Professor Lawrence was a favorite among the students in Colorado State University’s political science department. Perhaps it was because he did not act nor talk like professors usually do. He had the presence of an “average guy”, some would say. I encountered Dr. Lawrence in a foreign policy class and as fate would have it we were both in our last semesters. I was graduating and he was retiring. On one of the last days of class, after constant student pestering, regarding his political convictions, Dr. Lawrence described himself as “a committed socialist, gravitating towards communism.” (As you can probably surmise Dr. Lawrence’s desire to disguise himself as “middle-class” was, as usual, the miserable attempt of an “elite” to identify with the proletariat.) This was the man whom first taught me about the “new political tactic” called swift-boating.

    I put the words ‘new political tactic’ because swift-boating is a term used now to denote character defamation while showing that you are politically trendy. Furthermore character defamation is a decidedly old political tactic and has been used for centuries if not millennia. In the case of Dr. Lawrence one of two things was happening. Either he did not know, or did not have the moral capacity to see that both sides of most political debate engage in character defamation at some time, or he, himself was practicing a political tactic known as projecting. Since it would be hard in the first scenario to imagine that a professor of 30 years could be that ignorant of political history, even at the lowly Colorado State University, my judgment tends to lead in the direction of the latter scenario, especially after the documentation of political tactics used by communists. Projecting is done by groups to deflect criticism of themselves onto another group in order to diminish their culpability for the very act of which they are accusing the other group. By doing this the projector implies that he/she finds, in this instance, defamation a deplorable act, which he/she would never dream of partaking in. There is also a certain amount of distraction that is involved in projection.

    Among other reasons (exposing blatant partisanship, on the part of a professor inside a college class room, somebody I enjoy criticizing, at best blind hypocrisy on the part of a tenured college professor, to name a few) I bring up Dr. Lawrence to demonstrate that conservatives are being branded as the party of defamation, a title that should, at best be shared by liberals, if not entirely owned. Perhaps a comparison would shed some light on the political ideology that owns character defamation.

    First, we can look at the swift-boat incident. The swift boat group was a group of men who served with John Kerry (this much can be documented) and in their experience with Kerry the group came to the conclusion that Kerry was a man of low character and questionable morality. In their view the deficiency found within Kerry reached the level where they thought it would be irresponsible for them to withhold their experiences with Kerry from the public, and certainly irresponsible for the nation to elect him President. (Save the conspiracy theories of President Bush or Republicans in general backing the swift boat veterans. If there is enough evidence to warrant this I am sure that a law enforcement official would be happy to hear about it.) The swift boat veterans were kind enough to document their experience with Kerry in a book entitled Unfit for Command. In this book the swift boat veterans make historical claims and anyone who was so inclined was free to assess the validity of their historical claims and either accept or reject them. While some choose to call the swift boat veterans defamers they were trying to warn the public from making what was in their view, an egregious mistake. As patriots, and veterans to do not do so would be disloyal to the country they had served.

    Finally I am getting to the main character in this story and the central purpose of this blog; to defend Ann Coulter. Before I give my take it is helpful to watch what Coulter actually said, found on Breitbart here. Even on Fox News I saw the scroll on the bottom reading something to the effect that Ann Coulter had said she hopes John Edwards dies in a terrorist attack. If you watched the video you can tell that the media severely misrepresented what Coulter had said. In this situation we see the media intentionally misquoting Coulter and reproducing their imposed interpretation of what she said to the whole world. Coulter is left with little chance of defending a statement that she did not ever make, nor intend to imply, furthermore it can be easily documented that Coulter did not make the statements attributed to her, but that is not what the message conveyed to the public is.

    This is not a new phenomenon with Coulter. It seems as if every week she is being widely slandered. In fairness Coulter is less tactful and more provocative than most pundits, but in my opinion this is because she refuses to apologize for her conservative political commitment. The question is why do they hate Coulter, and why is the left wing so set on discrediting Coulter’s political opinions? Some may answer this by saying because she is so far right wing, but if the left’s primary enemy is the far right there are plenty of targets (just as public) that they would be better off in choosing (i.e Michael Savage, Don Levine…). My proposition is that the left wing of the media chooses its enemies based primarily on two criteria; 1) influence and 2) aptitude. Mr. Rush Limbaugh is enemy #1 because he is widely influential and has the ability and the understanding to describe the motives, worldview and goals of both the political left and right in America. Coulter, while lacking mildly in influence shares the political understanding and ability to articulate politics coherently with Mr. Limbaugh. As evidence I would put forth her books Treason and Godless: The Church of Liberalism. Treason (which I might add would not have had to been written if public educators were doing their fair and balanced job) describes the intimate connection the American political left has with communism, while Godless coherently explains that the American left is just as religious as the cultural right, only that they subscribe to the dogma of Atheism. If there was a list entitled top ten things liberals don’t want the mass public to know about liberalism these would be #1 and #2 on the list, and Coulter wrote entire books about it.

    In summation, this is a big deal. Defaming Coulter is not to degrade her character but rather to diminish the impact her ideas may have upon society. When stripped away the tactics used by the media are done in order to suppress the speech of Coulter. Put another way, the end goal is not to damage Coulter personally but rather to degrade the message of true conservatism that she preaches. This is legal and those who wish to do so should certainly be allowed to, but conservatives must answer back. So far, as Coulter mentions in the interview the conservative answer has been to distance themselves from Coulter, thereby allowing the message of conservatism to be marginalized. This does a disservice both to conservatism and to Coulter. I might add that perhaps due to the success of free market suppression liberals have grown bolder and are now looking to suppress free speech by legislation through the fairness doctrine. Always remember that conservatism is intuitive to most free men/women, furthermore it corresponds to reality, therefore we do not have to hide the principles of conservatism like our opposition, a fact that Coulter learned long ago.