I have ran across a few articles this week that have forced me to think about the psychology of modern liberalism. They all seem to cross paths with a serious mental problem liberals have, moral equivalency. This problem can be observed in things like the reasoning behind why no score should be taken in a children's soccer game to why no one should win a war. First up in my analysis is a piece by " Leon Aron is a resident scholar and the Director of Russian Studies at the American Enterprise Institute" on CNN.com.
In this piece, Aron explains it is easy to see, even clear to anyone who bothers to look with honest eyes, who is right and who is wrong in both Ukraine and Gaza. In Ukraine, the Ukrainians are in the right, the Russians are in the wrong. In Gaza, Hamas is wrong, Israel is right. Given this, Aron writes;
"Yet in neither case has the justness of the causes led the "West" to wish for a victory by the "right" side, rather than a "truce" or "ceasefire," which, as everyone knows, the "wrongs" are going to violate as soon as they recover, regroup, and resupply."
What Aron begins to get at here, is how modern liberalism tries to make moral equivalencies about almost anything. He continues;
"First, while someone's victory implies someone's defeat, "peace" – no matter how fraudulent or short-lived – superficially has no losers, and for that reason is vastly preferable. Second, the "right" and "wrong," the "just" and "unjust," the "good and evil" are inherently suspect because values themselves are suspect. Western opinion makers appear to have learned from elite universities that "values" are "individual" and "subjective." As a result, they must be taken out of political discourse and decision-making. Hence, too, the coverage by the elite media of the West of both wars as "conflicts" in which the word "just" or its synonyms never once appear, both sides are somehow equally at fault, and therefore a victory by one side is not more morally agreeable than by the other."
It is this same reasoning that liberals use to justify children's soccer games to have no score, and all the kids get a trophy for just being there playing in the game. But, it is this same thought process that allows liberals to claim the supposed high ground when someone questions or is critical of things like a gay lifestyle or the social dysfunction of inner city blacks. How dare you question their values?! Your judgements are subjective! We cannot question these things. Those on the right are called bigots or racists for doing so. I could go on, but I'll advance to my next example.
Joan Walsh writes a book review of Rick Perlstein's latest work for Salon. The title of book doesn't matter, all his books are the same, liberal versions of history after WWII to present day. Walsh throws out these ideas of how Republicans could have been good in her liberal mind, if they would have just followed this thinking. Like Gerald Ford was a good Republican because Betty Ford believed in ERA (The Equal Rights Amendment for women) and she was pro abortion. She writes, "(Pres. Ford was) a kindly ’50s sitcom dad with a pipe, but he has a wife perfect for the ’70s – Betty Ford could have been a friend of Maude or Mary Tyler Moore."
Though Walsh and Perlstein's book she is reviewing, seem to be shocked that Americans didn't run away from Goldwater forever, elected Nixon, and elected Reagan. By her thinking, we all should be liberals by now and she tries, poorly, to explain why. It is very clear to me that Joan Walsh has no clue about the average American, even ones who maybe voted for Obama. I won't get deep into this, you can read it for yourself, but she and Perlstein make some connection between the 1970s movie "The Exorcist" and Ronald Reagan. Walsh goes on to say that people who supported Reagan were racists writing, "Race runs through the backlash to modern liberalism (with regard to Civil Rights) first channeled by Goldwater, then Nixon and then Reagan – and it runs back to the Civil War."
Here is last part of Walsh's piece I want to deal with and it goes to core of much liberal thought, she writes,
"He (Obama) found his inner FDR in time to beat Mitt Romney in 2012, but the damage to his two mandates, and his presidency, had been done, by Tea Party reaction and, yes, racism. And by the Democrats’ recurrent belief that their inner righteousness will redeem them......We (liberals) trust in our own moral superiority – and lately, in our moral superiority tied to demographic destiny, which seems unbeatable."
This is it. Joan Walsh, like most liberals, believes she is morally superior. As a matter of fact, she writes it here as if it is gospel, not something (like global warming) to be debated. And she wants to believe that her and other liberal's "inner righteousness" should be enough to convince people to vote for Democrats and liberals, they should win every election and run the country. The piece she is writing here is trying to explain why that isn't so, and of course it's because of racism and such, not because of reality.
Walsh is one of those liberals who thinks the First Amendment is all well and good if it only allows liberal speech. And she supports doing away with other speech by declaring it offensive. Criticism of blacks is racist. Criticism of gays is bigoted. Criticism of abortion is a war on women. If someone has a poster of an aborted fetus it's OK for some feminists to attack that person. But these liberals can rage in front of the Supreme Court or Wisconsin's State Capitol, harass, intimidate, spit on people no problem.
The last article I want to comment on here was actually written back in 2010, but it's been brought back for the anniversary of the USA dropping the A-bombs on Japan to end WWII. This is by Robert Frisk in the UK paper The Independent. It's another moral equivalency piece, that we (the USA) didn't have to nuke Japan. I am not going to bother to give this one much time, you can read it if you like. But, and he does talk a lot about all nations apologizing for war, like somehow this will keep us from doing it again. His general idea is the same one I began with, Israel is bad for attacking Gaza, the US was bad for nuking Japan.
I hope my brief journey through liberal thought tonight helped to enlighten you to the mental disease they suffer from.
