The left has unpleasant characteristics apart from their actual ideologies themselves (which are bad enough). One is that they fight dirty. There’s just no comparison, in regard to fighting dirty, between the left and the so-called right — everyone, even many of those on the left, sees that the left wins the prize for underhandedness in debate and in politics-related tactics. Why they fight so much dirtier is still a bit of a mystery to me.

Another of their unpleasant characteristics is lack of respect for scholarly standards and honesty in their treatments of history: if bending truth might further their aims, they have no compunction about bending it. They feel perfectly OK lying about history if it will serve their interests. This Lincoln display sounds like yet one more example of that.

If I had responsibility for ANY such display, but ESPECIALLY a display about so major a figure, in the eyes of the world, as Abraham Lincoln, I’d absolutely insulate my work from any possible taint of politically-motivated prejudice one way or the other, and go with the best approach to the truth which I was able to achieve, letting the chips fall where they might.

Ever notice how unlikely it is for a leftist who finds himself in charge of one of these projects to show this same truth-honoring neutrality? It exists, but is rare — WAY RARER than on our side.

Leftists do think that others fight dirty, though, because to them liberalism IS virtue. Virtue to a leftist is not traditional honesty, honor, etc; virtue to a leftist is identical to liberalism. Everything that helps liberalism is virtuous and everything that opposes it is evil. Same with truth and beauty. The true, the good, and the beautiful are, to a leftist, just another way of saying liberalism. It is perverse, but I think it is the truth. The leftist who produced the film and the one who approved it probably both thought (in their own way) they were doing so in the service of the true, the good, and the beautiful.

Unadorned’s observations are correct and his question is an important one: Apart from the objectional aspects of leftist beliefs in and of themselves, WHY does the left fight so dirty, WHY does it feel free to lie so much?

Part of the answer is as Matt said, that the leftists identify liberalism with virtue and everything that stands in its way as evil, so anything is justified in its pursuit. But there’s an additional element, which is that they are trying to change the order of society and even of the world. The inherited and inherent ways of society and the world (including the people in that world and their values and opinions) tend to be non-liberal, and therefore must be supplanted. Further, because those ways are non-liberal, they are evil, which justifies any chicanery in supplanting them. And further, because those ways are deeply rooted, the chicanery must be systematic and ruthless. Thus you have, for example, the endlessly devious methods of progressive politics whereby a new proposal never gets debated. The leftists conceal the nature of what they are doing and so prevents a debate on it until the measure is passed, and then as soon as the measure is passed and people start to realize what’s involved in it, the leftists say, “It’s too late to debate it now.”

According to Roberts and Stratton in The New Color Line, the leaders of the early civil rights movement had decided that given America’s inherent racism, democratic and constitutional means could never bring race equality, so they would have to get it forced on the society through the courts, or, as in the case of the 1964 Civil Rights act, through legislation that was presented as an individual-rights law but, once it was passed, was instantly changed into a group-rights law.

I have been with liberals who in conversation among themselves would defend lying politicians on the basis that, given the backwardness of the American people, that’s the only way that good measures can be passed.

One reason liberals fight dirty is that their theory of things denies the reality of human conflict. As a result they can’t consistently view their opponents as fellow human beings who deserve consideration as such. If you oppose liberalism on some point it’s not a legitimate human action and you are not a legitimate human being. Any and all methods are fair in dealing with you.

Mr. Kalb wrote:

“One reason liberals fight dirty is that their theory of things denies the reality of human conflict. As a result they can’t consistently view their opponents as fellow human beings who deserve consideration as such. If you oppose liberalism on some point it’s not a legitimate human action and you are not a legitimate human being. Any and all methods are fair in dealing with you.”

Agreed that LIBERALS (in the proper sense of the word) deny the reality of human conflict, and so feel that anyone who disagrees with them is outside humanity. By contrast, LEFTISTS (in the proper sense of the word) think that conflict—specifically conflict over power—is the ONLY reality. Since for leftists so-called moral standards are just a mask for bourgeois power, and since power is in fact the ONLY reality, leftists feels justified in using whatever means are necessary to increase their own power.

Liberals and leftists seem to start from a different place, but they end up in the same place.