Pro Ecclesia * Pro Familia * Pro Civitate: Diogenes on the Edwards Bloggers

(Hat tip: Regular Guy Paul)

Diogenes takes his shots:

... With precisely the same justice Sid Blumenthal and Anna Quindlen might object that they're not ill-disposed toward the Baptist Church because, after all, they voted for Bill Clinton. The shell-game of identity politics works such that the stigma attached to racial bigotry can be extended, when expedient, to rational preferences as well; and conversely, detestation of religious believers can be exonerated, when expedient, by pointing to good-will toward persons who lay claim to the religion but reject the belief (the Jesuit universities, in large measure, and the Catholic Alliance for the Common Good, in essentia, exist to facilitate this glissade).

To understand what's going on here it's vital to grasp that left-liberals are incapable a priori, on axiomatic grounds, of acknowledging their own hatred. It may be said that, performatively, they define and distinguish themselves from their adversaries precisely in virtue of their being preserved free from this sin. There is simply no such thing as a "left-wing hate group," as a Nexis-search will attest. That conservatives have a monopoly on this vice is dogma -- perhaps their only dogma. This means that the hatred that exists within left-liberal breasts must be accounted for as something other than what it is. In the case of in-house antipathy, of leftist versus leftist, malice is reflexively attributed to a recrudescence of right-wing politics (sexism, racism, hetero-centrism, etc.). When their hatred is directed toward non-leftists, it is explained as some variety of righteous indignation.

Because universities tend to be kindergartens of leftist catechetics, this double standard is particularly evident there. Think for example of the asymmetrical treatment accorded the Nazi swastika and the Communist hammer-and-sickle. To display either is to make implicit reference to millions of victims of ideological murder and say, "I'm glad you're dead." But only one counts as symbol of hate, and, at a university today, a faculty member wearing a swastika t-shirt will be charged with a hate crime, while a faculty member wearing a hammer-and-sickle t-shirt will be defended against objectors (if any) on the grounds of academic freedom. Sure, the latter academic is announcing to Christians, "I wish you were dead," but this desire, no matter how fervid it may be, does not qualify as hatred, and if you protested to a university administrator your complaint would bewilder him utterly. (Were he the kind of person capable of taking your point, he almost certainly wouldn't be a university administrator.)

In spite of their hatred, it's a mistake to call Marcotte and McEwan bigots in the strong sense. True bigotry involves irrationality, i.e., blurring of distinctions that the bigot himself deems important, whence bigots treat all Jews or all blacks under the same description of opprobrium, whether a given individual exhibits the despised quality or not. Further, the bigot will cheerfully indulge his bigotry even if his own interests suffer therefrom, as when the anti-Semite hires a less-competent gentile salesman in preference to a more competent Jew. There's no indication that the Edwards bloggers succumb to either sort of irrationality (as McEwan says, she voted for Kerry -- unquestionably her kind of Catholic). My sense is that if these gals and I were conducting a prisoner exchange, they would place the correct tags on the correct people and assign to each the proper level of utility or harm: "Ratzinger's your guy; Cawcutt is ours; Sam Brownback's your guy; Nancy Pelosi is ours." Like the hatred C.S. Lewis describes in the quote above, Marcotte and McEwan's is not hot and diffuse but cold and well-targeted -- too cold to arraign them for bigotry...

[More]

My Comments:
Don't mind us, Uncle Di and I are just engagining in a little bit of "gossiping in the pews" at the expense of these poor misunderstood blogettes who are "learn[ing]" and "grow[ing]" as we speak.

UPDATE

Also, be sure to read "Smear And Loathing On The Campaign Trail. The Catholic Report Talks With Former Senator Edward's Staff (Sort Of) Along With Catholics In Alliance For The Common Good" by Dave Hartline. (Hat tip: Amy Welborn)

And in "Liberal Catholic activist group prostitutes away whatever credibility they may have had", Publius provides a roundup of Mark Shea's efforts to expose the pro-Democrat sycophancy of Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good - noting that "[e]ven Morning's Minion, one of the biggest apologists for the Democratic party around St. Blog's, can't defend Edwards" and seems quite baffled by CACG's rehabilitation efforts on Edwards' behalf.

Finally, don't miss The Curt Jester's excellent work in regard to this story: