Joel Engel goes Vizzini on the L-word

About once a quarter I’ll experience a conversation in which I feel like Inigo Montoya’s character in The Princess Bride when he hears Vizzini repeatedly say the word “inconceivable!” after witnessing yet another heroic feat by the masked and dangerous Dread Pirate Roberts. After hearing Vizzini say that word several times, Montoya finally turns to him and says, “I don’t think that word means what you think it means.” I’m having an Inigo Montoya moment after reading Joel Engel go all Vizzini on the word “liberal” in The Weekly Standard. Here’s a snippet:

Alas, somewhere over the last two decades or so, liberalism lost its root as the word liberal was perverted to the point of Orwellian inversion–and therefore rendered meaningless. For example, rooting against the United States and for “insurgents” who delight in slaughtering innocents is many things (stupid, for one, also sad, evil, and short-sighted), but it is assuredly not liberal. Decrying the American “religious right” for advocating a “culture of life” while simultaneously praising the neck-slicing Islamofascists is many things (start with pathetic), but it is not liberal. Calling 3,000 workers who died when the buildings fell “little Eichmanns” is many things (vile, as well as repulsive and morally repugnant), but it is not liberal. Protesting the painless execution of a sadistic murderer while cheering the removal of a feeding tube from a brain-damaged woman whose parents very much want her alive even if her estranged husband doesn’t, is many things (incomprehensible, indefensible, and unforgivably cruel), but it is not liberal. Marching against war every time the United States is involved–in fact only when the United States is involved–regardless of the war’s purpose, is many things (reactionary for sure), but it is not liberal.

Engel’s implication — that all liberals are little Ward Chruchills — is partisanship gone absurd. Conservative Ramesh Ponnuru makes this point in NRO’s The Corner in discussing Engel’s litany of non-liberal actions:

All of that is true–but most contemporary liberals would presumably agree with those sentiments. It may be that liberals should be criticized for not doing enough to distance themselves from people who hold these sentiments; but it is neither true nor fair, I think, to suggest that most liberals hold those sentiments themselves. And it advances no worthwhile cause to depict our society as more divided than it actually is.

In other words — I don’t think the modern incarnation of the word “liberal” means what Joel Engel thinks it means. UPDATE: Mickey Kaus points out that the Associated Press can overgeneralize with the best of them — this time with regard to defining “conservative”:

Is “conservative activists” really the best phrase to describe the fundamentalist Christians who are sponsoring this anti-homosexuality event? Isn’t that a little like identifying sponsors of a gun-control or militantly-pro-choice rally–or a gay rights event, for that matter–as “liberal activists”? (emphases in original).