Left Behind

The horror. You are a progressive liberal. You wake one day to discover that you are just not totally left enough. Your colleagues, compatriots, and comrades tell you to hit the bricks. So ended Juan Williams stint at NPR.

The Progressive movement is based upon principles and principles are based on beliefs, not fact. These beliefs are defended with passion and zeal, not practicality. Juan violated a belief system as strongly entrenched on the progressive left as any orthodox religious cult. He dared to say how he felt, and that feeling was not "correct". Much like the Nazi in the Indiana Jones movie, he chose his feelings....poorly. Time to be destroyed! Or, at least, confined to a psychiatrist's couch for re-indoctrination.

A feeling is often both genuine and fluctuating, depending on subtle clues that add or subtract. It differs from an opinion, which is often deeply held and defended against all challenges. Juan's admission of a "feeling" is certainly different than clumsy distortion or subtle shading of news data to tell a story with a specific conscious or subconscious framing, as is quite common on NPR. Indeed the group CAMERA has been quite vocal in the past about the distortions in NPR reporting on Israel.

Juan made the fatal error. He assumed that conservatives should be spoken to, that they could be influenced by teachable moments. This flies in the face of the ad hominem attacks on the intelligence and compassion of conservatives that are the bread and butter of the progressive left. This, more than anything else, put Mr. Williams on the hit list (did I leave a letter out of the word before list?). Indeed, as soon as they could, the ad hominem attacks on Juan began. But, since only a few days before he was a respected super-liberal, they just decided that he must be temporarily crazy, having been exposed to too much conservative Craptonite.

As a member of the Progressive Cult, Juan had fraternized with the outsiders and had seen some light. He must be cut off from the group.

Kool-aid anyone?