Faith-Based Reality

Faith-based reality: I'm loving this phrase.
Apply it mostly to Conservatives, the President, or Benedict XVI, though I could imagine some out on the Lefty fringes to whom it could apply.

Left of center, though, most of us still believe in objectivity, at least as an ethic, and the more the Right trashes the "cultural relativism" of the Academic Left, the more obvious it becomes that we need critical theory just to explain what the hell it is the bad guys are doing. In the faith-based reality, beliefs are absolute. Facts are relative. The Bush Administration is the epitome: ignoring scientific research; suppressing figures about the cost of the Medicare drug benefits; the entire war. This morning I was reading about Hugh Hewitt, a conservative talk radio host, who is convinced that the media is liberal. He interviewed a WaPo columnist and just kept asking questions to "prove" liberal bias. The fairness of the questions? Doesn't matter. Evidence? Anything that fits a sound bite. The problem is only partly AM sleaze: the man, according to Nicholas Lemann believes he's right.

More on this later.

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