Projection

A little psychological term I picked up in college, projection is a defense mechanism whereby someone accuses another of a negative attribute or behavior she actually exhibits.

There seems to be a lot of projection in our modern political dialogue.

Let's examine a few:

Conservatives who support capital punishment are heartless barbarians.

I'm still waiting for an explanation about why the most strident voices against capital punishment are equally as strident in their defense of a "woman's right to choose", even to the point of where a fully-developed human infant's brains are sucked out just before delivery so the mother doesn't have to raise the child. How does it work - "Save the murderers, kill the babies"? How about "Save the environment, abort a fetus".

Conservatives "steal" elections by "disenfranchising" Democrat voters.

I've been trying to figure out what that means, and the closest I can get is this: Laws like the one passed here in Indiana that require voters to produce a valid identification before voting disenfranchise Democrat voters who are filling in for people who have moved away, are dead, or never existed in the first place. Then of course there are the illegal immigrant and convicted felon disenfranchised Democrat voters. Who exactly is "stealing" elections?

Conservatives, especially talk radio, are responsible for the divisiveness and uncivil discourse in American politics today. It's conservatives who have no tolerance for other points of view. Rush Limbaugh is the poster child for this argument.

Tell you what: Listen to Rush Limbaugh just once, then turn on Bill Maher or Keith Olbermann or Chris Matthews. Then tell me who is more uncivil; who exhibits more raw hatred and disgust for the other side? Be honest.

Conservatives hail from the Flat Earth Society.

I guess the charge is that conservatives hate science, apparently because they're religious nutcases. Al Gore recently said that anyone who questions his highly touted "scientific facts" about global warming is no more worthy of media play than someone who believes the earth is flat. Interesting, given the fact that even the climate scientists on Al's side have admitted that he's vastly overblown many of his "facts", and completely made up several others.

Interestingly, the people who claim to put so much faith in science and reason rise up in righteous indignation if anybody in the scientific community releases a study that seems to prove one of their sacred liberal beliefs isn't true. The latest story on stem cells, for example. Darwinian evolution. That men and women are actually different in several measurable ways (*gasp*).

It's so interesting how science is only touted by these folks when it serves their agenda. Oh wait - I thought that was supposed to be the other side that does that!

Moving on to reason, that just may be the biggest joke. Those who profess to use reason and a dispassionate analysis of the factual evidence seem to be most likely to abandon reason for emotion. Those on the far left (Marxists, in case you don't know who the far left are) choose to ignore the abject failures of Marxist society, believing they will simply implement it better than the others.

Bush is spying on Americans.

Aside from the fact that there's no evidence any innocent American has been illegally wiretapped, it's another great example. Anybody remember the FBI Files scandal, euphemistically called "Filegate", from the Clinton era? By the way, it was Hillary that set up the illegal office where FBI files were obtained on all of the Clinton's political enemies to use against them. Plus there was the case of Newt Gingerich's cellphone conversations being tapped by Democrat party operatives and shared with Hillary to use against him.

Strange how everybody but Hillary got prosecuted for that stuff.

There are more, but here's the last one:

Bush has shredded the Constitution.

That's amazing, coming from those who would impose a big-brother socialist society on the rest of us, telling us what we are allowed to drive, eat, smoke, even think. Those who want a Supreme Court that disregards the constitution to implement anything they can't achieve through democratic means. Those who would erase all references to God and repeal the first and second amendments as quickly as possible.

Our word for today, children, is Projection.