America’s evil is part of liberals’ idealistic dream

Until he was arrested this week as a terrorist leader, University of South Florida professor Sami Al-Arian had been claimed by the liberal media to be the target of a witch hunt, an innocent victim of America’s pathological need to find enemies. This is of course the fundamental liberal attitude—all men are good and there is no evil, except for our own sick and evil need to imagine evil and enemies where none exists. Contrary to what I argued recently at VFR, Jay Nordlinger at NRO suggests that liberals’ unshakeable belief in the evil of our own society is not an expression of alienation and hatred, but of idealism. It is part of their technicolor dream of the way life ought to be:

Liberals want certain things to be true, and even if they aren’t true, they ought to be true, because, in a way, they’re truer than true. They represent some higher truth. So much of liberal thought and liberal commentary is a morality play. Joseph McCarthy is always knocking on the doors of the innocent, and blacks are always one step away from Bull Connor’s fire hoses.

No, Tawana Brawley wasn’t raped and tortured by the white power structure, but it ought to have been true. No, there were no racist burnings of black churches, but it ought to have been true. No, there were no such burnings when Clinton was a child, but there should have been, and he’s entitled to his “memories.” No, Prof. al-Arian wasn’t the victim of a Security State and a Jewish lynch mob, but he should have been—it makes so many people feel so much better.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at February 25, 2003 10:51 AM | Send