Demonic_ How the Liberal Mob Is Endangering America - Ann Coulter [2]
Many of liberals’ peculiarities are understandable only when one realizes that they are a mob. For example, a crowd’s ability to grasp only the simplest ideas is reflected in the interminable slogans. Liberals have boatloads of them: Bush Lied, Kids Died! Our Bodies, Our Selves! No Blood for Oil! No Justice, No Peace! Save the Whales; Love Your Mother (Earth); Ban the Bomb; Make Love, Not War; Friends Don’t Let Friends Vote Republican; Diversity Is Our Strength! Save the Planet! Pro-Choice, Pro-Child! Support Our Troops, Bring Them Home! Co-Exist! Hey, Hey, LBJ, How Many Kids Did You Kill Today? Dissent Is Patriotic! War Is Not the Answer! Go Green! Health Care Is a Right, Not a Privilege! Imagine Peace; Celebrate Diversity! Beat the Bushes for Peace! No Nukes! Give Peace a Chance; Think Globally/Act Locally; No Tax Cuts for the Rich; Save the Planet! Venceremos! One, Two, Three, Four, We Don’t Want Your F—King War! Bush = Hitler; Hell No, We Won’t Go! Off the Pig! Eat the Rich! Die Yuppie Scum! Peace Now! We Are the Ones We’ve Been Waiting For! Solidarity Forever! Bring America Home! You Can’t Hug a Child with Nuclear Arms; Meat Is Murder! Books Not Bombs! Fight the Power! Yes We Can!
And those are just the ones on my neighbor’s car.
What is the Tea Party’s slogan? There is none. Republicans almost never have slogans, certainly none that anyone can remember—except when our presidential candidates are forced to come up with some short-lived catchphrase for their campaigns.
There are only three memorable Republican slogans in the past half century—unless you count what Dick Cheney said to Pat Leahy on the Senate floor in 2004, in which case there have been four. There was “27 Million Americans Can’t Be Wrong,” after Goldwater lost in a historic landslide in 1964. There were the YAF buttons made in tribute to William F. Buckley’s mayoral campaign platform in 1965: “Don’t Let Them Immanentize the Eschaton!” And when there were few other reasons to vote for the reelection of the first President Bush in 1992, there was “Annoy the Media, Vote Bush!” Republicans display crosses and fish, college and sports decals, and a few parodies of liberal slogans (“Imagine an Unborn Child”), but there are no bossy demands on our bumper stickers.
Conservatives don’t cotton to slogans. When they finally produce one, it’s never the sort of rallying cry capable of sending people to the ramparts, such as “Yes We Can!” or “Bush Lied, Kids Died!” “27 Million Americans Can’t Be Wrong” is a wry observation, not an urgent call to battle. “Annoy the Media, Vote Bush!” barely qualifies as a suggestion. Conservatives write books and articles, make arguments, and seek debates, but are perplexed by slogans. (Of course, another reason Republicans may avoid bumper stickers is to prevent their cars from being vandalized, which brings us right back to another mob characteristic of liberals.)
By contrast, liberals thrive on jargon as a substitute for thought. According to Le Bon, the more dramatic and devoid of logic a chant is, the better it works to rile up a mob: “Given to exaggeration in its feelings, a crowd is only impressed by excessive sentiments. An orator wishing to move a crowd must make an abusive use of violent affirmations. To exaggerate, to affirm, to resort to repetitions, and never to attempt to prove anything by reasoning are methods of argument well known to speakers at public meetings.”4
Liberals love slogans because the “laws of logic have no action on crowds.” Mobs, Le Bon says, “are not to be influenced by reasoning, and can only comprehend rough-and-ready associations of ideas.”5 He could be referring to the New York Times and other journals of elite