In response to That Hobby Lobby Ruling Is Just Like ISIS Imposing Sharia Law:
That’s a pretty stunning display of sheer ignorance, or more likely deliberate mendacity. The liberal response to Hobby Lobby is all about emotional exhibitionism, going over the top, conjuring a fantasy villain so everyone can join hands and sing “We Shall Overcome.” It’s a hysterical release of energy, bottled up by frustration at Obama’s disastrous second term and the looming midterm-election catastrophe. The Left really needed a win here, but more importantly, they needed emotional validation. They can still get that by squalling like babies with soiled diapers, and taking note of how many fellow travelers are squalling right along with them.
If they scream loud enough, they won’t hear the golf-clap applause from supporters of religious liberty, who are pleased to learn the First Amendment still means what it says, more or less, and will now return to their day jobs. One of the big advantages to making mountains out of molehills is that the people who still see a molehill aren’t going to invest a lot of effort in arguing with you.
The triumph of raw emotionalism over common sense is a big part of the Left’s appeal. It’s fun for them, it attracts young people who tend to be impressed by “emotional authenticity,” it spares them the trouble of understanding the arguments of their opponents, and it even saves them the effort of learning about what they support.
The Know-Nothing instinct among today’s leftists is incredibly strong – you prove you really care about an issue by not studying its nuances. Trying to explain that Hobby Lobby covers 16 forms of contraception without complaint, to a person who thinks the Supreme Court just denied women access to birth control, is like asking Wendy Davis to explain the abortion law she got famous by protesting. Only crusty old patriarchs, or their submissive faux-female baby incubators, would expect these brave and sincere crusaders to know what they’re talking about before loudly demanding cosmic justice!
Combined with the speech controls imposed upon us – in which one false word about, say, a transgendered person can get you bounced out of your job – the net effect is one of national neurosis, in which validation can be achieved only by passionate and unreasoning support for what a liberal’s duly credentialed leaders tell him or her to believe. It’s no surprise the new aristocracy loves the idea of hapless followers viewing themselves as children. If you believe that either someone else gives you free birth control, or you’re being “denied access” to it, you are explicitly judging yourself to be a child, incapable of making rational decisions or taking care of your own needs. Likewise, if you think the solution to social problems is to scream and sob until someone from the Ruling Class comes along to make it all better.
I always thought Obama’s “hope and change” mantra was disturbing, because “hope” is passive – his followers were being told to vote for him and await rescue, transforming politics into an emotional statement, a form of personal validation. That appeal is unworthy of the resourceful and independent people of a free nation. It turns out to be an effective way to cattle-drive people into voting booths, but it has a damaging effect on the national psyche. After six years of it, I’m not surprised to hear people who know very little about the Taliban, ISIS, or sharia law comparing Hobby Lobby to all three. That’s what a small child does: you either give him what he wants, or you’re a monster. The encouragement this gives to the actual monsters, and the insult it renders to their victims, does not occur to people who are just looking for nasty names to lob at people they have been instructed to hate.
Ben Franklin said his colleagues gave us a republic, if we could keep it. A nation of adult babies and shrieking neurotics doesn’t have much chance of hanging on to a republic… as you can see from the big push to abandon it, in favor of a benevolent-dictator Sugar Daddy model of the presidency. Followers are encouraged to hold their binkies tightly as Daddy tells them another scary bedtime story about the evil corporations and nasty judgmental Bible-thumpers he protects them from.
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.