Posted by
Jonathan on Friday, April 27, 2007 2:52:19 PM
In 2003, Al Franken made a splash among the liberal intelligentsia with his book Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right,
which took conservatives to task for a broad range of alleged
misstatements and deceptions. When it comes to lying, however, Franken
and his fellow liberals are in a class by themselves. That became clear
to me after reading Andrew Klavan's essay, The Big White Lie, in the Spring 2007 edition of City Journal.
"The thing I like best about being a conservative is that I don’t have
to lie," Klavan writes. "I don’t have to pretend that men and women are
the same. I don’t have to declare that failed or oppressive cultures
are as good as mine. I don’t have to say that everyone’s special or
that the rich cause poverty or that all religions are a path to God. I
don’t have to claim that a bad writer like Alice Walker is a good one
or that a good writer like Toni Morrison is a great one. I don’t have
to pretend that Islam means peace." Amen, brother.
As Klavan notes, modern liberalism is suffused with lies. These are not
the lies that politicians or ordinary people tell to gain short-term
electoral or material advantage. They are self-deluding lies based on a
happy face, utopian view of the world that is largely at odds with
reality. These lies are demonstrably false, and the programs that flow
from them have been disastrous. But they make liberals feel good, and therein lies their power. For liberals it's all about the process, not the results:
With its tortuous attempts to rename unpleasant facts
out of existence—he’s not crippled, dear, he’s handicapped; it’s not a
slum, it’s an inner city; it’s not surrender, it’s redeployment—leftism
has outlived its own failure by hiding itself within the most
labyrinthine construct of social delicacy since Victoria was queen.
This is no small thing. To rewrite the rules of courteous behavior is to wield enormous power.
Klavan is on to something here. We all want to be liked. We all crave
approbation. We like being invited to dinner parties and enjoying the
company of our peers. So we avoid talking about problems that upset
people, or cloak them in euphemisms. Of course, that merely aggravates
the problems.
You can see this in action when conservative politicians and judges
come to Washington. Those who soften their views and morph into
"moderates" get praised by the mainstream media for their
thoughtfulness and ability to learn. On the other hand, those who
remain true to their convictions -- Justices Scalia and Thomas come to
mind -- are excoriated as unrepentant knuckle draggers out of step with
enlightened opinion. It takes a tough, self-confident persona to
withstand this kind of peer pressure.
We like to think that we live in a coarse, brutally frank age. Our
elites no longer tour ghettos and battlefields while holding scented
handkerchiefs over their noses. But the snobbery and effeteness of our
ruling class is as strong as ever. The only difference is that those
sweet-smelling handkerchiefs have been replaced with sweet-sounding
language.