Delusional Liberal Myths

The Weekly Standard did an article this weekend which listed ten myths liberals tell themselves. Some of these were right, but most really weren’t. So what are the real myths liberals tell themselves? In other words, what false ideas do liberals genuinely believe about themselves, even though those beliefs are nonsensical, contradictory, and/or contrary to all the evidence?

Myth No. 1: Liberals Are The Mainstream

Even though polls show 60% of Americans embrace conservative beliefs, twice as many Americans identify themselves as conservative than liberal (40% to 20%), and even though liberal politicians shy away from the liberal label, liberals still believe they are the mainstream in America.

Liberals believe this because they live in a bubble. They cluster in predominantly liberal cities and they choose only liberal friends. Hollywood inserts liberal messages in their films, Madison Avenue does the same with advertising, liberal publishers do the same with books, and even the nightly news is entirely liberal, while pretending to be unbiased. Thus, to a liberal, the whole world seems liberal because that’s all they see and hear.

An interesting bit of proof of how much this can distort your view comes from a Gallup poll which asked what percentage of the American population is black. Blacks, who cluster together and who hear their leaders complain about under-representation despite being overrepresented in the culture, answered that blacks are 30% of the population. . . three times the actual number.

Myth No. 2: Everyone Genuinely Thinks Like Liberals Do

An offshoot of Myth Number 1 combined with an incredible lack of self-awareness, liberals believe that everyone genuinely thinks like they do. Indeed, when someone dares to express a different view, they automatically assume that person is motivated by bias or has been bought or misled. This issue also explains why liberals believe that all criminals are victims: because they personally can't conceive of wanting to be a criminal. Thus, since they know that everyone else thinks like they do, it stands to reason (to them) that anyone who commits a crime does so against their own will, e.g. they are forced by circumstances beyond their control.

Myth No. 3: Liberals Are Knowledgeable

Liberals believe they are better educated and better informed than the public at large. And they see their enemies as stupid, anti-science, anti-knowledge hillbillies. This is of course wrong. Not only has it been shown over and over that liberals are very poorly informed, but their incredible desire to block “inconvenient truths” through political correctness and simply denying reality, and their refusal to consider knowledge that runs counter to their beliefs (see Myth No. 1 above) keep liberals happily ignorant. So why do they think they are knowledgeable? Consider the old adage that the most intelligent person is the one who knows what they don’t know, and those who are most sure are those who know the least. That describes liberals. They are willfully ignorant of what they don’t know, and that blinds them to the truth and makes their own beliefs seem that much more correct.

Myth No. 4: Liberalism Has Never Failed

Liberal policies have failed whenever they’ve been put into practice. Indeed, the evidence is indisputable that liberal policies are highly destructive. Yet, liberals insist liberalism has never failed. Why do they say this? Because liberals disavow their failures. The most common defense mechanism involves believing that liberal policies weren’t actually tried. This delusion takes two forms: (1) either the liberals in charge turned out not to be "genuine" liberals and thus perverted the policies (e.g. the Soviets or Nazis) or they failed to go far enough (e.g. Obama or the Great Society), or (2) their policies were undermined by the enemies of liberalism, e.g. corporations, Republicans, the rich, white people, religious people, capitalists, the bourgeois middle class, etc. That's how despite 70 years of nearly-uninterrupted liberalism, liberals will tell you with a straight face that liberalism has never really been given a chance anywhere. And in rare instances, where its inescapable that liberalism was tried (e.g. FDR), liberals create elaborate lies to explain how it actually worked despite the historical evidence to the contrary.

Myth No. 5: Liberals Are Independent Thinkers

Liberals are the classic example of “group think.” They believe what they are told, no matter how contradictory. And their beliefs can be changed literally overnight if their leaders tell them so. Yet, liberals consider themselves independent thinkers. This is of course ridiculous. First, consider the fact that liberals actively dismiss all evidence that doesn’t fit their beliefs. Secondly, consider that liberals are poorly informed people who only get their news from liberal propaganda sources. Third, consider that liberals have no problem ignoring reality when they are told it is no longer politically correct to believe reality. None of that is consistent with independent thinking.

Myth No. 6: Liberals Represent The Little Guy

Liberals love to believe they represent the little guy. Yet, their representatives do the bidding of Big Business. Their minimum wage kills the very jobs the little guy needs. Their unions crush small businesses and keep out outsiders (particularly minority workers). Their regulations stop all but the best connected companies. Their open borders keep wages low. Their love of taxes crushes low and middle class workers. Their protectionism hurts consumers. And all their heroes have come from the idle rich class. So much for the little guy.

Myth No. 7: Liberals Aren’t Racist/Sexist/Ageist

Liberals believe everyone else is racist, sexist, etc., but not them. Yet, big liberal cities (like LA, Boston and Washington) have the worst racial problems. Liberal companies don’t hire more minorities than conservative companies. Anyone who knows liberals knows they freely tell racist and sexist jokes. . . which they claim doesn’t make them racist, but would make conservatives racist. Their attacks on conservative blacks and women often take the vilest forms of racism/sexism and few liberals (read: none) will ever raise an objection. And there is a deeply racist underpinning to the liberal view of civil right, i.e. that minorities don’t have the ability to succeed unless white liberals hold their hands the whole way.

Myth No. 8: Liberals Aren’t Full of Hate

Liberals claim everyone else is full of hate. Yet, liberals are the ones who seethe with hate. They rant and rave and want their opponents destroyed. Liberals don’t just want apologies (something they would never feel they owed if the situation was reversed), they want people fired and driven from the public square. They demand re-education, i.e. brainwashing. Their protests turn violent. They want their opponents silenced. They openly hate the rich. . . actually anyone they consider a “have”. They hate religious people. They openly hate Jews again. They hate those who disagree with them. They hate conservatives. They tar their opponents as racists. And they want all of these people crushed by the state.

Myth No. 9: Liberals Are Better People

Liberals believe they are better people, pure and simple. In fact, it's fascinating how self-righteous liberals get about charity. They dismiss the efforts of people engaged in genuine charity, but they think their vote to give your money to someone they feel deserves it more makes them better than you. You see this in every facet of their beliefs. They see themselves as the saviors of the poor, of minorities, and of the very planet. . . all done with your money, though they take all the credit. And they look down on anyone who isn’t as “noble” as they believe they are.

Myth No. 10: Liberals Are Rational

Finally, liberals believe they are rational, but they aren’t -- they act on emotional impulses without any thought to what they are proposing. This is why their policies are often childishly stupid, e.g. “if someone doesn’t have healthcare, then we should just give it to them. Duh.” This is also why they can actively believe things that cannot be true and why they can believe contradictory things at the same time -- because they aren't thinking, they are feeling. This is also why they get so irrationally angry at anyone who disagrees with them, because they a dealing purely in emotion, where disagreement is a personal affront. This is also why they think their good intentions justify their failures. . . "sure you got hurt, but I meant well."

Put simply, liberals are incredibly not-self-aware morons.