“Although it is not true that all Conservatives are stupid people, it is true that most stupid people are Conservative.” Expressed by liberal John Stuart Mill, this sentiment has become a left-wing article of faith (though Mill would be shocked by today’s liberalism). Thus is it perhaps not surprising that NBC’s Andrea Mitchell jumped the gun Wednesday trying to shame the quite erudite Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) as an ignoramus — and ended up with egg on her face. Unfortunately, Mitchell’s error well reflects a wider problem with the mainstream media.
At issue was criticism of the impeachment trial leveled by Cruz yesterday. As Mitchell tweeted:
Erstwhile “conservative” and devout never-Trumper Jennifer Rubin chimed in mere minutes later, opining thus:
Now, I’m not sure how making an attribution error would bespeak of “lack of soul.” But, then again, I’m not as enlightened as a mainstream media journalist (I hope!). Yet the two ladies have a bigger problem:
Cruz was absolutely correct.
“William Faulkner borrowed the title of his book Sound and Fury from Macbeth, Act V: ‘It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing,’” as editor and commentator Thomas Lifson notes.
“Even I recognized the source, and I was not an English Lit major, unlike Andrea Mitchell, who graduated from the Ivy League University of Pennsylvania in 1967 with that as her field of concentration,” Lifson continues. “As Ace pointed out, this has got to be among the five most famous quotes from all of Shakespeare.”
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While other liberals had chimed in with Mitchell and Rubin, as the ignorati e-congregated, the two journalists were savaged by more scholarly respondents.
For example, Twitter user Adriana Stubbs wrote, “I normally wouldn’t care that @mitchellreports doesn’t know her Faulkner from her Shakespeare but the fact that she tweeted this in an effort to paint @SenTedCruz as stupid makes it just too delicious to resist!”
Then, a figure some may recognize offered a bit of advice:
(Twitchy has a great selection of similar tweets.) Unfortunately for Mitchell, she nonetheless kept digging her hole by issuing an apology infused with self-flattery:
This provoked responses such as the following from New York Post op-ed editor Sohrab Ahmari:
“Meanwhile, Jennifer Rubin, who apparently defined herself as having no soul because she doesn’t know what Any Thinking Man does, has issued no mea culpa that I have been able to find,” reports Lifson.
However, the deeper issue was touched upon by a couple of other Twitter users. Blogger Erik Soderstrom wrote, “Shakespeare’s works are in the public domain. You could have checked this in a few seconds.”
Then there’s the following:
That really is the point. So much can be said here, too.
First, Mitchell’s mistake violated Chinese philosopher Sun Tzu’s sage counsel to “know the enemy and know yourself.” When someone as erudite as Ted Cruz (whom liberal law professor Alan Dershowitz called “one of the best students I ever had”) makes an assertion, you shouldn’t take it as gospel. But you should take it seriously. Then you may not end up looking unserious.
Moreover, even if you do suppose you’re dealing with idiots, you should heed Scottish writer Thomas Carlyle’s words, “Every man is my superior in that I may learn from him.” Anyone can learn from anyone. So do your fact-checking.
In this vein, many a time has a liberal said something, occasionally directly to me, that I might have doubted. But I’d think, “OK, could that be true?” and investigate it on the Web. I also do this, of course, when writing pieces and sometimes before posting to social media. For while we all make mistakes, it’s how you can avoid looking stupid, and it usually only takes 30 seconds.
Failure to do this speaks volumes. Roughly speaking, there are two kinds of people involved in our great debates: the Truth-oriented, who want to be right; and the self-oriented, who want others to agree they’re right.
Liberals almost universally fall into the latter category. It’s not that they’re all unintelligent or “invincibly ignorant,” to use a theological term; it’s that not believing in “Truth” (absolute, universal, and eternal by definition), they just don’t care about it.
This helps explain bad journalists. And coming to mind here is a reporter in my region who years ago used the term “high-capacity ammunition.” When I informed her there was no such thing — at issue were “high capacity magazines” — she accepted the correction humbly. But she also essentially said that she couldn’t do better until her bosses paid her to go to a gun range.
In other words, I’ll be competent when they pay me to be competent (and not even then, really). Someone who loves Truth never has this attitude.
A person to whom doing even a couple of minutes research is too taxing doesn’t belong in journalism. But liberals, being not Truth-oriented but self-oriented and solipsistic, don’t trouble over this. In fact, no matter their stumbles, they’ll still be sure that conservatives are dumb. Their self-esteem, after all, is dependent on their illusion of elite status.
It’s just more proof that modern liberalism is akin to “a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”
