The modern left is built around a trio of laudable principles: protecting the environment is good, racism is bad, and so is demonizing a person over his or her sexual preferences. (In the chapter of his book Intellectuals titled “The Flight from Reason,” Paul Johnson wrote that “At the end of the Second World War, there was a significant change in the predominant aim of secular intellectuals, a shift of emphasis from utopianism to hedonism.” ) But just as the Bircher right began to see communists everywhere, the new Bircher left sees racism, sexism, homophobia, and Koch Brothers everywhere.
They’re lurking around more corners than Gen. Ripper imagined there were commies lurking inside Burpelson Air Force Base. They’re inside your video games! They own NFL teams! They’ll steal your condoms! Disagree with President Obama? Racist! (That goes for you too, Bill, Hillary, and your Democratic supporters.) Not onboard for gender-neutral bathrooms? Not too thrilled with abortion-obsessed candidates like Wendy Davis and “Mark Uterus”? Sexist! Disagree with using global warming as a cudgel to usher in the brave new world of bankrupt coal companies and $10 a gallon gasoline? Climate denier!
And as with the original Birchers, don’t get ‘em started on fluoride.
Or GMO foods, or vaccines.
Interesting about how Web sites as this are properly monitored that we get properly scolded for wrong thinking.
I am also thinking about the differences between Rand’s refined salon and the Wild West Saloon that Sailer is running?
Here, our assumptions and privilege gets challenged, and we actually take these challenges seriously, even if it means we scold back at our scolders. Sailer’s operations is so hard core, maybe too hard core, maybe iSteve is the ISIS of the Right Blogosphere. When people scold “sexist” and “racist” and folks respond, “Thank’s for the compliment!”
Steve is no more controversial on race and gender than, say, a particular economics professor on President Obama’s original economic policy team (cough, Laurence Summers, cough). But hoo boy, the folks who comment over there . . . they don’t have many “trolls” because they get their heads chopped off.