In today's New York Sun, R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr., with tongue lightly implanted in cheek, wonders about the source of liberals' discontent with the world in Alone At the Heart Of Liberalism. He points out that liberal principles are exactly what are most at risk in the current war against Islamic fascism, which would suggest that they would be very supportive of the efforts to defeat such an illiberal movement, yet the liberals have moved far to the left and are effectively trying to hamstring our military and the administration in their prosecution of the war. Tyrrell quotes Brett Stephens' piece in the WSJ last week:
In a thoughtful and timely Wall Street Journal column Bret Stephens offers this, "Here's a puzzle: Why is it so frequently the case that the people who have the most at stake in the battle against Islamic extremism and the most to lose when Islamism gains — namely liberals — are typically the most reluctant to fight?" They have also been the first to bug out of Iraq, which one would think does not put liberals in a good light.
Mr. Stephens advances several reasons, none of which diminishes the irony of his point. He offers the liberals' "instinct for pacifism," their moral relativism, their weakness for appeasement and their confusion of Islamism with opposition to materialism and to the corporate world.
Tyrrell then offers his assessment:
But I have an additional explanation. The liberals are uncomfortable being on the side of bourgeois conventionality. Some see this as anti-Americanism. Actually it is something more amusing.
It stems from the liberals' only unwavering political value, the political value that now stands alone at the heart of liberalism. That value is a misdemeanor in the criminal codes of most civilized countries. It is disturbance of the peace. Drop a liberal into a community where conventions have been established and where civility reigns and our liberal friend will find some triviality to protest. Our liberal friends are congenitally alienated.
Before I offer a somewhat deeper explanation, allow me to digress for a moment. There are a couple of other stories that shed some light on the problem. All of these stories involve cherished liberal positions.
Captain Ed asks, Since When Has Geneva Protected Our Troops?
The arguments employed by the opponents of George Bush's plan to establish specific definitions for Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions make one argument over and over again, and rarely get challenged on it. They claim that any redefinition or apparent backsliding on the Geneva Conventions will put our own troops at risk; Colin Powell made the same argument yesterday. However, they fail to explain how the GC has ever protected American troops during wartime:
Colin L. Powell, Mr. Bush’s former secretary of state, sided with the senators, saying in a letter that the president’s plan to redefine the Geneva Conventions would encourage the world to “doubt the moral basis of our fight against terrorism,” and “put our own troops at risk.” ...
Richard Miniter points out that all of our PC kindness toward Guantanamo detainees has been counter-productive at best, A DEADLY KINDNESS:
America has never faced an enemy who has so ruthlessly broken all of the rules of war - yet never has an enemy been treated so well.
Of Gitmo's several camps, military records show that the one with the most lenient rules is the one with the most incidents and vice versa. There is a lesson in this: We should worry less about detainee safety and more about our own.
Some 20 current detainees have direct personal knowledge of the 9/11 attacks and nearly everyone of the current 440 say they would honored to attack America again. Let's take them at their word.
The Anchoress describes the unhinged media reaction to Pope Benedict's recent speech, Headline tells the story of the AFP Press:
Pope enjoys private time after slamming Islam H/T Amy.
“Slamming?” What a provocative word.
The WaPo, more accurately: Pope Invites Muslims to Dialogue.
In a major lecture at Regensburg University, where he taught theology between 1969 to 1977, Benedict said Christianity was tightly linked to reason and contrasted this view with those who believe in spreading their faith by the sword.
The 79-year-old Pontiff avoided making a direct criticism of Islam, packaging his comments in a highly complex academic lecture with references ranging from ancient Jewish and Greek thinking to Protestant theology and modern atheism.In his lecture, the Pope quoted a 14th century Byzantine emperor who wrote in a dialogue with a Persian that Mohammad had brought things “only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.”
The Pope, who used the terms “jihad” and “holy war” in his lecture, added: “Violence is incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul.”
....Hello, mediafolk - can’t you get a grip on your employees? Between the Reuters folk doctoring photographs, and the headline writers doing all they can to spin things (and they have some effect; lots of people don’t read beyond the headlines) are you really wondering why you’re so disliked and distrusted? You write a headline like Pope enjoys private time after slamming Islam and you let it go out, knowing it’s not right, knowing it will foment hated and distrust and possibly violence, but still it stands?
Just one more item, which might at first seem disconnected, but is actually close to the heart of the problem of liberalism. In another New York Sun article today, Andrew Wolf describes a victory in the war against unreason in Turnaround In the Math Wars:
In a change of heart, it appears that the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, the group which has spent the better part of two decades promoting what has become known as "fuzzy math," has done a 180 degree turnaround. Now, once again, they embrace more traditional instruction.
This was reported on the front page of the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday and represents good news for America's ability to compete in world markets.
Proponents of "fuzzy" or constructivist math eschew the idea of teaching math by drilling or by formula. Thus memorization of times tables was discouraged, so much so that the Thomas Fordham Foundation found that only two-dozen states required that students commit multiplication tables to memory. In many school districts, children are no longer taught long division.
What joins all these stories is an antipathy and fear of aggression and its derivative, competition, which is the fundamental guiding force behind liberalism. (I am not addressing far left totalitarianism which has no problem with aggression and uses skillful rationalization to subvert more soft-hearted, and soft-minded, liberals to support their goals.) For many years, the goal of liberalism has been to minimize the impact of aggression in the world. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this goal but when one's fear of one's own aggression is kept out of awareness, it exacts a terrible price in its drive for expression. Too many liberals have been willing to condemn youngsters to Math illiteracy in order to protect them from competition they might lose. Too many liberals have subverted sports in our schools to avoid having any child win or lose. Too many are willing to appease the violent in the hopes that they won't get mad at us. It all fits a pattern of discomfort with aggression and its overt expression, even in attenuated and sublimated ways (like normal competition) that has come dangerously close to disarming us as a people.
Managing and containing the aggressive drive is a prerequisite for civilization, yet when the civilized liberal becomes so frightened of his own aggression that he attempts to suppress every overt expression of aggression, even when it is appropriate and necessary for his survival, he invites greater and greater violence from those who are not similarly constrained. This is a lesson which tends to be forgotten during peace time and must be relearned periodically.
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