Liberal Tolerance is a Myth

Since publishing my post “No Child Left Behind” (2/3/07), I’ve been engaged in an email exchange with a liberal friend. Here is a sample of the debate between the Tolerant Liberal and the Conservative Neanderthal. (That’s me). You be the judge.

Tolerant Liberal: Bill says that “Many agree that the K-12 education system is failing the lower half of the intelligence distribution, preferentially inhabited by low income children and minorities (Blacks, Hispanics and Native Americans).”

It is this kind of statement that really gets me angry. Why in the world was it necessary to add the phrase after the comma? The fact that you've brought income and race into this discussion makes me very suspicious that your real goal is to perpetuate a system where the advantages of the advantaged carry on from generation to generation.

Conservative Neanderthal: Are you angry because what I said is untrue? Or maybe it’s because I am not allowed to say it. When you say that my real goal is to perpetuate a system... you base this on a misunderstanding of my motivation, which is to fix a system that fails the disadvantaged.

You do not know me. Conservatives think that liberals are wrong, but liberals think that conservatives are evil.

Tolerant Liberal: Why isn't it your goal to fix a system which fails all below-average students, whether disadvantaged or not? Is it, perhaps, because the educational system doesn't fail white students who are below average in intelligence but above average in socioeconomic status? And, liberals say the same thing about conservatives.

Conservative Neanderthal: You don't like it that my goal is to fix an educational system that fails the disadvantaged. I think that is a fine goal. The disadvantaged have special needs. You can worry about the advantaged.

Further, you proved my point (Conservatives think that liberals are wrong, but liberals think that conservatives are evil) by the comments you made. I still do not think you are evil, just wrong.

The Neanderthal was tempted to add and stupid after just wrong, but I restrained myself. This is the way so many arguments progress. We try to explain why the liberal position is wrong but they say we are mean, evil, Holocaust deniers!!

Oh yes, the ad hominem attack is such a common tactic that liberals use it with abandon and extravagance, even in the major newspapers. The Boston Globe’s Ellen Goodman used the evil card in discussing global warming. “Let's just say that global warming deniers are now on a par with Holocaust deniers, though one denies the past and the other denies the present and future.”

Nice. Goodman notes the evil of ordinary Americans who, in Pew Research Center surveys, place global warming only 20th on the list of 23 policy priorities, below terrorism, tax cuts, crime, morality, and illegal immigration. Goodman also notes that only 23% of college-educated Republicans (but 75% of Democrats) believe the warming is mostly due to humans.

So now the majority of Americans who have doubts about the human responsibility for global warming, not to mention the critical need to do something humongous about it, may be compared with Iranian Ahmadinajad and the rest of the Holocaust deniers. It’s just Ellen Goodman practicing that good old liberal tolerance.

Our friend Dennis Prager agrees that Goodman “reflects a major difference between the way in which the Left and Right tend to view each other. With a few exceptions, those on the Left tend to view their ideological adversaries as bad people, i.e., people with bad intentions, while those on the Right tend to view their adversaries as wrong, perhaps even dangerous, but not usually as bad.”

It reminds me of the animal rights organization PETA. Those tolerant liberals used their “Holocaust on your plate” campaign, which equates the barbecuing of chickens with the cremating of Jews in the Holocaust, to attack the food industry (those evil Neanderthals). All of this merely trivializes the horrors of the Holocaust and the evil of Holocaust deniers.

We conservatives do not believe that (most) liberals are evil, just utterly, impressively wrong. We want liberals to talk about their ideas, confident in our belief that normal people will eventually realize what claptrap it is. But liberals fear what we say and try to silence us by innuendo, satire (No one expects the Republican Inquisition) and calling us names. It’s like they are reliving their glory days in the school yard. (Note the infatuation with pre-pre-school.)

What liberals mean by tolerance is forbidding the Pledge of Allegiance in schools because “under God” may be offensive to atheists. To most liberals, tolerance means calling those who disagree with them evil. The unfortunate consequence is that progress on the important matters that face America is impossible when one side is using rational argument while the other side is throwing stones.