Hume on liberals’ view of conservatives

I’ve never shared the general conservative admiration for Brit Hume, who has always struck me as a stiff, both in his personality and in his intellect. However, on Fox News on Monday, he said something about the left which goes beyond the usual inadequate conservative analysis:

It has become a habit of the American left to equate disagreement with liberals and liberalism with hate. So convinced do they seem of the virtue of their cause that the only possible explanation for resistance to it must be hatred.

Of course you will find this kind of insight into the left’s mindset at VFR all the time, but you will never hear it from mainstream conservatives. The reason you will never hear it from mainstream conservatives is that it borders on saying that the left is not a normal American political movement but a tyrannical ideological movement at war with conservatives and seeking their suppression; and if we acknowledge that the left is at war with us and seeking our suppression, then the American political system, based on consensus and shared loyalties, starts to break down, in which case mainstream conservatism itself, based on belief in that consensus, starts to break down. So for an establishment conservative like Hume to say what he said above represents a significant step toward the forbidden truth of contemporary politics.

- end of initial entry -

Karl D. writes:

I am shocked that Hume went so far as to say what he did. Typically he seems to think that everything is blown out of proportion regarding just about everything. The man is utterly devoid of passion. He is a human Quaalude. If I had a nickel for every time I heard him say, “When cooler heads prevail,” I would be a billionaire.

LA writes:

Mark Richardson expands on the meaning of this entry, quoting a prominent liberal, Markos Moulitsas of the Daily Kos, who confirms in spades that yes, he regards conservatives as evil haters; sees them, literally, as the equivalent of the Taliban; and wants to suppress them.


Posted by Lawrence Auster at January 12, 2011 12:53 PM | Send
    

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