Howard Dean

There has been some reaction to Howard Dean's rant yesterday, reported by the Lawrence Journal in Lawrence Kansas. Dean said many of the the things one would expect about going to every state in the Union and rallying supporters, even in Republican states. But he probably did his party no good with his statements on social issues. According to the paper:

"'The issue is not abortion,' Dean told the closed-door fund-raiser. 'The issue is whether women can make up their own mind instead of some right-wing pastor, some right-wing politician telling them what to do.'
And Dean told the Hiebert fund-raiser that gay marriage was a Republican diversion from discussions of ballooning deficits and lost American jobs. That presents an opportunity to attract moderate Republicans, he said.
'Moderate Republicans can't stand these people (conservatives), because they're intolerant. They don't think tolerance is a virtue,' Dean said, adding: 'I'm not going to have these right-wingers throw away our right to be tolerant.'"

Many individuals, not the least of which would be Christian apologist Josh McDowell, have pointed out that the word tolerance has become a code word for the stubborn insistence that no ultimate and final truth can exist about anything, and a hammer to keep faith-based values out of public discourse. Tolerance, to the liberal mind, means all views are equally valid except those views that claim to be objectively and finally true. As long as something is only personally true, one can believe anything one wants. But when something is asserted as universally true, to the liberal, it is a sign of supreme arrogance on the part of the one who holds that standard.

When morally conservative people say murder is always wrong, and that a human fetus is always a living human being, morally liberal people see arrogance. How can anyone say anything is always true? And morally liberal people, (tolerant as they are), tend to use liberal politics to impose their viewpoints on society with the force of law, usually through the courts.

I do think the reaction of the state Rebublican party leader, Derrick Sontag, was a bit over the top.

"'My immediate reaction to that whole dialogue is, it's full of hatred,' Sontag said. 'The Democratic Party has elected a leader that's full of hatred.'"

Liberalism is not necessarily hatred, and I don't think it wise to respond to labels with labels, to play the "hate" card the way some play the "race" card, or the way gay rights activists have used the word "hate" to bash everyone who doesn't think homosexuality is a morally neutral genetic trait. Rather, liberalism is a mindset that cannot conceive of the possibility that there can be any universal truths, (save for the absolute rule that no absolutes exist). And it drives morally liberal people to distraction that conservatives can't see the obvious arrogance in saying something is actually true. I think Dean is sincere. I think he is totally clueless as to how shrill and ridiculous he sounds to most Americans. I think he really believes we just aren't enlightened enough to understand.