Soon after 9/11/01 I was struck by a remarkable contrast. The prior month David Horowitz had conducted a little experiment. He had taken out paid ads in a number of college newspapers attacking the concept of reparations for slavery. The main purpose of the experiment was to see how many college newspapers would actually carry the ads, but in those that it usually caused a furor. I especially recall that one student complained that the ad “hurt him really, really bad”; I compared that “really, really bad pain” to the sight of people jumping out of the WTC, choosing one form of death over another. What a contrast between worlds!
But the sight of that actual horrible pain did not stop the continued display of that contrast. In fact, it has continued and expanded in the years since. If you are able to tune in an Air America station you no doubt will be treated to a wail about how Bush and Cheny have “gone around the world collecting people and imprisoning them” and never mind that 66 years ago we did that on a far vaster scale – and it was considered then to be very humane. And listen to the “horrors” of the Patriot Act, in which Federal officials may actually be able to find out which library books you have checked out. Or the “horrors” of Abu Grabe. Or the ACLU’s valiant defense of your right to board a New York subway and not be searched; they had no problems with the security force being there, just that they not actually do anything. Or the possibility that foreigners might have their telephone conversations snooped upon. All these things “hurt people really, really bad” too. Or do we want to hear again about not enough WMD’s being found in Iraq to form a satisfactory quorum?
The most distressing thing about the Left is not just that they are contemptible, or vile, or objectively traitorous, but that they are so very petty. And they revel in this intellectual insignificance and have elevated this to something of an art form. They have learned nothing from the real horrors of 9/11/01, not even a sense of perspective.
Some people say that such pettiness is a sign that the Left are not serious people. But the fact that they are indeed serious about what could not be considered as serious from any reasonable perspective may be the worst part of their delusion.
