Goodbye to All That

Another sanction of the victim moment

In this essay the publisher of Encounter Books, Roger Kimball, explains why he will no longer send books to the reviewers at The New York Times. The reason is not simply the overwhelming leftist bias that is typical of that paper and many others that take their lead from them. We all know about that. It is rather that the Times refuses to even acknowledge the existence of any books by conservatives. It would be one thing if the paper were to review books by conservatives and criticize them. But they don't even bother to do that. They just pretend that the authors don't exist, even when conservative books appear on the Times' very own top 10 list. It really is typical of how things actually work in the world of the left. In fact I was reminded of this story by its similarity to another.

I was driving home from work the other night and listening to Dennis Prager on the radio and he was discussing the case of Douglas Feith. Mr. Feith was an undersecretary of defense in the Bush administration and for the last few years has been teaching at Georgetown university. But even though his students give him high marks and even though he is a person who has held a high position in government where he has gained invaluable experience in the field and worked at the highest level, he will not be returning. It seems that the members of the Angry Leftist faculty have their panties in a twist and will not tolerate any ideas that diverge from the Stalinist line that they demand. They are calling him a "war criminal." It is important to note in this context that Mr. Feith was the only conservative to be teaching foreign policy at Georgetown. The school apparently has as its policy a complete monopoly of ideology from the left such that no other ideas will be allowed on campus. Not even one individual with a different way of looking at the world will be allowed to teach. The school has chosen to present a united front of leftist professors with not one voice of dissent. No intellectual "diversity" allowed at this school.

I mention these two different events in this post to illustrate a point made by Mr. Prager on his show. Wherever leftists control things, the result is invariably the loss of freedom to think and act as an individual and the concurrent collapse of standards of justice. When the left is in charge it's their way or the highway. They loudly preach the value of "tolerance" but the claim is a sham. The reality is that they allow only what they themselves agree with when it comes to ideas and actions. If they can find a way to control it, they do. And if they can find a way to silence their opponents they do. Actions and activities that they don't want? They will quickly be forbidden. Speech codes, the destruction of private property, when it is owned by conservatives, and attacks on conservative speakers are encouraged and rewarded. Crimes against conservatives are quickly forgotten and almost never prosecuted. In short, where you find the left, you find Stalinism.

That is why Roger Kimball is giving the boot to the New York Times. There is nothing to be gained in pretending that the left is anything other than the totalitarian movement that it is. Every day it demonstrates in clear ways that it has no use for real tolerance and diversity of the kind that real Americans actually respect. A real debate of ideas and philosophy that goes to the fundamental questions of the human condition and how we actually organize our society for our own benefit and the future of our inheritors would be one worth having. But that discussion only takes place on the right side of the political spectrum where ideas are considered important and discussion is valued. It is utterly alien to the left and will remain so as long as they wall themselves off from the rest of the population with whom they are actually at war. They have no use for the "bitter clingers" or anyone who might want to offer intellectual arguments from that perspective.