By

[T]hey label the argument and the person making it "leftist" and "liberal" and - presto! - no more need to address the arguments or consider its substance because it’s all been shooed away with one fell swoop of name-calling cliches.

The name-calling technique links a person, or idea, to a negative symbol. The propagandist who uses this technique hopes that the audience will reject the person or the idea on the basis of the negative symbol, instead of looking at the available evidence.

Tonight Show

Tonight Show

Godless

Only a society that has ceased to value that reasonable context of discussion (in other words, only a society that no longer really cares about itself) could enthusiastically make significant room for someone like Coulter, who rakes in profits by making up lies and "entertaining" people by demanding the deaths of those she hates. And American society today makes room not only for her, but also for an entire right-wing movement for which eliminationist rhetoric has become the norm. This is a society that no longer trusts itself, that is incapable of seeing its citizens as citizens and therefore as worthy of respect.

Correction - I had previously said Malkin wrote for VDare. That's not the case, they run her syndicated column.

UPDATE



The last few years have witnessed the emergence of a new class of pundits. Many, regrettably, are prodigies in the aggressive political jargon that pervades our political discourse.

Why is Coulter so important? Even though most people haven't heard of her , she and other relatively young jargon-slingers like David Limbaugh and Michelle Malkin are gaining stature. As a result, the rise of aggressive political jargon is likely to continue, with predictable and pernicious consequences for American political discourse.