Loyalty, Critical Thinking, and Ann Coulter

I often read Ann Coulter’s weekly essays, which come to my yahoo box.  My general view is that I think her outrageousness is funny.  I agree with a lot of what she says, although these celebrity conservatives do not speak for me.  But lately she’s just been shrill, and now mean. 

Her most recent rant is that Samaritan’s Purse should not have sent American missionary doctors to Liberia or the third world period because Ken Brantley and another needed to be rescued, flown home, and treated for Ebola and it cost 2 million dollars.  She went on and on about how stupid that was to send medical help over there, and how the American poor need medical care in destitute communities.

First, I hardly think she has a good perspective on the missionary world.  Second, it’s none of her business how much Samaritan’s Purse spends—she doesn’t donate to them.  Third, since when does she care about the poor in the U.S. ? 

But the comment section is what always gets me.  Her acolytes got all huffy about defending her.  The indefensibility of her position doesn’t matter; they have to be loyal and this loyalty comes at the price of logic or good sense.  I did not know that loyalty was about one’s self-esteem and self-defense.  I thought it was about the other person. 

It is possible to expose oneself to the views of a writer or source and not drink his/her koolaid.  It’s called critical thinking, which is in short supply on both sides of the aisle.  If we have to agree wholeheartedly, in lock step with one side on all issues, all the time, we are in big trouble and no compromise and therefore no progress is possible.