Why are liberal elites so contemptuous of Americans?
The recent public and embarrassing disclosure of the private rantings of the JournoList members gave us a clue into what response to expect from the left once a public furor ensued after Obama endorsed construction of the Ground Zero Mosque. But the extent of the rancor levelled against opponents of the mosque (70% of Americans) was overt, unrestrained and truly astonishing.
“America has disgraced itself”, railed left-wing blogger Peter Beinart. Eugene Robinson of The Washington Post characterized opposition to the mosque as hysterical — the product of ignorance and right-wing fear mongering. Not to be outdone, in an article entitled, “Going Mad in Herds”, Maureen Dowd wrote that, “The dispute over the Islamic center has tripped some deep national lunacy. The unbottled anger and suspicion concerning ground zero show that many Americans haven’t flushed the trauma of 9/11 out of their systems . . . .
In the eyes of the left, all Democratic presidential candidates, including the new Messiah, are endowed with gravitas. But since Obama’s supposed intellectual heft has been harnessed in support of a radical makeover of the nation — a policy agenda the electorate has thoroughly rejected — with each passing day, he becomes more and more politically neutered. It is Obama’s precipitous decline and diminished standing that explains in part the increasing vitriol emanating from the professional left. Their contempt and sneering condescension towards ordinary Americans has increased directly in proportion to the revulsion the voters have expressed to the radical agenda of our first post-modern president.
Since the time of Karl Marx, the left has always felt an antipathy towards the middle class. In addition, liberals suffer the conceit that they are morally and intellectually superior to the unwashed masses, or the common man on whose behalf they purportedly toil. This helps explain why those who disagree with liberals are not perceived as honorable people who have legitimate and reasonable differences of opinion, but rather are viewed as either evil and/or moronic, standing athwart the left’s desire to make a better and more just world. This is why the left revels in ad hominem, scurrilous attacks against their ideological opponents. Since few Americans outside of academia subscribe to their radical and alien world view, they cannot win the battle of ideas.
If the left has become disillusioned and disenchanted, it is solely because they themselves were delusional in their belief that Obama’s election heralded a new era of unbridled liberalism, a political realignment that would last for fifty years. Yet, instead of embracing the Obama agenda, the country has revolted. In short, the left can’t handle the truth. The Democratic Party has lurched inexorably leftward, but most Americans with their center-right sensibilities have stubbornly refused to follow.
Left wing politicians can never reveal their true intentions, for they would be repudiated at the polls. Obama campaigned fraudulently as a centrist, yet since his inauguration, has governed as a hard leftist. Is it any wonder his approval ratings continue to accelerate downwards?
With its open contempt for the views of the majority of Americans, the left has reduced itself to a fringe movement appealing to a fringe audience which consists largely of mainstream media journalists, left-wing bloggers and academics. As the Democrats brace themselves for an electoral thrashing of historic proportions in November, the devolution of the left will be complete.
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