I really don’t mean to bring up Richard Cohen again but his column in today’s Post is so revealing it’s worth a good read. It’s about David Horowitz’s attention-grabbing ad about reparations for slavery. Here’s the kicker paragraph: “Word for word, there’s not a lot in Horowitz’s ad with which I disagree. But word for word is not, I learned a long time ago, how people read. They take in a message – a tone. They hear an inaudible sound. They sense what the movie director Ang Lee (“Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon”) would call “the juice.” The interior message of Horowitz’s ad is smug, cold – dismissive. It’s not racist, as some have charged. It just feels that way.” What Cohen is saying is that what should matter in public debate is not whether an argument makes sense or not, but how some people will feel when exposed to it. This cult of sensitivity – the sworn enemy of rational thought – is the new shibboleth of the some well-meaning types on the left. For them, it doesn’t matter if what you say is objectively racist or wrong or bigoted; even if what you say makes complete sense, all that really matters is if someone, particular of a designated minority group, feels offended. This is the underlying rationale for speech codes; it’s the sentiment behind those who refused to run the Horowitz ad; it’s the rallying cry of the campus left. But when there’s only feeling, there is no debate, and no arguments – merely the “inaudible sounds” of people’s emotions. And when there is no debate, there can be no progress. This cult of feeling, if you scratch it a little, is an almost purely reactionary phenomenon – which is why real liberals should resist it at every opportunity.
IT’S THAT TIME OF YEAR: This is not an invitation for you all to flood me with tax hell stories, but this tale from a reader cracked me up: “A couple of years ago I accidentally contributed more than I was supposed to to an IRA account, so I had to take it out and pay a penalty, which I did. A couple of months later, I get a letter saying I owe $450. I call the IRS and they say I don’t owe anything. Another 2 months and another letter comes saying I owe the $450. I call the IRS and they say I don’t owe anything. Another two months, another letter, a threat to place a lien, etc. Back and forth this goes, until they finally determine they have two records on me in their database, one says I owe the other doesn’t. Delete one record, case closed, right? No, two months later I get a check from the IRS for the $450 they said I owed to them. I don’t cash it, I just hold it. Three months later, they say they want their money back – with interest, which I paid.” Ah, how wonderful our government is.
CAMPAIGN FINANCE REFORM IN A NUTSHELL: How would this reader suggestion work? Raise the individual hard money contribution to $25,000. Not enough to really sway anyone, but enough to alleviate the need for oodles of soft money. Full disclosure of everything. Then the flat tax. Why would corporate lobbyists need to lobby when there are no loopholes to create? Not perfect, but more feasible and effective than anything else now on the table.
EVEN IN THE JOURNAL: A reader points out an odd piece of cognitive dissonance in the Wall Street Journal’s news pages. In a piece on March 20, devoted to president Bush’s possible Supreme Court picks, the reporter quotes White House legal counsel, Justice Gonzalez, in an abortion case: “Our role as judges requires that we put aside our own personal views of what we might like to see enacted and instead do our best to discern what the legislature intended.” Then the reporter writes: “That philosophy is about as far away from Justice Scalia’s view on abortion as Austin is from Washington.” Huh? This is exactly Scalia’s position. The piece goes on to say that Scalia said that “the right to abortion ‘must be overruled.'” But Scalia only believes that such a right should be over-ruled if the Courts are imposing the right on a reluctant or hostile legislature. When reporters on the Journal don’t even have a basic clue as to the principles of conservative (or liberal) judicial restraint, what hope is there for CNN?
The Dish 