Like most, I found Ann Coulter’s Shock and Awe performance in her interview with Matt Lauer revolting. I reacted to her manner, not the content of what she said. She was raving about on the show about a group of widows of people killed in the 911 attacks and Cindy Sheehan criticizing the Administration. Her accusation was that they are capitalizing on their grief to remain unassailable; that they are motivated by greed; and that they are being used by "liberals." In what little I know of her book, Godless: The Church of Liberalism, she makes a similar charge against liberal people in general.
As a matter of faith, liberals believe: Darwinism is a fact, people are born gay, child-molesters can be rehabilitated, recycling is a virtue, and chastity is not.
They [liberals] have an irreducible fascination with barbarism and will defend anything hateful–Tookie, Mumia, Saddam Hussein, Hedda Nussbaum, abortion, The North American Man/Boy Love Association, New York Times columnist Frank Rich.
In Ms. Coulter’s view, the 911 widows, Cindy Sheehan, and, in fact, all liberals, are driven not only by self-serving and self-promoting motives, but are also hiding from their inner barbarism by decrying it. In this, she equates liberalism with atheism, but implies that there is an alternative set of beliefs held by liberals that points to a hidden, rigid faith – another religion she calls The Church of Liberalism.
As tempting as it is to join in the fray and argue with each of her points, it probably makes more sense to look at what might be correct in what she writes. In essence, she is saying that there are underlying trends in the human personality that cannot be escaped:
- that there are self-serving motives in every one of our actions;
- that some form of aggression is an essential part of the human psyche;
- that we all long for a simple explanation for the origin and complexity of the world;
- that we are drawn to affiliate with groups and accept the group norms as our own, simplifying and attacking disagreeing positions;
- that denial of these underlying aspects of our actions and thoughts often drives our public personae.
All of these things are true, and possible hypotheses about the phenomena she addresses. Most of them are also plausible hypotheses about her own motives, but that’s an obvious point.
More important, I think, is to learn from her fallacies, and they are blatant. The biggest one in from logic 101 – syllogisms. Her arguments take the general form: "Some liberals think ___" therefore "All liberals think ___". She generalizes anything she can get her hands on. Another is the "Straw Man" argument. In this form of fallacy, you set up an absurd caricature, then attack it. She [and others, notably Karl Rove] do this by collecting people who are in fact diverse into simple categories like "Liberals," or "Darwininsts." I expect we liberal leaning people do the same thing with "Neoconservatives" or "Christians." Ann Coulter is a master of the "ad Hominem" fallacy. In this fallacy, one attacks the person making the argument, rather than addressing the argument itself – attacking the motives of the 911 widows or Cindy Sheehan, rather than the content of their complaints. It’s very tempting to do the same with Ann Coulter. She is so obviously filled with theatrical aspirations and venom, so clearly anything but an advertisement for Christianity or chastity, that she stands as an open target for "ad hominem" attacks. I just can’t resist either [as evidenced by the last sentence].
But beyond the logical fallacies in her arguments, it is her pseudo-Freudianism that really lumps her with Rush Limbaugh as two of the smartest dumb people on the planet. Both of them are quick to tell us about the unsavory, unaknowledged motives of the people they go after. Unsavory and unaknowledged motivations are part of the human mind. This was Freud’s great revelation. No matter how one feels about his other ideas, that one has become a part of our culture for all time. We don’t just look at the content of what others say, we look at why they are saying it. And that leads to a wealth of fallacies never dreamed of by the ancient Greeks who were focused on the logic alone. Just because a motive is possible is no proof that it is a dominant motive. Even if a dominant unaknowledged motive is present, that does not disprove a premise. Even if a motive is primarily free of self-serving, unsavory gain, that does not mean that the expressed premise is true.
Ann Coulter may be correct that there is a Church of Liberalism in some place. I don’t know about that. I kind of wish we had one here in Georgia, but if it were like the one she describes, I’d probably not go back a second time. What I do know after a career as a psychotherapist and psychoanalyst is that her assertions about the motivations of people, while vaguely based in human psychology, are the assertions of a hostile idealogogue – so colored by her own internal machinery as to be as totally discountable as she thinks her targets should be. She is in no position to make comments about the motivation of others because she obviously hasn’t looked at her own, an essential prerequisite for anyone getting into the "motive business."
Let us hope that Ann Coulter’s most recent outburst marks the beginning of the same fate for her as became her idol, Joe McCarthy. We don’t need any more of her kind of irresponsible pontification in an important American dialogue. As Joseph N. Welch said to Senator McCarthy,
"You’ve done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?"
Brilliant!