Unconscious Projections by Conservatives: Who’s Un-American now?

After enduring endless claims that Bush bashers were un-American, opposing the war on terrorism was un-American, government rules and regulations was un-American, the New Deal was un-American, and liberal socialist Democrats were destroying our country, was definitely un-American, conservatives are now whining about being accused of being un-American for opposing religious freedom. If the name fit, guys.

The ability to project, “the unconscious act of denial of a person's own attributes, thoughts, and emotions, which are then ascribed to the outside world or to other people … Thus, it involves imagining or projecting that others have those feelings,” has been brought to new jaw dropping heights in this Wall Street Journal article by James Taranto:

We were only kidding last week when we headlined an item "Bring Back HUAC."
The reference was to the House Committee on Un-American Activities, disbanded in
1975, and we were poking fun at the tendency of today's liberals to label anyone who disagrees with them "un-American." In the case of the Ground Zero mosque, that would mean the vast majority of Americans are un-American.”

Sure Nancy Pelosi wanted to know who's funding the opposition to the mosque, but is that really like HUAC? If anyone wants to bring it back, you would have to be talking about Republican governor candidate Rick Lazio?:



Because there is a First Amendment guarantee of religious freedom, with no mention of a test for “insensitivity or offensiveness,” Democrats are being challenged by “constitutional conservatives” through a propaganda campaign against its appropriateness. As they’re quick to tell us, “They have the right, sure, but it’s still wrong.” But when Democrats stand up for the constitutional freedom the First Amendment provides, it’s called “verbal abuse” and believe it or not, an “abstraction.”

Why is it a good idea to build a fancy new mosque just two blocks from the site of an act of mass murder that was committed in the name of Islam? Ask this question, and the response is almost certain to be some combination of verbal abuse ("Bigot! Un-American!") and airy abstractions about freedom of religion.

Excuse me? The Constitutional guarantees are "abstractions" now? These abstraction are all we ever get from the tea party movement; restoring our freedoms and liberties and returning to the founding fathers original meaning of the Constitution. And that means what…? That’s not an abstraction?

Washington Post columnist Kathleen Parker tries to offer one but fails spectacularly. Her column today begins:

Parker: “It is hard to imagine that anything has gone unsaid about the so-called Ground Zero mosque, but an important point seems to be missing … The mosque should be built precisely because we don't like the idea very much.”

She's just taking the airy-abstraction approach, à la President Obama, reciting First Amendment pieties without really thinking her argument through, and condescendingly dismissing critics as motivated by "emotion, which isn't necessarily bad, but it bears watching." But it's worse than that.

Parker: “Nobody ever said freedom would be easy … Ultimately, when sensitivity becomes a cudgel against lawful expressions of speech or religious belief--or disbelief--we all lose.”

This passage starts and ends with clichés.

Hold on a second. Democrats and liberals are the ones with clichés? The herding cats party?

Interestingly, conservatives love firing off the “clichés” comeback. Devoid of an actual thought provoking answer, I’ve personally been challenged with that response, and cast off as another un-American liberal, which brings us back to the start of this post; Projection.

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