Legal Commentary

Liberals Are Dumb Too, Part 2

By Big Tent Democrat

Yesterday I wrote about liberal handwringing over Markos' book American Taliban. Meanwhile back at the reality ranch, David Kopel at the Volokh Conspiracy writes about Anne Coulter's claim that President Obama is an atheist:

Ann Coulter’s column today argues that Obama is not a Muslim; rather, he “is obviously an atheist.” [. . .] I disagree with both the facts and the conclusion. Coulter is accurate in calling Jeremiah Wright “a racist nut.” However, that does not prove that Wright (and by extension Obama, to whatever extent Obama believes in Wright’s theology) is not a Christian. Some practitioners of “liberation theology” (including the black liberation theology variant) may simply be Marxists looking for some broadly-appealing rhetoric to add to their political program.

(Emphasis supplied.) This discussion of "liberation theology" of course is the new talking point delivered by Glenn Beck. Glenn Reynolds also writes about it:

[T]o take things beyond the Obama question — on a similar moral plane. In fact, if you look at a Marxist Utopia — say, Cuba — what you’ll see is basically a plantation. At the top, you’ve got the Massa and his family — Fidel, Raul, et al. — followed by various layers of overseers — the Communist Party apparat, the secret police — and House Negroes — e.g., the state-controlled media — all living off the surplus labor of the Field Negroes, whose produce is disposed of not according to their own desires (that would be capitalism!) but according to their betters’. This, we’re told, is for the best, since they aren’t smart enough to make their own decisions anyway, and the Massa looks after them with food, housing, and health care. Slaveholders even defended their system as more humane and less exploitative than atomistic capitalism, conveniently ignoring the role of the lash, just as apologists for Marxism conveniently ignore the role of the gulag.

I think Reynolds, in his oblique style, is arguing that Castro's Cuba is somehow related to progressivism. "Liberation theology" don't you know.

Do you think the guest posters at Fifth Column Sully's site will add this to their Miss Manners Guide To Political Discourse? Me neither.

And yet, the liberals at The American Prospect are very, very concerned with progressives analogizing among extreme religious movements in the United States and around the world. Obviously, religion has never ever been a force for discord and violence right?

Liberals can be as stupid as anybody.

Speaking for me only

Full post as published by TalkLeft on September 02, 2010 (boomark / email).