Law Religion Culture Review

Exploring the intersections of law, religion and culture. Copyright by Richard J. Radcliffe. All rights reserved.

Wednesday, August 01, 2007

Pot Meet Kettle.

I just received a solicitation to donate money to a conservative think-tank.

Like similar pleas for cash, this letter was loaded with buzzwords about political boogeymen (boogeypersons?).

I decided to count the number of times the correspondence managed to inject variations of liberal, left, radical fringe or combinations thereof (e.g., "radical left").

In the 5-and-1/2-page letter, the author (a former presidential candidate) achieved no fewer than 35 instances of such name-calling.

My favorite passage was the following three-fer:

"Why should we care what the crazy left does? Because the ideas percolating through Congress's left were first brought up in the organizations, publications, and websites of the radical left." (emphases supplied.)

In addition to being a non-sequitur, this short excerpt succeeded in displaying these terms three times--in case one might forget whom the writer is talking about.

But it gets better.

The author actually complained about the crazy, radical left's name-calling in the same letter.

Enjoy the hypocrisy: "You'll hear ... a great deal of name-calling directed at those who disagree with the left."

Does anyone feel the need to part with money as a result of this kind of rhetoric?