Rock Bottom

Warner Todd Huston, your opinion offends me so deeply, you should be legally prohibited from expressing it.

I'm being facetious, of course. But seriously—it's vile. I'm writing about it here to establish a reference point of sorts, because surely this is as bad as conservative commentary gets.

[T]his Smith guy is definitely a class "A" creep. But he is also the perfect, logical end of left-wing, Democrat ideology. What makes this whole story all the more sad is that half the American electorate is on the side of a woman-beating, creep like Graydon Smith.

Graydon Smith, you see, had apparently made his girlfriend sign a contract giving him the right to physically abuse her. Only her midsection was off limits, on account of the developing fetus inside (and what a happy life that baby can look forward to). It's a sad, bizarre, horrible story, which makes it the perfect excuse to hurl unfounded insults at millions of people.

Employing left-wing thinking, this violent man did what every leftist says should be done. He indulged his inner desires—because his “rights” to do as he wishes are sacrosanct.

...

I believe in moral absolutes. Since the left does not, they have no leg to stand on to tell this guy that his contract and his girlfriend's consent to sign it is wrong.

This is all a veiled dig at something, I'm sure. If I had to guess, I'd say Huston is upset about liberals being unwilling to broadly condemn Islamic fundamentalism. I detect a hint of homophobia in there, too. Whatever. After reading the article, I don't especially care what he's upset about, so kudos, Mr. Huston, on a job well done.^[1]

I'm not going to be so patronizing as to say that conservatives should disagree with this nonsense, because I'm sure I don't need to. But I'd like to see what would happen if you presented this article to a bunch of non-conservatives. I bet a substantial amount would not be so quick to dismiss it as the incoherent, hateful raving of a close-minded fool. Instead, they would dismiss it as the incoherent, hateful raving of a close-minded conservative, and that is a crucial difference. Huston's article, on the surface, features the same blind partisanship and pointless, mean-spirited stereotyping that have become generally associated with conservative discourse—and the surface is about as far as most people would get.

Blame the "liberal media" for demonizing conservatives, if you like, but this guy (Huston, that is, not the leftist misogynist with the faulty understanding of how contract law works) is hard at work demonizing conservatives on his own, and I don't hear anyone telling him to shut up.^[2]

1. Also, I'm tempted to point out that freedom of contract is very much a conservative principle, but I won't. Everyone seems to be assuming that this woman was coerced into signing the contract (which is certainly more likely than any other explanation), and there was also an unborn child involved, so it's not exactly a clear-cut freedom of contract issue. That's why I'm not pointing out that, once again, freedom of contract is a conservative principle.

2. That's not entirely true, but it makes for a better closing than "if the comments on his articles are any indication, a handful of people are telling him to shut up (or at least that he's an idiot), but theirs is hardly the prevailing opinion." Also, I'm pretty sure I don't need to say this, but I will anyway. When I say "telling him to shut up," I'm not talking about any kind of infringement on his First Amendment right to post hateful nonsense on the Internet (just as the founders intended). I'm talking about literally saying "hey, you idiot, you're making us look bad, so why don't you give it a rest for a while."