www.ornery.org/essays/warwatch/2004-10-17-2.html
Rhinoceros Times, Greensboro, NC By Orson Scott Card October 17, 2004 The Death of Shame I have been puzzled for some time by the behavior of the Left, not just i n this election but in the past decade. I watched in fascination during the whole Monica Lewinsky brouhaha, as Cl inton's defenders demanded an absurd degree of proof before they would a ccept that Bill was guilty (which, of course, he was), while at the same time believing instantly and without evidence the most outlandish charg es against Bill's accusers. Didn't they recognize their own absurd doubl e standard? Then in the campaign of 2000, I became increasingly angry over the truly vicious lies that were being told to African-American groups about Georg e W Bush. The solemn warnings of a return to Jim Crow if Bush were elec ted made it sound as if Bush were Strom Thurmond of 1948, when they knew perfectly well that Bush was one of the few Republicans who actually de served -- and, in Texas, got -- a higher than normal percentage of the b lack vote. And the Leftist-dominated media, instead of exposing the racially charged language being used by Gore's supporters -- as they would certainly hav e done if a Republican had used identical, but racially reversed, langua ge to all-white audiences -- let it go on and on virtually unmentioned. Of course, after nearly four years of Bush's presidency, it should be obv ious to black voters that the terrible warnings they were given in 2000 were completely false. But the race-baiting is already under way, albeit on a smaller scale, as the Democrats piously warn of "voter intimidatio n" Then in Florida, during the so-called "recount," the Left shamelessly spr ayed out accusations of how the Republicans had "disenfranchised" poor v oters, though in fact all they ever showed was the normal error rate tha t had been accepted for many years in elections throughout America -- an error rate that was always assumed to apply equally to both sides. In fact, that was the obvious basis of Richard Daley's selective recount effort on behalf of Gore in Florida. If you only recount the most Democr at-dominated voting precincts, then, by finding the normal number of err ors, the resulting increase in correctly counted ballots will be tilted strongly for the Democratic candidate. It was a scam -- which was exposed by Gore's attempt to block the countin g of the absentee ballots of American servicemen from Florida, since it is well known that the people who volunteer for the military tend to vot e two-to-one in favor of the Republican presidential candidate. And yet the Democrats piously continue to this day to treat the whole vot e-count affair, not as an obvious attempt to steal an election by manipu lating selected groups of ballots, but as some noble attempt to block th e evil Republicans from depriving poor helpless minorities from having t heir ballots fairly counted. The Catalogue of Lies The falsehoods are thick on the ground, and contrary to the impression so me might try to give you, they are not conducted equally by both sides. When they trumpet examples of Republican "lies," they usually turn out to be in the following categories: 1 Statements that turn out to be wrong, though they were believed to be right at the time they were spoken. ") 2 Statements that interpret legitimate data in ways that support the Rep ublican view. ") 3 Statements that point out obvious contradictions between what the Demo cratic candidates say and what they have said and done in the past. Thes e are called "negative campaigning" and "mudslinging" and "distortions" and, of course, "lies," but these countercharges are offered instead of coherent explanations. Meanwhile, the Democrats engage in wholesale, flat-out lying, ranging fro m Kerry's false charges against America's soldiers in Vietnam, his phony claims about Christmas in Cambodia and what it was he threw over the fe nce when he said they were his medals, to present charges that Bush has blocked stem-cell research and that if Kerry were president, paralytics would rise up and walk. If a Republican had said these things, the media would throw him into the flames, never letting us forget these ridiculous and contemptible lies for a second. Instead, we get the ABC News memo that makes it clear that Republican distortions are to be trumpeted, while Democratic ones are " not central" and therefore can be ignored. Intellectual Laziness All of this can be chalked up to "partisan wrangling," though the Left ha s clearly returned to the era of machine politics and demagoguery that f or a while -- indeed, for most of my life -- American presidential candi dates and parties were ashamed to engage in, though it bubbled just unde r the surface and, in a few key states, served to steal an election or t wo. What most astonishes me, I'm afraid, is at the personal level. The Left fancies that it has a monopoly on intellectuals. When an online magazine invites published authors to tell whom they're voting for and w hy, out of dozens only four (including me) are voting for Bush. The most interesting thing is that the four pro-Bush authors offer clear reasons for their vote, but the pro-Kerry authors spew out invective against Bu sh or give cute or clever "reasons" that simply treat the question as be ing beneath serious discussion. I get letters that are endless variations on the same theme: Mr Card, I like your books and you seem so wise, but yet you're supporting Bush. Wh y don't you look at the evidence and realize that Bush is the devil and Kerry will save us from the disaster that Bush is leading us toward? Yet when I choose to answer these letters and ask them to get specific, i t becomes obvious that none -- no, not one -- of these people has actual ly examined the evidence at all. These "intellectuals" show not even the slightest sign of ever having que stioned their own opinions. Now, I have to regard this as the minimum standard for being regarded as a genuine intellectual -- that you have questioned your own beliefs and subjected them to rigorous tests of logic and evidence. But throughout this entire war and the political talk surrounding it, I h ave found exactly one intellectual of the Left (a professor at Appalachi an State) who was actually willing to test his own ideas in the cauldron of reason and real-world evidence; he and I still reach different concl usions because we have a different moral worldview, but at least we live in the same rational universe. It's the same on the news and entertainment talk shows and in the intelle ctual and scholarly magazines. While the Right does not lack for shallow -thinking spouters of the party line -- one thinks of the ever-vacuous S ean Hannity -- the intellectual Right still holds itself to rigorous sta ndards of evidence and reason. I actually find better reasoning about and evidence in support of the Lef tist point of view, and more skeptical but serious examination of Rightw ing ideas, in magazines like Commentary and The Weekly Standard than I d o in Leftist publications like Harper's and The New Yorker. What I find from most self-styled "intellectuals" in American public life is a laziness so profound as to be frightening. These are our opinion l eaders and university professors? Have they forgotten that "the never-do ubted opinion is not worth speaking"? The conclusion has been received, the Pope has spoken, the Supreme Cour t has decided. The Entitlement to Power How did American intellectual leadership pass to people who no longer eve n go through the motions of rigorous examination of ideas? Shame is the innate human need to be thought well of by one's neighbors. It is the motive behind hypocrisy -- the desire to continue to sin withou t paying the social penalties of being known to be a sinner. So when the Left acts hypocritically, one can assume that they do feel sh ame, and for years I have made that mistake. Because the double standards of the Left toda y are not prompted by any sense that the lies and misbehavior they are c oncealing are wrong, but rather by the fact that the exposure of those l ies and misbehavior would be politically inconvenient. Indeed...
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