Gerard Alexander's recent piece for the Washington Post —"Why are liberals so condescending?" — is either an experiment in irony or merely proof that he is a rather academic type of moron. Even if you ignore his annoyingly-posh coupling of two rather-snooty names, his essay on liberal condescension comes off as, well, condescending.
If you've seen Team America: World Police then you'll understand me when I tell you that Alexander's essay asking Why is everyone so fucking stupid? is a rant based on the same quality of facts as Kim Jong Il's ramblings.
Alexander's point? The majority of conservatives pick the political high road while liberals snipe at them from positions of prejudice and narrow-mindedness.
Yes, you read that right. What an unheard-of concept in political commentary! I don't think anyone has ever thought to state that his or her political party is the victim of unwarranted attacks and condescension from across the aisle.
So, it's pretty safe for me to state outright that Alexander's whole point is a load of crap, and entirely moot to boot. But in the interest of fairness, I'm going to make this a two-sided argument and take him on point-counterpoint style. I'll be as unbiased as possible as I give you Alexander's essay piecemeal (with me destroying his bullshit arguments between excerpts), beginning with this:
Every political community includes some members who insist that their side has all the answers and that their adversaries are idiots. But American liberals, to a degree far surpassing conservatives, appear committed to the proposition that their views are correct, self-evident, and based on fact and reason, while conservative positions are not just wrong but illegitimate, ideological and unworthy of serious consideration.
Nice argumentative style there, Gerard. Your bio says that you're one of the University of Virginia's associate professors of politics, but I can't imagine that anyone with an academic background would drop such a huge steamer of a fallacy into his opening paragraph.
Since when does anyone who does not wish to crash and burn his political career admit that his party's stance might be flawed and that the opposition might be correct? Welcome to American politics, moron — voters are told that compromise is weakness, that understanding is cowardice. To say that liberal absolutism can "far surpass" that of conservatives is to suggest that there exists a party that isn't already utterly committed to the totality of its own correctness. Such a suggestion seems rather amateur for someone who studies politics.
Next:
It's an odd time for liberals to feel smug. But even with Democratic fortunes on the wane, leading liberals insist that they have almost nothing to learn from conservatives.
You don't think they're learning from conservatives? Just wait until Democrats are a Congressional minority — then you'll see how much they've learned from Republican use of holds on legislation and appointments. But more to (or against) your point, when has any political figure ever said he could learn from anyone across the aisle? This isn't unique to liberals.
This condescension is part of a liberal tradition that for generations has impoverished American debates over the economy, society and the functions of government — and threatens to do so again today, when dialogue would be more valuable than ever.
So when conservatives are condescending, they're actually demonstrating political solidarity, but when liberals are condescending, they're impoverishing American debates? You must have scored some crazy good hash before writing this, Gerard, because you're totally delusional. Dialogue and debate only occur when there's a relative balance of partisan power. Anytime one side has control, those things are suddenly only viewed as useful by the minority.
Liberals have dismissed conservative thinking for decades, a tendency encapsulated by Lionel Trilling's 1950 remark that conservatives do not 'express themselves in ideas but only in action or in irritable mental gestures which seek to resemble ideas.'
Ah, so here's where you set out to prove yourself quite the academic. The lines following that quote are largely historical references — and one-sided ones at that. I can really see your book knowledge shining through, but where's the (un)common sense, the valuation of all relevant facts? It seems that you've quickly forgotten that liberals are generally regarded by conservatives as godless hippies who are trigger-happy when it comes to abortions and in favor or raging-in-the-streets hedonism. Both sides have their arsenals of ill-considered, biased statements. Political parties aren't gatherings of objectivity and open-mindedness; they're corrupt entities that should only be considered evils, between which voters must choose the lesser.
Evidence of the costs of cap-and-trade carbon rationing is waved away as corporate propaganda; arguments against health-care reform are written off as hype orchestrated by insurance companies.
Indeed. And cap-and-trade and health-care reform are decried as communism by conservatives. False accusations and slippery-slope statements are made by both parties.
I'm still waiting for you to wow me, Gerard. But I will admit that you come close here, where you actually have a brush — just a brush — with the kind of reasoning you claim is lacking in liberal thought:
Of course, plenty of conservatives are hardly above feeling superior. But the closest they come to portraying liberals as systematically mistaken in their worldview is when they try to identify ideological dogmatism in a narrow slice of the left ... in a particular moment ... or in specific individuals ... A few conservative voices may say that all liberals are always wrong, but these tend to be relatively marginal figures or media gadflies such as Glenn Beck.
Thanks for that bit of magnanimity, Gerard, but you missed the mark yet again. Unless you consider Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage, Sean Hannity and Ann Coulter to be "relatively marginal figures."
Ultimately, I have to wonder why you put forth this piece. Is it satire? Attempted sabotage of conservative views? Is it an early April Fool's joke? As with Sarah Palin's palm-based cheat sheet, could it be a purposeful lure to garner attention through liberal attacks?
Whatever your reason(s) why, I have to hope that, for the sake of your students, you haven't read this aloud in your classroom.
I also have to thank you, because you've provided me with another essay I can file in my ever-growing body of evidence supporting the prohibition of political parties. With hypocrites on all sides of politics, we might at least make them less dangerous by preventing them from gathering into large enterprises.
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