Fact-Free Liberals: Part IV
By Thomas Sowell
TownHall.com
One of the things that attracted me to the
political left, as a young man, was a belief that
leftists were for "the people." Fortunately, I was
also very interested in the history of ideas -- and
years of research in that field repeatedly brought
out the inescapable fact that many leading thinkers
on the left had only contempt for "the people."
That has been true from the 18th century to the
present moment. Even more surprising, I discovered
over the years that leading thinkers on the opposite
side of the ideological spectrum had more respect
for ordinary people than people on the left who
spoke in their name.
Leftists like Rousseau, Condorcet or William Godwin
in the 18th century, Karl Marx in the 19th century
or Fabian socialists like George Bernard Shaw in
England and American Progressives in the 20th
century saw the people in a role much like that of
sheep, and saw themselves as their shepherds.
Another disturbing pattern turned up that is also
with us to the present moment. From the 18th century
to today, many leading thinkers on the left have
regarded those who disagree with them as being not
merely factually wrong but morally repugnant. And
again, this pattern is far less often found among
those on the opposite side of the ideological
spectrum.
The visceral hostility toward Sarah Palin by present
day liberals, and the gutter level to which some
descend in expressing it, is just one sign of a
mindset on the left that goes back more than two
centuries.
T.R. Malthus was the target of such hostility in the
18th and early 19th centuries. When replying to his
critics, Malthus said, "I cannot doubt the talents
of such men as Godwin and Condorcet. I am unwilling
to doubt their candor."
But William Godwin's vision of Malthus was very
different. He called Malthus "malignant," questioned
"the humanity of the man," and said "I profess
myself at a loss to conceive of what earth the man
was made."
This asymmetry in responses to people with different
opinions has been too persistent, for too many
years, to be just a matter of individual personality
differences.
Although Charles Murray has been a major critic of
the welfare state and of the assumptions behind it,
he recalled that before writing his landmark book,
"Losing Ground," he had been "working for years with
people who ran social programs at street level, and
knew the overwhelming majority of them to be good
people trying hard to help."
Can you think of anyone on the left who has
described Charles Murray as "a good person trying
hard to help"? He has been repeatedly denounced as
virtually the devil incarnate -- far more often than
anyone has tried seriously to refute his facts.
Such treatment is not reserved solely for Murray.
Liberal writer Andrew Hacker spoke more sweepingly
when he said, "conservatives don't really care
whether black Americans are happy or unhappy."
Even in the midst of an election campaign against
the British Labour Party, when Winston Churchill
said that there would be dire consequences if his
opponents won, he said that this was because "they
do not see where their theories are leading them."
But, in an earlier campaign, Churchill's opponent
said that he looked upon Churchill "as such a
personal force for evil that I would take up the
fight against him with a whole heart."
Examples of this asymmetry between those on opposite
sides of the ideological divide could be multiplied
almost without limit. It is not solely a matter of
individual personality differences.
The vision of the left is not just a vision of the world. For many, it is also a vision of themselves -- a very flattering vision of people trying to save the planet, rescue the exploited, create "social justice" and otherwise be on the side of the angels. This is an exalting vision that few are ready to give up, or to risk on a roll of the dice, which is what submitting it to the test of factual evidence amounts to. Maybe that is why there are so many fact-free arguments on the left, whether on gun control, minimum wages, or innumerable other issues -- and why they react so viscerally to those who challenge their vision.