Right Wing Nation

Not to be cliché, but do liberals never tire of being wrong?

Liberals have so consistently been wrong, the list seems never ending—though where liberals were wrong or lying is open to interpretation. Liberals were wrong about Lenin, wrong about Stalin, wrong about Trotsky, wrong about the USSR (20 million deaths wrong), wrong about Mao (65 million deaths wrong), wrong about North Korea (2 million deaths wrong), wrong about the Cold War. Liberals were wrong about the Rosenbergs, wrong about Alger Hiss, wrong about the Communist Party, wrong about McCarthy. Liberals were wrong about Ho Chi Minh, wrong about the North Vietnamese, wrong about the Tet Offensive—and let us make sure that it is said clearly that liberals were wrong about Vietnam, 2.5 million deaths wrong.

Despite their howling about human dignity and rights, only Communists have more blood on their hands than liberals. 89.5 million deaths is nothing to sneeze at (and that’s a conservative estimate). And liberals have no shame or guilt about those deaths, either; no, they insist on the myth that hippies were cultural heroes, and their political stances were justified and righteous.

Liberals were wrong about the New Deal. Liberals were wrong about terrorism, wrong about Hussein, wrong about Afghanistan, wrong about Iraq. Liberals were wrong about US intelligence, wrong about Iran, wrong about Cuba, wrong about the UN—the list goes on and on.

In fact, I’m having a very hard time coming up with anything liberals were right about, and I really am trying. Liberals were right at least in spirit about civil rights in the 60s, though wrong in their implementation (although it cost him the election, Goldwater was right to oppose the Civil Rights Act of 1964 as an unconstitutional law—though at least is was democratic and not legislated by the courts). That’s as close as I can come.

The thing is, getting liberals to admit they were (or are) wrong is nearly impossible. In nearly any instance, the closest liberals get to admitting error is to twist the truth and claim, suddenly, that they were right.

So we have Kennedy and Kerry claiming that liberals deserve credit for the fall of the USSR (this after both howled through Reagan’s presidency about how his policies, which resulted in the fall of the USSR, were going to bring us to nuclear war). Or we have liberals claiming Clinton was responsible for welfare reform (yes, he campaigned on welfare reform, but had to be forced to sign the welfare reform bill over his veto; welfare reform was thanks only to Gingrich and the Republican Congress).

Liberals who admit they were wrong do so when they become conservatives.

So liberals still uphold the mythology of the 60s and claim to be cultural heroes, and still scream about American war crimes in Vietnam as if every soldier there raped babies on a daily basis, even though My Lai was the only example of any such war crimes, and even though the VVAW’s “Winter Soldier” hearings were found after investigation to be pure bunk. You will never, however, hear a liberal admit that the conservatives were right about the domino effect, even though Cambodia and Laos fell like dominoes as soon as we pulled out, nor will you hear a liberal admit that pulling out resulted in millions of deaths.

Take the Killing Fields, which graphically deals with the bloodbath of the Khmer Rouge. The first half of the movie squarely lays the blame not on the murderers, but on the United States—when what blame does belong to the United States falls squarely and solely on the shoulders of the anti-war liberal Democrats.

What’s going on? How can so many people be so utterly oblivious to reality that they cannot even see how much death and destruction their socialist, pro-leftist dicatator policies have caused?

If I were Ann Coulter, I’d say they were lying. Some are. But it’s not that simple, I’m sorry to say. And to answer the question, we have to delve into the culture of fear known as liberalism.

Liberals are afraid of many things—firearms, flags, imaginary “hate crimes” that haven’t happened yet but might someday if their agenda isn’t implemented—but foremost among them is conservatives. Liberals isolate themselves in ghettos of liberals. Those who do, in fact, know a conservative or two don’t discuss anything with them.

At our goodbye party, a group of liberals was talking to me. One said (incorrectly, by the way, but that’s another issue) that Penn State was not as “diverse” as IU. My response was, more or less, who cares? and it—rather, I—was outed. One of those liberals, when she found out that the Explorer with the GOP stickers was mine, said that she was scared—and she was only half kidding.

Liberals are frightened of conservatives for two basic reasons. First, liberals will not tolerate dissent in any form, and (correctly) perceive conservatives as a challenge to their delusions. Second, liberals have whipped themselves into a frenzy of fear about conservatives and Republicans—all you hear from liberals about either is how stupid or evil (or both) they are.

And this frenzy isn’t just rhetoric. It’s real.

These two reasons motivate liberals to only associate with other liberals. Liberals make the assumption that anytime they are talking to someone, the other person is also a liberal. Because liberals never interact with anyone but other liberals, they can weave a fantasy world where reality has no impact. Kennedy and the liberals were the reason the Soviet Union fell. Clinton gave us welfare reform. Hippies were cultural heroes, and nobody died as a result of our pulling out of Vietnam. Burning flags is patriotic. Bush is a Nazi. No liberal would ever think to question these precepts, or test them against facts. They are part of the liberal fantasy world, the Alice Through the Looking Glass land in which they live, upon which reality and facts have no effect. Point out that after four decades of affirmative action and handouts, the black community has more crime and poverty than any time since the end of the Civil War or that black males are more likely to end up dead or in prison—all incontrovertible facts—and they will tell you it’s because of “racism” if you’re lucky, though they’re more likely to tell you that you’re a racist. Try to point out how utterly devoid of any morals, ethics or principles Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton or Julian Bond is, and watch the fireworks. You cannot get liberals to discuss issues and deal with reality; they will only deal with their fantasies.

In order to do this, liberals have had to reduce every possible counter example or argument to hate, racism, sexism, homophobia, or whatever strawman they have come up with—and they have done this by disavowing the existence of personal responsibility and reducing all human beings to mindless puppets manipulated by external forces. So liberals avoid the “illegal” in illegal immigrant by charging racism. Liberals avoid Roe v. Wade by screaming sexism. Liberals avoid Vietnam by screaming My Lai. And so it goes.

Again, though I love Ann Coulter’s poison pen, I don’t think liberals are necessarily lying (and I don’t think that if she were sitting here, Ms. Coulter would disagree with me in a serious conversation). Some undoubtedly are, at least some of the time. And I don’t believe that liberals are inherently evil.

But as long as liberals live in their irreal world, as long as they only associate with or talk to other liberals and reinforce their delusions, and as long as they demonize conservatives, they will never admit their errors, or wash the blood from their hands.