and on earth peace, good will toward all. … Or maybe not. Here is Mike Potemra, at The Corner:
I have over the past couple of months been watching DVDs of Star Trek: The Next Generation, a show I missed completely in its run of 1987 to 1994; and I confess myself amazed that so many conservatives are fond of it. Its messages are unabashedly liberal ones of the early post-Cold War era – peace, tolerance, due process, progress (as opposed to skepticism about human perfectibility).
Kevin Drum observes:
You know, conservatives don’t usually confess straight up to finding peace, tolerance, due process, and progress so disagreeable. But I guess they slip up every once in a while.
Steve Benen adds:
But it doesn’t end there. Potemra, hoping to understand why conservatives enjoy a show that embraces wacky concepts like due process, asked some National Review colleagues about it. The answer, apparently, is that the right appreciates the “toughness” of Jean-Luc Picard, portrayed as “a moral hardass,” who offers viewers a “compelling portrait of ethical uprightness.”
But if Picard is both a liberal and a “moral hardass,” modeling “ethical uprightness” for television viewers, doesn’t that mean…. (emphasis is mine)
… that being an ethically upright and generally virtuous person is, however surprising this result may be, consistent with being tolerant, peace-loving, even with upholding due process[?]
Ohhhh, no! I think I need a little Christmas, right this very minute. Make mine peaceful and upright.
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