Political Bilingualism
David Frum makes an excellent point in his diary note today on the reaction to Mark Levin's new book on the Supreme Court, Men in Black. The book is on its way up bestseller lists, but law professors aren't interested in it:
It rarely even occurs to them to listen. Liberalism is like a cult, where anyone with a big enough mouth can anoit some foolish idea as progressive and soon enough the parade begins. Witness the acceleration of this process in our universities, most recently in the monumental kerfuffle over Harvard President Larry Summer's declaration that men and women have different abilities, etc.
For all of my years arguing with liberals on Usenet or in the occasional tavern (including some liberals who have decided they no longer like paying taxes and have declared themselves libertarians, but still fully support the Leftist cultural revolution), I've encountered no more than two or three who will engage in an honest discussion. The problem, as I see it, is that the fundamental tenets of modern liberalism rest on quicksand, and the moment that a discussion is directed toward fundamentals the liberal hysteria gets ramped up and the exchange is dead. One must walk on eggshells to keep a liberal in a conversation, and under those conditions not much progress is possible.
Why are these academic experts on the Supreme Court so uninterested in a book that is likely to have a large impact on public opinion about the courts – and incidentally the next nomination to the highest court of them all? People are busy of course, and nobody can read everything, but still …. I’m reminded of something that John Podhoretz said many years ago: The great advantage that conservatives have over liberals is that we are bilingual. We can speak our language and we also know theirs. They however even now still don’t know ours and cannot be bothered to learn.That's my boldface emphasis on the last two sentences. That has long been my exact predicament with liberals. I once was a liberal, a radical even. I know the song and dance, the lack of intellectual rigor, the lack of circumspection that's involved in the typical posturing of liberals from the inside, from experience. I've been there and done that. I know their arguments better than they do, and it is a tiresome task to listen to them. And the bottom line is that they simply have no ability to hear most of what conservatives have to say.
It rarely even occurs to them to listen. Liberalism is like a cult, where anyone with a big enough mouth can anoit some foolish idea as progressive and soon enough the parade begins. Witness the acceleration of this process in our universities, most recently in the monumental kerfuffle over Harvard President Larry Summer's declaration that men and women have different abilities, etc.
For all of my years arguing with liberals on Usenet or in the occasional tavern (including some liberals who have decided they no longer like paying taxes and have declared themselves libertarians, but still fully support the Leftist cultural revolution), I've encountered no more than two or three who will engage in an honest discussion. The problem, as I see it, is that the fundamental tenets of modern liberalism rest on quicksand, and the moment that a discussion is directed toward fundamentals the liberal hysteria gets ramped up and the exchange is dead. One must walk on eggshells to keep a liberal in a conversation, and under those conditions not much progress is possible.
Comments