Interesting to read David French’s piece up at NRO’s The Corner.
After reading it, I was reminded of a William F. Buckley quote. “Liberals claim to want to give a hearing to other views, but then are shocked and offended to discover that there are other views.”
French reveals through analysis that there is far more group-think from the left than the right.
Don’t believe me? In 2008, McCain/Palin won 73 percent of the Evangelical/born-again vote. By contrast, San Francisco gave Obama/Biden 84 percent of its votes. All the boroughs of New York City (except Staten Island) went for Obama by wider margins than 73 percent, with Manhattan giving Obama 85 percent of its votes. There were similar numbers for Philadelphia and Washington D.C. In other words, these major American cultural centers are less diverse than churches entirely filled with self-selecting populations of Bible-believing Christians. Leftists have greater group solidarity than Christians.
If heavily insulated, group-think will take on damaging momentum. Typically, when people think alike and are reinforced from others’ similar thinking, a more extreme version of the common held belief will emerge. The funnelization will also cause group polarization and the group polarization creates an us and them mentality.
That is why often the case liberals have such scorn and hatred toward conservatives and conservative groups. In their limited mind, they really do believe they own the truth, are morally superior, and intellectually honest. Thus, when they encounter a person with opposing views, than these persons must be the exact opposite. It creates a powerful, if warped, false reality.
The lack of diversity among leftists inside their liberal enclaves creates the opposite atmosphere that they believe they exist in. It creates a very confining box intellectually. As such, liberalism — today’s liberalism — actually becomes ideological orthodoxy.
For example, conservatism has several camps, social conservatives, fiscal conservatives, neo-conservatives, enterprisers, etc. There are even moderate-conservatives. Liberalism, on the other hands, has no such camp. The modern, self-professed liberal is dogmatic and absolute in terms of ideology. That is why liberal ideology only accounts for 20 to 22% of Americans, while conservatives (which included the broad camp) make up roughly 40 to 42 percent.
Given the larger number of conservatives, it is far more likely that two conservatives will meet and come a way with different views on a given subject. Liberals, however, are far less likely to do so. When considering liberals, such extremism will only create those who are orthodox who then in turn find either heretics or hate-mongers surrounding them.
