JONATHAN CHAIT JULY 28, 2010
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Conservative talk-show host Dennis Prager writes that liberals hate conservatives, but not vice versa:
Every one of us on the right has seen this hatred. I am not referring to leftist bloggers or to anonymous comments by angry leftists on conservative blogs — such things exist on the right as well — but to mainstream, elite liberal journalists. There is simply nothing analogous among elite conservative journalists. Yes, nearly all conservatives believe that the Left is leading America to ruin. But while there is plenty of conservative anger over this fact, there is little or nothing on the right to match the Left’s hatred of conservative individuals.
Hmm. This is hard to prove either way and Prager makes no real attempt to justify it. But I do note that Eric Boehlert chronicles the way in which one of Glenn Beck's tirades very nearly led, except for an extremely lucky break, to a mass murder:
On his Monday radio show, Glenn Beck highlighted claims that before he started targeting a little-known, left-leaning organization called the Tides Foundation on his Fox News TV show, "nobody knew" what the non-profit was.
Indeed, for more than a year Beck has been portraying the progressive organization as a central player in a larger, nefarious cabal of Marxist/socialist/Nazi Obama-loving outlets determined to destroy democracy in America. Beck has routinely smeared the low-profile entity for being staffed by "thugs" and "bullies" and involved in "the nasty of the nastiest," like indoctrinating schoolchildren and creating a "mass organization to seize power."
As Media Matters reported, the conspiratorial host had mentioned (read: attacked) the little-known progressive organization nearly 30 times on his Fox program alone since it premiered in 2009, including several mentions in the last month. (Beck's the only TV talker who regularly references the foundation, according to our Nexis searches.)
So yes, Beck has done all he can to scare the hell out of people about the Tides Foundation and "turn the light of day" onto an organization that actually facilitates non-profit giving.
And guess what? Everybody in America would have found out about the Tides Foundation last week if Byron Williams had had his way. He's the right-wing, government-hating, gun-toting nut who strapped on his body armor, stocked a pickup truck with guns and ammo, and set off up the California coast to San Francisco in order to start killing employees at the previously obscure Tides Foundation in hopes of sparking a political revolution.
Thankfully, the planned domestic terrorist attack never came to pass because California Highway Patrol officers pulled Williams over for drunk driving on his way to his killing spree. Williams quickly opened fire, wounding two officers during a lengthy shootout.
Technically, this does not rebut Prager's point -- this is a case of conservative hatred of a liberal institution, not an individual. Still, it's not as if conservative journalists like Beck are lacking in hatred for liberal individuals, either.
A recent Pew Survey found that Republicans think Democrats are far more extreme than vice versa. In other words, both Republicans and Democrats have a similar view as to how far right the Republican Party is. But while Democrats think the Democratic Party is just a bit left of center, Republicans think it's way, way left of center:
Of course, exactly what's "radical" is a matter of opinion, not fact. But certainly relative to where things stood three or four decades ago, the GOP has moved much further from the center than the Democratic Party has:
So why are Republicans so much more convinced of Democratic radicalism than vice versa? Paul Waldman notes that this probably results from the fact that Democrats tend to get their news from sources that strive for balance -- sources that portray the political debate as revolving around two essentially parallel parties. Republicans, on the other hand, increasingly get their news from sources mostly or totally unconstrained by traditional journalistic standards and which portray Democrats in hysterical, apocalyptic terms:
So why is this? It's hard to say, but my nominee would be the differing media systems partisans are drawn to. Conservatives are more likely to seek out highly partisan information sources -- Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, etc. -- than Democrats are. The latter may take in the occasional episode of Keith Olbermann or Rachel Maddow, but they're getting most of their news from more neutral places like NPR and CNN. What makes the difference is that the idea that the Democratic Party is a bunch of socialists with a radical leftist agenda is a core component of the rhetoric on Fox, Limbaugh, et al.
It's fashionable to draw a parallel between MSNBC and Fox News. But MSNBC's liberal commentary occupies just a couple hours of its evening lineup. It is intended as a supplement to the news, not a substitute for it. The premise of Fox News, Limbaugh etc. is that the mainstream media is totally corrupt and should be completely ignored in favor of news sources controlled by the conservative movement. That premise has no parallel on the left.
24 comments
"[N]early all conservatives believe that the Left is leading America to ruin." If that's true, then no wonder many conservatives have gone off the rails. I may disagree with the Right on many (but not all) issues and I may believe that America would be a better place if the Left prevailed more often on those issues, but it never occured to me that the Right is leading America to ruin. This isn't original, but demonizing those with whom we disagree is a sign of emotional immaturity, or worse, neurosis. I suppose Beck fits the diagnosis, since his behavior (a serial cryer) is definitely immature, and at times (the obsessions combined with the delusions) appears to be a form of neurosis. So those on the Right may not be leading America to ruin, but they do suffer from a mental disorder.
- rayward
July 28, 2010 at 9:13am
Actually if you include Dylan Ratigan and the Ed Show, plus the soon-to-come Lawrence O'Donnell, MSNBC features more than just a couple of hours of liberal commentary in its evening lineup. In fact, I think the Right's hatred of the Left may be Greater in the abstract and lesser in the personal. That is, the Right views "the Left" through a quasi-religious prism, and hence sees it in almost apocalyptic terms. It is not merely a battle of ideas, but a battle against the Forces of Darkness (Beck exemplifies this). On the other hand, individual leftists that they meet they regard as potentially penitent sinners, people who need redemption and thus love--at least initially. Conversely, the Left's hatred of the Right may be lesser in the abstract--they can value, say, Burke or Hayek, even if they disagree--but greater in the personal. Personal contempt for bourgeois or red neck conservatives runs deep on the Left, at least in my experience, often tinged by either suspicion of racism (occasionally justified) or hostility to revealed religion.
- timteeter
July 28, 2010 at 9:19am
"occasionally justified"--the suspicion, that is, not the racism.
- timteeter
July 28, 2010 at 9:21am
I disagree, tim. I think "hate the sin, love the sinner" is a rationalizing lie on par with "Some of my best friends are ..." Liberals I know want conservatives to leave them alone. Conservatives I know want liberals to to silenced and beaten down (figuratively) because they are "tearing this nation down" or some shit.
- W_Bombay
July 28, 2010 at 10:05am
Of course, the problem is that there isn't really any such thing as "abstract" hatred. A rightwinger might say to a leftwinger, "I don't hate you, I just hate those pinko radical..." etc. (fill in whatever rightwing words demonizing leftwingers you can stomach), to which the leftwinger will only reply "Duh! Hello??" I'd guess that rather than a "hate the sin, love the sinner" response, it's more of a "some of my best friends are..." situation to borrow from W. Bombay; a rightwinger would actually flag his or her perceived non-hatred of some individual leftwinger as a emblem of how "tolerant" he or she is. Lefties, on the other hand, see righties who do grotesque damage to the body politic or civil society and are going to get angry, and direct that anger at the righties doing the damage.
- cspencef
July 28, 2010 at 10:27am
Bombay: "beaten down (figuratively)" - and not always figuratively.
- icarusr
July 28, 2010 at 11:23am
Two words account for this phenomenon: epistemic closure. It is the same reason why so many Republicans believe that Barack Obama was not born in America, that ACORN stole the 2008 election, and that the New Black Panther Party is a threat to the nation. I live in Seattle, where I am surrounded by liberal groupthink (Bombay lives to the north of me). So I am not on the front lines here. I would be interested in experiences with conservative rage that readers have had.
- liberal reformer
July 28, 2010 at 11:55am
libref: I recently attended a wedding in Kentucky. At the rehersal dinner, I was making small talk with the priest. Unexpectedly, the priest turned the topic to politics and repeated the joke about the SecDef coming to the Oval Office and reporting that three brazilian solders have been killed today, followed by the President completely flipping out, wailing and crying, before asking how many there are in a brazilian-except in his telling, it was Obama doing the flipping out. I mentioned that he was retelling and updating that joke, as I heard it years back with Rumsfeld and Bush as the players. The response I got was, very bluntly, that I was lying about it being an old joke, almost insulting him to say he was retooling it, and that Obama's self-evidently too stupid to know up from down. I let the matter drop, as I hadn't really psyched myself up for a knock-down drag-out political argument with a priest at a wedding.
- janus
July 28, 2010 at 12:15pm
Fascinating, janus.
- liberal reformer
July 28, 2010 at 12:31pm
Let us remember two things: The quote from Prager concerns "elite, liberal journalists" who are "mainstream." Perhaps we can expand that to mean "anyone who reads opinion magazines" or "anyone who recognizes the name Edmund Burke." That there are plenty of thugs on the right is not in dispute. Second, when it comes to evidence, all of us--myself included--are operating on the basis of anecdotal evidence. I actually have no means of verifying hatred levels. I can only say that, in my experience, in talking with conservatives, I have experienced little hatred, though certainly flashes of extreme annoyance. Well, maybe hatred for Olbermann, but that's about it, and that doesn't qualify as personal. On the other hand, the level of vitriol I have heard expressed for particular conservatives by liberals has been high. And no, I don't think "love the sinner, hate the sin" is always rationalizing, though it certainly can be. All of which is to say, this is entertaining speculation, but that's about it.
- timteeter
July 28, 2010 at 12:46pm
I don't much like Keith Olbermann, and from cruising around liberal blogs, my opinion seems to be shared by many of my fellow travelers. But, if Olbermann went on a meth bender for a week and unleashed his id to the absolute max, his output still wouldn't match Limbaugh's. And Limbaugh reaches, by his own estimate and maybe Arbitron's too, about ten or twenty times more people. And Limbaugh is far from alone - how much unbridled hate is unleashed on Fox every day, how many hate radio jocks are there? How many liberal hate jocks are there? Would John Kerry say out loud "America needs more states like Massachusetts, and fewer like Mississippi"? Of course not, he'd get slaughtered. Conservatives say crap like that all the time, only in reverse. Imagine Obama closing a speech in Charlotte "I can't wait to get out of here and back to real America." W took office on pretty shaky grounds (TSTL!) How many Dem tea parties were there? How much mainstream liberal commentary was there talking about impending tyranny? How many anguished cries on TV that the country we know and love is being stolen from us? How many black folks showed up at W rallies with guns and t-shirts talking about watering the tree of liberty with W's blood? Yeah, yeah, a small number of folks, who were routinely denounced by other liberals, compared W to Hitler - after W had been in office for a year and after he launched a war on false pretenses. Obama gets the Full Fuhrer just for having the gall to take the oath of office after winning 53% of the vote. I know some conservatives who think Wolf Blitzer is the devil, apparently because he might say something like "Pres. Bush vetoed S-Chip today, leaving x number of kids without health coverage." If Hannity reported the news that straight, he'd get fired - he's there to provoke and enrage, not enlighten. As a liberal, I actually wish that all liberals would conduct themselves with the utmost decorum and respect for truth. I think the flamethrowing is counterproductive and likely to burn the people holding the hose. I think most liberals share this view, which is why liberals pushed back on the most outrageous charges against W. Hell, if I remember, most Dems even went along with Repub demands to denounce Move.on for rhyming "Petraeus" with "Betray-us". Conservatives, on the other hand, need the bigots, or think they do. That's why instead of denouncing racists in the tea party, they evade the question ("it's slander to call every one of us racist"), and then immediately turn the tables to make the NAACP look bad. That's why they celebrate hateful demagogues like Gingrich. The Dem standard-bearer made his name with a speech where he said that there is no Red America or Blue America, just the United States of America. Conservatives explicitly believe the opposite - that Blue America is corrupt, and its "elites" are ruining the lives of Red staters. Both Obama and Hillary campaigned partly on cross-over appeal, while in the Repub primaries, cross-over appeal was anathema to the Base. That says it all right there - liberals really do believe that decent conservatives and liberals can co-exist, and even agree on some things. The far right worldview that currently dominates the GOP and conservatism is that the only good liberals are either dead, or far away from power. The far right needs hate - the far right is hate.
- Geoff G
July 28, 2010 at 12:48pm
I reside in a small town in the deep south, where Eskimos probably outnumber liberals. These folks are not mean-spirited, they just have limited experiences. Most are, and consider themselves to be, self-sufficient, and believe liberals want to take from them and give to the shiftless ("Who is John Galt" signs have appeared most everywhere in the south). With no large employers (other than, ironically, government), and no unions, these folks have a different, not necessarily wrong, perspective. To make and keep friends, I don't talk politics or religion (piety is its own religion down here). Rather, I try to make my points with anecdotes (the friend who lost his job and health insurance because he got sick), and let them draw their own conclusions.
- rayward
July 28, 2010 at 1:00pm
Yours is an excellent comment, Geoff. I don't like Keith Olbermann, either, but you are absolutely correct. He doesn't hold a candle to the right-wing-zoo.
- liberal reformer
July 28, 2010 at 1:48pm
rayward, that is exactly my experience (except that we have a few academic conservatives in my department as well). Further, I would suggest that, while quantifying hatred may be impossible, and its manifestations largely depend on who is seen as having the upper hand in politics or culture at the moment (does anyone think that the intensity of hatred one encounters on the right would be so great if unemployment were, say, 5% ?), there is definitely a different quality of conservative vs liberal hatred. Perhaps my previous idea--particular vs general hatreds--doesn't capture it, but I still sense it.
- timteeter
July 28, 2010 at 2:43pm
Who's on the far left? Naomi Klein, Michael Moore, Noam Chomsky (I guess, I've never actually read anything by him), Dennis Kucinich, Ralph Nader, Marcy Wheeler, Jane Hamsher, and, for argument's sake, Olbermann. Feel free to add to the list. Now, who's on the far right? Gingrich, Palin, Romney (that's his coloration, whether or not it's what he really thinks), Huckabee, Limbaugh, Beck, O'Reilly, Hannity, Andy McCarthy, Mark Levin, all the blonde Fox newsbabes and newsdudes, Krauthammer, Will, McCain (today), Demint, Coburn, Tancredo and - there are way too many to list. How many of the above folks are taking a bigoted, unAmerican position on the NYC mosque? Is there anyone who isn't? (okay, maybe Will, but that doesn't mean he'll come out in favor of the mosque, he just won't make arguments in support of the bigots). Now, here in Chaitville, where liberals of various persuasions come for enlightenment and venting, how often does Chait criticize one of the far lefties cited above? How often does he agree with them? If you come here often, you know he's far more likely to criticize than praise them. How much influence does Kucinich have on Dem policy, how often do you see him quoted advocating for this or that policy? If the far lefties listed above didn't exist, who would be more likely to invent them - disgruntled liberals or conservative provocateurs looking for flesh-and-blood strawmen? If the far lefties didn't exist, how would Dem policies be any different? If the far left dominated liberalism the way the far right dominates conservatism today, Obama's approval rating would be in the single digits. On the other hand, how much influence do the far right spittle-spewers have on the GOP and conservatism? You can know everything you need to know about Dem policies and liberalism, as they exist in the real world, without ever reading any of the lefties cited above. Would it be possible to understand the GOP and conservatism without paying attention to the haters on the list? I didn't think so. And then there's religious radio which reaches nearly every hamlet in America with grotesque gay, Muslim and liberal bashing. How many atheist radio stations spew hate against Christians? If Prager doesn't know he's lying, then he needs to be institutionalized..
- Geoff G
July 28, 2010 at 3:03pm
I have read the better part of tow dozen books by Noam Chomsky and I can assure you, Geoff, that he is on the far left.
- liberal reformer
July 28, 2010 at 4:26pm
You've got a strong stomach, lib!
- Geoff G
July 28, 2010 at 4:29pm
Well, actually, I was way further to the left a generation ago than I am now, so I read so much Chomsky out of affinity. I subsequently deprogrammed myself and I am happy to report that now I am doing just fine.
- liberal reformer
July 28, 2010 at 5:03pm
I spend a lot of time with conservative friends in Indiana, Kentucky, and North Carolina. I think Rayward hits the nail on the head - they all believe they are self sufficient and are being robbed by lazy freeloaders who need to get a job. It is frustrating to talk politics with them because their views are completely driven by a sense of moral outrage. They should be able to keep everything that is theirs and the scum need to be punished. Even if you could prove to them that spending $1 million on social programs would result in $100 million in savings on healthcare and police spending they would not care. That is not the the point. The point is that there are people out there getting away with murder. They are very strong law and order types, unless they're busted for pot or drunk driving, and then it's just a scam to collect more money via court fees or something. My most recent argument with one friend was about the oil drilling moratorium (which he thought was government overstepping its bounds). Earlier in the day he was upset about waste lagoon spill at a hog farm that had killed off everything in his creek. He thought all hog farms close to waterways should be shut down. I tried to draw what I thought were obvious parallels between the two situations. Nope. Not happening.
- Attrill
July 28, 2010 at 5:07pm
Every discussion of "who hates whom more" is obscured by the assumption that "hatred" means the same thing for American conservatives that it means for American liberals. This is not true. Although there are individual exceptions, by and large, we liberals dislike conservatives because we believe they are stupid or irrational. Conservatives dislike liberals because they believe we are morally evil. That's why Glenn Beck's tirades against an institution (The Tides Foundation) could move a California wacko to go gunning for individuals, not to write an angry blog post. A stupid individual or institution can be criticized or laughed at; an evil individual or institution must be destroyed.
- zimnycalif
July 28, 2010 at 6:25pm
I fear that as liberals we want to have an informed debate about the issues and let the democratic process determine the outcome, while the right wants to crush us and take over. If we don't recognize this fact we could be in a lot of trouble... Also, rayward, thank you very much for your comments on a small, Southern town. I have read some truly vile posts about Southerners on other websites in the past few days and your fairness goes a long way in restoring my faith....
- campbellsj
July 29, 2010 at 9:14am
What kind of a person do you have to be to go to church on Sunday -- where you hear about the Golden Rule and how hard it is for the rich to get into heaven and how the meek are the blessed ones -- and then on Monday insist that it's bad public policy to try to put any of what you heard into practice? How does a conservative deal with this manifest conflict? I think answering that question gets you to the center of a conservative's black heart.
- Mikelawyr22
July 29, 2010 at 10:30am
Mikelawyr22, that assumes there is a natural affinity between "conservative" (i.e., anti-Keynesian) economics and New Testament ethics. There isn't. (Catholic social justice doctrine has long been sceptical of unfettered capitalism, for example.) It is an alliance of convenience between different factions of the coalitions of the right. Some on the right are aware of this contradiction, some try to deny it, but many (if not most) just continue to engage in cognitive dissonance.
- timteeter
July 29, 2010 at 11:25am
Timteeter: I guess I agree. There is an argument that the market maximizes the delivery of goods and services to those whom people with kind hearts would wish to receive them. But we just don't hear that argument being made, do we?
- Mikelawyr22
July 29, 2010 at 12:09pm