Liberal Projection
Most discerning observers of the political scene understand that today’s liberal Democrats habitually project – a prime example of which I will illustrate in my next post. How’s that for a bogus tease?
That is, liberals forever accuse conservatives and Republicans of doing what they do -- or would do -- if given the opportunity. That’s why so many of them went ballistic over the alleged loss of our civil liberties with the Patriot Act. (Note to the Libertarians among us: I am not here impugning your legitimate concerns, which I think are differently – and authentically -- motivated.)
Why do I suggest that liberals might not have been sincere in their objections to the Patriot Act, among other things? Well, how about their duplicity in alleging that George W. Bush lied about WMD? Same motive: to discredit Bush who had become a popular wartime president when all this nonsense started. But I’ll give you a better example: liberals have shown themselves to be but fair-weather guardians of civil liberties. They fashion themselves as freedom loving, and conservatives as authoritarian scolds, but in fact they only selectively endorse the First Amendment and certain other constitutional liberties.
Was it not Obama’s Supreme Court appointee Elena Kagan who advocated the government’s “unskewing” of certain kinds of speech when it deems there is an “overabundance” of it? Conservative talk radio, anyone? Was it not Obama’s regulatory czar Cass Sunstein who wrote a Harvard paper recommending the practice of “cognitive infiltration”: the government’s use of fake websites and outside 501(c)(3) interest groups to front as independent supporters of government policy and to “infiltrate” opposing websites?
Is it not liberals behind the Fairness Doctrine, Net Neutrality Rules, Campus Speech Codes, and restrictions on religious expression and religious exercise in the often-phony name of church-state separation – arising out of a grossly expansive interpretation of the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause? Was it not the Obama-Holder Justice Department that dismissed a voter intimidation case against two New Black Panther Party members that it had already won by default judgment because of an unwritten policy that whites cannot be victims of voter intimidation by blacks? Is it not liberals who believe that appellate judges can properly make law, and can rewrite the Constitution to serve their ends?
Liberals aren’t champions of civil liberties across the board as a matter of vindicating the constitutional principle at stake, but proponents of certain favored causes and opponents of others. They only opportunistically invoke the Bill of Rights when it serves to advance their causes, but ignore or oppose it when it doesn’t.
Knowing their own propensities, they assume conservatives are the same way. They believe that our judges will be conservative activists, that our executive administrations will monitor conversations of rural grandmothers, that we have antipathy for those who don’t look like us, that we will torture enemy combatants not to extract lifesaving information, but as a function of our conservative sadism, that we will keep an enemies list (ahem…), that we will suppress religious liberties and speech, that our Tea Partiers are phony astroturfers (like their SEIU bussed in thugs), that our Tea Partiers are violent, nasty, bigots – little Timothy McVeighs, and that we oppose Barack Obama’s recklessly destructive agenda because of our partisanship, not to save America. (After all, the Democrats’ partisanship led them to circle the wagons around Bill Clinton even when he had committed felonious perjury.)
It is against this backdrop of liberal Democratic projection that I want to discuss the recurring talking points from liberal Democrats to explain the Tea Party phenomenon and cast conservative protestors as partisan, knuckle-dragging extremists. In the next post, I’ll discuss and link to a column making just this point.
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Comments :
Jul '10
Re: Liberal Projection
"...unskewing..." speech?
Holy Moly, that is sweet.
You really do have to admit, that's a formulation that could only have emerged from the Ivy League. You just don't get that quality of thought out of a mere state college.
Re: Liberal Projection
Exactly, Kenneth. BTW, since I posted the above I just ran across another example of Obama/lib projection, not that I intended to present an exhaustive list. RedState's Erick Erickson asks rhetorically on his Facebook page, "When Obama calls the Chamber of Commerce a 'threat to our democracy' for taking foreign money into its general fund, is he projecting?"
Jun '10
Re: Liberal Projection
Way back, two-and-a-half years ago, when the Left thought that the religious right was dead and gone, and new grassroots political awakenings were a great thing:
http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/tue-january-22-2008/jim-wallis
Now, they're not so crazy about new grassroots awakenings.
Jul '10
Re: Liberal Projection
Democracy? That old thing?
Look, it was an appealing idea, but it's so...messy and inefficient.
There's the whole "advise and consent" thing. Ick, ick, ick. Man, if you're gonna have to have your Czars submitted for approval by a bunch of yokels who are nothing but pawns of an ignorant, braying populace, you'll never get anything done.
May '10
Re: Liberal Projection
But David, there is the whiff of conspiracy about your examples which I don't believe exists. Rather like a religious zealot, the left is so convinced of the right-ness of its cause and motives, that it is prepared to dismiss principal. But I don't believe leftists know they are doing this as they do it. I don't think most are Stalinists. The left is often hypocritical but not knowingly so. Perhaps that's not a meaningful distinction but I think it keeps the accustation from being dismissed out of hand by the political center.
I also think -- as I think MFR noted in another thread -- that there is a constant conflation of motives with results (the former being well-meaning, that latter being tragically disastrous) that continually gives the left permission to trample civil liberty protections and likewise causes them to continually denigrate Conservative motives simply because they disagree over methods and likely outcomes.
I often feel like if we could just agree that we both want essentially good outcomes but differ profoundly over the best way to get there we could at least keep the dialogue constructive.
Aug '10
Re: Liberal Projection
Hot hoppin' socks, you'd better believe it's a meaningful distinction! Lying to others but not yourself and lying even to yourself are very different things. A person lying even to himself is arguably less culpable (though we have a responsibility to be wise as well as good), but also more deeply deluded.
Gosh, are others already remembering what I say better than I do? (Is it because I'm that fascinating or -- more likely -- because I'm prematurely senile?) Sure sounds like something I'd say, though (and naturally, I agree with it).
Sometimes I think what the Left has is a gigantic case of animistic fallacy.
Aug '10
Re: Liberal Projection
David Limbaugh, Guest Contributor:
Liberals aren’t champions of civil liberties across the board as a matter of vindicating the constitutional principle at stake, but proponents of certain favored causes and opponents of others. They only opportunistically invoke the Bill of Rights when it serves to advance their causes, but ignore or oppose it when it doesn’t.
Knowing their own propensities, they assume conservatives are the same way.
Assuming others share your propensities is short-sighted, but to some degree understandable. The Golden Rule, for example, presupposes that people share enough propensities that doing unto others as you would have them do unto you is in fact a considerate way of acting (rather than, perhaps, cruel or baffling).
My experience is that even very intelligent liberals act as if the sincerity of their belief that, say, the Bill of Rights is a Good Thing justifies them not having to think very hard about whether their proposed policies actually respect the Bill of Rights.
Politically, they are so consumed by intention and hoped-for results that they forget process. (This, even when they're in heavily process-oriented professions, which is interesting.)
Hardly a new observation, but always worth repeating.
Edited on Oct 10, 2010 at 11:29pmOct '10
Re: Liberal Projection
The left can’t possibly concede moral equivalence and then trust their fate to arguments based upon efficacy. They’re too smart to fall into that trap! David Limbaugh’s example in his next post exemplifies Dennis Prager’s oft repeated point: the right thinks the left is wrong; the left thinks the right isn’t merely wrong, but evil. After 40+ years of accustomed dominance over the means of propaganda (media and academia) they’ve grown lazy, so they fall back on their old stand-by of ad hominem attacks on the right’s putative motivation(s)—sexist, intolerant, xenophobic, homophobic, Islamophobic, racist, bigoted (SIXHIRB, another Pragerism).
Aug '10
Re: Liberal Projection
If Christine O'Donnell were a Democrat, the witchcraft charge would be turned into a badge of honor, i.e., "That was years ago and she was very young, experimenting with different ideas... unlike rigid and dogmatic Christian right-wing nutjobs...This is so typical of the Republican Party's attack machine, smearing a bright young progressive woman who has the temerity to defy the special interests and giant corporations who take bread from the mouths of our children!"
May '10
Re: Liberal Projection
I agree.
I wonder about the politicians. At least some of them know what they're doing. But even they have been doing it so long that they probably give it a thought only rarely.
Meanwhile, the peons will cling to fad-like hate until their leaders finally abandon them (or worse).