In The New York Times' profile on the family of Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan, her aunt was quoted as saying: "There was thinking, always thinking" at the family's dinner table. "Nothing was sacrosanct."
Really? Nothing was sacrosanct? Because in my experience, on a scale of 1-to-infinity, the range of acceptable opinion among New York liberals goes from 1-to-1.001.
How would the following remarks fare at a dinner table on the Upper West Side where "nothing was sacrosanct": Hey, maybe that Joe McCarthy was onto something. What would prayer in the schools really hurt? How do we know gays are born that way? Is it possible that union demands have gone too far? Does it make sense to have three recycling bins in these microscopic Manhattan apartments? Say, has anyone read Charles Murray's latest book?
Those comments, considered "conversation starters" in most of the country, would get you banned from polite society in New York. Also, unless you want the whole room slowly backing away from you, also avoid: May I smoke? I heard it on Fox News and Merry Christmas!
Even members of survivalist Christian cults in Idaho at least know people who hold opposing views. New York liberals don't.
As Kagan herself described it, on the Upper West Side of New York where she grew up, "Nobody ever admitted to voting Republican." So, I guess you could say being a Democrat was "sacrosanct."
Even within the teeny-tiny range of approved liberal opinion in New York, disagreement will get you banned from the premises.
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When, as dean of the Harvard Law School, Kagan disagreed with the Bill Clinton policy of "Don't ask, don't tell" for gays in the military, she open-mindedly banned military recruiters from the law school, denouncing Clinton's policy as "discriminatory," "deeply wrong," "unwise and unjust."
From this, I conclude that having gays serving openly in the military is "sacrosanct" for liberals.
Having gays NOT serve in the military is a position held by lots of people in other parts of the country, but I do not recall any Christian colleges banning military recruiters because the schools believed "Don't ask, don't tell" went too far the other way.
Not only is every weird, shared delusion of the New York liberal deemed sacrosanct, but what ought to be sacrosanct -- off the top of my head, human life -- isn't.
As Stan Evans says, whatever liberals disapprove of, they want banned (smoking, guns, practicing Christianity, ROTC, the Pledge of Allegiance) and whatever they approve of, they make mandatory (abortion-on-demand, gay marriage, pornography, condom distribution in public schools, screenings of "An Inconvenient Truth").
When liberals say, "nothing is sacrosanct," they mean "nothing other Americans consider sacrosanct is sacrosanct." They demonstrate their open-mindedness by ridiculing other people's dogma, but will not brook the most trifling criticism of their own dogmas.
Thus, for example, liberals sneer at the bluenoses and philistines of the "religious right" for objecting to taxpayer-funding of a crucifix submerged in a jar of urine, but would have you banned from public life for putting Matthew Shepard in a jar of urine, with or without taxpayer funding.
These famously broad-minded New Yorkers -- "thinking, always thinking" -- actually booed Mayor Rudy Giuliani when he showed up at the opera after pulling city funding from a museum exhibit that included a painting of the Virgin Mary plastered with close-up pornographic photos of women's vulvas.
(The New York Times fair-mindedly refused to ever mention the vulvas, instead suggesting that the mayor's objection was to the cow dung used in the composition.)
Has a decision to fund or not fund "art" ever gotten a politician in any other part of the country booed in public? And how might the Times refer to citizens booing a mayor who had withdrawn taxpayer funding for a painting of Rosa Parks covered in pornography?
If New York liberals insist on bragging about their intellectual bravado in believing "nothing is sacrosanct," it would really help if they could stop being the most easily offended, P.C., group-think, thin-skinned weanies in the entire universe and maybe ease up on the college "hate speech" codes, politically correct firings, and bans on military recruiters.
With that in mind, here are some questions it would be fun to ask a New York liberal like Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan at her hearings next week:
-- Roughly one-third of Americans are Evangelical Christians. Do you personally know any Evangelical Christians? Name two.
-- In 1972, Richard Nixon was elected president with more than 60 percent of the vote, winning every state except Massachusetts and the District of Columbia. How many people do you know who voted for Nixon?
-- Appropriate or inappropriate: Schools passing out condoms to seventh-graders? Schools passing out cigarettes to seventh-graders?
-- Who is a greater threat to America, Sarah Palin or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad?
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