How Modern Liberals "Think"

A post today at The Muslim Question coming from former cradle liberal Evan Sayet is a brilliant analysis into how modern Liberals "think." Sayet now works for the The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank.

I've embedded the video here. It's long, but well worth the watch. Follow the link to read the entire transcript at TMQ2.

Regurgitating the Apple: How Modern Liberals “Think”

by Evan Sayet The Heritage Foundation

Heritage Lecture #1020 Delivered on March 5, 2007.

Foreward by Becky Norton Dunlop, VP for External Relations at The Heritage Foundation:

Evan Sayet has written and/or produced in virtually every medium there is. He started out as a stand-up comic. Very few are successful, but Evan has been successful at that. He was quickly spotted by David Letterman and offered a spot on a special episode featuring young talent. He then moved into writing, and he was an integral part of the team that made the “Arsenio Hall Show” the first late-night program in 30 years to give the “Tonight Show” a run for its money.

Then he moved to a very interesting assignment called “Politically Incorrect” with Bill Maher. After that, Evan wrote and produced the highest-rated special in the Learning Channel’s history, “The 70’s: From Bellbottoms to Boogie Shoes.” He perfected the book for a musical comedy, wrote a screenplay optioned by Penny Marshall, and even tried his hand at game shows as the original writer of the cult classic, “Win Ben Stein’s Money.”

The latest twist in Evan’s career came during the recent presidential elections when he turned his attention and skills toward convincing others of the greatness of America and the need to reelect President Bush and to stay the course in the Middle East. In a short time, Evan was made the communications director for Los Angeles for President Bush. He wrote a number of articles about this for major conservative outlets and later was asked to offer weekly commentary on KMJ Radio. He also began delivering the lecture that he’s going to be delivering to us today.

He now is among Los Angeles’s most in-demand speakers, a political pundit recognized by Dennis Prager as brilliant for his take on the unique power of the Judeo-Christian culture and singled out by Rush Limbaugh for his explanation of why Liberals lie. Evan is signed with one of the country’s top speakers bureaus and has recently been booked at the highly prestigious Lincoln Club, whose monthly roster of speakers has included people such as Ken Starr, former U.S. Treasurer Rosario Marin, and the Consul General of Israel.

At around that same time, Evan returned to his first love, stand-up comedy, only now with a decidedly conservative twist. He has been the headliner of a night of conservative comedy called “Right to Laugh” and is now planning a series of one-nighters around the country. He recently appeared at the Conservative Political Action Conference and was well received by his audience on a night when there were many luminaries on the stage. He will soon produce his first CD, “Funny, You Don’t Look Conservative.”

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Evan Sayet: I call myself a 9/13 Republican. I grew up a liberal New York Jew; you don’t get much more liberal than that, although it was lower-case “l,” not what’s considered Liberal today. I graduated from high school knowing only one thing about politics: that Democrats are good and Republicans are evil.

I tell a story. It’s not a true story, but it helps crystallize my thinking that brought me to become a conservative. I say: Imagine being in a restaurant with an old friend, and you’re catching up, and suddenly he blurts out, “I hate my wife.”

You chuckle to yourself because he says it every time you’re together, and you know he doesn’t hate his wife; they’ve been together for 35 years. He loves his daughters, and they’re just like her. No, he doesn’t hate his wife.

So you’re having dinner, and you look out the window and spot his wife, and she’s being beaten up right outside the restaurant. You grab your friend and say, “Come on, let’s help her. Let’s help your wife,” and he says, “Nah, I’m sure she deserves it.” At that moment, it dawns on you: He really does hate his wife.

That’s what 9/11 was to me. For years and years I’d hear my friends from the Left say how evil and horrible and racist and imperialistic and oppressive America is, and I’d chuckle to myself and think, “Oh, they always say that; they love America.” Then on 9/11, we were beaten up, and when I grabbed them by the collar, and I said, “Come on, let’s help her. Let’s help America,” and they said, “Nah, she deserves it.”

At that moment, I realized: They really do hate America. And that began me on what’s now a five-plus-year quest to try to understand the mindset. How could you possibly live in the freest nation in the history of the world and see only oppression? How could you live in the least imperialist power in human history and see us as the ultimate in imperialism? How could you live in the least bigoted nation in human history and, as Joe Biden said, “see racism lurking in every dark shadow”?

Over the next five years, what I came to think through, what I came to learn, what I came to find in conversations and studying, listening, and reading became this talk and very soon will be the book Regurgitating the Apple: How Modern Liberals “Think.”

I assume that just about everybody in this room agrees that the Democrats are wrong on just about every issue. Well, I’m here to propose to you that it’s not “just about” every issue; it’s quite literally every issue. And it’s not just wrong; it’s as wrong as wrong can be; it’s 180 degrees from right; it is diametrically opposed to that which is good, right, and successful.

What I discovered is that this is not an accident. This is part of a philosophy that now dominates the whole of Western Europe and the Democratic Party today. I, like some others, call it Modern Liberalism. The Modern Liberal will invariably side with evil over good, wrong over right, and the behaviors that lead to failure over those that lead to success.

Read the entire post at TMQ2.