Liberal Bullshit

‘Bullshit” is American English’s assertion, maximally succinct and vigorous, that a contention is factually preposterous or logically absurd. According to philosophy professor Harry Frankfurt, however, the “essence of bullshit is not that it is false but that it is phony.” His slender volume devoted to the subject, On Bullshit, invites us to think of a Fourth of July orator “who goes on bombastically about ‘our great and blessed country, whose Founding Fathers under divine guidance created a new beginning for mankind.’” The speaker’s point is not “to deceive anyone concerning American history.” Rather,

what he cares about is what people think of him. He wants them to think of him as a patriot, as someone who has deep thoughts and feelings about the origins and the mission of our country, who appreciates the importance of religion, who is sensitive to our history, whose pride in that history is combined with humility before God, and so on.

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/392570/liberal-bullshit-william-voegeli