On Loathing Mere Conservatives

June 2, 2002

by Gary Larson

They bristle with self-righteous indignation, as if to say "how dare dispute my moral certainty?" They dismiss you as a nitwit. You’re a "right-wing nut case," a bigot maybe, even (gasp!) a Nazi. Your conservative nature baffles ’em. Your Christian values - traditional, you know - are distinctively unhip. They tend to attack you, and foul motives they ascribe to you, up-close and personal.

What stirs liberal mainstream editorial folks to knee-jerk angst? Columnist-editor Jonah Goldberg in National Review Online (March 27, 2002) describes the mind-set: "... liberals denounce conservatives as awful, evil, heartless, greedy, nasty people." His verb, denounce, is hardly an understatement.

I am discovering this firsthand. Editors replying to my e-mail criticism figuratively flip me the bird. Their replies range from facile off-puts to character assaults. Politeness does not disturb their hubris. It gets ugly sometimes. One local editorial page writer calls me "friggen Nazi" for what? Criticizing her earnest left-liberal notions. I kid you not; sadly, it’s all too true.

Another editor says I am a "Clinton-hater." Well, I do abhor lying, perjury, obstruction of justice, corruption, pardon peddling, vile stuff like that, and rape. But do I hate the man? No. Pity is more like it. Why is this dichotomy so difficult for these editors to understand?

Editors parry my critiques with invective. Here they must perceive an Emanuel Goldstein, the hate object in George Orwell’s novel, Nineteen Eighty-four. Orwell fans will recall "Manny" Goldstein is the Enemy of the People, subject of the daily "Two Minutes Hate" rally in Oceania’s Ministry of Truth ("MiniTruth"). Now I emphasize with Orwell’s well-hissed scumbag whose crime no one remembers, not least Winston Smith, Orwell’s hero who worked at "MiniTruth."

Editorials’ adjective of choice nowadays is "far." Rarely applied to the left, only right, it’s followed often by "-wing," as a gratuitous slur. "Nut case" is the editorial left’s beloved aphorism. It’s faintly reminiscent of what ideological foes were termed - albeit straight-faced - in the former Soviet Union. Crazy, eh?

What happened to editorialists’ senses of humor? Replies so devoid of wit, I wonder, can’t they lighten up? Snarl less? What’s the joy in snippy postmodernist put-downs?

Another editorial writer rips me for "trying to change my [her] mind." Well, gol-ly, the shoe fits one way? Hello! It’s called expressing another view. Happens all the time in noisy democracies. Really.

Smug intolerance of others’ views bodes not well for any truth searches. Thomas Jefferson said differences of opinion lead to inquiry, and inquiry to truth. Regard if not respect for readers’ opinions seems to be a minimal starting point.

As editor myself (in B.C., before computers) I signed a pre-printed postal card to each letter-writer. We respected readers’ views-well, mostly-even when submitted in Crayola. Wannabe op-ed writers got polite form letters, typically with my friendly personal thank-yous scribbled at the bottom. (At times I wrote lack of space did not permit us to print their keen insights. I lied.)

Ah, the Good Old Days. Not as good as they were, as G. K. Chesterton quipped, but then again, Everything under the Sun then was not politically-charged. All was not framed in bloody ideological and war-like terms. New ballgame today. An emotional politics-of-meaning milieu crept in silently, when no one was looking, mainly brought by leftist activists. Now we are, all of us, defined by categorized views, and called hateful names sometimes. Intellectual tyranny I wonder?

A new editorial breed-thankfully, not monolithic - brings to the table a conceit not witnessed before, except in defense of Alger Hiss at mid-century. Some editorial page staffs flash "we’re right and you’re wrong, ha-ha-ha!" Chips on their shoulders, they unload on critics of their firmly-held liberal beliefs. Sometimes they call their beliefs "core principles." This might tell us something about their cocksure moral certitude.

My recent experiences bespeak a drift beyond partisanship. Some of my replies-witness the "Nazi" tag-border on the hate-filled rhetoric of, say, irrational militants. Note that much hate speech today - e.g., Nazi, Taliban-like, McCarthyite, bigot, racist, et. al., to describe one’s foes-spews from the left? Has decency on the left taken a hike? In such a crazy-quilt world, critic Frank Rich in The New York Times Magazine calling conservatives "gargoyles and lunatics" is almost comic relief.

Such tirades are the stuff of party-lines - rude, crude and, oh yes, untrue. Orwell got it right in his time-honored essay, "Politics and the English Language" (1946). Rendering good words virtually devoid of meaning is an ideological weapon. "Political language," wrote Orwell, "is designed to make lies sound truthful." Likely in a foul mood that awful day in 1946, Orwell also wrote: "... politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred, and schizophrenia." Was he prescient?

Lacking humility, some editorialists today remind me of little kids in hissy fits. Not having their way, kids lash back at all who disagree with their cherished belief systems. Baby Boomer liberals did pretty much have their way growing up. It must be gut-wrenching to admit to any flaws in their counter-cultural beliefs.

Elite media do not, as a rule, give conservatives their due. Not surprisingly, folks today increasingly get their news and commentaries today from this marvelous Internet, from cable and satellite TV. Middle America is savvy now to media bias.

Like deranged TV anchor Howard Beal in filmdom’s "Network," some are mad as hell, and not taking it anymore. They’re turning off Big Media. If the media "suits" catch on some day, perhaps they’ll be open more to conservative voices. Free enterprise, always dear to us classic liberals - a.k.a. modern conservatives - will have scored famously. Well, we mere conservatives can dream, anyway, of fairness and level playing fields in media Elysium, can’t we?

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© 2002 by Gary Larson & America’s Voices, Inc. All rights reserved.
Gary Larson is a former association executive and editor of newspapers and an award-winning business magazine at Harcourt Brace Jovonovich. Larson was also a combat correspondent, and one-time stringer in VietNam for Stars & Stripes. He retired to northern Minnesota (and winters in Florida and Arkansas). He is not the retired cartoonist, only another fan of The Far Side. His editorials and commentaries appear in other popular Internet webzines such as Front Page Magazine, EtherZone, PoliticalUSA and Accuracy in Media (the media watchdog organization based in Washington D.C.). You can contact Gary at glarson@americasvoices.org.