Appearing on Fox News’ O’Reilly Factor Wednesday, liberal columnist and Fox News contributor Kirsten Powers discussed a George Washington University study showing that liberals on the internet are less tolerant than conservatives. Powers said that part of the reason is that liberals are unsettled by opposing points of view because they’re used to running the so-called “mainstream media.”
“I always knew that liberal people were more sensitive, more sensitive to criticism, more sensitive to disagreement, and according to the study, 22 percent of liberals have ended digital relationships, whatever they are, because somebody disagreed with them politically,” O’Reilly said. “For conservatives the number is 15 percent. And you say?”
Powers responded by telling O’Reilly that the study “jibes” with her real-life experience, “especially,” she added, “as I came into more contact with conservatives as I got older because I used to really live very much in a Democratic bubble when I worked in politics.”
“I did find that they were much more open to sort of hearing other viewpoints, where I think liberals because they are so used to controlling all the media pretty much, academia, that for them when they hear things that don’t jibe with what they want to hear, it’s very disconcerting and unsettling to them. And it doesn’t surprise me that they’re really less interested, whereas conservatives are kind of used to it. They’ve lived in a world where pretty much, you know, the whole media has been sort of liberal,” she explained.
“So they’re used to the joust more than the liberals are?” O’Reilly asked.
“Yeah,” Powers said. “I think they don’t, they just have a sort of, they just sort of expect it, where the liberals are sort of taken aback because they feel like, ‘What are you talking about? Everybody knows that what I think is right and nobody thinks differently.’”
Kate Obenshain a Republican strategist who appeared on the program, agreed with Powers and said that when conservatives on colleges disagree with liberal orthodoxy, they are often charged with “violating campus speech codes.”
Newsbusters’ Noel Sheppard wrote that Powers’ statement rang true for him.
“Just this week,” he wrote, “I got into an email argument with a childhood friend of mine – someone I’ve known since kindergarten – who claimed emphatically that Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush each created more federal debt than Obama.”
Sheppard said that when he provided the facts along with a link to the Treasury website backing it up, his liberal friend refused to believe it and changed the subject.
“What’s become clear of late is the liberal media’s propaganda machine is so strong it’s impossible for some in our nation to accept the truth,” Sheppard added.
When confronted with facts, they lash out and demand an end to the conversation while threatening to end the relationship, Sheppard added.
Conservatives who engage with liberals on social media sites like Facebook often find this to be true. When presented with facts and sources, many on the left simply choose not to accept what is right in front of them and either try to change the subject or engage in name-calling.
The study’s findings are not all that surprising, given that a 2012 Pew survey found liberals are less tolerant of different political opinions on various on-line platforms and are far more likely to block someone because they disagree with their political point of view.
“Scary stuff when you think about it,” Sheppard wrote.
Video of the segment can be seen here.
Related:
- Liberalism remains an ideology of genocidal hate and rage
- Democratic strategist warns: Mainstream media ‘enemy of the American people’
- Distrust of mainstream media at all time high, poll says
- Yes, Virginia, there is a Democrat-media complex
- Majority of voters view media as biased and unethical
- Democratic strategist: Media purposefully suppressing news that would hurt Obama
- Jamie Foxx on killing white people in new movie: ‘How great is that?’
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When your world view is shallow and can not stand up under scrutiny, of course you would not want to be forced to defend it. That also explains why they try to silence opposing views by working to get conservative websites shut down, get conservative radio hosts kicked off the air, and why they really think if they don’t report on Benghazi, it didn’t happen.
There might be more going on. I’m not sure I’ll get this out right; it’s complicated and weird. Let me just try to blast through it:
I’ve been studying Anarchy; the study has required hanging out with Marx and other bizarre progressive philosophers; I noticed all these guys think “the church” has to go; I noticed the ones that wanted to actively destroy it, the anti-theists, keep repeating the same idea — as long as it exists, the door is still open. Bakunin, for example, wrote in God and the State that a material explanation for the belief in God was required,
It wasn’t enough to reject the idea of God; it was also necessary to annihilate the ability to believe in God.
Anyway, progressives seem to think their clique has value in itself, and they seem to want to be progressives more than they want to know the truth. If you put a fact on the table, and if accepting that fact will keep them from being progressives, they want nothing to do with it. “Willful blindness” might cover it. And — you touched on this — it isn’t enough to just reject the undesirable fact; they want to burn the book the fact was written in and put into an oubliette anyone that repeats it to protect themselves.
All that seems pretty clear, but I don’t know what to call it. Apologize for the length.
You are probably right, and it makes me think this might be good news, because it made me realize that the democrats I know are probably not progressives, and are not beyond hope because they believe in God. I now doubt they are even aware what the fringe of their party has become, thinking back on conversations I had with them prior to the election. I was so mad about the election that I had sort of decided my democrat friends and relatives were not worth talking to anymore, but I think now that it would be worth trying to point out what they don’t see because they aren’t paying attention. How to go about that without alienating them is the question.
Do you have a tree stump or large rock in your yard? You’ll have better luck talking to either of those. I know all this because I am surrounded by family that just “doesn’t get it” and never will.
Worse than not listening to other sides is that they believe everything they get from their sources (Daily Kos probably being the worst)…mention GW Bush or Reagan and you’ll get the robotic BS that is so common in the entire liberal world.
You may be right, but I’m still going to try!
Godspeed good soldier! Before you go please post who we should notify when it’s obvious you ain’t coming back.
Ha Ha Ha! Will do!
The study is obviously flawed for the following reason: #1 the inability to listen to both sides of an issue is limited to ignorant people #2 liberals are smarter than conservatives (they remind us all the time). Thus it follows that the failure to listen to alternative viewpoints cannot possibly describe a liberal. I think what they are describing is a bunch of conservatives posing as liberals (it’s part of some secret Tea party plot).