Evil or Stupid?

There's a fun game one can play while reading Ann Coulter. Just substitute her name whenever you come across the word liberal. Go ahead, you try:

"A central component of liberal hate speech is to make paranoid accusations based on their own neurotic impulses, such as calling Republicans angry, hate-filled, and mean." (Slander, p. 19).

Neurotic impulses? Glass houses Ann?

"Liberals don't try to win arguments, they seek to destroy their opponents and silence dissident opinions." (Slander, p. 91)

Again, sounds familiar. But the quote which recently attracted my attention--and inspired this essay--is:

"While having dinner recently with John Lott, author of 'More Guns, Less Crime,' one of life's enduring debates came up: Are liberals evil or just stupid? I was surprised to discover that Lott vigorously disputed those of us staking out the evil position." (March 8, 2001)

So there's the question. Ann Coulter: Evil or Stupid? First, it's rather odd that Coulter has the nerve to put things quite that way. Her recent book--admittedly published after the above quote, but not saying anything new--spends a great deal of time complaining that liberals are always accusing conservatives of being evil (much of the rest of the book, not surprisingly, accuses liberals of being evil). Or to quote from her recent (June 2002) appearance on the Today Show:

"Political debate with liberals is basically impossible in America because liberals are calling names while conservatives are trying to make arguments...It's really all the same lie [that liberals tell], that conservatives are either stupid or scarily weird and therefore you don't have to deal with their ideas."

So it's ok for conservative Ann Coulter to call liberals stupid or evil, but it's darn mean for liberals to call conservatives stupid or evil? If this is Coulter's idea of starting a "political debate" she's better off sticking with invective. I don't know if she is blind to the hypocrisy of her position or if she just doesn't care (or perhaps she uses the old schoolyard claim "they started it first!"). Whatever her internal rationalization, her words make her look pretty, uh, well, you know. Stupid.

The problem with Coulter's Evil vs. Stupid debate is not that it's, well, stupid (although it really is, isn't it?), the problem is that she frames the debate in terms of good and evil in the first place. It's not that there isn't such a thing as evil. We all know evil exists. World Wars, fascism, Stalinism, all these are faces of evil. As are maniacs who fly planes into buildings. But in the world of politics, evil isn't that common, or, rather, that black and white. I don't think my political opponents are evil. Rudy Giuliani supports the death penalty, I don't; that doesn't make him evil, or me. We simply disagree. My father-in-law is a conservative born-again Christian. I'm not. We disagree on many (most) political issues. Yet neither one of us is evil (or stupid).

That's something Coulter really doesn't seem to understand. Your opponents are not usually evil, they just see things differently than you do. And that's normal, even healthy. Coulter's dinner guest, John Lott, recognizes this. Elsewhere in Coulter's essay he tells her that liberals simply believe in 'different facts' than he does, and that makes them neither evil nor stupid. But Coulter doesn't get it.

Coulter sees the world in black and white. She's white (Connecticut white) and everyone she doesn't like is black (New York black). You're either a good conservative, or an evil liberal, there are no in betweens. Or to quote from Coulter on "swing" voters:

"The swing voters---I like to refer to them as the idiot voters because they don't have set philosophical principles. You're either a liberal or you're a conservative if you have an IQ above a toaster. "---Beyond the News, Fox News Channel, 6/4/00

A person, a real flesh and blood human being, has a complex, confused, and sometimes even contradictory way of looking at the world. She might be pro-death penalty, but also pro-government provided health care; anti-gay marriage, but pro-choice on abortion; opposed to both the missile shield and the estate tax. So how does she vote? Conservative or liberal? A complicated world cannot be broken down into simple either/or political philosophies. To do so is simpleminded.

This, in the end, is Coulter's most serious flaw as a pundit. She believes that there are really only two kinds of people in the world: those who agree with her and those who are evil and stupid liberals. Only she, and those who agree with her, has a monopoly on goodness and truth. If not stupid, at the very least this makes her very, very blind. And her blind hatred of liberals makes her a bitter and nasty voice on the political landscape. Dare I say, a force for evil?

©2002 Carl Skutsch. All rights reserved.
All opinions expressed herein are those of the author unless otherwise noted
(and it goes without saying that they make more sense than Coulter's opinions.)

graphics & design by pixelforge