YET ANOTHER LATE RESPONSE

On the Rules of Engagement

A little while ago, when I remembered the strange reconnection I had with one of my former friends, Subwife asked how come it's all right, in my opinion, when conservatives call liberals stupid, but not all right when the situation is reversed; doesn't that smack of double standard? Posed like this, it is a very interesting topic for discussion, so, here goes.

First of all, let us identify the players. On one hand, we have the group that calls themselves liberals, and so, by default, everyone else started calling them liberals also. That definition, of course, could not be further from the truth, because that particular group represents the most malevolent and freedom-suppressing force ever to arise on American political scene. Overwhelming amount of these people possesses a very interesting set of morals and a firm believe that all the personal liberties enumerated in American Constitution apply to them exclusively; and, as the irony of fate would have it, since the majority of media is controlled by them, our conscious and subconscious minds are constantly being bombarded with direct and subliminal messages to the tune that only that peculiar set of morals is "true morals" and these people are true defenders of our Constitutional rights and freedoms.

On the other hand we have an opposing bunch, whose members are, again by default, identified as conservatives; and, again, that is not precisely so. As I mentioned before, they are pretty diverse crew by themselves, coming from all kinds of political thought and political school; the only thing that unites them is the opposition to the so called liberals, but that does not necessarily make them conservatives, and a lot of them are not: just look at Tammy Bruce. So, what we have in a nutshell are basically people on the left and all the rest, who are usually on the right and sometimes in the center. Out of consideration for my fingers I will simply call them lefties and righties in this here composition.

Now, in the normal, civilized course of political argument nobody, obviously, calls their opponents names and nobody raises his or her voice. You present your opinion, your opposition presents theirs, and hopefully, both of you have substantiating evidence. At a certain point you realize that both of you feel too strongly about the topic discussed and you will not convince each other to switch opinions. So, you politely agree to disagree, smile, and either wish each other good evening or switch the discussion to flighty New York weather, or Yankees, or latest movie, or Agatha Cristie, or ballet, or Paris Hilton (hopefully, you and your opponent have some other interests aside from latest development on the political scene). That scenario, again, works perfectly well if you are dealing with civilized people who, at a certain point in their development, were taught at least a modicum of proper manners. Unfortunately, when you are dealing with lefties, that is usually not the case.

These people, both the leaders and the followers, are firmly convinced that they took over Pope's ability to be infallible, and that they, and they alone, possess all the right answers and all the secrets of the universe. Freedom of speech belongs exclusively to them; all the members of the opposition are reactionaries, members of the right-wing conspiracy, racists, etc, and, as such, are not entitled to express their opinion in any shape or form. Moreover, your belonging to the opposition (again, in any shape or form) automatically makes you stupid, or, at the very least, uneducated and uninformed. Here are some snippets from my personal experience.

Holiday lunch at a friend's house. Usual (for her) motley assembly. Conversation zigzags around strange topics, and yours truly pipes something in defense of McCarthy, followed by immediate and predictable outrage from another guest. "You really should read up on the topic" goes her superior advice down her nose. "I just did it few months ago". "Really?" with disbelieve.

Election day. I am chatting with one of my friendlier co-workers. He is totally confused as for whom to vote and asking my advice. I confess that I vote down the party line exclusively for Republicans, so, I am not necessarily an unbiased adviser. Another woman from a different department is passing by. "You vote for Republicans? How dare you! You would not be allowed into my house!"

Another friendly co-worker sets me up with a blind date. The guy has a promising political career working as an underflunkie to some kind of councilman (Democrat, of course). As irony would have, that was around February of another Presidential election year, and, of course, he wanted to find out what candidate appealed to me. The moment I mentioned my party affiliation, he became extremely condescending and downright nasty, mocking every single opinion I had on any subject and leaching on to every single little scrap of information that I did not know and he did. Let's just say it was a most memorable date.

So, basically, lefties usually view righties as stupid by default; righties usually call lefties stupid (and some other choice names) after thorough study, interesting evidence and long experience (like happened in my case). Unfortunately, the battle lines are much deeper than that. Saul Alinksy, whom some biographers of our dear Hilary Rodham Clinton call her spiritual mentor, basically taught his followers to use the bourgeois mentality of their opponents and make a complete mockery of it. Here is a charming example I found in one of Barbara Olsen's books: Alinsky instructed his goons to eat beans and then go protest some kind of meeting (do not remember which one, but it was inside a closed room) and basically distract the said meeting with excessive flatulence. How, may I ask you, are you supposed to remain civilized when dealing with such opponents?

Just think about it: in a few decades since the sixties (which is a very short period of time, historically speaking), lefties have taken over tremendous chunks of American life, education being the most crucial of them. Freedom of speech belongs exclusively to them; political correctness is chocking everyone else. From the leftie's point of view, there is no respect for the enemy: he has to be yelled at, yelled down, deprived of his ability to express the said opinion, and hopefully deprived of his livelihood. Meanwhile, we are supposed to remain civilised and bleat at all and sundry that these people do not adhere to the rules of civilized behavior and gentleman's fighting code? In my humble opinion, one of the reasons lefties have such virulent hatred towards Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter particularly is because these two engaged them at their own battlefield and emerged triumphant, never mind very popular.

In my long association with lefties there was only one person with whom I could speak about politics and not loose my cool. She was also a former co-worker, by the way. When she felt that the discussion was entering dangerous waters , she would just propose to agree to disagree and jokingly add that that is why we have vanilla ice cream and chocolate ice cream. The taste that was left in my mouth after discussions with all the other lefties I have either known on a personal level or just encountered in strange situations usually did not resemble ice cream, either vanilla or chocolate. The saddest part of all? Time for discussions has past long time ago. We are in the middle of a very serious fight. Our freedom, the future of our children, and the future of this country are at stake, never mind the the decline and almost total non-existence of polite behavior.