[Via email from Del]

I really like this article, it says a lot that really strikes a chord with me.  Especially the part about losing friends, because that has happened to me in the past 3 years much more than I would have thought possible.  It really started in the lead up to the 2004 election, when I told a lot of friends that if they liked John Kerry's record as a Senator and thought his speeches and promises really held value for them, they should vote for him; but that to vote for him because of his campaigning as a war hero would not be the thing to do.  That cost me a couple of friends right there, who argued briefly with me.  When I, as politely and carefully as possible, made some points about refuting the exaggerations of his war service while bringing up the extremism of his antiwar activities, they no longer argued.  They just stopped talking to me, and have not responded to any e-mails or phone calls since.

They were the first, but not the only people who moved away from me in varying degrees because of my occasionally sending them conservative articles or my own thoughts on issues.  I now have several old friends with whom I have very guarded (on my part) communications, wherein I limit topics to the weather, TV shows, general family updates, and the very occasional mention of sadness or disappointment with some political matter which reflects as much or more on the Right side of the aisle as the Left.

The term "intolerant liberal" is supposed to be an oxymoron, an inherent contradiction in terms.  And for me, it still is, because I reject the broad use of "liberal".  There are liberals, ultraliberals, and leftists.  As I see it, a liberal holds ideals about freedom and justice, equality of persons, maximizing human potential, doing as much charitable work as possible for demonstrated need, etc.

An ultraliberal takes that a step further, with innate biases that say any identified minority group must be given special consideration (smokers being the exception), any majority group is always suspect, government and its agencies are often guilty of deliberate abuses, many politicians are dishonest and act as tools for special interest groups, etc.  This is often idealism carried far, far out.

Leftists are all the way into the government is not only corrupt but oppressive, the large corporations run everything, injustice is regularly and very deliberately visited on the lower strata of society by those in power, the only way to be a racist is to be white, all religions (with the exception of Islam) are false and harmful, and communism didn't really fail in all those years, it just never got implemented properly due to the undercutting by the rest of the world.

The ultraliberals and leftists are anything but tolerant.  If you oppose them in any way, you are wrong, stupid, a conscious or unconscious tool of somebody/something, and perhaps just flawed to the point of being at least nasty if not evil.  They are in a sense addicted to their fantasies of how the world is and should be, and your opposition is taken as an attack on those cherished fantasies, which attack must and will be vehemently rejected.  Coming up with facts and logic that chip away at those fantasies only precipitates anger and barbed dismissal of your arguments.  For them, the baseline is not logic or objective facts, it's strong emotion that overrides everything else, and leads to accepting all "facts" that support their chosen beliefs (so the CIA flew the planes into the WTC, Saddam never had or tried to get WMD), while treating any and all counterarguments as irrelevant, erroneous, immaterial, or just plain outright lies.

And of course, you have now made them "uncomfortable", and heaven knows, you have no right to make anyone uncomfortable.  One of the interesting myths of modern times is that we have an inalienable right to be comfortable all the time, and those people who make us uncomfortable are marking themselves as unpleasant, somewhat rude/inconsiderate, and therefore, best avoided.  If you don't like looking at certain things, then you really should turn your head and look elsewhere, either at something you like, or sometimes, at things you like to hate/despise.  (Feeling righteous is also addictive, and righteousness is a hallmark of ultraliberals and leftists.)

How it has come to be that there is a significant fraction of Western societies that have slid into ultraliberalism and leftism (including so many highly educated and intelligent people) is a major question.  If anybody knows, please let me know.  If you know how to reverse it, I'll get you a ticket to fly to DC and we can meet some people in Congress or the White House to talk about it!

Del

The Big White Lie
Andrew Klavan

The thing I like best about being a conservative is that I don’t have to lie. I don’t have to pretend that men and women are the same. I don’t have to declare that failed or oppressive cultures are as good as mine. I don’t have to say that everyone’s special or that the rich cause poverty or that all religions are a path to God. I don’t have to claim that a bad writer like Alice Walker is a good one or that a good writer like Toni Morrison is a great one. I don’t have to pretend that Islam means peace.

Of course, like everything, this candor has its price. A politics that depends on honesty will be, by nature, often impolite. Good manners and hypocrisy are intimately intertwined, and so conservatives, with their gimlet-eyed view of the world, are always susceptible to charges of incivility. It’s not really nice, you know, to describe things as they are.

This is leftism’s great strength: it’s all white lies. That’s its only advantage, as far as I can tell. None of its programs actually works, after all. From statism and income redistribution to liberalized criminal laws and multiculturalism, from its assault on religion to its redefinition of family, leftist policies have made the common life worse wherever they’re installed. But because it depends on—indeed is defined by—describing the human condition inaccurately, leftism is nothing if not polite. With its tortuous attempts to rename unpleasant facts out of existence—he’s not crippled, dear, he’s handicapped; it’s not a slum, it’s an inner city; it’s not surrender, it’s redeployment—leftism has outlived its own failure by hiding itself within the most labyrinthine construct of social delicacy since Victoria was queen.

This is no small thing. To rewrite the rules of courteous behavior is to wield enormous power. I see it in Southern California, in the bleeding heart of leftism, where I live. I’ve been banned from my monthly poker game, lost tennis partners, lost friends—not because I’m belligerent but because I’ve wondered aloud if the people shouldn’t be allowed to make their own abortion laws, say, or if the world might not be a better place without the UN. ...

Contributed by Bill Faith on April 25, 2007 at 04:59 PM in R J Del Vecchio | Permalink

Comments

Posted by: yankeemom

I live in Santa Cruz. My daughter enlisted in the Army while still in high school.
I have few people in my life anymore that I can call friends. (Military parents keep a low profile around here.) Apparently, I make a lot of people here 'uncomfortable', if not downright angry, in that I support our troops AND their mission and am so very proud of my daughter. I also tend to point out the leftist's nonsensical statements when I hear them.

Thank you, Bill, for posting this. It's not just me being "overly sensitive".

Posted by: yankeemom | Apr 27, 2007 12:09:52 AM