{"id":11725,"date":"2010-04-02T15:58:53","date_gmt":"2010-04-02T15:58:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2010\/04\/02\/the-racism-charge-the-lefts-attempt-to-shut-down-debate\/"},"modified":"2010-04-02T15:58:53","modified_gmt":"2010-04-02T15:58:53","slug":"the-racism-charge-the-lefts-attempt-to-shut-down-debate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2010\/04\/02\/the-racism-charge-the-lefts-attempt-to-shut-down-debate\/","title":{"rendered":"The Racism Charge: The Left’s Attempt to Shut Down Debate"},"content":{"rendered":"

In The Faith of a Liberal<\/em>, Morris Raphael Cohen<\/a> <\/font>writes<\/font><\/a> that "The touchstone that enables us to recognize liberalism is the question of toleration . . . ." Now if toleration is the touchstone of liberalism, there is nothing liberal about contemporary liberals.  They should therefore not be called 'liberals' but leftists.  There is nothing tolerant about them.  They show no interest in open discussion, free inquiry and the traditional values of classical liberalism.  And they are poor winners to boot.  With the passage of the health care bill they scored a victory.  So why all the querulous fulmination against the Tea Party patriots to whom the  lefties love to refer as 'teabaggers'?  Why, in particular, the routinely repeated charge of 'racism'?<\/font><\/p>\n

This is now the party line of the Dems and toe it they will as witness the otherwise somewhat reasonable and mild-mannered Alan Colmes in this segment, <\/font>Political Hatred in America<\/font><\/a>, from The O'Reilly Factor.<\/em> Colmes begins his rant around 6:07 with the claim that "what is driving this [the Tea Party protests] is racism."  It looks as if Colmes is under party discipline; otherwise, how could so intelligent and apparently decent a man say something so blatantly false and scurrilous?  That something so silly and vicious should emerge from the mouth of a twit like Janeane Garofalo is of course nothing to wonder at. What idiocies won't<\/em> HollyWeird liberals spout?  But Alan Colmes?  If we remember that for the Left the end justifies the means, however, things begin to fall in place.  The Left will do anything to win. Slanders, smears, shout-downs . . . all's fair in love and war.  Leftists understand and apply what I call the Converse Clausewitz Principle<\/a>: Politics is war conducted by other means.<\/font><\/p>\n

When leftists hurl their 'racism' charge, just what are they alleging?  Two possibilities.<\/font><\/p>\n

A.  One is that the arguments brought against Obama's policies are not arguments at all but mere expressions of racism and bigotry.  But this 'possibility' is beneath refutation.  Make a simple distinction.  There is Obama and there are his policies.  Obama is black, or rather half-black and half-white, but his policies are not members of any race.  White leftists advocate the same policies. Arguments against the policies are not attacks against the man.  Need I say more?<\/font><\/p>\n

B.  The other interpretive possibility is that the conservative arguments are genuine arguments, not mere expressions of racism and bigotry, but that the can be refuted by claiming that the people who advance them are all, or most of them, racists.  But of course it is egregiously FALSE that all or most or even many of these people are racists.  Only some of them are.  But then there are 'bad apples' in every bunch, so this fact is not significant.<\/font><\/p>\n

But even if we suppose, contrary to fact,  that every single conservative who argues against Obama's policies is a flaming racist, that has no bearing on the validity or invalidity of the conservative arguments.  To think otherwise is to commit the genetic fallacy.  Again, need I say more?<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In The Faith of a Liberal, Morris Raphael Cohen writes that "The touchstone that enables us to recognize liberalism is the question of toleration . . . ." Now if toleration is the touchstone of liberalism, there is nothing liberal about contemporary liberals.  They should therefore not be called 'liberals' but leftists.  There is nothing tolerant … Continue reading “The Racism Charge: The Left’s Attempt to Shut Down Debate”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,163,56,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11725","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-current-affairs","category-leftism-and-political-correctness","category-politics","category-race"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11725","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11725"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11725\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11725"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11725"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11725"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}