The National Review
May 10, 2002
Clueless Liberals
And they think we’re dumb.
By Stanley Kurtz
http://www.nationalreview.com/kurtz/kurtz051002.asp
When it comes to contemporary conservatism, liberals don't have a clue. Yet thanks to the Left's dominance of mainstream-news outlets, conservatives have an excellent understanding of how liberals think. Half of what we do at National Review Online, after all, is argue with the liberal media. We read them, but they don't read us — and it shows.
Liberals live for the idea that they're saving the world from the racial, religious, and sexual bigotry of conservatives. Yet, looking at the conservative web, I am continually amazed at the fellowship across all of these potential divides. I grew up as liberal Jew, worried about the anti-Semitism of American conservatives. Yet today, evangelical Protestants and orthodox Catholics rush to the side of Israel. I myself have become something of a crusader for the rights of conservative Catholics, who seem to me to have been unfairly maligned and marginalized within the academy.
No issue is more difficult and divisive than homosexuality, and I myself have written repeatedly in opposition to gay marriage. Yet despite deep differences on this explosive issue, nearly every conservative I know (myself included) is a huge fan of conservative gay writers like Andrew Sullivan and Jonathan Rauch. I am still enormously proud of the fact that National Review Online hosted "The Gay-Marriage Debate," a far more substantive and respectful exchange on that issue than anything that's appeared in the mainstream media.
And, of course, we barely give a thought anymore to the many black pundits and intellectuals whose work makes an essential contribution to American conservatism (Cornell West can't hold a candle to the likes of Shelby Steele or Thomas Sowell). In the eyes of America's liberals, though, black conservative intellectuals (not to mention judges and policymakers like Clarence Thomas and Condoleezza Rice) just don't count.
A glance at Thursday's New York Times shows that the myth of conservative bigotry is still alive and well. It's the subtext of half of the op-eds. Tom Wicker's remembrance of LBJ features a story about Johnson's reaction to passage of the historic civil-rights bill: "I think we just delivered the South to the Republican Party for a long time to come." Wicker follows the story by mournfully noting that Democrats have been locked out of the South far longer than even Lyndon Johnson expected — as if the reason for Republican dominance in today's south is nothing but frustrated segregation. More than slander, this is comfortable self-deception for Democrats who simply can't acknowledge how far their program on race, and so much else, has strayed from the old ideals of integration and individual rights.