Category: Leftism and Political Correctness
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Free Speech and the Fairness Doctrine
(Written 29 July 2007) Philip Terzian gets it right in his piece Radio Free America: Revival of the Fairness Doctrine is not intended to facilitate "both sides of the story" but to shut down conservative talk radio. Why? Because efforts to invent a successful left-wing Limbaugh have consistently failed, and what Jim Hightower, Mario Cuomo,…
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Political Correctness and Gender Neutral Language
I am writing a review of J. P. Moreland's The Recalcitrant Imago Dei: Human Persons and the Failure of Naturalism (SCM Press, 2009). It is a very good book, and J. P. Moreland is one of my favorite philosophers. I don't know the man personally, but I rather doubt that he is politically liberal. And…
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Unbelievable if True: Illiteracy and Innumeracy
David K. Shipler, The Working Poor: Invisible in America (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004), p. 139: Some 37 percent of American adults cannot figure a 10 percent discount on a price, even using a calculator. (Emphasis added.) The same percentage cannot read a bus schedule or write a letter about a credit card error.…
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Liberal Values: Limbaugh Bad, Mao Good
Are we in Cloud Cuckoo Land yet?
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Conservative Activism, the Left’s Incomprehension, and the Genetic Fallacy
'Conservative activism' has an oxymoronic ring to it. Political activism does not come naturally to conservatives, as I point out in The Conservative Disadvantage. But the times they are a 'changin' and so I concluded that piece by saying that we now need to become active. "Not in the manner of the leftist who seeks…
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Pessimistic Thoughts on Political Discourse in America
The following piece was written on 12 April 2006. I repost it, slightly emended, because events since then have led me to believe that the grounds for pessimism are even stronger now than they were before. It is becoming increasingly clear that conservatives and liberals/leftists live on 'different planets.' And it is becoming increasingly clear which planet…
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Topical Insanity
There is temporary insanity as when a middle-aged man buys a Harley on which to ride though his midlife crisis, wisely selling the bike after the crisis subsides. But my theme is topical insanity, that species of temporary insanity that can occur when certain topics are brought to one’s attention. Someone so afflicted loses the ability…
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Why Are Jews Liberals?
Don't they understand their own interests? Given their respective stances on the state of Israel, why would a Jew vote for Obama rather than McCain? “Jews earn like Episcopalians and vote like Puerto Ricans." (Milton Himmelfarb) Why? An impressive panel provides some answers.
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Can Belief in Man Substitute for Belief in God?
The fact and extent of natural and moral evil make belief in a providential power difficult. But they also make belief in man and human progress difficult. There is the opium of religion, but also that of future-oriented utopian naturalisms such as Marxism. Why is utopian opium less narcotic than the religious variety? And isn’t it…
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Mark Steyn on Code Language
Thank God for Mark Steyn, a man of intelligence and courage and a resolute foe of liberal-left idiocies. He cites one Melissa Harris-Lacewell, professor of African-American studies at Princeton, who proffered the contemptible inanity that “language of personal responsibility is often a code language used against poor and minority communities.” Steyn comments: “Personal responsibility” is racial…
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Jimmy Carter, Race-Baiter
This is hard to believe. "I think an overwhelming portion of the intensely demonstrated animosity toward President Barack Obama is based on the fact that he is a black man, that he's African American," Carter tells us in the video clip to which I have just linked. First of all, what is being "intensely demonstrated" at…
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Why Am I So Hard on Liberals?
A reader comments by e-mail: I sometimes read your website. I'm generally impressed by (and envy) your clear-headedness and detail when it comes to technical questions, but I find myself turned off by some of the more "poetic" stuff and the political analysis (the former because I hate poetry, more on the latter below). [.…
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Environmentalism as Green Socialism and Nature Idolatry
From Jeffrey T. Kuhner, The War on Capitalism: Environmentalism has very little to do with protecting the environment. It is green socialism. Its objective is to achieve what red communism couldn't: the conquest of capitalism. Instead of central planning and a command economy, we would have a highly regulated, highly taxed bureaucratic corporatism that would…
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Rorty on the Idea of a Liberal Society: Anything Goes
Rorty is dead, but a thinker lives on in his recorded thoughts, and we honor a thinker by thinking his thoughts with a mind that is at once both open and critical, open but not empty or passive. In Chapter Three of Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity, Richard Rorty writes: It is central to the idea…
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Once Again on Liberal Bias in Academe with Some Remarks on Indoctrination
A reader e-mails (my responses in blue): I had a question regarding your blog post, From the Mail Pouch: Of Comments and Liberal Bias. Does the intention to indoctrinate follow from the fact that academia has more registered Democrats than Republicans? No, it doesn't follow, but neither did I say that it followed. Obviously, group…