Kirsten Powers: Leftists Create a New Dark Age of Intolerant Anti-Intellectualism

The terrific thing about mob anger is that it requires so very little thought.

Welcome to the Dark Ages, Part II. We have slipped into an age of un-enlightenment where you fall in line behind the mob or face the consequences.

How ironic that the persecutors this time around are the so-called intellectuals. They claim to be liberal while behaving as anything but. The touchstone of liberalism is tolerance of differing ideas. Yet this mob exists to enforce conformity of thought and to delegitimize any dissent from its sanctioned worldview. Intolerance is its calling card.

Each week seems to bring another incident. Last week it was David and Jason Benham, whose pending HGTV show was canceled after the mob unearthed old remarks the brothers made about their Christian beliefs on homosexuality. People can't have a house-flipping show unless they believe and say the "right" things in their life off the set?

...

Don't bother trying to make sense of what beliefs are permitted and which ones will get you strung up in the town square. Our ideological overlords have created a minefield of inconsistency. While criticizing Islam is intolerant, insulting Christianity is sport. Ayaan Hirsi Ali is persona non grata at Brandeis University for attacking the prophet Mohammed. But Richard Dawkins describes the Old Testament God as "a misogynistic … sadomasochistic … malevolent bully" and the mob yawns. Bill Maher calls the same God a "psychotic mass murderer" and there are no boycott demands of the high-profile liberals who traffic his HBO show.

The self-serving capriciousness is crazy.

She writes that few of these assholes have bothered to think and ask the question, "What happens when they come for me?"

Instapundit excerpts this article on PC mobism as a "positional good." (The article has been linked here before, but is worth a read if you missed it.)

And a member of the Washington Post's editorial board, Jonathan Capehart, patiently explains dictates that tolerance is a one-way street, contradicting a man who offered the rather uncontroversial idea that it ought to run in both directions.

Here's his quote -- and note the correction he makes to his words after blurting them out.

[T]olerance, no, is not – it should not be a two-way street. It’s a one-way street. You cannot say to someone that who you are is wrong, an abomination, is horrible, get a room, and all of those other things that people said about Michael Sam, and not be forced — not forced, but not be made to understand that what you’re saying and what you’re doing is wrong.

He accidentally spoke the truth with that "forced" choice of terminology, before attempting to say something less honest.

But the formulation he settled on -- "made to understand" -- is actually worse, as it mixes the leftist's adoration of mob coercion with the leftist's fascination with sinister euphemism.

posted by Ace at 01:54 PM

| Access Comments