Jonah Goldberg Weighs In an Katie Couric's Deceptions

Jonah Goldberg has a rare piece on the gun debate today.  Goldberg, being from New York, hasn't ever felt the need, I suppose, for guns,  Neither has Goldberg ever noticed the high correlation between opinions on gun rughts and conservative ideas.  But, in any case, the piece, entitled Going to extremes to start a conversation is really about the manifest dishonesty of the Progressive project.

Goldberg cites as a recent example, Katie Couric's response to reports that she lied:

She was asked about the scandal swirling around her anti-gun-documentary -- specifically, the fact that she deceptively edited a gun rights group's response to a question to make the members seem like dangerous idiots.

I wrote about all that in a recent column, so there's no need to repeat myself beyond noting that Couric and her producer are guilty of outright deception. But I thought her response was amusingly revealing.

"I can understand the objection of people who did have an issue about it," Couric said. (The "it" here is the deliberate falsifying of the truth). "Having said that, I think we have to focus on the big issue of gun violence. It was my hope that, when I approached this topic, that this would be a conversation starter."

And there it is: the "I lied to reveal a larger truth, which I desperately want you to notice, and not condemn me for my little white lie." Goldberg goes on to cite many other examples of Progressives doing the same thing, and ostensibly for the same reasons. Of course, as I have pointed out, we have been having a conversation about gun rights for essentially the last 100 years,  The trouble is that the Progressive Left lost the debate.  But rather than admit defeat, the Progressives pretend as if this debate never took place, so it is urgent we have it again.

Goldberg notes, though, that even this is really no surprise:

I don't think people appreciate how pernicious and widespread this crowdsourced totalitarianism really is. Routine lies in the service of left-wing narratives are justified in the name of "larger truths," while actual truth-telling in the other direction is denounced as hate speech or "triggering."

...snip...

Remember, behind every obvious double standard is a hidden single standard. For instance, earlier this year, The New Yorker's Jane Mayer came out with a book attacking libertarian philanthropists Charles and David Koch called "Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right." When asked by NPR's Steve Inskeep what the nefarious supervillains of her screed were really up to, she ominously explained, "What they're aiming at is changing the conversation in the country."

Well, so are left-wing billionaire George Soros and his minions. So is Mayer herself. So are all of these campus fraudsters and activists. And so is Katie Couric. But when someone on the other side of the ideological chasm questions the official narrative, they must be demonized or otherwise silenced. Why? Because the last thing progressives want is to start an honest conversation. They want to have their conversations -- and only their conversations.

Update: Jonah Goldberg refers to a second piece he had already written on the affair. That piece can be found here.