Liberals are not paying attention to opposing views

Tim Carney:

Closed-minded dismissal of opposing views has gone from being a bad habit of conservatives to a core strategy of the Left.

As we await the Supreme Court's Obamacare ruling, liberal commentator after liberal commentator has declared that only a dishonest partisan or a complete fool could find the individual mandate unconstitutional.

This is where the liberal elites have been headed for a couple of years, and not just on health care. In many cases, it's simply a matter of the liberal bubble. For others, it's a cynical way of moving the bounds of permissible dissent. This latter phenomenon I've given the florid name "Strategic Epistemic Closure."

I learned the term "epistemic closure" a couple of years back from the erudite libertarian blogger Julian Sanchez. Sanchez wrote that grassroots conservatives are especially prone to ignore counterarguments and opposing viewpoints, instead immersing themselves in the comfortable waters of Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity.

Epistemic closure is a sign of intellectual laziness that's too present among the conservative base. But it seems that among some liberals, epistemic closure is a deliberate and strategic choice: Ignore, dismiss and ridicule conservative and free-market views, and maybe the "referees" -- that is, the mainstream media -- will begin treating those views as ridiculous, too.

The other side's views need not be entertained, the argument goes, because the other side is not serious. And we know they are not serious because they are on the other side. Any reporter who gives as much weight to the Right's argument as to the Left's is guilty of false equivalence and "he-said-she-said" analysis.

Paul Krugman, the acid-penned New York Times columnist, is the trendsetter when it comes to Strategic Epistemic Closure.

... Here's the flip side of that story: liberal Strategic Epistemic Closure is all about dismantling any permission structure on the Right. For instance, get enough elites to dismiss an idea, and boom, it's "discredited." Get enough liberals to act shocked at a proposal, and you've made it "controversial." Then pretend some objective standard has been met, and warn the media not to give credence to discredited or controversial ideas....

By failing to engage on the issues liberals find themselves surprised when their point of view is rejected by the court and by voters.  Contrary to what they say about Rush and Sean, both do take on the liberals arguments and tell you why they think those arguments are wrong.  In fact that is what makes their show so entertaining to conservatives.  It is the left in this country that wants to put their hand over their ears and eyes.  What they really can't stand is free speech for anyone other than themselves.