Arguing With Leftists
15th February 2011
The Other McCain does it so well.
Such preening moral narcissism, the pharasaical desire to strut one’s superior virtue like a peacock flaunting his tail, is the inescapable essence of liberalism. But you don’t need me to tell you that, when Thomas Sowell has written an entire book about it: The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy.
One might describe the liberal’s typical pose as, “I have noble sentiments and virtuous opinions — admire me!” This is why they constantly accuse others of harboring malign motives (racism, sexism, homophobia, etc.) and why nothing so outrages a liberal as when you deny them the admiration they so desperately crave.
If you’ve ever gotten into an argument with a liberal, you recognize this holier-than-thou game for what it is. One minute you’re arguing about a specific incident (in this case, the charges against Julian Assange) and then next thing you know, the liberal starts lecturing you as if you were a third-grader, demanding that you accede to whatever point he’s pushing. He throws out a hypothetical case or employs some inapt analogy that he thinks will prove him right, and if you call him on that, he’ll take the argument off in some other direction. This is when you realize that the supposed subject of the argument is merely a pretext, and that the real point he’s trying to prove is actually quite simple: “I’m better than you.”