Liberals Nod as Comey Begs the Question If you’re smart, why consider opinions other than your own? By Barton Swaim
Posted By Ruth King on May 5th, 2019
https://www.wsj.com/articles/liberals-nod-as-comey-begs-the-question-11557090274
Former FBI director James Comey published an op-ed last week asserting that President Trump has “eaten” Attorney General William Barr’s “soul.” Mr. Comey’s piece is a remarkable exercise in question-begging—a series of bald assertions that assume their own truth.
It begins with this rhetorical question: “How could Mr. Barr . . . start channeling the president in using words like ‘no collusion’ and FBI ‘spying’?” If you don’t already agree that Mr. Barr’s words are outrageous and borderline-criminal, Mr. Comey makes no effort to bring you along. So it goes for another 800 words. The argument of the piece is identical to its premise: that Mr. Trump is a loathsome person and those who work for him—with a few exceptions, including of course Mr. Comey—are made corrupt. Media-savvy savant that he is, Mr. Comey knows that the typical reader of the New York Times, where the piece appeared, requires no persuasion on this point.
In that sense, Mr. Comey’s op-ed nicely captures what ails present-day American liberalism. Its defining characteristic is a labored ignorance of the other side. Liberals frequently neither know nor care to learn what nonliberals think. Their own views predominate in the universities and media; why bother considering lesser ones? Liberals take the other side seriously mainly when it has the bad manners to win an election and hold power.
Conservatives have no such luxury. However angular and ignorant a right-of-center commentator may be, he can’t ignore liberal opinion.
Turn your radio dial back and forth between NPR and talk radio. On NPR, references to conservatives and conservatism are few and awkward. The word “conservative” often attaches to people very few conservatives recognize as ideological associates, from centrist liberals like David Brooks to eccentric figures like Steve Bannon. Mostly conservatives and conservatism are absent, except perhaps in the form of a guest who “served in the George W. Bush administration” or in references to Republican officeholders.
On talk radio, by contrast, “the left” is vividly ubiquitous. The typical host won’t go five minutes without referring to liberals by name and to liberalism as the hegemonic force they’re struggling against. The prevailing view of liberalism is wildly oversimplified and exaggerates its power, but liberals can’t complain that these right-wingers ignore them. Talk radio is obsessed with what liberals think.
Neither is a healthy attitude, but conservatives at least do liberals the courtesy of acknowledging their existence. Liberals often won’t even acknowledge that they are liberals, since to do so would be to countenance the legitimacy of conservatives, who are best left to the nebulous realm of speculation.
It is the peculiar failing of highly educated elites to believe that their own views need no defense and have no opponents worth thinking about. Once you take that attitude, you’re a soft touch for duplicitous self-promoters such as a certain former FBI director.
Mr. Swaim writes a column on political books for the Journal.
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