Friday, April 22, 2011

Why Are Liberals So Condescending?

KPC friend, and my own good friend, Gerard Alexander had a piece in the WaPo that was good a year ago, and even better now. Worth reading. Excerpt:

It's an odd time for liberals to feel smug. But even with Democratic fortunes on the wane, leading liberals insist that they have almost nothing to learn from conservatives. Many Democrats describe their troubles simply as a PR challenge, a combination of conservative misinformation -- as when Obama charges that critics of health-care reform are peddling fake fears of a "Bolshevik plot" -- and the country's failure to grasp great liberal accomplishments. "We were so busy just getting stuff done . . . that I think we lost some of that sense of speaking directly to the American people about what their core values are," the president told ABC's George Stephanopoulos in a recent interview. The benighted public is either uncomprehending or deliberately misinformed (by conservatives).

This condescension is part of a liberal tradition that for generations has impoverished American debates over the economy, society and the functions of government -- and threatens to do so again today, when dialogue would be more valuable than ever.


ATSRTWT

3 comments:

Mr. Overwater said...

Wait, Mungowitz is complaining about somebody ELSE being condescending?

Wow. Besides Bill O'Reilly, Beck, and Limbaugh, I don't know where you can find more condescending smugness than this blog.

And they say it's not productive. Hrm!

Mungowitz said...

Mr. O: We are MORE condescending than Beck.

I'll give you O'Reilly and Limbaugh, tho. So we're third.

Bob said...

http://www.claremont.org/publications/crb/id.1594/article_detail.asp