What is it about many liberals that blinds them to their true nature? What makes them think that they are unbiased, objective, open-minded, tolerant and free of "hate"? Why are they so often in denial -- even about their own liberalism?
 
Way before Bernard Goldberg wrote his insider expose of the liberal bias of CBS News and confirmed the liberals' obliviousness to their own bias, I personally observed this phenomenon.

 They are so caught up in the "righteousness" of their cause that they see liberalism as the norm -- there's no bias in being objectively normal -- and conservatism as deviating from the norm. Reporting is either objective or conservatively biased; there is no such thing as liberal bias. So truly liberal reporting is objective, truly objective reporting is conservative, and truly conservative reporting is radically conservative.

 The same thing applies to other areas (beyond reporting). For example, liberal judicial activism is touted as progressive and forward thinking. Efforts to roll it back -- as opposed to engaging in conservative judicial activism -- are deemed conservative judicial activism. Again, that's because liberalism is the norm; actively implementing it through the judiciary or otherwise is a positive thing, a return to normalcy, irrespective of such trivial concerns as the unconstitutional usurpation of power by the courts.

 In addition, to liberals, conservatives are not only close-minded, reactionary and regressive. They're hateful. You heard me right. Conservatives are no longer just uncompassionate. They're hateful and intolerant -- merely for opposing socialism and defending traditional values.

 A recent commentary in the New Yorker, "Radio Daze," by Hendrik Hertzberg illustrates all these points. After lamenting the dominance of conservative talk on radio, which he contemptuously derides as "shrill jabber," Hertzberg whines that "There is no real liberal or even just noncon (nonconservative) counterpart to the radiocons, as we might call them."

 Why? Because conservatives, according to Hertzberg, thrive on hate. "For the radiocon audience, political hate (beg ITAL) is comedy and drama. To their ears, it's music." But noncons, he says, "do not regard politics as entertainment."

 Oh, sure, National Public Radio enjoys an audience size roughly equivalent to "The Rush Limbaugh Show," says Hertzberg, but NPR is "an alternative" "not an equivalent." NPR's "Morning Edition" and "All Things Considered," he contends, "are news-feature broadcasts; they adhere to the practices of journalistic professionalism, including the aspirational ideal of objectivity."

 There's more. "Their (NPR's) sensibility," says Hertzberg, "may fairly be said to be "liberal" in the sense that liberal education is liberal -- that is, open-minded and urbane, with a preference for empirical inquiry over dogmatic conclusion-mongering -- but what little overt political commentary they offer hovers around the moderate middle."

 Perhaps by "objectivity," "urbanity" and "empirical inquiry" Hertzberg has in mind an incident in 1995 when Andrei Codrescu on NPR's "All Things Considered," said (about Christ's rapture of His church), "The evaporation of four million (people) who believe in this (Christian) crap would leave this world a better place"? Continued...