Plumb Bob Blog

01/17/2008 (11:31 am)

Liberal Self-deception Exposed

The public narrative — that is, the leftist position that’s touted as a fact that everybody knows by the allegedly objective press — claims that the political left thoughtfully believes that everyone should doubt their own truths, and argues for an energetic, robust exchange of ideas, while the political right simply hates what it does not understand, and expresses that hatred as intolerance.

I’ve never believed that was anything but liberal self-congratulation. Today, thanks to Arthur Brooks, professor of Public Affairs at Syracuse University, I can say it’s statistically false.

Brooks gives that notion the lie in today’s Commentary column in the Wall Street Journal, on page A16. He bases his argument on the University of Michigan’s American National Election Studies (ANES) survey, a periodic survey in which respondents rank their feelings about individuals and topics, a so-called “feelings thermometer.”

First, the notion that conservatives hate, while liberals don’t. From the 2004 ANES survey:

People in this survey who called themselves “conservative” or “very conservative” did have a fairly low opinion of liberals — they gave them an average thermometer score of 39. The score that liberals give conservatives: 38. Looking only at people who said they are “extremely conservative” or “extremely liberal,” the right gave the left a score of 27; the left gives the right an icy 23. So much for the liberal tolerance edge.

It’s plain that liberals and conservatives view each other about the same; so it’s equally plain that the liberal claim that “they hate, we don’t,” is simply congratulatory self-deception.

Even more revealing, though, was the comparison of how liberals view President Bush today with how conservatives viewed President Clinton during his administration:

…those on the extreme left give President Bush an average temperature of 15 and Vice President Cheney a 16. Sixty percent of this group gives both men the absolute lowest score: zero.

To put this into perspective, note that even Saddam Hussein (when he was still among the living) got an average score of eight from Americans. The data tell us that, for six in ten on the hard left in America today, literally nobody in the entire world can be worse than George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.

This doesn’t sound very tolerant to me — nor especially rational, for that matter.

And conservatives regarding Clinton?

…in the 1998 ANES survey, Messrs. Clinton and Gore both received a perfectly-respectable average temperature of 45 from those who called themselves extremely conservative. While 28% of the far right gave Clinton a temperature of zero, Gore got a zero from just 10%. The bottom line is that there is simply no comparison between the current hatred the extreme left has for Messrs. Bush and Cheney, and the hostility the extreme right had for Messrs. Clinton and Gore in the late 1990s.

When I discuss the Clinton scandals with liberals, I’m routinely rebutted with “Your level of hatred is frightening.” I’ve never understood that; invariably, I had merely recited facts. Now I understand: that’s how liberals feel about Bush, so they assume that’s how I feel about Clinton. Note to liberals: we’re not like you.

Michelle Malkin, discussing the Brooks article in her lead story this morning, points out that no objective observer familiar with the blogosphere could possibly conclude that liberals and conservatives feel the same:

Spend anytime in the blogosphere and it’s clear that the two sides of the political galaxy are not created equal. One side burns effigies of American soldiers and craps on the American flag. The other does not. One side wraps itself in assassination chic. The other does not. One side indulges in vicious Sambo photoshops, rank religious bigotry, death wishes, gloating over the illnesses of public figures, and fill-in-the-blank derangement syndrome. The other does not.

Malkin, the author of “Unhinged: Exposing Liberals Gone Wild,” sports quite the collection of articles exposing the antics of hate-raddled leftists.

I’ve encountered fire-breathing conservatives whose venom I felt was excessive; but they’re not Senators, columnists, reporters, or even particularly influential bloggers. What I hear from inconsequential conservative nobodies, I hear from liberal talk show hosts, columnists, elected officials, and candidates. President Clinton used to call the Republican Congressional initiative “the Contract On America,” likening it to a hit squad, and he blamed conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh for the Oklahoma City Bombing, a vicious slur that defies imagination. Nothing President Bush has said or done comes within a light year of that level of partisanship.

TV pundits (mostly liberals) decry the level of invective in modern politics. The truth is somewhat different; one side has been throwing eggs for years, and the other side is only just now finding the means to talk back.

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