December 16, 2014      3:41 PM
Bearse: Left-wing Ideologues Hiding in Plain Sight
From the Right: Quorum Report’s conservative columnist Eric Bearse argues that liberals hide their own extremism while flogging conservatives for not being pragmatic
Why do
liberals get a pass on the label “dangerous ideologue”? When Senator Ted Cruz implemented his strategy to
shut down the federal government over ObamaCare – and
more recently his strategy to defund the president’s executive order on
immigration – he was vilified in the press, and the subject of disdain in
cocktail parties across Washington. His ideology was extremist because he
actually carried out the promises he made on the campaign trail.
But what about
Elizabeth Warren? Here is a senator
from Massachusetts who doesn’t really believe in capitalism. She is the
preferred choice of the Obama ideologues, moveon.org operatives, Occupy
Wall Street zealots and Seattle anarchists. She is a hard-left
ideologue whose efforts to stop the bill to keep government funded was done out
of principle, according to the media narrative. Because Cruz’s principles
disagree with press sensibilities, he is a dangerous ideologue. Warren’s
ideological principles just make her palatable for president.
One of the
tricks liberals like to play is to pretend they don’t have an ideology, but
instead are just about solving problems. In fact, they scorn ideologues on the
right while denying they even have an ideology. This is the tactic employed at
the blog formerly known as Burkablog, where
politicians are divided into two camps -- people driven by ideology, and people
who want to solve problems. The conservatives are ideologues, the moderates and
liberals just want to solve problems. It’s how many on the left claim they are
centrists – they deny their solutions have an ideological bent.
The complete column from Eric Bearse
is available in the R&D Department.
By Eric Bearse
|