Washington Post: Liberals Suck!

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I don’t think I’ll ever get over the Washington Post piece in which Charlotte Allen suggested all women are morons, or the fact that the editors there ran it. Now, the op-ed page is telling me I’m a terrible person for a reason other than posessing two X chromosomes: because I’m liberal.

This is a problem, writes Gerard Alexander, because liberals

appear committed to the proposition that their views are correct, self-evident, and based on fact and reason, while conservative positions are not just wrong but illegitimate, ideological and unworthy of serious consideration.

Got that? We’re odious because we think our values, our way of approaching the world and its problems are correct, and those of conservatives are wrong. That seems not so much condescending as basic logic. Should we be liberal because we think those values are incorrect? Wouldn’t this logic in fact suggest that the author doesn’t even think his own views are valid, or at least not based on solid reasoning? If so, why would the Post run such a piece?

And yes, there are occasions when conservatives seem to be shunning established science and fact, or willfully ignoring the views of experts for their own non-expert, politicized ends. So what is so bad about finding that wrong?

Ezra Klein, himself a member of the Post’s op-ed page, wondered on Twitter: “Would the Post have published a piece entitled ‘why conservatives are morons?’ Genuinely curious.” Similar sentiments were voiced after the Allen piece was published: Would the Post have published a piece suggesting all Asians are stupid? All Jews?

It’s a preposterous premise. And, just like the Allen piece, it’s just as offensive that the editors there chose to single out a specific group as worthy of derision as it is that one person wrote the piece to begin with. These pieces pass through many hands on their way to the page, and it’s so disheartening that no one in that chain spoke up loud enough to say, “Do we really want to alienate people this way?”