I have spent a fair amount of time recently looking at the roots of Political Correctness and illustrating some of the ways in which it interferes with our ability to accurately perceive and assess reality. I thought it might be useful to suggest some possible reasons why people insist on clinging to a PC world view.
The current issue which is most acute relates our views of Islam and the war on terror. The PC view, which overlaps with the left-wing view, suggests that Islam is, as claimed, a religion of peace but that some individuals are driven to extreme measures, like suicide bombs, because of America's unprovoked assaults on the innocent Muslims of Iraq. England, a country that has been so tolerant of Islamic fascists as to earn the name Londonstan for its capital, is now being punished for joining America in the persecution of the innocent Arab. Finally, in this world view, most roads lead back to Israel, which has been tormenting the innocent Palestinian victims for the last 40 years.
I will not review the voluminous material on the growth of al Qaeda during the Clinton administration, bin Laden's failure to mention Israel in their initial complaints about the West, the multitude of connections between al Qaeda-terrorists of other stripes-Saddam Hussein, etc. Many others have done excellent work on these issues that I could never hope to replicate. For some recent summary articles take a look at Bill Roggio's brilliant al Qaeda Attacks: A Flash Presentation, John Hawkins's Debunking 8 Anti-War Myths About The Conflict In Iraq, and Stephen F. Hayes & Thomas Joscelyn's The Mother of All Connections.
In the face of all this evidence, it is still possible for a reasonable person to disagree with taking the war into the Iraq theater; it is certainly possible to disagree with the execution of the war; it is possible to disagree with the strategy and tactics of the entire war. However, most of the anti-war opponents never do any such things. They tend to look toward the past and accuse the Bush administration of lying, or misleading us into war, or accuse us of creating more terrorists by going into Iraq. What has been lacking has been any suggestion of how better to prosecute the war on terror. What could be behind this?
I would suggest that the anti-war, PC-thought, point of view, is a defensive structure which serves to protect a person form the reality of the threat we are facing.
The defensive nature of the structure is revealed by its lack of involvement with the mass of facts that counter their point of view, and their inability to articulate any alternative approach that can be supported by any reading of the situation. For example, the idea of turning to the UN, which was bruited about during the fall and has now disappeared, could only be held by denying that the UN has failed in every arena in which it has tried to protect innocent people or halt hostilities. The idea of getting out of Iraq as quickly as possible via training Iraqis to perform their own security is a non-sequitor; it is exactly what we have been doing. Thus, the divorce from reality and the essential non-involvement with contravening arguments (ad hominem arguments do not constitute arguments) reveals the defensive nature of the argument as a rationalization or intellectualization. This further implies that the defense has its roots in the unconscious and is directed at an unconscious threat or threats.
I think there are several layers of threat involved and will try to delineate a few of them. First of all, terrorism, when it strikes close to home, is terrifying. That is how it exercises its power. The majority of Americans, and apparently of Brits, as well, controlled their fears and reacted with anger and rage to attacks on our innocents. Thus far, we have been able to channel our fear and rage and direct it to our efforts where one can appropriately argue they will do the most good. Please note, I am not at this point claiming that everything we are doing in Iraq and the world is right, or even that going into Iraq was our best alternative, or even a wise alternative. I am suggesting that the lack o alternatives presented by the opponents is revealing of unconscious fears and anxieties that are unacknowledged by both sides.
A terrified person tends to want to appease the bully rather than confront him. Fascists are nothing if not bullies, and thrive on appeasement. Just as it was in grade school, the braver course is to confront the bully even at the risk of a black eye that would have been avoided if only you had handed over your lunch money. Children soon learn that if they give up their lunch money on the first day of school, they will not have lunch for the rest of the year, except at the sufferance of the bully. This is precisely the offer that al Qaeda has extended to us, the Spanish, the English. That they lied to the Spanish is also neglected to be mentioned by the PC-appeasers, but that is just more proof that the bully can always increase his demands when the victim has the temerity to stand up to him. A person who has to deny his own terror (and keep it unconscious) will construct rationalizations to support the position which requires less courage.
Another fear of much of the anti-war crowd, and this applies especially to the MSM, Academia and the Democratic Party, is the fear of losing their influence, cachet, and power. The New York Times can see its circulation eroding under its feet; CBS, once the paragon of what a news organization should be, can see the future and it is a future, if trends continue, in which a cable news station will soon have a bigger circulation than they will have. The only hope they have of maintaining relevance is for Iraq to be a disaster. Their ideas have been repudiated with regularity and only a disaster or terrible scandal offers any hope for the left to regain a modicum of power. As long as these people cannot bear to imagine that their ideas may be faulty, they will continue to insist that they are right, create semi-plausible rationalizations to explain why so few listen to them, and hope for disaster; if they are wrong, they forfeit their authority, especially in their own eyes.
On a more personal level, PC-thought has become integrated into the self concept as a support for the ego ideal and self esteem of many of the narcissistic left. I have written about this extensively and will not repeat the discussion here except as a brief summary: People in the left need to believe they are smarter, wiser, and more caring than their opponents; to accept that their ideas do not work and have been rejected by the country requires them to not only assume their opponents are evil and stupid, but to force them to root for failure in Iraq as the only way to vindicate their positions. This is an awful position to be in for anyone who wants to have influence in our society. Again, to put oneself into such a position requires one to be unaware of how invested they are emotionally in their position.
As so often happens, this post has become longer than anticipated and I will take my leave. As always I hope for someone to responsibly and respectfully disagree, preferably offering facts and links to support their position; thus far, responsible disagreement has been rare from the left.
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