Knee jerk liberal arguments: Installment One

Being a graduate student in the humanities, I experience the phenomenon of knee jerk liberalism far too often. I used to think this was funny, but, more and more, I've become irritated, pouncing on those who pass knee jerk liberalism as debate. It's not a good sign when I, of all people, am the most conservative voice in the room.

What exactly is a knee jerk liberal argument? Well, The Free Dictionary defines knee jerk liberal as "a person of strong liberal convictions who reacts predictably and emotionally to certain events." This is an appropriately vague definition because, as we will see over the course of several posts, there are many varieties of knee jerk liberal arguments.

My problem with these arguments isn't exactly that I disagree with the sentiments. Sometimes I do, but other times it comes down to this: "There's nothing I like less than bad arguments for a view that I hold dear." I can probably think of a few things I like less, but I concur totally with the point: There are few things more irritating for a progressive-minded person than hearing brain-dead arguments for your cause. It makes you, and the whole cause, look stupid.

Which brings us to our first knee jerk liberal argument.

Standard knee jerk liberal argument #1: The Crude Comparison. This argument is the most popular and takes on the most forms. In essence, the Crude Comparison model involves interrupting a discussion about a foreign crisis with a variation of the phrase "Really, when you think about it, that's not all that different from what's going on in the United States..." Here are a few examples I've seen over the last year:

• Warping a discussion on repressive Middle Eastern politics by suddenly claiming that George W. Bush is like an authoritarian leader.
  
• Claiming the surveillance thriller The Lives of Others shows a government "not all that different" from the Bush administration because both use covert surveillance on their own citizens.
  
• Any and all comparisons between the US government and Nazi Germany.
• Language comparing George W. Bush to a king or the Bush family to a monarchy (as much as I love the Arcade Fire, "The king's taken back the throne / the useless seed is sown" is textbook knee jerk liberalism).
  

I could go on. Like many knee jerk liberal arguments, this form of debate does nothing but further caricature the left as the "blame America first" crowd of the Democratic Party. It makes progressives not only look critical of their government (which is fine), but makes them look like they don't even understand the government they're criticizing. Comparing the Stasi's surveillance tactics to Bush's domestic wiretapping is ludicrous (this goes to all the film critics who hailed The Lives of Other as timely and relevant). Claiming that Bush is an authoritarian leader is a bend-over-backwards attack on someone who's not particularly difficult to criticize in the first place.

A significant subset of the Crude Comparison is the Crude Historical Comparison. In an example of this model, a knee jerk liberal would interrupt a conversation on women's rights in Saudi Arabia by "reminding" us to "remember the way women used to be treated in this country." I'm taking a class on Morocco and Bangladesh right now, and -- without fail -- someone makes this argument every session. Again, it does nothing but brand progressives as simplistic, Blame-America-First reactionaries. It's also oddly ethnocentric; why must conversations on foreign affairs, past or present, always refer back to America and its troubled history?

Not all arguments using this structure are patently offensive, but, more often than not, these arguments rely on a superficial, broad-stroke understanding of the United States. There's much to criticize about the Bush administration, but, in the end, a knee jerk liberal argument only helps their cause.