The Tyranny of Clichés: How Liberals Cheat in the War of Ideas (45 page)

2
.   
Stephanie Gaskell, “Statue Depicting Flag-Raising at Ground Zero Draws Criticism for ‘Political Correctness,’” The Associated Press, January 12, 2002.

3
.   Alexis de Tocqueville,
Democracy in America
, trans. Bruce Frohnen (Washington, D.C.: Regnery Gateway, 2003), p. 128: “A proposition must be plain to be adopted by the understanding of a people. A false notion which is clear and precise will always meet with a greater number of adherents in the world than a true principle which is obscure or involved.”

4
.   Irving Janis, one of the pioneers of Groupthink, explains the phenomenon thus: “The more amiability and esprit de corps there is among the members of a policy-making ingroup, the greater the danger that independent critical thinking will be replaced by groupthink, which is likely to result in irrational and dehumanizing actions against outgroups.” “Groupthink,”
Psychology Today
(1971), pp. 43–46.

5
.   Lee Bollinger, “Pro: Diversity is Essential,”
Newsweek,
January 26, 2003; accessed November 19, 2010,
www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2003/01/26/pro-diversity-is-essential.html
.

6
.   President Lyndon B. Johnson, “To Fulfill These Rights,” commencement address at Howard University (June 4, 1965); LBJ Online Archives; accessed Nov 24, 2011,
www.lbjlib.utexas.edu/johnson/archives.hom/speeches.hom/650604..asp
.

7
.   Evan Thomas and Pat Wingert, “Minority Report,”
Newsweek,
February 18, 2010; accessed November 19, 2010,
www.newsweek.com/2010/02/18/minority-report.html
.

8
.   See Kathryn Knight, “The Bizarre Truth about Life with Barbra Streisand,”
The Daily Mail
(July 19, 2007), last accessed December 6, 2011; Peter Schweizer,
Do as I Say (Not as I Do): Profiles in Liberal Hypocrisy
(New York: Random House), pp. 173–91.

8.: Social Darwinism

1
.   Mario Cuomo, 1984 Democratic National Convention Keynote Address. Speech delivered at the 1984 Democratic National Convention, San Francisco, California, July 16, 1984.

2
.   Barack Obama, Commencement Address at Knox College, Galesburg, Illinois, June 4, 2005.

3
.   Edwin Black,
War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America’s Campaign to Create a Master Race
(New York: Four Walls Eight Windows, 2003), p. 12.

4
.   See Geoffrey Hodgson’s authoritative essay “Social Darwinism in Anglophone Academic Journals: A Contribution to the History of the Term,”
Journal of Historical Sociology
17, no. 4 (December 2004).

5
.   Hodgson writes: “The 1907 appearance of the term was in the
American Journal of
Sociology
in an article by Collin Wells. Partly because the article itself is entitled ‘Social Darwinism’ it is worthy of more detailed discussion. This was the first use of the term in the title of an article in the JSTOR database. In addition,
it is the only article or review found in this entire database clearly and explicitly advocating ‘Social Darwinism’ in any sense whatsoever
. [Emphasis in original.] Wells insisted, however, that by ‘Social Darwinism’ he did ‘not mean those propositions of the doctrine of evolution which Darwin chiefly emphasized’”! (1907): 695.

6
.   Charles Darwin,
Autobiography
(London), p. 120.

7
.   Charles Darwin,
The Origin of Species
(1859), p. 116. See also p. 67, where he telegraphed his intention to apply the doctrine of Malthus in this way:

In the next chapter the Struggle for Existence amongst all organic beings throughout the world, which inevitably follows from their high geometrical powers of increase, will be treated of. This is the doctrine of Malthus, applied to the whole animal and vegetable kingdoms. As many more individuals of each species are born than can possibly survive; and as, consequently, there is a frequently recurring struggle for existence, it follows that any being, if it vary however slightly in any manner profitable to itself, under the complex and sometimes varying conditions of life, will have a better chance of surviving, and thus be naturally selected. From the strong principle of inheritance, any selected variety will tend to propagate its new and modified form.

8
.   Charles Richard Van Hise,
The Conservatism of Natural Resources in the United States
(New York: Macmillan, 1910), p.378.

9
.   Scott Gordon,
The History and Philosophy of Social Science
(New York: Routledge, 1993), p. 521; Daniel Kelves,
In the Name of Eugenics: Genetics and the Uses of Human Heredity
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1986), p. 68.

10
. Edward Alsworth Ross, “Social Darwinism,”
American Journal of Sociology
12 (1907): 715.

11
. E. A. Ross,
Seventy Years of It
(New York: Appleton-Century, 1936), p. 70, cit. in Thomas Leonard, “‘More Merciful and Not Less Effective’: Eugenics and American Economics in the Progressive Era,”
History of Political Economy
35, no. 4 (Winter 2003), p. 699.

12
. Sydney Webb, “Eugenics and the Poor Law: The Minority Report,”
The Eugenics Review
, 237; accessed November 10, 2011,
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2986721/pdf/eugenrev00382-0077.pdf
.

13
. Unsigned editorial,
The New Republic,
March 18, 1916.

14
. Richard Hofstadter,
Social Darwinism in American Thought
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1944), p. 44.

15
. Robert B. Reich, “Having It Both ways,”
The American Prospect
, November 28,
2005;
www.prospect.org/cs/articles?articleId=10666
; accessed July 28, 2011.

16
. Burt Folsom,
The Myth of Robber Barons: New Look at the Rise of Big Business in America
(Herndon, Va.: Young America’s Foundation, 1991).

17
. Ibid.

18
. Henry Hazlitt, “Capitalism Without Horns,”
National Review,
March 12, 1963.

19
. Timothy P. Carney,
The Big Ripoff: How Big Business and Big Government Steal Your Money
(Hoboken, N.J.: Wiley & Sons, 2006), p. 40.

20
. Irwin G. Wyllie, “Social Darwinism and the Businessmen,”
Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society
103 (1959): 629–35; Robert C. Bannister,
Social Darwinism: Science and Myth in Anglo-American Social Thought
(Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1988).

21
. Wyllie, p. 633.

22
. Ibid.

23
. Edwin Palmer Hoyt,
The Vanderbilts and Their Fortunes
(Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1962), p. 266.

24
. Wyllie, 634.

25
. Andrew Carnegie, “Memo to Self” (December 1868), accessed November 23, 2011,
www.carnegiebirthplace.com/images/Memo_sheet.pdf
.

26
. Hofstadter, p. 5.

9.: Slippery Slope

1
.   See Eugene Volokh’s typically exhaustive and insightful “The Mechanism of the Slippery Slope,”
Harvard Law
Review
(2003); David Enoch, “Once You Start Using Slippery Slope Arguments, You’re on a Very Slippery Slope,”
Oxford Journal of Legal Studies
(Winter 2001).

2
.   Eugene Volokh, “The Mechanism of the Slippery Slope,”
Harvard Law Review
116, no. 4 (Feb. 2003), pp. 1026–37.

10.: Dissent

1
.   See Mark Steyn, “Liberal Fabrications about Thomas Jefferson,”
Insight,
May 1, 2006.

2
.   Ibid.

3
.   
The Use of Force in International Affairs
(Philadelphia: Friends Peace Committee, 1961), p. 6.

4
.   Peter Beinart, “Election Night’s Big Loser,”
The Daily Beast,
November 2, 2010.

5
.   Michael Kinsley, “U.S. Is Not Greatest Country Ever,”
Politico,
November 2, 2010.

6
.   Hayley Tsukayama and Liz Lucas, “Thousands Cheer Obama at Rally for Change,”
Missourian
, October 30, 2008. Video of speech accessed November 23,
2011,
www.youtube.com/watch?v=_cqN4NIEtOY
.

7
.   “Charges Traitors in America Are Disrupting Russia,”
New York Times,
September 16, 1917, p. 3.

8
.   Walter Winchell, “Americans We Can Do Without,”
Liberty,
August 1, 1942, p. 10.

9
.   Video accessed October 20, 2011;
newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2009/04/16/garofalo-tea-partiers-are-all-racists-who-hate-black-president
.

11.: Social Justice

1
.   Jalees Rehman, “Why We Were Attacked in Norway,”
The Huffington Post,
July 23, 2011; accessed July 27, 2011,
www.huffingtonpost.com/jalees-rehman/why-we-were-attacked-in-n_b_907567.html
.

2
.   AFL-CIO Mission Statement, accessed February 2, 2011,
www.aflcio.org/aboutus/thisistheaflcio/mission/
.

3
.   SEIU 2008 Constitution and Bylaws, accessed August 10, 2011,
www.seiu.org/images/pdfs/Con.BylawsFinal3.4.9.pdf
.

4
.   Editorial, “$10 for Harvard,”
The Harvard Crimson,
May 23, 2011.

5
.   Accessed August 11, 2011,
www.fordfoundation.org/grants/grantdetails?grantid=8108
.

6
.   Accessed August 11, 2011,
www.ethicshare.org/node/714181
.

7
.   Accessed September 5, 2011,
www.masnet.org/main/content/mas-freedom
.

8
.   Accessed September 7, 2011,
www.americannaziparty.com/about/index.php
.

9
.   Accessed August 22, 2011,
www.yale.edu/sjn/
.

10
. GLADD and NGLCC, “Re: Proceeding 11-65 involving the AT&T merger with T-Mobile.” An open letter to the FCC. May 31, 2011; accessed November 26, 2011,
www.scribd.com/doc/57008791/GLAAD-ATT-letter
.

11
. K. C. Johnson, “Disposition for Bias,”
Inside Higher Ed,
May 23, 2005; accessed June 10, 2011,
www.insidehighered.com/views/2005/05/23/johnson
; “Dispositions, Education Programs, and the Social Justice Requirement,” accessed June 10, 2011, academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/history/johnson/dispositions.html.

12
. For a complete account of the history, development, and nuanced role of social justice within Catholic Social Doctrine, see Russell Hittinger, “The Coherence of the Four Basic Principles of Catholic Social Doctrine: An Interpretation,” a paper delivered to the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, May 2, 2008.

13
. Luigi Taparelli D’ Azeglio,
Saggio Teoretico
, “Ogni consorizio dee conservare la propria unità in modo da non perdere la unità del tutto; ed ogni società maggiore provvede
alla unità del tutto senza distruggere la unità dei consorzii”; in Thomas C. Behr, “Luigi Taparelli D’Azeglio, S.J. (1793–1862) and the Development of Scholastic Natural-Law Thought as a Science of Society,”
Journal of Markets & Morality
6, no 1 (Spring 2003): 99–115.

14
. Used by Mussolini in a speech before the Chamber of Deputies on May 26, 1927,
Discorsi del 1927
, Milano, Alpes, 1928, p. 157.

15
. See Ryan Messmore, “Real Social Justice,”
First Things Online
, November 26, 2010; accessed June 11, 2011,
www.firstthings.com/onthesquare/2010/11/real-social-justice
.

16
. Pope Leo XIII,
Rerum Novarum,
May 15, 1891.

17
. Reverend John A. Ryan, “Roosevelt Safeguards America,” a radio address made to the faculty of Catholic University of America, October 8, 1936.

18
. Principles of the National Union for Social Justice, quoted in Alan Brinkley,
Voices of Protest: Huey Long, Father Coughlin, and the Great Depression
(New York: Vintage, 1983), pp. 287–88.

19
. Charles A. Beard and George H. E. Smith, eds.,
Current Problems of Public Policy: A Collection of Materials
(New York: Macmillan, 1936), p. 54.

20
. “Attack on AFL by Coughlin Backed; Radio Priest Right, J.L. Ryan, Union President, Tells Protesting Clergymen.”
New York Times
(December 3, 1933).

21
. Accessed April 10, 2011,
www.ssa.gov/history/cough.html
.

22
. F. A. Hayek,
Law, Legislation, and Liberty, Vol. 2: The Mirage of Social Justice
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978), p. 97.

23
. Herbert Croly,
Progressive Democracy,
vol. 3 (New York: Macmillan, 1915) pp. 148–49. True, Croly says here that the moral ideal of society must be pursued “supplementary” to the individual. But should the interest of the State and the individual collide, there is little doubt with whom Croly would side: “The individual has the best chance of giving integrity to his life in a society which is being informed by the social ideal.… Although an advance towards social salvation will be accelerated by increasing individual integrity, society will never be saved as a consequence of the regeneration of individualism.” p. 199. In other words, Croly understood the language of social justice as the language giving credence to his ideological project of enabling the State to take the reins.

24
. “Social Justice in an Open World: The Role of the United Nations,” United Nations Division for Social Policy and Development (2006), pp. 2–3.

12.: Community

1
.   Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar, “Average Medicare Benefits By Far Top Lifetime Costs,”
Associated Press,
December 31, 2010.

2
.   The Hoover Dam contains 4.36 million cubic yards of concrete and created Lake Mead, a massive reservoir that flooded nearly three hundred square miles
of desert, diverted a river, and endangered the existence of numerous species of plants and animals, including the Bonytail, Colorado pikeminnow, Humpback chub, and razorback sucker. It was an astounding human accomplishment, but it was also a devastating blow not just to the surrounding ecosystem, but to the entire West Coast: Los Angeles, Las Vegas, and much of the Southwest would be inhospitable to large communities of human beings were it not for the electricity it provided. The idea that the same people who shudder at the mere suggestion of drilling in the unoccupied arctic wastelands of Alaska would today countenance such a wholesale rape of Mother Nature is laughable.