Posted on 02/14/2008 7:36:17 PM PST by EternalVigilance
It's poetic justice, really. Listen to Sean Hannity these days, and you'd think he'd been a Keyes Republican all along. He's been clamoring — and more power to him — about the glaring defects of the candidacy of John Mc Cain, yet his objections have a curiously familiar ring to them. Standing on principle, going into political "exile" rather than being washed away by the liberal tide, putting policy non-negotiables above electoral pragmatism — aren't these the very necessities that many of us were trying to get across to Colmes' counterpart during the long and tedious months when he was trying to Hannitize us into supporting Rudy Giuliani? At this point in the primaries process, Sean sounds like a man who, having plunged over the edge of a waterfall, has correctly if belatedly realized the necessity of swimming his way back to safety again.
Rudy Giuliani is a pro-abortionist. Sean supported Rudy's candidacy on the grounds that the war against terror is more urgent than the pro-life effort. As many commentators have pointed out, this is tantamount to arguing that preventing foreign aggressors from attacking innocent American citizens should outrank preventing domestic aggressors from doing the same thing. Regarded logically, what Sean was advocating made no sense. The only defense he offered, when pressed, was that Rudy alone could grease the wheels of the "Stop Hillary Express" — a specious argument in the first place, which collapsed definitively along with the Giuliani candidacy itself.
Now, the fresh-faced celebrity-journalist has been confronted with a Republican frontrunner whose record Sean himself can find no way to rationalize. Rather than sitting back and enjoying the spectacle of Mr. Hannity drowing in self-contradiction, let's dive in and help him out, shall we? Where, indeed, is the solid ground to be found?
Sean regards himself as principled because he is sincere. He really, really believes in what he believes in — so his argument goes — and beyond the borders of his own honesty, he will not stray. Isn't that what the conservative movement needs right now? Isn't that what being principled is all about?
Well, no, not really. Adolph Hitler, after all, could have justified his agenda on the same grounds. While the Führer has rightly become the poster boy of evil in the modern world, no one has ever lodged against him a credible charge of hypocrisy. Being sincere is one thing. Being principled is another.
Reality, after all, does not come into being when people happen to believe in it. Reality is that which remains "there" whether people recognize it or not. The Earth didn't — boing! — go from pancake-shaped to global long about the time of Galileo. A ball thrown up in the air doesn't head back towards the ground in deference to the wishes of Sir Isaac Newton. Ten plus ten wouldn't turn into twenty-three as a result of intense lobbying on the part of the NEA.
A principle is a moral reality. The notion that there are no moral realities, only empirical ones, is as ersatz as is the ACLU's version of the "separation of church and state." Americans of African descent weren't transformed into human beings by the Emancipation Proclamation. The concentration camps were not morally validated by the fact that a majority of Germans chose, proactively or under pressure, to tolerate them. And abortion is not a thing that can be facilely deprioritized during an election cycle — not even by radio's second-most popular talk show host himself. While it is certainly possible to be principled and sincere at the same time, that doesn't mean we can strike an identity between these two phenomena. More often than not, being principled means standing for what is right even at the cost of one's own, or one's society's, subjective conclusions.
Where Sean has lost his footing is in appealing, in essence, to subjectivism itself. Subjectivism, loosely defined, is the notion that reality is what one decides or desires it to be. Just because Sean has personally determined that he would like the world to have a conservative character doesn't make his capitulation to the quintessentially liberal worldview a viable foundation for our movement per se.
Liberalism begins with subjectivism. It ends (paradoxically but inexorably) with tyranny because, while in theory all opinions are equal, in practice all opinions cannot be treated as equal. Abortion cannot be both legal and illegal at the same time. Homosexual marriage cannot be both legal and illegal at the same time. Western jurisprudence and sharia law cannot be practiced in the same society at the same time.
Where such clashes occur, the subjectivist society will treat liberal policy as its default setting. If subjectivism characterizes ultimate reality, then people basing their opinions on raw personal assertion are, in a sense, more right than are those who appeal to something beyond themselves — a something which is held, finally, not to exist. The fact that this makes no sense is no problem, if you happen to be a subjectivist.
The only problem, of course, arises concerning what to do about those who hold — with comparable levels of subjective sincerity — that non-subjectivist conclusions ought to obtain. Such groups or individuals can only be understood as tramplers on the rights of others. Their agenda, therefore, has to be stamped out. Once subjectivism as a worldview is conceded, the convictions of people like Sean Hannity will end up being run over roughshod. Somebody's sincere beliefs are going to go by the wayside; better the other guys', the subjectivists implicitly hold, than their own. The self-contradiction inherent in this dynamic is, once again, neatly compensated for by the fact that subjectivism as a worldview makes no demand for internal consistency upon itself.
If Hannity tries to base conservatism on raw personal assertion, then he is setting himself and the entire movement up for failure, self-imposed. Pitting sincerity against sincerity won't get us anywhere at all. Nothing short of the principled Declarationism of Alan Keyes can — culturally, morally, and politically speaking — set our feet back on terra firma once again.
Helen M. Valois is a homemaker and mom currently residing in the northwoods of Wisconsin. She is a member of the MI (Militia Immaculatae) movement founded by St. Maximilian Kolbe. She met Dr. Keyes when he was the graduation speaker at Franciscan University of Steubenville in 1996, when she was awarded her Master's Degree in Theology. Helen's articles and book reviews have appeared in a number of publications since that time.
I was just thinking about this a while ago, how Sean stumped so long for Rudy only to tell us that McCain is too liberal of a RINO. No consistency, no credibility.
I’ve tried to listen to Hannity on the radio, and just can’t stand more than a couple of minutes of him, because he’s so simplistic, shrill, and disorganized, plus he seems to have hundreds of commercials. That said, I wouldn’t compare him to Adolph, and I think Keyes is a nut.
An insightful piece, IMO. Thought you might enjoy it...
Sean, is that you?
You betcha.
It's disgusting to hear the "country music" intro to his show.
I turn him off right there. "Country music" is the mumblings of the ignorant.
Look..he just asks for 3 hours a day...can’t you make that fit into your schedule? Maybe listen on the way to Ruth’s Chris for a steak or cozying up on the couch reading one of his books...oh and he is on the cover of Newsweek...there will be blood dontcha know?
First off I never really spent anytime listening to the man. I just know stupid when I read it.
Trying to see how many twisted lies you could fit into one post?
I have ALWAYS seen Sean as an extreme “lightweight” conservative. He seeks to emulate Rush, but Sean’s principles aren’t consistent. At his worst, he was a salivating Rush fanatic, without a brain to think on his own. Rush, the man he wants to emulate, almost always thinks on his own.
I don’t think Sean will ever get beyond copying what his mentor says on things. He can’t think on his own.
1) Sean Hannity is a dim bulb. I've never been able to listen to him. I love Rush and have listened to him for 3 hours a day since I was a kid. I enjoy Dr. L and have come to very much get a kick out of Dennis Miller. Mike Savage is an exceptionally entertaining act (he must be having serious laugh on his audience - I heard him saying he was going to start a new party - the Nationalist party - here in the states). But Hannity is boring and dim and lacks all of the cleverness of the better men in the business.
He claims to have the 2nd most listened to program in the US, and while technically true, he benefits tremendously from Rush's lead in and from having a much larger pool of listeners - he's on in drive time on the East Coast while Rush gets neither coasts' drive time. If he had nearly the same broad appeal, his audience would be double Limbaugh's, not a fraction of.
2) Helen Valois is talking to Sean like he's a politician, a political leader, a philosopher, or a meal-ticket speaker (Alan Keyes). He's none of those. He's a pitchman for a few third tier advertisers. Many in his listening audience like Rudy (he presumes). And after spending a primary season bashing McCain, he doesn't have the clever deftness to get out from under it like Rush does.
3) Helen Valois needs something else to do from 3-6. Write a book, take up sewing, etc. Her article is above many semesters beyond Sean's reading level.
HAH!
Well, I disagree. Hannity is one of the compromisers who brought us to this pass, and his whining about it now is sadly amusing. I think Mrs. Valois nailed him right between the eyes.
Jeez. I wonder what you think of rap.
Absolutely.
:)
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