Hypocrisies of the Urban Liberal
May 8, 2005 · By Max West
An Urban Liberal is someone who wants to free the working poor, but not until they’ve finished cleaning the bathroom. That’s why Urban Liberals love gay rights. They get to feel like Martin Luther King without affecting the neighbourhood.
Urban Liberals believe the problems of today’s youth are caused by the pernicious social influence of the neighbours’ children.
An Urban Liberal believes no one should be dictated to by any set of written commandments, because it says so in the Charter.
Urban Liberals love openness and inclusion. That’s why they want nothing to do with rednecks and fundamentalists.
Urban Liberals are more egalitarian than others and therefore better than them. They’re especially superior to those dirty inegalitarians who believe some people are better than others.
Urban Liberals love diversity, as long as everyone is a liberal.
An Urban Liberal thinks that religion should never be mixed with politics. But we need the Kyoto Protocol because nature is sacred.
An Urban Liberal believes firmly in open-mindedness and refuses ever to believe otherwise.
Urban Liberals believe that every child should be taught freedom, spontaneity and diversity. That’s why they should all be forced to attend the same state-run schools.
An Urban Liberal believes it’s universally true that all views are equally valid.
Urban Liberals are doctors, lawyers and accountants who believe immigrants should be free to become anything they want, as long as we don’t have too many doctors, lawyers and accountants.
An Urban Liberal believes freedom of thought is always good and insists everyone else must think so too.
Urban Liberals love the CBC because a hugely diverse multicultural multiregional country like Canada can only be properly represented by a single big state-monopoly broadcaster centrally run from Toronto.
Urban Liberals love Toronto because - well, they don’t, unless they live there. Those from Toronto love it because it’s just as good as the American cities they hate. Those outside Toronto hate it because it really isn’t.
And finally, an Urban Liberal hates non-liberals because they’re so full of, you know, hate.
Some of the best commentaries on the origins of modern liberalism are in the form of histories of manners. As the medieval political order broke down, and with them the honor codes that sustained it, it was replaced by first the court society whose mores in turn were extended beyond the urban settings (i.e., London, Florence) to the rural areas and the lower orders. “Courtesy” (from court) and its later equivalent, “civility” (from civitas) were codes of manners for the new mode and order. The 1600s to 1900s saw a plethora of guide books on teaching children how to be polite courtesans. Erasmus wrote the one later authors would copy. The US Founders like George Washington wrote them.
The point of this is that “courtesy” and “civility” became ways to shame and control the “backward” and those “less civilized.” It would be used by progressives (the intellectual sources of Urban Liberals) to tarnish “reactionaries.” In short, combined with certain versions of progressivism, “courtesy” and “civility” turn into a kind of Manichaeanism that divides the world into the civil and uncivil, or the liberal and non-liberal. This is why many liberals view the influence of socons in politics in such apocalyptic terms. Raise the possiblity of pregnant women marching in chain-gangs and whipped by the editors of the former Alberta Report, and the civil intimidate the “uncivil” to keep their mouth shut. And if that doesn’t work, then file a human rights complaint against them.
Urban Liberals
An Urban Liberal is someone who wants to free the working poor, but not until they’ve finished cleaning the bathroom. That’s why Urban Liberals love gay rights. They get to feel like Martin Luther King without affecting the neighbourhood….
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ThePolitic - Canadian Political Weblog » Hypocrisies of the Urban Li [...]
How could a group of people who describe themselves as the intellectual social concience of the world be so stupid as not to see the hypocrisy and contridiction in their statements.
Tom of comment #4: Let me answer by way of analogy: brain damage doesn’t hurt.
[...] an Walsh, Roger Gibbins in the Toronto Star outlines Alberta’s best strategy for the urban liberals. Gibbins expends considerable effort explaining t [...]
[...] moderate and rational so it would support liberal democracy. Then he trots out the usual Urban Liberal canard that religious people, “from Baghdad t [...]
[...] But they can’t say so, even to themselves, because to do so would unmask yet another Urban Liberal hypocrisy. So instead they make up stories about ho [...]
The article on “urban liberals� itself is really nothing new. The same thing has been said of champagne socialists for years.
The more interesting thing here is comment #1 concerning the history of manners. The author, Tom Cerber, suggests that the character and disposition of modern “liberals� or “progressives� can be traced to particular developments in social codes of “courtesy� and “civility�. Moreover, that modern liberals use these social codes as a way to divide the world into its liberal (good, civil) peoples and its non-liberal (evil, barbaric) peoples, and as a means to dominate the non-liberal other.
The interesting thing here is that the author of the comment himself seems to be guilty of the same sins that he assigns to the liberal or progressive, specifically, of artificially grouping people and then demeaning and intimidating the Others. This is most evident towards the end of his comment when Cerber describes all “urban liberals� (if such a group actually exists) as irrational, overdramatic and willing to use shame and intimidation to manipulate people. These could all be considered negative character traits, often associated with the “evil� and the “barbaric�. Interestingly enough, these are also traits that men have traditionally (and negatively) assigned to women. The urban liberal character is thus painted in very derogatory and feminine light – as being irrational, overdramatic, and manipulative.
This could mean one of the following. First, that Tom Cerber is himself a closet liberal or progressive. The evidence being that he exhibits the same character traits of dividing the world up into good and evil (civil and barbaric), and shaming or intimidating the Other. This would also entail that Cerber is himself irrational, overdramatic and manipulative (and possibly feminine). However, this would be a completely circumstantial conclusion to draw (not to mention a very rude thing to say to someone).
Second, it may simply be that this particular social code of courtesy and civility is not particular to the liberal character, but may be consistent with a wide variety of different ideological dispositions. In other words, the conservative, socialist and liberal all have the potential of irrationally dividing the world up into good and evil and of attempting to shame the Other in an overly dramatic and manipulative way.
LLL: Of course civility differs from ideology. It’s a moral virtue, whereas ideology as something to do with the intellect. Therefore, people of varying stripes are capable of civil and uncivil behavior, and of drawing gross overexaggerations. Our author, Max West, points to the various tropes that urban liberals (or limosine liberals, or socialists, as you suggested) use to portray “the Other.” You’re right to observe that one doesn’t get anywhere doing the same thing to the other, except in 2 ways: 1) in the form of social satire and 2) using the comedians’ strategy of knocking the big and mighty down, which in this case is done by applying his/her own mode of thinking (or “troping” to him or herself).
One can point to numerous examples of urban liberals replacing thinking with tropes. I point to one I commented on recently: http://www.thepolitic.com/arch.....-religion/
Larry, you’re boring.
Cerber: I appreciate you clearing things up. It wasn’t clear from your first comment that you distinguished social manners from ideology. And I suppose it can be entertaining to esoterically “make fun” of people.
LLL: It’s fun to make fun of people exoterically. Moreover, if the object of your ridicule is too obtuse to understand that you’re ridiculing him, does that make the ridicule esoteric or exoteric?
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Cerber: It doesn’t really matter - unless they are your audience. Very ironic question.
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[...] On barbarism versus civilization in Canada, read Max West’s treatise on urban liberals. That’s a good primer on Globe and Mail hermeneutics. [...]
[...] In memory of the late, great Max West, I reprint his classic essay, “The Hypocrisies of the Urban Liberals.” Jim Dinning’s strategy to scare voters away from Ted Morton reflects hypocrisies like these: Urban Liberals love openness and inclusion. That’s why they want nothing to do with rednecks and fundamentalists. [...]
[...] The History Of The Idea Of Progress From Hypocrisies of the Urban Liberal, we get a list of the characteristics of the Urban Liberal. Although the author is Canadian, one [...]
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