A Fortress of Myths

Although Liberals have been compelled to protect their outdated beliefs with a bodyguard of lies, this has proved insufficient.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