socialist 3rd world country.
watching this administration is like watching a slow motion train wreck
don,
A person would have to be a paranoid to believe that he lived in a world of evil leftists, who were mentally ill, and frightening, and that this was somehow illustrated by a couple of fake quotes about Rush Limbaugh.
Read the parent. The existence of the fake quotes is not the problem. The fact that they believed the fake quotes is because it reveals the model of the right that they hold. That model says that the right is evil enough to look back fondly on slavery and to make a hero out of a political assassin. People who believe others to be evil can justify doing horrible things to them.
That is where the danger lies.
I don’t think outright violence is a short term threat but certainly extreme political dirty tricks and using the government powers such as the IRS against opponents is definitely a possibility.
If this was an isolated instance it would tell us nothing but it is part of an ongoing pattern in which the left treats 30% or more of the political spectrum as simply evil and beyond the pale.
Well, they’ll certainly try to go after our firearms, for one thing.
Shannon,
Thank you for the response. I think we are talking past one another.
I can go on a dozen websites, and have some far to middle left democrat explain to me the psychology of “Rethuglicans” or whatever far left folks call the middle right these days. Or I can go onto a dozen far to middle right sites, where they will be happy to explain to me the psychology of “wingnuts” or “leftists.” But the last people I would listen to, in explaining the motivations or worldview of one or the other party, is are those adamantly opposed to them.
In this case, I don’t know what you’re talking about to the extent that I doubt either of us know how many “leftists” (whatever constitutes a leftist) believed the quotes or how many persisted in repeating the quotes after they were debunked. If you browse snopes, you would probably conclude that believing a bogus quote is pretty common, among all walks of life and political positions, so I don’t think that means much. Although you may have excellent insights into policy or political strategy, psychoanalyzing the opposition comes off as projection.
To me, your post sounds paranoid in the same way you say the leftists are paranoid – that you are surrounded by malevolent forces, with the worst possible motives in everything. The fact is that both sides have a distorted view of the other, and ultimately both sides sound paranoid.
(And, it isn’t so strange to think that a major media figure would hold such views. I have no problem with Limbaugh, and I think that he is against affirmative action and racial victimhood, but not by any means a racist. I think what Limbaugh does, merely as a matter of skill and entertainment, as well as research, is incredibly impressive. I did read, however, that Pat Buchanan did say a number of things much closer to the fake Limbaugh quotes. Buchanan is an isolationist, and fairly loony in a number of his views, yet he is on cable tv all the time. Glen Beck is pretty loony; Randy Rhodes is definitely off her meds; Keith Olberman goes off the deep end. Why is it so strange to believe that Rush is more extreme than he is, if you don’t listen to his show?)
Re the fantasy of the left, I thought you’d be interested in this quote: “Particularly on the Left, political thought is a sort of masturbation fantasy in which the world of facts hardly matters.” –George Orwell, London Letter to “Partisan Review”, December 1944
The left is made up of mostly limp wristed beta males and dikes from what I read from republicans at HA. So you have nothing to fear.
The fact of the matter is that we all want to be lied too. Tell us what we want to hear. Just listen to the thoughless “amens” echoing every word Obama utters.
Though we all want to be told our views are correct. There is a group (Liberals/progressive/Marxists) that by definition, see only “any means to an end” as a convenient substitute for immutable fixed truth. They have fine tuned it to the point of scientific professionalism. They are gods unto themselves (some in high office, even make halos and rainbows and claim to be able to stop the seas from rising and attempt to control life and death)and truth is merely a weapon to be used if it’s convenient.
The “fake but accurate” meme is almost exactly how Charles Johnson of LGF justified putting up the quotes with no proof. At the time he said he would not retract them until proven to be wrong. But he had been one of the biggest people criticizing the media of a lack of fact checking.
How could anyone credibly believe that a popular figure could say such things?
It’s pretty easy, really. They have been inundated by things just as, if not more reprehensible from their political representatives, and leftist media figures for quite a while.
Atop that, classic projection come into play. They could well imagine themselves making such statements (but only in jest, mind you!), and so it does not surprise.
After listening to legacy media figures spout 8 “teabagger” jokes in 7 minutes, this activity should be expected as the norm.
This post has been linked for the HOT5 Daily 10/22/2009, at The Unreligious Right
The left lives under the delusion that utopia is possible and they’ve killed millions trying to prove it.
[Comment deleted for anti-semitic comments –Shannon]
Don,
Although you may have excellent insights into policy or political strategy, psychoanalyzing the opposition comes off as projection.
I’m not a Freudian. However, the question of what psychological processes cause people choose political particular ideologies is a legitimate question. It is especially compelling when you realize that that these ideologies cover a wide range of unconnected issues and that knowing a persons position on one issue, such as the liberation of Iraq, strongly predicts their position on another wholly unrelated issue such gay rights or nuclear power. The same people line up on the same side of debates on many different unrelated issues over and over again. There is a phenomena here to be studied.
To me, your post sounds paranoid in the same way you say the leftists are paranoid…
I might be getting there. How often do you have to hear someone call you evil before you begin to wonder if they might really believe it and then decide to act on that belief?
I did read, however, that Pat Buchanan did say a number of things much closer to the fake Limbaugh quotes.
That’s a good point. Buchanan’s insane holocaust denial and Hitler apologia seems to be oddly tolerated by both the left and the right. I thinks it because anti-sematism has become cool on the left again. On the other hand, when I first heard it claimed that Buchanan said such things, I didn’t instantly believe it. I checked first. The people who believed that Rush is a wacko racist believed it without checking.
Why is it so strange to believe that Rush is more extreme than he is, if you don’t listen to his show?
Really, slavery? Just as a practical matter how could someone who is apparently in the crosshairs of the President of the United States himself say something like that without it instantly being news across the entire planet? The disturbing thing isn’t only that they believed it, it was that they believed it without hesitation and without double checking anything.
I think part of the toleration for Buchanan is that he’s been around so long–and around in forums (talking-head programs) where typical media types hang out. He is in a sense their co-worker, in a way that talk-radio or Internet players are not.
Shannon:
“However, the question of what psychological processes cause people choose political particular ideologies is a legitimate question.”
I disagree, for a number of reasons. First, it is impossible, because political positions are too diverse, and adopted for diverse reasons. Some people adopt political positions or social attitudes because their they learned them unthinkingly. On the right, there are libertarians, social conservatives, foreign policy hawks, etc., in various combinations. On the left, there are environmentalists, feminists, poverty advocates, union advocates, and some old fashioned New Deal types. They all have differing degrees of sophistication and reasons for believing as they do. They disagree among themselves. It’s hopeless to say the conservatives or liberals have any particular psychological orientation.
Second, it detracts from policy arguments. It moves away from the important discussion of whether some policy is wrong or nutty, to a de-legitimizing of the position by attacking the sanity of the proponents.
Third, it is a waste of effort, because policy isn’t made by the base, but by the center. The left railed about how radical Bush was, but I just saw a poorly executed war against a country that had given the world lots of problems, an education bill supported by Kennedy, Democratic-leaning immigration policy, and a tax cut – he didn’t ban abortion or mandate prayer and creationism in the schools or withdraw from the UN. Now, the right is focusing on radical statements of a few Obama advisors. But Larry Summers, Rahm Emmanuel, et al are practical politicians, not ideologues, and nothing will get passed without going through the Blue Dogs. So, even if Bush or Obama had crazy ideas or were psychologically damaged, it is the center that makes policy.
“How often do you have to hear someone call you evil before you begin to wonder if they might really believe it and then decide to act on that belief?”
All my life I have heard people on the left and the right calling each other crazy socialists or fascists. So, in my case, for about 35 years the two sides have called each other nuts and a cancer on the body politic, but no one has instituted reeducation camps. Right now there’s an uproar about Obama going after Fox News, but what really can he do? Pull their FCC license? Have Glen Beck locked in the tower? (Personally, I think anyone who has the ambition to become President, left or right, has a little bit of Stalin in his or her heart). The Democrats can’t pass the Fairness Doctrine, or anything similar – they don’t have the votes now, and they aren’t going to increase their margins in 2010. What are you afraid they will do?
“Just as a practical matter how could someone who is apparently in the crosshairs of the President of the United States himself say something like that without it instantly being news across the entire planet?”
I don’t know. It’s probably more likely than the idea that a man could face the Clinton machine and the RNC, with hundreds of millions of dollars for opposition research and a will to win, and no one would uncover the secret of his foreign birth and ineligibility for the Presidency.
The non-response to Buchanan is because both sides, left and right…heck and middle, already expect Pat to make anti-semitic comments.
My theory: Leftists are so removed from reality that their wishes, dreams and desires take precedence over reality until it finally becomes their reality. Once that happens they are beyond debate. To them, their way is the only way. period.
While you might be able to debate and convince me away from one of my conservative beliefs to reach a compromise; the only compromise to some of these leftists is no compromise at all.
Example: Harry Reid blaming Republicans for HIS failure to get enough of HIS democrats to vote for cloture yesterday. Dontcha see! You didn’t do it harry’s way, so you are not “compromising!”
Rush was right last week when he was shouting out “Shut up and vote!”.
So yes, Shannon, i agree that the leftists in power now think of us all as grown up children who need to be told, cajoled and forced to do what they think is right, regardless of the consequences or the methods they need to employ to get their dream utopia in place.
Don,
I hope your correct by I worry that the left has gone off the rails in a leftwing version of the red scare or one of our other periodic political panics. They seem unhinged by owning both elected branches of the government and still not being able to get their agenda through. They seem to be looking for outsiders to blame.
All my life I have heard people on the left and the right calling each other crazy socialists or fascists
It might simply be that I think that the accusation of racism and in supporting slavery is fantastically serious while most leftists treat it in a casual or ritualistic fashion. I would personally have a near impossible time dealing politically with someone who believed the way that leftists claim to believe Rush does. I would view such people as actively evil and if I thought such people where seriously going to gain power, I would be planning for the possibility of violent resistance. I make the assumption that most leftist would have that reaction as well.
Hopefully, you are correct that leftists simply don’t believe what they’re saying and that its all some kind of reflexive ritual like calling people communist back in the 50’s. On the other hand, looking back at the history of the 20th century we have to at least keep in the mind the possibility that political groups can go off the rails into serious delusion. A leftwing version of the red scare would be very destructive.
Relevant comment at the Belmont Club
:
I went over to the NYT site and read the David Rohde series [on his captivity in Afghanistan/Pakistan] you linked to. It’s an interesting and entertaining read, highly recommended. I then made the mistake of reading some of the comments. Let’s leave aside the Non-Americans commenting. Let’s leave aside the “We Americans brought this on ourselves” contingent. How are we to understand the many comments asserting that extremist Talib are no worse than many (or most) Americans? Is this mere reflexive blathering? Are they merely disingenuously attacking their political rivals? Or is it possible that they truly believe (no matter how objectively ridiculous) that their political opponents are as bad as we see the Taliban as being? And given our prescription for the Taliban, just how far would the “hard left” go in dealing with us?
Shannon,
“They seem unhinged by owning both elected branches of the government and still not being able to get their agenda through. They seem to be looking for outsiders to blame.”
The far left is frustrated, but there isn’t any inability to get the Democratic agenda passed. There will be a major healthcare bill, the only real question among Democrats being whether there will be a public plan. If Obama gets any bill, he wins politically. His approval ratings will rise again. If he gets the public plan, he quells dissatisfaction among his base. He can’t really lose. He got his stimulus bill. His early efforts at foreign policy have unbelievably netted him a Nobel.
Obama doesn’t want to crush Limbaugh and Fox News. He wants to marginalize them. As long as they remain in the picture, he can use them effectively to portray any Republican opponent as a radical. There isn’t any blame on the horizon, because there isn’t any defeat on the horizon.
“I would view such people as actively evil and if I thought such people where seriously going to gain power, I would be planning for the possibility of violent resistance. I make the assumption that most leftist would have that reaction as well.”
I think the threshold for political violence is higher than you do. I appreciate the discussion.
I read a wide variety of websites, and when it comes down to true anger, and/or real “hate,” the left is by far much more intense in their emotions compared to the Right.
I’ve visited white nationalist websites and agitated them by accusing white nationalists of fearing black men due to sexual inadequacy. The reactions were tame compared to the reactions I got at Daily Kos (banned me) and Democratic Underground (also banned me) for suggesting IQ differences between ethnic groups or arguing for IQ centered immigration policy.
Not only did people instantly call for me to be banned, but more than one person literally wished me to die a painful death. One girl just wrote die die die die hundreds of times. I watched (but didn’t take part in) another immigration debate where the pro-illegal immigration supporter accused the people debating him of being “child molesters” becuase they opposed open borders.
At first I found it quite amusing that Jewish people visiting stormfront dot com (in the opposing views section) actually received more decency than I did at Daily Kos or DU. I now recognize Leftist behavior as being actually quite dangerous. Leftists live with a mindset in which they believe they’re entitled to use violence, vandalizing, lying, and disruptive techniques becuase of their moral superiority. They’ll pelt anti-illegal immigration activists with batteries and then accuse the police of “fascism” when they get arrested for it.
In trying to understand these people I’ve concluded (for now) that leftists have very low self-esteem and were very likely to have been hurt somehow as children. This hurt may have came in the form of a divorce, abandonment, being bullied or picked on, being rejected by the opposite sex, not making an athletic team, or just being socially awkward. When the Leftist gets older and becomes exposed to leftist ideology, they become energized becuase finally they found a reason for all of their pain. In the “oppressor” (the rich, white people, men, right wingers) they found something to focus their intense rage (against the machine).
To the leftist, the “oppressor” is actually a subconscious reminder of the person(s) who hurt them as children. When the leftist is engaged in political activism, their lack of emotional maturity will oftentimes result in them acting-out in the ways I alluded to above. The same way a child will throw temper tantrums, scream, throw things, or break their toys, the leftist will throw rocks, scream, spit on people, and attack (but only when in greater numbers). Then, when the leftist gets arrested (put in time-out), this reinforces their earlier subconscious feelings of victim-hood regarding the “oppressor.” After all, in the mind of the Leftist he/she “didn’t do anything!”
Its important to never mistake a leftist as “compassionate” or concerned about the poor. This is most obvious when watching a leftist make fun of poor white people. The leftist will take joy in insulting poor white people in the same way that children make fun of other children who wear “buddies” or whose parents may shop at K-Mart. Leftists will also display large amounts of hate when encountering white women who have large families. I recall a story two years ago when a fairly wealthy white Christian family had 16 kids. I remember reading the comments at a leftwing blog where leftists actually called the women “a dog/bitch in heat.” At the same time, leftists will screech in horror at anyone who suggests that poor minorities may have some responsibility for their own actions. While this would seem to be a double standard, it brings us to a very important point about leftists. Never, (and I mean never) should anyone mistake a leftist for someone capable of original thought or original ideas and/or actions. The leftist is a true conformist who is about as “hip” as a Madison ave copywriter can come up with. The Leftist supports poor minorities becuase the Leftist is highly impressionable by popular culture. In fact, showing a Leftist the movie “Dances with Wolves” can result in what we see after a child watches a horror movie. The Leftist is most impressionable while being supervised by their favorite babysitters: University professors. (note: sometimes these babysitters are emotional children themselves)
I hope this study of leftism has been helpful? I want to be clear that this situation is not funny! We’re entering a dangerous time when people with the emotional maturity of 10-13 year olds wield enormous amounts of power. I’m going to predict that free speech will be in jeopardy in the next 3-5 years. Free speech IMO, is our most important right, and must not be taken from us by people who still feel the pain of being called “poo poo head” on the after school bus. If one of you kids are reading this, I’ll try to give you some advice on a level that you can handle. The next time someone says something you don’t like, instead of passing “hate speech” laws, try saying this:
“I know you are but what am I?”
or try
“I’m rubber and you’re glue, whatever you say bounces off of me and sticks onto you.”
As a U. of C. class of ’71 alum I met enough radicals of the left in my student days such that Obama, Axelrod, Wright, Anita Dunn, Van Jones, etc. are appreciated for who they are. It is very nice to see that many at this site also see through them.
Certainly, the radical left wishes to push out of the way any who disagree with them. Remember that Marx taught them that open debate is not important because the ideas of their opposition were inevitably false due to the class status of those who held them. And Trotsky had the insight that only the proletariat and a segment of the intelligentsia could perceive the truth about society.
Such views do indeed rationalize contempt for political opponents and the use of coercion to defeat them.
While an undergrad I took a class with Bettelheim, the psychologist who had been in a Nazi concentration camp. He stated in class that the radicals of that period were worse than the Nazis. He also speculated that what might have stopped the holocaust was if the Jews had been armed. If each time the Gestapo came to get a Jewish family in the night one of them got shot the holocaust would have been stopped.
Since Obama’s election gun sales have gone through the roof. Sales of popular types of ammunition are limited to one box per customer. As my rightwing dad once told me “Comes the revolution, both sides will have guns.”
Shannon,
Just as American slave holders were against America and American liberty in the 1850s because they could not square slave holding with America’s identity (See Walter Russell Mead & Special Providence: American Foreign Policy and How It Changed the World).
The American Left has an identity level issue with American Nationalism and the American national identity as expressed by “American exceptionalism.”
They are so against both that they would rather replace or subvert it to foriegn multinational organizations.
See:
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=YmYwY2JlM2E4MTkzMGU3OWNjNDhiMzQwMzI3NWZmZjQ=
Even Paranoids Have Enemies [Mark Krikorian]
Much of the respectable Right thinks the grassroots concern over a possible North American Union is fever-swamp nonsense, and in some specific cases, that may be true. But there’s no denying the post-Americanism of much of our country’s elite. Latest case in point – Jim Hoagland’s column on Sunday had this advice for Obama:
Here’s one example of new thinking he should pursue: The United States should apply to relations with hemispheric neighbors many of the lessons of the European Union and its half-century of economic and political integration. A functioning American Union that pools sovereignty is a goal worth introducing now.
Hoagland is not some academic kook; as a Pulitzer-prize-winning reporter and the Post’s former foreign editor, he’s about as Establishment as you can get. The point is not conspiracy, but worldview – sovereignty really is passe for the upper reaches of our society. This is going to be the central political problem for the rest of our lifetimes. As John Fonte put it in a recent paper, “The struggle for power between transnational progressives and liberal democratic nationalists could go either way, but it will be the main ideological event of the twenty-first century.”
This Leftist American versus the rest of America divide is reflected in partisan political polls.
Democrats & Leftists clearly have a far less favorable view of America than Republicans. Consider these three paragraphs towards the end of the article:
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/013/119yfosc.asp
The Peace Party vs. the Power Party
The real divide in American politics.
by Matthew Continetti
01/01/2007, Volume 012, Issue 16
What lies at the bottom of the great chasm dividing the peace party from the power party? One suspects it is differing attitudes toward American exceptionalism, conflicting opinions on America’s goodness and greatness. In 2004 the pollster Scott Rasmussen asked respondents whether America is “generally fair and decent.” Eighty-three percent of respondents planning to vote for George W. Bush agreed with that sentiment; only 46 percent of those planning to vote for John Kerry thought so. Rasmussen also asked whether respondents thought the world would be better off if other nations were more like the United States. The data were similar: Eighty-one percent of those planning to vote for Bush thought so; just 48 percent of Kerry voters agreed. When Rasmussen asked the “fair and decent” question again in November 2006, he found similar results.
In 2003, Pew asked respondents whether they agreed with the statement that “I am very patriotic.” As you might expect, almost everyone who is asked this question says “yes.” But a simple “yes” is not the only option. Seventy-one percent of Republicans said they “agreed completely” with this statement, while less than a majority of Democrats (48 percent) said their agreement was “complete.”
One’s views of America correlate strongly with one’s views of American power. In 2004 Pew asked whether the United States should be the “‘single leader’ or ‘most active’ nation” in the world. Fifty-four percent of Republicans agreed that America should be one or the other. Only 29 percent of Democrats shared that opinion–a 9 percentage point decline, Pew found, since the same question had been asked in 2001. Similarly, in 2004, Pew asked whether U.S. “wrongdoing” might have “motivated” the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Fifty-one percent of Democrats–and 67 percent of liberal Democrats–agreed with that sentiment, compared with only 17 percent of Republicans.
The Left sees America as an evil that must be conquered and those that uphold those values are necessarily evil that must be destroyed.
What we have here is a religious war between the secular transnational progressives in America and everyone else.
Shannon,
Grrr… sorry about forgetting to post my name in the Walter Russell Mead & Special Providence post above.
“In 2003, Pew asked respondents whether they agreed with the statement that “I am very patriotic.” As you might expect, almost everyone who is asked this question says “yes.” But a simple “yes” is not the only option. Seventy-one percent of Republicans said they “agreed completely” with this statement, while less than a majority of Democrats (48 percent) said their agreement was “complete.””
Interesting. The Republican scale for “completely agreeing” that they are “very” patriotic dropped 10 points from 71 to 61 between 2003 and 2007.
Independents post about the same level of agreement as Democrats: in 1999, independents were down to 40, in 2002 Dems and independents were each at 50, in 2003 Dems fell to 48 and independents rose to 54, and now they are at 45 Dem, 47 independent.
http://pewsocialtrends.org/pubs/525/who-flies-the-flag-not-always-who-you-might-think
Are independents anti American or anti exceptionalism? Is it not ok to be patriotic, but not “completely agree” that you are “very” patriotic? The data seems utterly insignificant.
Even a few of what were once considered right wing blogs got on the libel band wagon.
I’m not sure if it is a change of heart, or just an attempt to be on the whinning side, but Charles Johnson of littlegreenfootballs.com seemed to have gone completely left with his handling of this item.