I really enjoyed Ace's blog this past election season. He displayed the ability to combine Dungeons and Dragons with biting political humor. No mean trick, that. Anyway, what you might not have noticed is that he's a pretty fair writer. This column is a case in point. Excerpt:

Many liberals take genuine offense at the expression of an anti-liberal political notion. It's not just a political disagreement; to them, it's an attack on them as a person. As the liberal has so much of his sense of personal worth invested in his identity as a liberal, disagreements over policy are actually attacks on the core of his feeling of self-worth.

Not only does this make honest and logical argumentation difficult, but it also has the unavoidable effect of making liberals think that anyone who disagrees with them is a bad person. There's no getting around that implication: If liberal thoughts make one good, then it must be the case that un-liberal thoughts make one bad.

And that's why liberals honestly, genuinely believe that people who disagree with them are just plain bad. Not misguided. Not merely wrong. Not beginning with a different set of unproveable first assumptions which, inevitably, lead to wildly different conclusions. No-- if you disagree, you're a bad person. You're certainly unenlightened, probably stupid, and maybe racist and fascist to boot.

Liberals really have to learn to check that impulse. It's difficult to persuade those who disagree with you when your pitch is made from the standpoint of condescension and barely-disguised contempt. And the fact that so many liberal shibboleths are deemed sacred and simply not open to debate -- after all, if those bromides are questioned, wouldn't that be a confession that perhaps liberals aren't quite so superior as they think? -- make them inflexible and unreasonable even in the face of evidence and declining political appeal.

I've made the case several times on this blog that I remember the way the Democrat party used to be. Memo to Democrats: please pull your party back from the abyss. You made a good start by NOT nominating Howard Dean as your presidential candidate. Keep it up by finding some common ground with your political opponents. Remember that they are only your opponents; the people who want to blow us up are our enemies.

Posted by: Physics Geek at 07:08 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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