I love listening to Dennis Prager on the radio and this is a classic example of why. He interviewed Arthur C. Brooks, a Louis A. Bantle Professor of Business and Government Policy at Syracuse University’s Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs and Whitman School of Management, author and contributor to the Wall Street Journal. Dennis was asking him about his WSJ commentary from today, “Liberal Hatemongers“, in which he shows from data analysis that the Liberal mantra that Conservatives hate more than Liberals might just fall the other way.

. . . According to the political analysis of filmmaker Michael Moore, whose perception of irony apparently does not extend to his own words, “The right wing, that is not where America’s at . . . It’s just a small minority of people who hate. They hate. They exist in the politics of hate . . . They are hate-triots.”

What about liberals? According to University of Chicago law professor Geoffrey Stone, “Liberals believe individuals should doubt their own truths and consider fairly and open-mindedly the truths of others.” They also “believe individuals should be tolerant and respectful of difference.” Indeed, generations of academic scholars have assumed that the “natural personality” of political conservatives is characterized by hostile intolerance towards those with opposing viewpoints and lifestyles, while political liberals inherently embrace diversity.

Yeah, yeah, yeah! Anyone that’s been around a Lefty has heard that screed dozens, if not hundreds of times. But . . . is it true? Brooks poured through the results from several of the University of Michigan’s American National Election Studies (ANES) surveys, which assigned “feeling thermometer” ratings from zero [I hate you to hell forever] to 100 [Santa!!!!] to variety of questions. Those questioned were self-identified as conservative or liberal, strongly so, less so etc. Interesting things were found. Keep in mind that because the people surveyed were basically nice, the median number is a 70, not the expected 50 — meaning that if an interviewee was ambivalent about a question on average it would be rated as 70, so a number below 70 shows dislike, below 40 strong dislike, below 20 real hatred, and 0 — well, see above comment.

People in this survey who called themselves “conservative” or “very conservative” did have a fairly low opinion of liberals — they gave them an average thermometer score of 39. The score that liberals give conservatives: 38. Looking only at people who said they are “extremely conservative” or “extremely liberal,” the right gave the left a score of 27; the left gives the right an icy 23. So much for the liberal tolerance edge.

Some might argue that this is simply a reflection of the current political climate, which is influenced by strong feelings about the current occupants of the White House. And sure enough, those on the extreme left give President Bush an average temperature of 15 and Vice President Cheney a 16. Sixty percent of this group gives both men the absolute lowest score: zero.

To put this into perspective, note that even Saddam Hussein (when he was still among the living) got an average score of eight from Americans. The data tell us that, for six in ten on the hard left in America today, literally nobody in the entire world can be worse than George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.

BDS (Bush Derangement Syndrome) is very much alive and well on the Left! Of course, in the 90s the Right had a few strong issues with the Clintons, especially with ol’ Slick himself. So, how did the conservatives in 1998 rate Bill and big ol’ Al Gore?

In 1998, Bill Clinton and Al Gore were hardly popular among conservatives. Still, in the 1998 ANES survey, Messrs. Clinton and Gore both received a perfectly-respectable average temperature of 45 from those who called themselves extremely conservative. While 28% of the far right gave Clinton a temperature of zero, Gore got a zero from just 10%. The bottom line is that there is simply no comparison between the current hatred the extreme left has for Messrs. Bush and Cheney, and the hostility the extreme right had for Messrs. Clinton and Gore in the late 1990s.

So now you know — the Left is the bigger hater. That doesn’t justify Right-hatred of Liberals — I don’t hate ‘em, I just don’t want them running the government! Brooks comes to this conclusion:

[W]e have to face the fact that political intolerance in America — ugly and unfortunate on either side of the political aisle — is to be found more on the left than it is on the right.

Michelle Malkin has experienced this kind of hatred up close and personal and writes the following in her blog about Brooks findings, [h/t: SeeDubya]

When I was on the book tour for Unhinged: Exposing Liberals Gone Wild, critics predictably countered by playing the moral equivalence card. Show them how intolerant, racist, sexist, hateful, conspiratorial-minded, and violent the Left can be, and they sputter “B-b-b-b-b-ut the Right is just as bad.”

Spend anytime in the blogosphere and it’s clear that the two sides of the political galaxy are not created equal. One side burns effigies of American soldiers and craps on the American flag. The other does not. One side wraps itself in assassination chic. The other does not. One side indulges in vicious Sambo photoshops, rank religious bigotry, death wishes, gloating over the illnesses of public figures, and fill-in-the-blank derangement syndrome. The other does not.

It’s going to interesting to see what the Left does with all that hate after Bush leaves office in about a year. Probably not enough Prozac in the world . . . nope, not nearly enough. If you’ve got a Lefty in the house, better hide the razor blades.

Technorati Tags: Arthur C. Brooks, Liberal Hatemongers, American National Election Studies, ANES

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 17th, 2008 at 1:25 pm and is filed under Fever Swamp Madness, Lefty Nutters. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.  |   Print This Post  |   Email This Post

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