Man, I wish I’d written this:
But it wasn’t only liberal illogic that caused me to dump the whole program—much of it had to do with gradual changes in liberal attitudes and behavior. I’m old enough to remember when liberals were free-speech absolutists and conservatives tended to be the book-burners. But historical forces can blur, erase, and often invert party lines.
Over the years, I watched as liberals slowly became the group most likely to flat-out refuse discussing certain topics and answering certain questions, their purportedly “open” minds snapping shut like a giant clam. They became the group most likely to try and silence their opponents by shouting them down, defaming them, assaulting them, and even urging legislation to ban the use and expression of certain terms and sentiments. They became the group most disposed toward emotional appeals, double standards, wishful thinking, and wretchedly malodorous sanctimony.
Read the whole thing. It’s good.
Hat Tip: Spleenville.
UPDATE: I actually found the above on a blog a rarely read these days. Following some links on even less frequently read blogs I came across this:
The book’s French cancellation is, I realize, a rather small cultural event. Yet it gives specific color to the recent revelations on the Daily Caller website that left-wing journalists conspired to suppress scandals that might harm Barack Obama and to the brouhaha over Breitbart’s online release of a video that resulted in a government worker’s momentarily losing her job. In both stories, one thing leaps out at me: everywhere, the Left favors fewer voices and less information, and conservatives favor more. Everywhere, the Left seeks to disappear its opposition, whereas the Right is willing to meet them head-on.
Take the e-mails that the Daily Caller obtained from the now-defunct lefty Web service Journolist. Never mind the personal or psychological implications of a radio producer who lovingly imagines Rush Limbaugh’s death or a law professor who doesn’t know that the FCC has no power to deprive Fox News of a license or a reporter who wants to smear Fred Barnes and other right-wing commentators as racist in order to distract the public from the hateful radicalism of Jeremiah Wright, then Obama’s pastor. The point is not these people’s animus or ignorance or wickedness. The point is that what they desired was not victory in open debate but silence—the silence of censorship, intimidation, or the grave.
When has Rush Limbaugh ever wished a liberal’s mouth closed forever? Really, who can deny that Rush would happily argue a point with absolutely anyone anywhere? When has Fox News ever done anything to its rival cable stations but trounce them in a free competition for ratings? When has Fred Barnes ever tried to bully or intimidate someone into shutting up?
But wait, on yet a third blog, I found this:
Progressivism offers — rather, promises: less freedom; less mobility; less prosperity; less comfort; less autonomy and sovereignty for individuals; less integrity and straightforwardness; less transparency among the ruling class, oversight of their capricious usurpations, and recourse to address the wrongs they encourage; less satisfaction in life; less self-respect and dignity; less of everything that makes life living, in sum.
But there are in fact some things they offer us more of: more government; more taxation; more overweening bureaucracy to exercise more control over our lives; more intolerance for differing ideas; more restriction; more strangulation.
Wow. I’ve been saying this for the longest time…liberal, progressive, whatever you call it, is in fact just the opposite of what those terms have historically meant. I am still the liberal here. The rest of you have gone mad…
