America's Future Foundation

My friend Sara Libby links to the same Washington Post piece I did on the idea of liberal condescension; in her commentary, I think she inadvertently helps prove the author’s point. Here’s Sara:

Now, the op-ed page is telling me I’m a terrible person for a reason other than posessing two X chromosomes: because I’m liberal.

This is a problem, writes Gerard Alexander, because liberals

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.

Got that? We’re odious because we think our values, our way of approaching the world and its problems are correct, and those of conservatives are wrong. That seems not so much condescending as basic logic.

Except, well, that’s not at all what Gerard wrote. I mean, it’s not even close. He nowhere referred to liberals as “odious,” or said that liberals are “terrible” people. His piece isn’t arguing that liberals are condescending because they disagree with conservatives; rather, it’s about the way liberals have a tendency to assume their opponents are operating in some sort of illegitimate way. It’s about the refusal of liberals to actually engage with and debate conservative ideas or policies, choosing instead to dismiss them out of hand as either willful lies, hate speech, or something else that renders them unworthy of consideration.

I hate to say it, but Sara’s doing just what Gerard decries in her post. Ezra Klein did the same thing on his Twitter feed. Instead of arguing the merits of Gerard’s piece, they are dismissing it out of hand. Which, of course, only reinforces his thesis. For another great example of his idea at work, check out Jacob Weisberg’s piece on Slate in which he blames the failure of President Obama to successfully get his agenda passed into law on the “childish, ignorant American public.” In the liberal mind, opposition to the President’s policies couldn’t possibly be based on reasonable disagreements so it must be marginalized as feckless immaturity, the result of an ignorant populace unsure of how to act in decent society.

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