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Words Matter
I have got to stop watching the Sunday morning Talking Head shows.
Tim Russert, on Meet the Press, scrunched up his face, mustered the sort of righteous indignation the media reserve for conservative Neanderthals, and proceeded to mercilessly browbeat the NRA’s Wayne LaPierre about his recent comments. Time and time again Russert invited LaPierre to disavow his incendiary words about the President’s deplorable gun crime enforcement record. LaPierre stood his ground, forcing Russert to repeatedly scold, "but Words Matter", subtly reinforcing the Clintonian argument that inapt words by right wingers are a major cause of violence in our country.
My jaw, which had been hovering somewhere between my knees and ankles as I watched this spectacle, hit the floor. Words Matter? Words Matter? The press is lecturing to conservatives that words matter? The same press that nary raises an eyebrow when Democratic Congressmen routinely accuse republicans of the basest motives, from implying that they want old folks to freeze to death to calling them Nazis? The same press that more or less sat idly by as the Clinton machine brutally destroyed the reputations of its enemies through vicious lies and distortions? The same press that reported, but did not pass judgement on, words such as "is" and "No controlling legal authority"? It is clear that the only words that matter to the media are those uttered by the likes of Wayne LaPierre or John Rocker, words that offend the tepid moralism of contemporary liberalism.
After I simmered down a bit I realized that Russert’s comments actually revealed a bit of deeper truth. Words do matter to liberalism. In fact, they may well be all that matter. As Thomas Sowell has so convincingly pointed out, liberalism doesn’t care about results, especially the results of its policies on real, flesh and blood human beings. It is far more important to demonstrate convincingly that it cares. The language of caring is emotion communicated through words ("I feel your pain") and legislation. The language of results is the much less sexy lexicon of statistics and down-in-the-trenches hard work.
The debate over gun control is perhaps the perfect example of this phenomenon, which is what LaPierre so clumsily tried to point out. Those for who "words matter" see "progress" as defined by standing up and showing how much they care. In addition to talking, this takes the form of passing legislation. It is a reality that despite the non-stop pressure to pass more laws, the Clinton Administration has an abysmal enforcement record regarding laws already on the books. Rather than attribute this to political skullduggery, as LaPierre did, it is more accurate to see it as a perfect illustration of caring vs. results. Liberals get massive brownie points from their compadres and the media for passing gun control laws ("words"). They get no brownie points for busting felons (results). The incentives are clear: talk about the need to "do something" while ignoring the results. Using the language of results, John Lott has convincingly demonstrated that the actual result of allowing the concealed carry of firearms is a reduction in serious crime. This is invisible to liberals because it is a language they do not speak. (Mayor Giuliani is so detested by liberals because he seems their mirror image. He is incapable of speaking the language of caring, focusing instead on results. Achieving results is bad enough on its own, but when combined with lack of caring words it is enough to make liberals declare you a fascist.)
One can apply this theory to almost any area of public policy and see similar results. Education, tobacco, environmentalism, health care, campaign finance reform – in all these areas liberals are compelled to "action" while studiously ignoring results. The Clinton Administration may claim to represent the "New Democrats", but they have raised the art of "caring" at the expense of results to dizzying heights. Wayne LaPierre may have pointed this out in an impolitic way, but to those of us who value results more than words, he is hitting close to home.