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Here is a little something to start the conversation. The writer hits the
nail on the head. We see it here on this site day after day. Enjoy.
Harry Reid and the end of liberal thought
By Dennis Prager
May 23, 2006
The highest-ranking Democrat in America, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, described the Senate bill making English the national language of the American people as "racist." And the New York Times editorial page labeled the bill "xenophobic."
Welcome to the thoughtless world of contemporary liberalism. Beginning in the 1960s, liberalism, once the home of many deep thinkers, began to subs ute feeling for thought and descended into superficiality.
One-word put-downs of opponents' ideas and motives were subs uted for thoughtful rebuttal. Though liberals regard themselves as intellectual -- their views, after all, are those of nearly all university professors -- liberal thought has almost died. Instead of feeling the need to thoughtfully consider an idea, most liberal minds today work on automatic. One-word reactions to most issues are the liberal norm.
This is easy to demonstrate.
Here is a list of terms liberals apply to virtually every idea or action with which they differ:
Racist
Sexist
phobic
Islamophobic
Imperialist
Bigoted
Intolerant
And here is the list of one-word descriptions of what liberals are for:
Peace
Fairness
Tolerance
The poor
The disenfranchised
The environment
These two lists serve contemporary liberals in at least three ways.
First, they attack the motives of non-liberals and thereby morally dismiss the non-liberal person.
Second, these words make it easy to be a liberal -- essentially all one needs to do is to memorize this brief list and apply the right term to any idea or policy. That is one reason young people are more likely to be liberal -- they have not had the time or inclination to think issues through, but they know they oppose racism, imperialism and bigotry, and that they are for peace, tolerance and the environment.
Third, they make the liberal feel good about himself -- by opposing conservative ideas and policies, he is automatically opposing racism, bigotry, imperialism, etc.
Examples could fill a book.
Harry Reid, as noted above, supplied a classic one. Instead of grappling with the enormously significant question of how to maintain American iden y and values with tens of millions of non-Americans coming into America, the Democratic leader and others on the Left simply label attempts to keep English as a unifying language as "racist."
Another classic example of liberal non-thought was the reaction to former Harvard University President Lawrence Summers' mere question about whether the female and male brains were wired differently. Again, instead of grappling with the issue, Harvard and other liberals merely dismissed Summers as "sexist."
A third example is the use of the term "racist" to end debate about race-based affirmative action or even to describe a Capitol police officer who stops a black congresswoman who has no ID badge.
"Phobic" is the current one-word favorite among liberal dismissals of ideological opponents. It combines instant moral dismissal with instant psychological analysis. If you do not support society redefining marriage to include members of the same sex you are " phobic" -- and further thought is unnecessary. If you articulate a concern about the moral state of Islam today, you are "Islamophobic" -- and again further thought is unnecessary. And if you seek to retain English as America's unifying language, you are not only racist, you are, as the New York Times editorial describes you, "xenophobic" and "Latinophobic," the latest phobia uncovered by the Left.
There is a steep price paid for the liberal one-wording of complex ideas -- the decline of liberal thought. But with more and more Americans graduating college and therefore taught the liberal list of one-word reactions instead of critical thinking, many liberals do not see any pressing need to think through issues. They therefore do not believe they have paid any price at all.
But American society is paying a steep price. Every car that has a bumper sticker declaring "War is not the answer" powerfully testifies to the intellectual decline of the well educated and to the devolution of "liberal thought" into an oxymoron.
Dennis Prager is a radio talk show host, author, and contributing columnist for Townhall.com.
Copyright © 2006 Creators
Find this story at: http://www.townhall.com/opinion/colu...23/198416.html
un-American
un-Patriotic
Strategery
Well....there you go again.
And here is the list of one-word descriptions of what liberals are for:
Peace
Fairness
Tolerance
The poor
The disenfranchised
The environment
Xray.. excellent post as usual.
Thanks for the new sig.
It's a curious thing to juxtapose the thoughtful analysis that might go into a newspaper column against the sound-bite rhetoric that is modern Washington politics.
I would agree with the general sentiment that the Left in Washington has lost its intellectual moorings in some senses and has chosen to fence with imprecise, singular words that often convey more or less than what should be said. In part, that's the product of the way that politics is covered in the media -- if Reid chose to orate in some philosophical sense about the issues at hand, his speech would either receive no coverage or it would be condensed to the sound bite that appeals to the common denominator.
Even Mr. Smith would struggle to have the intellectual underpinnings of his point heard in Washington these days.
I'm not necessarily saying that Reid is capable of doing what I propose -- as much as I vote Democrat, I largely find the powers-that-be in that party to be shrill and offensive; and I do think that there's a shred of truth in suggesting that intellectual thought and honesty are rapidly-dissipating qualities among many in Washington. Nevertheless, even if there were intellectual giants in every elective office, I'm not certain that the intellectual underpinnings of their positions would be well known to the public.
Of course, it's interesting to me that in castigating the Left for using such broad terms, Prager himself uses some fairly sweeping generalizations about not only the Left but also the policies that he defends.
Mr. Forman, it helps if you tell what part of the quote you are laughing at.
Is it the fact that some consider the language bill racist?
Is it the weak attempt at humor?
Or is it the entire article and the fact that it seems to typical X-ray that I didnt even have to read who had originally made the post?
wow a conservative website defining liberals.. they must be an objective source..
I am going to Michael Moore's website to see what a conservative is..
to sum up the article ..libs bad cons good..
I enjoy seeing all of the cars with bush stickers and those yellow ribbons... these are the same folks who justified the unecessary war and the deaths it caused..remember they support the troops better..
Says the guy who posted a Berkeley study on the Conservative Mind.
You guys are like yin and yang.
Oh i get it, the baby is not fond of Bush therefore he is a racist.
Holy cognitive skills! You must be liberal!
WTF?? I was being sarcastic.
Oh well, uhm....yeah...I'm going to post in another thread.......ummmm..yeaahh...
I know you were. Grow a sense of humor.
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