A perfect example of how the liberal mind makes non-liberal reality disappear

Yesterday the New York Times blandly admitted (or triumphantly boasted) that as a result of the Arab spring, Islamist activists are on the verge of “achieving decisive power across the region.” This made a lie of the Times’ numerous assurances earlier in the year that Muslim freedom was giving birth to liberal democracy and pluralism. In the VFR entry on that article, John Dempsey writes:

Here’s how a well-read, leftist correspondent recently summed up his position on the matter of the “Arab spring”:

“You know how I feel about the majority of Arab rebels these days. I think they are mostly democrats and I’m not as concerned as you are about a few supposed transient Qaeda freedom fighters or a constitution that gives a shout out to Sharia law.”

So he denies that the majority of the rebels are Islamists. He even denies that al Qaeda are Islamist revolutionaries. Then he goes on to deny that the institution of Sharia law is even worthy of our concern.

In other words, reality doesn’t matter. Not even to someone who is a highly-educated historian.

See my reply to Mr. Dempsey.

UPDATE: In the same thread, Jim Kalb explains that he doesn’t think the liberal media’s lies and reversals about Islamic freedom are Orwellian exactly (which is the way I described them), though they have the same effect. Rather, liberals—believing that they possess the one and only truth of how to live, and believing that other people, such as Muslims, are also more or less in conformity with that truth—are optimistic about progressive-minded changes in the Muslim world, and so present a positive view of those changes. If the Muslims were not essentially like liberals, the liberal world would come crashing down. So liberals put every aspect of Islam through a filter which will make it seem like liberalism.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at October 01, 2011 10:15 AM | Send