As the Worm Turns

The title of the post is “Why Liberals Loathe ‘The People’“, but for the life of me I can’t find an explanation of why liberals hate ‘The People.” At most, this McCullough guy produces some feeble evidence that liberals hate the people, leaving any explanation as to why to some unsupported, blanket assertions:

Regardless of partisan affiliation liberals seem to be on the war-path against the voice, votes, and welfare of those they work for: we the people. They are actively seeking to make them voiceless in the process of governing through supposed self-determination. They are also intent upon enslaving them to increasing government dependency for their basic needs, or to even entice them to live lawfully.

Liberals are on an enslaving, enticing warpath. Excellent! I now know why liberals hate the people: because Kevin McCullough says so!

Alright — I admit I’m reading too much into this. This Kevin McCullough character isn’t really engaging in deep sociological analysis. He is writing simple, easily-digested polemics on a national conservative website in order to spread his message and drive listeners to his money-making radio show. It’s not really fair for me to pick on his use of ‘why’ (which implies that he is engaged in explanation) when he really is just giving us an elaborate ‘that’-clause.

But — as a general rule — I try to take people at their word. Words have precise meanings. If someone says ‘why’ they should mean ‘why’; and if someone means ‘that’ then they should say ‘that’. Using words sloppily is sloppy writing. And sloppy writing leads to sloppy thinking.

Take McCullough’s first complaint:

Last week the voice of the people was shut out of the process of weighing in on one of the most explosively controversial topics of the day - redefining marriage to include additional sexual couplings.

It is the prevailing wisdom to allow the people to decide the weightiest matters of our time but not so to the ruling Marxist Democrats of Massachusetts. 151 political elites in the combined houses of the state legislature voted AGAINST allowing the people of the state a voice to speak.

It is the “prevailing wisdom” for the people to “decide the weightiest matters of our time.” Sounds like McCullough prefers direct democracy over representative democracy. That’s a perfectly reasonable position to take; I’m sure there are plenty of arguments McCullough could produce in support.

But I doubt McCullough really believes this. After all, the current War in Iraq is certainly one of the “weightiest matters of our time.” So, by his own principle, we should allow a nationwide referendum on the issue — and, if the recent polls are correct, a direct democratic decision on the war would likely lead to a withdrawal of our troops.

If McCullough accepts this democratically-chosen withdrawal as a reasonable result then I’ll grant that he’s presenting a coherent, principled argument. I might not agree (I think there are good reasons to prefer representative democracy — but I’ll admit to being unimpressed with the wisdom of crowds), but I’ll treat McCullough as a respectable, thoughtful opponent.

But if McCullough has a hard time swallowing this — if he wants direct democracy when the people vote against gay marriage, but wants the buffer of representative democracy when it gives G.W. Bush the authority to go to war arbitrarily, and continue that war against the express wishes of the people — then he’s nothing but a low-down, dirty, sloppy-thinking post-modern relativist. And we all know how I feel about those.

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