The Idiot Wind of Charles Krauthammer, Pt. 1

Last Friday, arch-conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer published a piece in the Washington Post entitled “The last refuge of a liberal” (invoking Samuel Johnson’s “Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel,” a notion Glenn Beck might take to heart). The column claimed, in Krauthammer’s typically eloquent and astringent style, that liberals, encountering the realities of their failed policies (the stimulus plan, health care bill, etc.) and staring down major electoral defeat in November, have taken to cynically portraying their opponents—most notably the nebulous Tea Party—as a host of ignorant bigots, all in a deliberate effort to gain some semblance of traction in the quagmire of public opinion. He cites four relatively recent instances in which he believes the left wing has resorted to this tactic: painting Tea Partiers as racists; Arizonans in support of the state’s new anti-immigration law as nativists; Americans in support of California’s Proposition 8 as homophobes; and those opposed to the construction of an Islamic Center in lower Manhattan as Islamophobes.

I read conservative columnists on a reasonably regular basis; it’s worthwhile to understand the motivations and arguments of the opposition in order to better counter its rhetoric. Most of the conservatives I follow are on the Post’s Op-Ed page—Krauthammer, George Will, Michael Gerson, occasionally Kathleen Parker—as well as David Brooks and Ross Douthat of the New York Times. I respect Will for his intellectual consistency, his principle, and his facility with language (he is the heir of Buckley, Safire, and Kilpatrick), Brooks for his moderation and his thoughtfulness; Douthat and Gerson, too, are reasonable and fair-minded individuals, although Gerson’s deference to his old boss, George W. Bush, can seem misplaced at best. In short, although I regularly disagree with the ideas of these men, I rarely have cause to object to their tone—and more often than may be suspected, I feel somehow stronger for having entered their confidence. Reading their work can be an exercise in affirming the rightness of difference—a society demands a plurality of views to move itself forward.

Krauthammer, however, is a different beast than the rest; he never attempts to conceal his scorn for the left, never concedes its intellectual viability, much less its good faith. Left wingers are nefarious beings to him, incomprehensible and sinister. He employs “liberal” as a sneer, a diminutive, a pejorative coated in disdain, glazed with malice. His columns are not so much expressions or affirmations of conservative belief, as they are bitter repudiations of the liberal worldview. “The last refuge of a liberal” is echt-Krauthammer, a bread-and-butter gambit from a reactionary grinch, his every word exuding contempt and condescension, the arrogance of a self-satisfied pundit who believes his peculiar prejudices are in the ascendance.

He begins, “Liberalism under siege is an ugly sight indeed,” and goes on to bemoan “the Democrat’s failure of governance,” sprinkles his commentary with acerbic references to the liberal “commentariat,” “intelligentsia,” and “vast media auxiliary,” and speaks of the “corruption of liberal thought” that has led to “the cheapest race-baiting.” He closes with a peremptory salvo that is intended as an epitaph for the Democrats in the coming mid-term elections: “The Democrats are going to get beaten badly in November. Not just because the economy is ailing. And not just because Obama over-read his mandate in governing too far left. But because a comeuppance is due the arrogant elites whose undisguised contempt for the great unwashed prevents them from conceding a modicum of serious thought to those who dare oppose them.”

It is infuriating from beginning to end, not least because Krauthammer is so terribly off-target. How can he fail to recognize, in the instances he cites, liberals’ rhetorical commitment to advancing and protecting minority rights, to upholding constitutional statutes? Whether in agreement or not, can he be so thick-headed as to deny the moral foundation for the left’s arguments?