Jumping To Conclusions

The old cliche is that liberals think conservatives are evil, and conservatives think liberals are stupid. The neatness of that divide has been tested in recent years, as the attacks on George Bush illustrate -- he's not just mean-spirited; he's a simpleton, too. Still, the basic cliche holds, as Charles Krauthammer humorously explained last year.

And you couldn't ask for a better example than Colman McCarthy to demonstrate why conservatives think liberals are dumb. McCarthy wonders why, in analyzing the war, the cable news networks utilized retired military officers, rather than "such groups as Fellowship of Reconciliation, Pax Christi USA, Peace Action and the American Friends Service Committee." Here's a guess: could it be because the news shows were covering a war, and the former actually know something about war?

You have to admire McCarthy for his consistency, if nothing else; most anti-war people claimed that although they felt the war in Iraq was illegitimate, they supported at least a limited response to 9/11 in Afghanistan. McCarthy, though, argued that our response to 9/11 ought to be, "We forgive you. Please forgive us." You'd swear he was an Ann Coulter caricature of a leftist, if only he didn't exist. So when Charles Krauthammer writes:

Liberals tend to be nice, and they believe -- here is where they go stupid -- that most everybody else is nice too. Deep down, that is. Sure, you've got your multiple felon and your occasional war criminal, but they're undoubtedly depraved 'cause they're deprived. If only we could get social conditions right -- eliminate poverty, teach anger management, restore the ozone, arrest John Ashcroft -- everyone would be holding hands smiley-faced, rocking back and forth to "We Shall Overcome."

Liberals believe that human nature is fundamentally good. The fact that this is contradicted by, oh, 4,000 years of human history simply tells them how urgent is the need for their next seven-point program for the social reform of everything.