Columnist is "intellectually dishonest"

Kevin O'Connor, Ph.D.
lecturer, Department of History

Dear Editor:

I'm new to SIU, and at first I sort of admired Brian Smith's willingness to take an unpopular stand in a university environment that is overwhelmed by the demands of "politically correct" behavior and thought. Mr. Smith, whom I have never met, is among the best informed and most articulate of the Daily Egyptian's regular columnists. However, his columns are also highly polemical and, when it comes down to it, intellectually dishonest.

His ad nauseum diatribes against "Liberals" are undermined by the fact that, as one reader pointed out, he fails to identify exactly what a "Liberal" is. Thus, it appears that in Mr. Smith's world, a Liberal is anyone who is for whatever he is against.

For Mr. Smith, the heroic defender of the "free market," "Liberals" are all those who question its efficacy and fairness, and, well, rightness. He writes, "The wailing and gnashing of teeth occurring on the far left only shows that they have zero knowledge of economics." It appears that Mr. Smith himself misunderstands (or, more accurately, misrepresents) the workings of the U.S. economy: although he is a worshipper of the "free market," he never seems to ponder the fact that the United States in fact does not have a free market in goods and services; agrobusiness, to name just one example, enjoys substantial government subsidies designed to protect American agriculture from competitors in Africa and elsewhere.

Moreover, exactly who on the "far left" does Mr. Smith mean? Does he mean Communists? Has it come down to red-baiting? The Cold War is over, Mr. Smith. The good guys won: Adam (not Brian) Smith is in and Karl Marx is out. The "free market" (such as it is) has triumphed, and you know very well that nobody in American politics today wishes to resurrect Lenin's mummified corpse. Brian Smith needs a bogeyman, and for him it is the free-market-hating Liberal. Who is he (or she), Mr. Smith? Let's name names.

So Saddam Hussein-supporting Liberals have replaced Communists as enemy No. 1. Oh, they're the same people, all right; they've just traded in their little red books for the Koran and their tie-dyes for oxford shirts and red (red! I knew it!) ties. So, again I ask, who are these "Liberals"? In addition to those who favor a radical redistribution of wealth along Bolshevik lines, for Mr. Smith the hated "Liberals" include all those who question the Bush administration's rationale for waging war against Iraq. The Dixie Chicks, therefore, are "Saddam Hussein-supporting" Liberals. I couldn't care less for the Dixie Chicks, but where is Mr. Smith's evidence that they supported Saddam Hussein? So Mr. Smith's method of persuasion is to brand those who disagree with him as "Liberals" (as if to be a Liberal is somehow shameful and that all Liberals share the same views) and to treat anyone who questions the motives and actions of the administration in Washington as unpatriotic and even guilty of treason.

No doubt Mr. Smith will gleefully and disingenuously continue to trash "Liberals," for that is all he knows how to do. To put it bluntly, he is a one-trick pony.

Kevin O'Connor, Ph.D.
lecturer, Department of History

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