Deligitimizing the Opposition
I'm blessed with a good relationship with my parents and speak with them daily even though we live thousands of miles apart. Yes, I went through a phase where I thought their politics were horribly wrong. That was during a more anarchistic phase of my libertarianism (I know, I know). To their credit, though, they kept talking to me and explaining their positions. These positions have remained remarkably consistent since their twenties, when my mom converted my dad to conservatism.
They're pretty hardcore Fox News fans, like most of the cable-watching public. So I was interested in this FrumForum piece written by someone who attacks his parents behind a pseudonym. He says his parents have gone off the rails:
I don’t know when it happened, exactly, but she began peppering our conversation with red-hot remarks about President Obama. I would try to engage her, but unless I shared her particular judgment, and her outrage, she apparently thought that I was a dupe or a RINO. Finally I asked my father privately why Mom, who as far as I know never before had a political thought, was so worked up about Obama all the time.
Now, I rarely watch news, much less Glenn Beck. In fact, my in-laws who are huge devotees of Beck seem to think that if I only watched more Beck, I'd like him more. I took the Glenn Beck challenge of watching one full week. Let's just say I'm not the target viewer. Even when he's right on, I find him a bit too sophomoric for my tastes.
But this essay, and the comments that follow, still annoyed me. For one thing, I'm conservative enough to think that there's something to be said for the wisdom of our elders. Such respect for one's parents is sorely lacking from this essay. For another, this strikes me as a straight-up attempt to deligitimize the opposition. The pseudonymous attacker of his parents assures us he's conservative (though he refers to conservatives as "right wing"). But if you think it's outrageous that a conservative is outraged at President Obama, how conservative can you be? I know that FrumForum was one of those places that thought Obamacare was something conservatives should work with Democrats on rather than something to be fought with every fiber of our conservative movement.
Back to the essay, the language is just bothering me:
"If Fox was the window through which I saw the wider world, for hours every day, I’d be perpetually pissed off too." Parents are described as "angry," people who "read the riot act about Obama," and are victims of "Fox Geezer Syndrome." We're told about the "fevered emotionalism of their elderly parents’ politics." Then there's a suggestion about Tucson and rhetoric and a claim that "Unbridled anger at the deserving enemies is a danger to the civil order, and ultimately to ourselves."
The weirdest thing about this is that the pseudonymous author claims to be in his 30s or 40s. Doesn't it sound more like he's in high school?
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May '10
Re: Deligitimizing the Opposition
Serves you right for hanging around the Frum Forum. What's next? Guest posts by Megan McCain?
Dec '10
Re: Deligitimizing the Opposition
"read the riot act about Obama"
Conservatives read the riot act; liberals riot.It happens everytime there is a meeting of the G7 or WTO. This is because we are uncivil and they are civil.
Edited on Jan 30, 2011 at 10:13amDec '10
Re: Deligitimizing the Opposition
As pointed out in a recent Ricochet podcast, the supporting evidence for arguments of the left have been transformed to suggestive glances and names. Saying something like "Glenn Beck", or "Fox News" slowly, and following it with a knowing look is now shorthand for the settled societal judgments of the left.
It doesn't matter that crimes by Fox News or Glenn Beck or Sarah Palin are not in evidence, only that it's settled, so shut the hell up.
Jun '10
Re: Deligitimizing the Opposition
"Doesn't it sound more like he's in high school?"
Yes!!
If he's not actually a high schooler, he's one of those smug hipster types who gladly accepted financial support from mom & dad long past the time he should have stood on his own two feet, then developed a patronizing attitude toward the parents who enabled him. Perpetual adolescents.
Anyone who still has his parents around to argue politics with, discuss grandchildren with, or just share a cup of coffee with should be grateful.
Sep '10
Re: Deligitimizing the Opposition
It also sounds staged. Something off about the tone and the "read the riot act" bit.
Re: Deligitimizing the Opposition
By the way, if you found the piece itself petulant, do not read the accompanying comments unless you have a high tolerance for smug!
Dec '10
Re: Deligitimizing the Opposition
Here are the two money quotes:
"Unbridled anger at the deserving enemies is a danger to the civil order, and ultimately to ourselves."
"There’s a profound conservative truth in this, a warning that even passion for righteousness can be turned to evil, precisely because it is passion."
The writer, like Frum (and to a lesser extent, Brooks and Noonan), believes that if one's beliefs move one to passion, one's beliefs should not be trusted.
And that explains why they hate Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and people of that stripe. Those latter folks believe that strongly-held beliefs can and should be expressed with strong statements, confidence and, yes, passion.
Passion makes the author of the Frum Forum piece uncomfortable. It embarrasses him. He clearly would rather be reasonable than right, and would rather compromise for the sake of reasonableness than stand firmly for what he believes is right.
That discomfort with passion, that embarrassment at the righteous warriors on our side, is why his Mom calls him a RINO and why our party these days nominates palatable candidates like Reagan rather than passionate ones like Reagan.
Dec '10
Re: Deligitimizing the Opposition
Oh, is a smug storm forming?
Nov '10
Re: Deligitimizing the Opposition
The writer of the essay gets me to thinking about the Battleground poll by Ed Goeas and Celinda Lake which consistently shows over 60% of respondents self-indentifiying as conservative with only 30-something percent liberal. Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and others use this poll to argue how conservative a country we are.
I’d love to believe it, but I don’t. There are a good number of liberals who may think they are conservative, and another group who know they are liberal but are ashamed to admit it. These will show up as self-identified conservatives in the poll and skew the results in a false direction. The anonymous essay writer probably fits into one of those two categories.
Further evidence that the number of self-identified conservatives is a false positive is that the generic poll never shows that sort of disproportion in the number of Democrats* and Republicans.
I’d say the essay writer sounds like he is in high school, but not because he is but because he’s a liberal, and a liar. That’s redundant though isn’t it?
*There is no such thing as a conservative Democrat anymore.
Oct '10
Re: Deligitimizing the Opposition
Whether fake or real, he has the causality exactly backward. My parents have gotten more conservative and more outspoken about their political views as well. But to claim that they're doing this because they're being led around like mental infants by Fox News is supremely condescending. In reality, they have turned to outlets like Fox precisely because they find the current political trends so disturbing - not vice versa. His reflexive assumption that his parents' conviction must be the result of indoctrination rather than honest, rational thought simply because it differs from his own is the sure sign of a simplistic progressive mind.
Oct '10
Re: Deligitimizing the Opposition
Let's take his word for it that he is truthfully telling his story. As a Geezer, 68, one thing I know is that I have clear memories of an America that is no longer. I'm not into the "good ol' days" romanticizing, but am blessed with a very good sense of recall. Given that the writer is the same age as my own kids, their birth at the start of the seventies means that they are disconnected from the forties and fifties. Forget the sitcom aspect of Leave it to Beaver or the Nelsons, it is a relatively accurate portrayal of the cultural and emotional atmosphere of the times. Us Geezers have an attachment to a time now lost, and our children, even very conservative ones like my kids, simply have no ability to imagine what I have seen lost.
Read the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution with your heart, feeling the emotion of the writing and setting aside the different period, and then tell me that the environment now in evidence has the same character. Yes, we do get angry. We know what we have lost.
Edited on Jan 30, 2011 at 11:18amJul '10
Re: Deligitimizing the Opposition
The clown is accusing his mother of being a pod person because she knows enough to be angry at Barack Obama. The clown is too stupid or constipated to be angry at Obama himself, and finds in this a virtue at the expense of his mother. This whole story reminds me of Obama throwing his grandmother under the bus as a typical, bigoted white woman. Both stories tell us more about the narrators than about the targets of their disapproval.
They both trash family members to whom they owe deep loyalty for a cheap political point. Delegitimization is the result of both stories, just not the delegitimization intended by the speakers.
Sep '10
Re: Deligitimizing the Opposition
Yes, yes and yes. I used to go there frequently and comment. I wanted to discover for myself what made Frum and those who would be his followers tick. I was one of the early commenters. I was able to "out" at least 5 of these as being political frauds. I found many of the comments to be similar to this essay, they didn't quite ring true. After some pokes and queries, the *conservative* frauds would reveal themselves. It is funny how people can't really lie very well when it comes to politics. One of these, who claimed he "used to be Republican" but switched parties because the GOP had become so extremely conservative, finally revealed the last time he pulled the "R" lever in a Presidential election was for Eisenhower. Eisenhower! Yet he had been speaking as though his alienation from the party was more, um, recent.
Along with these faux conservatives are outright leftwingers who have somehow stumbled upon the site and say something like "Mr. Frum I disagree with everything you stand for, but I think you are right about how your party has been hijacked by right-wing bible-thumping morons,..."
Dec '10
Re: Deligitimizing the Opposition
Stuart Creque: ...
Passion makes the author of the Frum Forum piece uncomfortable. It embarrasses him. He clearly would rather be reasonable than right, and would rather compromise for the sake of reasonableness than stand firmly for what he believes is right.
...
· Jan 30 at 10:53am
Very well put.
Jun '10
Re: Deligitimizing the Opposition
IF there's a commentator more heavily "footnoted" than Glenn Beck, I don't know who it is. The vast majority of what Beck presents, about the "evil" Progressives, past and present, is their own words, audio, video, and text. And he never tires of saying, "don't take my word for it, do your own research." As for solutions, he advocates family and local preparation (like food storage) for any worst-case scenarios that might happen. Good preparation is what keeps everybody calm, if the worst happens. He'd say, the most important of the preparations is spiritual. America has lived through much worse tragedies than an economic meltdown, but the most important thing is to be prepared, so that you, personally, are not one of the desperate in desperate times. If you're secure, you can help others that aren't. I think he sees himself as a spiritual guide and history teacher--not a political guide. He's not especially good at politics.
Jun '10
Re: Deligitimizing the Opposition
Wow, how incredibly condescending and patronizing! It really does have the ring of the high school student who thinks his parents are too stupid to know better. And, by the way, clearly someone who doesn't know his mom very well, if he believes she never had a political thought before watching Fox News.
Re: Deligitimizing the Opposition
That's exactly what I thought. It read a bit misogynistic to me, although maybe he writes this way of his father, too.
Sep '10
Re: Deligitimizing the Opposition
David Frum is fixated on all the things in the GOP that he considers makes Republicans "look bad" to independents and moderates. This article, whether genuine or fabricated, is just the sort of thing certain to be posted at Frum Forum. Frum wrote the cover story for Newsweek magazine attacking Rush Limbaugh as, among other things,
"A man who is aggressive and bombastic, cutting and sarcastic, who dismisses the concerned citizens in network news focus groups as "losers." With his private plane and his cigars, his history of drug dependency and his personal bulk, not to mention his tangled marital history, Rush is a walking stereotype of self-indulgence—exactly the image that Barack Obama most wants to affix to our philosophy and our party."
This is simply a personal attack in the guise of political advice. The cracks about Limbaugh's drug dependency and martial history are particularly low coming from someone who advocates civility. Perhaps Frum is some kind of model citizen who is incapable of becoming addicted to prescription medication and brilliantly chose the perfect woman for his bride, but this statement reveals more about Frum's character to me than Limbaugh's.
Sep '10
Re: Deligitimizing the Opposition
Totally! I had a back-and-forth comment session with two other commenters once on FrumForum, and though both claimed to be middle of the road politically, their parlance was very much liberal to left-leaning. ... I find Frum to be a frump. He likes the idea of government trying to get kids to lose weight, and he thinks single-payer is a good health system. He's way into big government; he just wants to be part of the group deciding what that means for the rest of us.
Jul '10
Re: Deligitimizing the Opposition
Well, Mollie, what'd You expect at free websites.
If FrumForum charged $3.47 a month to join their conversation, all those commenters wouldn't be there. They are either minors without bank accounts or thirty-somethings living with their Parents and hesitant to ask for permission to sign up because they don't have bank accounts.
So, I suspect that's who the author is addressing.