Although Liberals have been
compelled to protect their outdated beliefs with a bodyguard of lies, this has
proved insufficient. Their ideology is
so worm-eaten that they have had to erect a fortress of myths to defend it. Fantasies based on wishful thinking are
required to do the job.
Not long ago I spent some
time with my siblings. Given the present
controversy over Israel and Iran, the question of president Obama’s motives
arose. Why, it was asked, do so many
Jews continue to support our president when he is apparently so hostile to
Israel?
My brother—who, before I go
further, is one of the most decent people I know—rushed to Barack’s
defense. Our Middle East problems, he
informed me, are of our own making. If
Muslims are antagonistic toward us, or Israel, it is because they were
provoked.
The story goes this
way. The United States is rapaciously
selfish. Americans are so convinced that
they deserve to live in luxury that decades ago they squandered their oil
resources. This forced them to
appropriate stocks of other countries—most notably in the Persian Gulf.
“We stole their oil!” Naturally they are displeased. As thieves and bullies, we should not be
surprised when our victims get angry at us and our allies. Clearly, we deserve their animosity!
When I responded that we did
not steal Arab oil—that we paid for
it, this justification fell on deaf ears.
Instead the response was “We stole their oil!”—only issued more
emphatically.
No further progress was made
in resolving our differences because the notion that we are villainous thugs
was deemed self-evident. I had, in fact,
run into a stonewall of liberal myths.
These sorts of narrative are impervious to facts. They, therefore, serve as formidable redoubts
against unwelcome views.
Indeed, liberal myths
abound. One of the more recent is “Hands
up, don’t shoot.” That Officer Wilson
shot an unarmed black teenager because he was a racist has become an article of
faith. Even a report to the contrary by
Eric Holder’s Department of Justice, changed few minds.
Yet contemplate the many other
liberal myths—and they go way back. To
begin with, Franklin Delano Roosevelt did not save us from the Great
Depression. If anything, he prolonged
it. Nor did Calvin Coolidge provoke this
downturn. In reality, his policies
produced a period of enormous economic growth.
As for the War on Poverty,
it was not responsible for lifting the downtrodden out of misery. The truth is that minorities were making
faster progress before it was enacted than after.
Meanwhile it was not
Republicans who denied African Americans civil rights. For over a century, it was Democrats who did
so. As recently as the 1950’s, a large
proportion of them stood in the schoolhouse door blocking the entrance of
blacks. Amazingly, it was Richard Nixon
who gave us affirmative action.
Or how about Global
Warming? Had enough snow yet this winter? If we have much more due to carbon emissions creating
a greenhouse effect, we are liable to freeze to death. No doubt this is why Obama assured us the
Keystone pipeline is more dangerous than ISIS.
During my family’s
discussions I also heard the old chestnut about how Bush lied and people
died. But funny how many liberals also
believed the CIA’s warnings about weapons of mass destruction and hence voted
for the Iraq War.
The thing about myths is
that they are extremely enduring and can be shaped to rationalize any policy. I find it particularly amusing that
progressives style themselves intellectuals.
This too, of course, is a myth—as is the fiction of their exceptional
compassion.
When I responded to my
brother by elaborating upon the history of Islamic aggression, he waved my
explanations aside. As far as he was
concerned, anyone can cherry pick the facts to prove anything. But isn’t this what liberals do when they
engage in mythmaking?
Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.
Professor of Sociology
Kennesaw State University
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