by Bruce S. Thornton<\/p>\n
Private Papers<\/em><\/p>\n A<\/span>ccording to liberals, they are tolerant, open-minded, sensitive to complexity and nuance, and wary of simplistic explanations. So why is a column by the liberal Michael Hirsh, in the liberal newsweekly\u00a0Newsweek<\/i>, so intolerant, close-minded, simplistic and bigoted?<\/p>\n Hirsh\u2019s piece sounds the alarm over the fact that \u201cSouthernism\u201d has taken over the \u201cnational dialogue\u201d and has \u201ctransformed the sensibility of the country, . . .setting the agenda for our political, social and religious mores.\u201d\u00a0 What alerted Hirsh to this \u201cSouthernization of our national politics\u201d was a piece in\u00a0The New York Times<\/i>\u00a0about the elimination from the\u00a0American Idol\u00a0<\/i>television show of a contestant who in her last performance sang \u201cJesus Christ Superstar.\u201d According to Hirsh, this song was once the symbol of the triumph of \u201cthe new and the openness to innovation\u201d over \u201cnativism and yahooism,\u201d but now its performance cost the contestant a chance at the talent show finals because of its \u201cblasphemy.\u201d<\/p>\n To Hirsh, this incident is proof of the \u201ccoarsened sensibility that this now-dominant Southernism and frontierism has brought to our national dialogue.\u201d The consequences are \u201c \u2018lapel-pin politics\u2019 that elevates the shallowest sort of faux jingoism over who’s got a better plan for Iraq and Afghanistan,\u201d and the resurgence of \u201ccreationism into our political dialogue (in the form of \u2019intelligent design).\u2019\u201d Indeed, so powerful is this \u201cSouthernization\u201d that uber-liberal Hillary Clinton \u201cpanders shamelessly to Roman Catholics,\u201d who find in \u201canti-abortionism\u201d common cause with \u201cSouthern Protestant evangelicals.\u201d Nor is Obama immune to the power of the Southern sensibility, one so potent that the Senator from Illinois was too frightened to explain his relations with Jeremiah Wright and the former terrorist Bill Ayers by pointing out that for an \u201cinner-city organizer in Chicago,\u201d these men \u201cwere natural allies in a situation like that.\u201d Of course, this same malign Southern sensibility causes us to \u201croutinely demonize organizations like the United Nations,\u201d and its \u201cSouthern-frontier warrior culture\u201d has eclipsed \u201cthe realism and internationalism of the Eastern elitist tradition,\u201d thus compromising our foreign policy. Of course, George Bush is the worst example of this malign process.<\/p>\n This indictment is a farrago of ignorance, hypocrisy, and partisan special-pleading. What is Hirsh\u2019s \u201cbetter plan\u201d for Iraq, the withdrawal of American forces, as both Clinton and Obama are proposing? The consequences of that failure of nerve would be devastating: the complete degeneration of Iraq into a Darwinian jungle of civil war, the resurgence of al Qaeda, and the further loss of respect in the eyes of the jihadists who are gambling on America being just such a \u201cweak horse,\u201d as bin Laden famously said. As for intelligent design, Hirsh\u2019s equation of it with creationism merely repeats the ignorant received wisdom repeated by the philosophically challenged liberal media. Then there\u2019s the paranoia about a trans-denominational cabal of Christian theocrats itching to burn homosexuals and abortion doctors, one of the liberal secularist\u2019s most cherished myths, clung to despite the obvious triumph of secularism in our popular culture and a public square nearly stripped clean of the religious speech protected by the First Amendment. As for his advice to Obama about his association with a bigot like Wright or a quondam terrorist like Ayers: just imagine a white Southern politician explaining his association with a Klansman or an abortion-clinic bomber by saying he\u2019s a \u201cnatural ally.\u201d The dudgeon of liberals like Hirsh would reach the stratosphere. Of course, our self-loathing liberal must extol the United Nations, an utterly corrupt mechanism useful only for autocratic and tyrannical regimes pursuing their interests at the expense of ours. Most astonishing is the encomium to the foreign-policy realism that, before George Bush, liberals denounced for ignoring oppression and genocide because such crimes didn\u2019t directly affect our national interests.<\/p>\n T<\/span>his tissue of generalizations, bigoted clich\u00e9s, and bad history embodies the modern liberal sensibility that has found in Barack Obama its champion. Notice too the liberal media echo chamber in action. The\u00a0Times<\/i>\u00a0story Hirsh alludes to was a speculative piece based on a handful of posts on the\u00a0American Idol<\/i>website. In other words, anecdotal evidence was used to gratify the reporter\u2019s preconception that singing \u201cJesus Christ Superstar\u201d cost the contestant votes because of Americans\u2019 religious superstitions. No other empirical evidence is presented to buttress this conclusion based on a handful of remarks out of millions of voters. But Hirsh accepts this biased interpretation as a fact, and then uses that \u201cfact\u201d as evidence of\u00a0his<\/i>\u00a0preconceived notion about the malicious effect of \u201cSouthernism\u201d on our politics.<\/p>\n Then there\u2019s the potted history laughable in its gross generalizations and cavalier disregard of the complexity of historical change. Southerners, you see, are descended from Scots-Irish immigrants who first oppressed Catholics in Ireland, then immigrated to America where they settled on the frontier and fought Indians. There they developed a \u201crather savage, unsophisticated set of mores\u201d that used to be \u201cbalanced by a more diplomatic, communitarian Yankee sensibility from the Northeast and upper Midwest.\u201d Recent immigration to the South and Southwest by other Americans has now increased this sensibility at the expense of the old Northeastern one.<\/p>\n How\u2019s that for nuance and complexity? Reduce one dimension of the South\u2019s complex history and demography to a bundle of tired slurs and stereotypes, and then bestow this crude caricature with a power so fearsome that it can infect Americans who move to the South from elsewhere. This isn\u2019t rational analysis, it\u2019s sheer anti-Southern bigotry used for decades to gratify the snobbery and elitism of Northerners, with their clich\u00e9s about big-bellied Southern sheriffs, psychopathic Klansmen, inbred families, and moonshine-brewing yokels. As such it derives from the same narrow-minded elitism Obama displayed in his \u201cguns and church\u201d speech before the Pennsylvania primary: anyone who loves his country, goes to church, and believes in moral absolutes is a \u201cnativist\u201d and \u201cyahoo\u201d with a \u201ccoarse sensibility.\u201d Worse, rather than deferring to their smarter, more tolerant Eastern betters, these uppity yahoos have seized the political momentum and now are inflicting their \u201crather savage and unsophisticated mores\u201d on the rest of the country.<\/p>\n Hirsh\u2019s silly piece illustrates once again that liberals don\u2019t dislike bigotry or intolerance on principle; they base their distaste instead on who the victim happens to be and whose political ox is being gored. They aren\u2019t opposed to simplistic ideas lacking nuance; they always exempt their own from this stricture. They aren\u2019t in favor of keeping an open mind and hearing all sides; they just claim those goods for their own opinions, and deny them to those of others. In other words, they\u2019re flawed human like the rest of us \u2014 which is why we conservatives don\u2019t want to give them all the state power they constantly lust for.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u00a92008 Bruce S. Thornton<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Bruce S. Thornton Private Papers According to liberals, they are tolerant, open-minded, sensitive to complexity and nuance, and wary of simplistic explanations. So why is a column by the liberal Michael Hirsh, in the liberal newsweekly\u00a0Newsweek, so intolerant, close-minded, simplistic and bigoted?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","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":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[22,837],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-1oi","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":5304,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/jane-smiley-republican-party-recruiter\/","url_meta":{"origin":5350,"position":0},"title":"Jane Smiley, Republican Party Recruiter","author":"victorhanson","date":"November 9, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton Private Papers Losing often induces hysteria, particularly in those suffering from arrested development. So it's no surprise that in the aftermath of Kerry's defeat we're seeing a whole slew of tantrums being thrown by various liberal pundits. After all, much of modern liberalism, as Churchill suggested,\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":5350,"position":1},"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":2854,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/another-times-blowhard\/","url_meta":{"origin":5350,"position":2},"title":"Another Times Blowhard","author":"victorhanson","date":"April 10, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton FrontPageMagazine.com Every so often\u00a0The New York Times\u00a0runs an op-ed by the appropriately named Charles M. Blow. Blow\u2019s shtick is to dig up some statistical nugget and then draw all manner of portentous conclusions this data supposedly support. As one could expect, the conclusions invariably reinforce some\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":2228,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-lefts-selective-outrage\/","url_meta":{"origin":5350,"position":3},"title":"The Left’s Selective Outrage","author":"victorhanson","date":"October 11, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton FrontPage Magazine You know liberals are edging toward a full Jonestown-style meltdown when someone as smart as New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman starts losing it. Last week Friedman worked himself up into a paranoiac frenzy over the tone of some of the criticism Obama and\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":5350,"position":4},"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":4067,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/free-men-have-free-tongues\/","url_meta":{"origin":5350,"position":5},"title":"Free Men Have Free Tongues","author":"victorhanson","date":"January 28, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton RightNetwork.com Every time a crazy person perpetrates irrational mayhem, we immediately start demanding explanations that gratify our ideological assumptions. For liberals, something in the environment drives people to such acts. Bad childrearing, poverty, bullying at school, violent movies or video games, or bigotry and prejudice are\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Bruce S. Thornton"","block_context":{"text":"Bruce S. 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