by Bruce Thornton<\/p>\n
Frontpage Magazine<\/em><\/p>\n We need to find a new label for the ideology espoused by leftist Democrats. \u201cLiberal\u201d doesn\u2019t accurately describe the party of blinkered intolerance, fanatical certainty, and an eagerness to destroy freedom in order to achieve some dubious utopia. \u201cProgressive\u201d is more historically accurate for ideas that go back to a movement that started in the late 19th century. But it still suggests that lefties are the party of improvement and the future, when in fact they are reactionaries recycling failed ideas about as\u00a0au courant<\/em>\u00a0as a Nehru jacket and a puka-shell necklace.<\/p>\n These labels, moreover, function like newspeak in Orwell\u2019s\u00a01984<\/em>. They suggest that lib\/progs are tolerant champions of individual freedom and rights, skeptical of old-fashioned group identity, believers in nuance and complexity, open to new ideas that challenge authority, and respectful of difference and diversity. Liberals fancy themselves the party of reason and truth, their views and ideas the consequence of education and nuanced thinking, and their prescriptions and policies the only viable way to improve human life and eliminate suffering and oppression.<\/p>\n Flip through any newspaper at random and you will find examples that show today\u2019s lib\/progs are exactly the opposite of those flattering clich\u00e9s. Take global warming, back in the news recently after the announcement that last year\u2019s average temperature was the highest on record. \u201cThe science is settled,\u201d the lib\/progs scold us, and there is a \u201cconsensus\u201d that human activity is warming the planet to dangerous levels and causing more frequent catastrophic weather events. Those who challenge this \u201cconsensus\u201d are \u201cdeniers,\u201d either stooges of the oil companies or hopelessly ignorant rubes irrationally closing their eyes to an inconvenient truth.<\/p>\n But as Matt Ridley writes in\u00a0The Wall Street Journal<\/em>, this \u201csettled science\u201d in fact reflects a \u201cmonopoly that clings to one hypothesis (that carbon dioxide will cause dangerous global warming) and brooks less and less dissent. Again and again, climate skeptics are told they should respect the consensus, an admonition wholly against the tradition of science.\u201d Thus the respecters of \u201ccomplexity\u201d and \u201cscience\u201d unscientifically simplify the planet\u2019s most complex system, one the mechanics of which we as yet don\u2019t fully understand \u2014 certainly not enough to assert as revealed truth that increases in a trace gas in the atmosphere can drive the whole system. And the vicious shunning and slandering of anyone who practices the skepticism of received paradigms that has driven modern science, reveals that the champions of \u201cdiversity\u201d and \u201ctolerance\u201d of ideas that challenge authority are in fact intolerant and irrational, more interested in ideology than in truth, and slaves to self-appointed authorities.<\/p>\n Similarly, the supposed believers in individual freedom and autonomy are the first to sacrifice both to the coercive power of the state and its bureaucratic minions. The most notorious recent example is the directive from Health and Human Services that Catholic institutions and businesses have to provide their employees with contraceptives including abortifacients, thus violating their religious beliefs. The lib\/progs who regularly squeal about a fabricated First Amendment right to view pornography on a public library computer are perfectly happy to destroy that same amendment\u2019s protection of the free exercise of religion and religious speech.<\/p>\n But this is just a more visible example of a phenomenon that has become so common that we hardly notice it anymore. Universities and colleges, those supposed lib\/prog bastions of free inquiry and freewheeling debate, have been in the forefront of using institutional power to police speech and proscribe anything that violates the lib\/prog ideology. The latest offender is the University of Delaware and its \u201canti-bullying\u201d prohibition. According to the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, the university defines \u201cbullying\u201d as \u201c[a]ny deliberately hurtful behavior, usually repeated over time, with the desired outcome of frightening, intimidating, excluding or degrading a person.\u201d Examples include \u201cteasing,\u201d \u201cridiculing,\u201d and \u201cspreading of rumors.\u201d As FIRE points out, \u201cThe broad wording of this policy makes it highly vulnerable to abuse, with the potential to silence a great deal of protected speech such as parody and satire (which often ridicule their targets) and political speech.\u201d<\/p>\n So the same people who call Republican women \u201csluts,\u201d who accuse the Tea Party of being \u201cracist,\u201d who depict black Republican Representative Allen West punching an old white woman, and who imply that Mitt Romney is a \u201cfelon,\u201d a tax cheat, and possibly a murderer of a little old lady, are so worried that an 18-year-old might be teased and get his feelings hurt that they are willing to gut the First Amendment. So much for the \u201cdiversity\u201d of ideas and the \u201ctolerance\u201d of opposing viewpoints, so much for the fealty to individual rights and the value of dissent against orthodoxy.<\/p>\n And here we get to the most illiberal and reactionary dimension of the lib\/prog ideology: it is rigidly orthodox and enslaved to received wisdom. Rather than being edgy dissenters \u201cspeaking truth to power,\u201d most lib\/progs are stolid, unquestioning supporters of the reigning dogma, no matter how stale or intellectually incoherent. Look no farther than the Obama campaign\u2019s strategy to exploit class envy and resentment and paint Mitt Romney as a robber-baron villain, a Gordon Gekko leering \u201cgreed is good\u201d as he ships off jobs to China, kicks widows and orphans out of their homes, and cackles as the fired employees of the companies he\u2019s plundered waste away with cancer \u2014 Marxist anti-capitalist clich\u00e9s as old as 19th century melodrama, one already dead in 1946 when Frank Capra used it to create Mr. Potter in\u00a0It\u2019s a Wonderful Life<\/em>. Of course, this is the same Obama whose Department of Justice just gave its mega-campaign contributor Goldman Sachs \u2014 over $1 million just in 2008 \u2014 a pass on its suspected financial fraud related to the mortgage crisis that precipitated the Great Recession. And let\u2019s not forget the \u201cgreen energy\u201d subsidies to political supporters, like the half a billion of taxpayer money bestowed on now bankrupt solar panel manufacturer Solyndra.<\/p>\n It\u2019s hard to say whether this double standard reflects cognitive dissonance, the rank hypocrisy of the opportunist, or the corroding power of ideology on the critical faculties. Something must explain why lib\/progs think waterboarding a terrorist is a crime against humanity, while obliterating the terrorist and the family around him with a drone is okay. Something must explain why Ann Romney\u2019s $900 shirt makes her an out-of-touch plutocrat, while Michelle Obama\u2019s $6,800 J. Mendel jacket evokes breathless encomia to her style. Something must explain why the media decried a planned Republican ad about Obama\u2019s factual ties to racist reverend Jeremiah Wright, while the aired Democrat ad linking Romney to a woman\u2019s death by cancer earns a mainstream media shrug. Something must explain why critically questioning Christianity and its doctrines shows intellectual bravery, even though such criticism has been going on for over two centuries and is risk-free, while doing the same thing to Islam is Islamophobic hate speech rather than true intellectual daring.<\/p>\n We may never know why this contradiction inhabits the lib\/prog mind, but one thing we do know: it\u2019s not liberal and it\u2019s not progressive in any meaningful sense of those words. So anyone have a suggestion for what we should call it?<\/p>\n \u00a92012 Bruce S. Thornton<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Bruce Thornton Frontpage Magazine We need to find a new label for the ideology espoused by leftist Democrats. \u201cLiberal\u201d doesn\u2019t accurately describe the party of blinkered intolerance, fanatical certainty, and an eagerness to destroy freedom in order to achieve some dubious utopia.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[22,536],"tags":[12,165,84,1023,214,32,93,527,9,1018],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-8n","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":772,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-stupid-party\/","url_meta":{"origin":519,"position":0},"title":"The Stupid Party","author":"victorhanson","date":"May 20, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thronton FrontPage Magazine The presidency of Barack Obama has established once and for all that modern liberalism is now the stupid party. Very little of liberal thought these days represents anything fresh or new, but rather comprises what Lionel Trilling once reduced conservatism to: \u201cirritable mental gestures\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Bruce S. Thornton"","block_context":{"text":"Bruce S. Thornton","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/bruce-s-thornton\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3308,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-unexamined-president-and-his-media-enablers\/","url_meta":{"origin":519,"position":1},"title":"The Unexamined President and His Media Enablers","author":"victorhanson","date":"April 29, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton Advancing a Free Society As usual, the mainstream media are getting wrong the significance of President Obama\u2019s release of his actual birth certificate. In the liberal-left narrative, the \u201cbirther\u201d issue was always evidence of the Republican Party\u2019s fringe kookiness: as the\u00a0Daily Kos\u2019s Markos Moulitsas crowed, \u201cWhat\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Bruce S. Thornton"","block_context":{"text":"Bruce S. Thornton","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/bruce-s-thornton\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5409,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/liberal-racism\/","url_meta":{"origin":519,"position":2},"title":"Liberal Racism","author":"victorhanson","date":"November 8, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"The assault on skilled, independent, intelligent blacks by Bruce S. Thornton Private Papers When Barack Obama accused Hillary Clinton of \u201cplaying the gender card,\u201d the hypocrisy that typically defines our public discourse on race descended into the surreal. Obama\u2019s whole career has been created by and has exploited the perception\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Bruce S. Thornton"","block_context":{"text":"Bruce S. Thornton","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/bruce-s-thornton\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2355,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-new-york-times-resident-voodoo-statistician\/","url_meta":{"origin":519,"position":3},"title":"The New York Times’ Resident Voodoo Statistician","author":"victorhanson","date":"August 15, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Another rational liberal can't think straight. by Bruce S. Thornton FrontPage Magazine The\u00a0New York Times\u2019 resident voodoo statistician, Charles Blow, is at it again, using \u201cscientific\u201d polling data as an excuse to indulge ideological prejudice. The poll in question profiled people regarding the current health-care debate, and Blow doesn\u2019t like\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "August 2009"","block_context":{"text":"August 2009","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2009\/august-2009\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5307,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/interpreting-the-returns-of-election-04\/","url_meta":{"origin":519,"position":4},"title":"Interpreting the Returns of Election ’04","author":"victorhanson","date":"November 4, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"All that razzle-dazzle can't fool average Joe. by Bruce S. Thornton Private Papers Now that, as Hank Williams might put it, it's all over but the Democrats' crying, what are some preliminary conclusions we can draw from this election? The most obvious is that the Democrats are increasingly out of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Bruce S. Thornton"","block_context":{"text":"Bruce S. Thornton","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/bruce-s-thornton\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2534,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/its-the-philosophy-stupid\/","url_meta":{"origin":519,"position":5},"title":"It’s the Philosophy, Stupid","author":"victorhanson","date":"July 15, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton Advancing a Free Society The Democrats\u2019 position in the negotiations to raise the debt limit and deal with runaway government debt can be summarized in one mantric phrase: the rich must \u201cpay their fair share\u201d in taxes. White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer, for example, said\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Bruce S. Thornton"","block_context":{"text":"Bruce S. Thornton","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/bruce-s-thornton\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/519"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=519"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/519\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5838,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/519\/revisions\/5838"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=519"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=519"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=519"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}