Why is the Political Situation so Bleak? Because the Elite Fears Being Unfashionable More Than Being Wrong
“In the attics of the students, in the garrets of Bohemia, and the deserted offices of doctors without patients and lawyers without clients there are [the revolutionaries] in bud.” — Hippolyte Taine, writing about France in the 1860s
“We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth, and listen to the song of that siren till she transforms us into beasts. Is this the part of wise men, engaged in a great and arduous struggle for liberty? Are we disposed to be of the number of those who, having eyes, see not, and, having ears, hear not, the things which so nearly concern their temporal salvation? For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth; to know the worst, and to provide for it.” — Patrick Henry to the Virginia convention, March 23, 1775
How do you turn “the smartest people in the world” into the dumbest? Simple: you turn the sophisticated sources of information on which they depend — elite media, academia, and schools — into sources of misinformation.
And how do you persuade people who should know better to embrace bad ideas and silly concepts? Equally simple.
You make those ideas fashionable.
One of the girls in my son’s sixth-grade class told him he would look better if he wore blue jeans. After he explained to me that this is what the other kids in his class are wearing, I took him shopping and bought him a couple pairs. He wore jeans the next day at school, and a kid said: “Hey, look, Daniel is wearing blue jeans!” And they applauded.
But why, he asked me afterward, does it matter so much what someone wears? After all, that’s just a superficial outer appearance. I was proud of him for asking that question — which showed that he valued character over image — but explained that these things are important because they send social signals. Most people really don’t know how to evaluate someone in terms of their character and values. They lack the time or ability to do so. Thus, they look at symbols like clothes, haircuts, and the kind of car someone drives, or their credentials, like college degrees, in order to judge others.
Once I was in the elevator of a fashionable Manhattan high rise holding take-out coffee for myself and my wife. I was informally dressed and wearing a Baltimore Orioles cap. One woman in the elevator turned to another and said: “I didn’t know Starbucks delivers!”
Indeed, fashion may be the greatest enemy of survival for America today. Holding a certain set of ideas has been defined as making one seem sophisticated, successful, and admirable. Other ideas are deemed horrible, indicating that the person is a hick, rube, bumpkin, yahoo, racist. In short, the kind of person who hates others because they are different and clings to guns and religion.
One of the great successes of leftism (pretending to be liberalism) in North America and Europe today is that it has made itself so fashionable, so identified with sophistication, intellectual quality, and what used to be called the upper class. Not the old upper class of country clubs and yachts (though Senator John Kerry has a whopper of a boat), but the upper class of merit, the truly good who hate racism and are saving the Earth.
Funny how many of these people are quite wealthy themselves. The message: my money and success is justified by my holding proper attitudes. Al Gore may have a big house and a big carbon footprint, but that’s okay because he talks about how these things are evil.
The true class warfare going on is not that of the one percent reactionary, greedy rich versus the ninety-nine percent of everyone else, but rather a section of the elite that benefits from big government — in supposed alliance with those receiving government payments, plus various groups given special privileges — against everyone else. Per Taine’s words about nineteenth century France, the revolutionaries are no longer “doctors without patients and lawyers without clients,” but rather those who would be without patients, clients, or employment if not for the government’s patronage.
Part of the trick to conceal that reality has been to make one’s good intentions the test, rather than the results of one’s behavior or policies. The outcome may be disastrous to the economy, the poor, the medical care system, and those living in countries victimized by one’s wrong-headed foreign policy, but that’s not important if you meant well. Yet the abandonment of pragmatism — measuring things by what works rather than by ideological standards or intentions — is the start of the abandonment of successful democratic life.
Another element is the left’s transformation into the party of the snobs, the instrument for the elite’s contempt for the people.
At a diplomatic party in Washington, I was in line for the free food behind a well-coiffed, well-dressed woman. We got into a discussion of textbooks, and I asked if she knew which state was the largest purchaser of them.
Just so! Another one out of the park, Mr. Ruben.
It’s so good that I’ve just seen a new, better way to argue with liberals. When they spout their usual recycled nonsense, respond, “Oh wow, you still believe that? That’s so old and busted.”
Would that the views of “liberals” were indeed old and busted. The liberals in my acquaintance are digging in their heels, and will be hard to beat in 2012. I wrote about their almost religious belief in POTUS here, contrasting their views with the hostile ones of Republicans and other dissatisfied Americans: see http://clarespark.com/2012/04/06/diagnosing-potus/.
If large signs with the word “kneel” were held up before the crowd at an Obama event just as he came on stage, would the crowd obey?
Brilliant, and I think you are dead on right. What a sight that would be! Let’s try it!!!
+1 Mr. Rubin. Thank you!
Great essay.
I’m reminded of a (typically) awesome episode of South Park where a cloud of ‘smug’ forms over the US from a mixture of exhaust fumes from Toyota Prius’s and George Clooney’s Academy awards speech. Brilliant.
Depressingly true, see it everyday, especially in the human service field. Victimhood is celebrated, the staff can’t understand that money does not come from the government, and “republicans want a theocracy”.
“…repulicans want a theocracy.”
What I laugh at is when they say, “republicans want babies to die,” and “abortion is a choice,” with a straight face.
Are You In?
I often dislike what you write and how. IMHO this is the best essay you have ever written here. Bravo! This has to be the simplest and clearest exposition of these truths that I have ever read. Now, I will pay even closer attention to what you have to say.
Now here is a sterling example of the fruit of free speech. More speech, more understanding.
Quite often, the left’s message to conservatives can be boiled down to “Shut up, she explained.”
The great mistake of thinkers is the belief that individuals are rational.
They can be; but groups- the monkey band, the Herd, is not.
Our deepest instincts are to be a part: we are a social animal above all else.
From faces to parents to an audience in our minds.
We are mystified by the motivations and behavior of others, not realizing they are responding to different signals, marching to a different drummer.
We feel they are mad because they don’t see what we see.
The Herd is largely imaginary, true, but it is the name we put to our actual physical wiring in our brains.
‘God’ or ‘values’ are the face and the voice we put to these instincts, this wiring, so that we may talk about them.
Understanding religion- even communist religion- is easy.
Simply use ‘the Herd’ in place of ‘the God’ or ‘the Masses/the State’.
The Herd loves you.
The Herd wants you.
It is the will of the Herd.
It is the law of the Herd.
The Herd will punish you!
“Our deepest instincts are to be a part: we are a social animal above all else.”
Yes, I have never had that instinct. I never understood it on an emotional level. Put another way, I have been described as, “not a team player”.
I think the whole point of religion is to elevate us above the primitive (savage) tribal/herd instinct. It is supposed to guide us to more noble truths, a better way of living with each other.
Of course, mostly, it is pearls before swine. Lots of people go to church because it is fashionable, because it is necessary for their image. The Right tends to be church-going. The Left, not very much.
So, it is not only the Left who engages in such tribal conduct, worrying about acceptance of the tribe/herd. The Right observes the forms, rather than the substance, as well.
Very, very true. My parents worked very hard to make sure I understood why I did a thing.
“Are you doing that to look cool? Or are you doing that because it needs doing?”, was a common phrase in the house where I grew up. Many variations thereof and it wasn’t without whimsey. In other words, sometimes it’s fun to have the “cool thing” such as the little roadster, provided you bought it because YOU liked it, not because what OTHERS would think of you for having it, which, of course, is an inevitable feature of such things.
But first and always, we were taught that clothing is practical first, stylish second and that often gave rise to some ridicule at school. Flannel shirts in the wintertime, etc were frowned upon by my “peers” in high school but while they were freezing their behinds off while looking “cool” (interesting), I was happily warm in my flannel shirt.
I was also amazed that years later, getting ridiculed for not wearing shorts while boating. Never was “into” shorts. But “the thing” was to wear shorts when everyone was out rafting up, even in “the redneck yacht club”.
So it’s pervasive and gets into all walks of life. ie: don’t come to the jazz festival in boots, buckle and hat. The “sophisticated” will giggle merrily at your lack of worldliness. Ask me how I know.
Fundamentally, the IQ of a group is the IQ of the stupidest member of the group divided by the number in the group. Of course, this is especially true of young males; here, hold my beer and watch this!
Do you really do math like that?
You should see how the babes clamor to be the one chosen to hold my beer when I do calculus!
ha ha ha ha (no sarc)
Barking Monkey Theory:
Monkey in a tree starts barking.
Other monkeys in the same tree, start barking too.
“Our tree is the best tree! We are the best monkeys!”
The problem arises when monkey in ANOTHER tree hears them and starts barking back.
“No no! OURS is the best Tree, OUR monkeys are the very finest of monkeys!!”
There has got to be a Dr. Seuss story there!
We use sound and visual signals to set the pecking order.
Other animals use the lift of their tail, the spread of their wings, the loudness of their chirp or bark.
We are signalling our position in the Tree as we leap from branch to branch.
We signal our identity and loyalty to the imagined audience we identify with.
We use sound and visual signals to show identity and set the pecking order.
Other animals use the lift of their tail, the spread of their wings, their chirp or their howl.
We are signalling our position as we leap from branch to branch.
It is the intricacies of arboreal politics.
One side of the bell curve responds much more stongly to social standing.
They are truly speaking a different language, and you are not the audience they’re speaking to. You’re either scenery or a threat.
This essay is an EUREKA moment. That’s why the elite are liberals: it allows them to be simultaneously elitist and feel morally superior. It allows them to be “for” the poor, and hate them at the same time.
It’s something I think we’ve all always known, but it’s not an easy thing to put into words.
Charles Schulz said it best, years ago, via Linus: “I love mankind, it’s people I can’t stand.”
Does Texas still store the overflow textbooks in a certain high-rise building in Dallas?
You mean the one where the Communist assassin was perched when he shot and killed Kennedy?
No, it’s a tourist theme park now. I went a few years ago. You can stand in the window ext to the window Oswald used. When I did I realized that we have been lied to by the conspiracy nut-jobs. It’s an easy shot, almost anyone could physically do it. While I was there some tourists found a divot in the concrete across the street, they were so excited until I pointed out that the sidewalks are new, and the FBI would’ve chiseled out any bullet evidence years ago. Just goes to show you.
Heh. I had the same experience 30 years ago in Dealey Plaza. Dealey Plaza is tiny and it’s a chip shot — especially if you take three of ‘em.
the reds captured the intellectuals before they got busy with the real war.
Nothing is easier than suckering people who consider themselves intellectually superior.
Behind closed doors, they laugh at the fools.
Excellent. Just one criticism Of this quote: “Yet the abandonment of pragmatism–measuring things by what works rather than by ideological standards or intentions–is the start of the abandonment of successful democratic life.”
Pragmatism without principle, exercised democratically is the slippery slope to a tryanny of the majority.
That’s why constitutions are written and laws made under it. Sociery cannot be purely pragmatist. That is another frame of reference for a society that will, very democratically, justify any means to any ends.
Hiterite Germany is the best modern example; far and away the most democratic major power, a judicial system based on codified law, the cutting edge of social welfare and “social justice” systems, a very well-educated and “cultured” population. Leaving aside some rather barbarous behavior by both the SS and WH on the Eastern Front, everything the Germans did was democratically enacted, especially the exclusion of Jews and “others” from the protections of the law, thus making rounding them up, confiscating their property, and killing them perfectly legal.
As much as I despise the communists in our midst, especially the ones who don’t know they’re communists, the post-modernism being universally taught by our schools is far more dangerous to civil order. We now have a couple of generations completely inured to “right for me,” “it’s not wrong, it’s just different,” and worst of all, “true for me.” In a system where there is no objective right or wrong, anything that is pragmatic or democratically desirable is right, and we have Auschwitz and Dachau as reminders.
“Leaving aside some rather barbarous behavior by both the SS…” But what seem to be overlooking is the fact that Hitler’s police state almost immediately metasticized, once Hitler was elected. An element of fear was instilled in the opposition by the Gestapo, which trumps anything we have come close to here. People can fantasize about Obama doing this, but Hitler really did it. Gays, Jews, Communists or those charged with being some version thereof rounded up and sent off, with the rest of the population worried about being next. Odd, hyperbolic slogans “the language of the Third Reich” becoming the coin of the realm; see Victor Klemperer. Yes, some critical mass of folks permitted this to happen in a country which had grown desperate. And another critical mass came from the combination of the German respect for authority (compared to relatively lawless and disorganized Americans) and Hitler’s unique, evil genius.
And you think Vann Jones and Bill Ayers wouldn’t metastacize the moment they didn’t think that two or four years in the future there’d be a Republican AG just dying to put them in jail for a very long time or, better yet, hang them? Klemperer was a Jew, and very quickly and very democratically the NSDAP legally deprived Jews not only of the rights of citizenship but of the rights of being human. Rounding up the Jews and turning them over to SS Einsatzcommandos was perfectly legal, even obligatory under German law, as was rounding up partisans or starving Russian POWs to death. Go read German court decisions from the day and the most common phrase you see is “the healthy opinion of the Volk.” All you had to do to lead a charmed life in Germany was respect “the healthy opinion of the Volk” – until the bombs started raining on your head. There was no law other than the “healthy opinion” of the German people. We quickly rehabilitated, invented actually, the “good German” after the War because we really, really wanted it to be German rather than American boys plugging the Fulda Gap, but Goldhagen was right; they were all Hitlers Willing Executioners. The wealthy, decadent, socialistic welfare state that was Germany decided there was no right or wrong or crazy old pieces of paper, secular or sacred, limiting the desires of the “healthy opinion” of the Volk.
And, objectively, they weren’t desperate and they weren’t poor any more than ghetto, welfare blacks are poor or realistically desperate in America. They really just didn’t like paying for their damage to the Allies, didn’t think they should have to, didn’t think they’d really lost, and just didn’t want to have their very nice life interfered with by the tough World economy of the mid-’30s. So, they unleashed Hell on the 1% that they blamed for all their disappointments. Sound familiar?
…and Stalin and Mao and Pol Pot and and a whole association of Communist assholes who collectively killed more than 100 million innocent people in 70 years mean nothing to you? It figures!
So in your mind, is the issue that the Germans did not have an effective limiting Constitution, that they were just bad people, or…? For sake of argument, let’s assume that in the beginning most Germans thought that what was happening to the Jews was more like what happened to our Japanese; that they were being sent off to camps, but for separation, not extermination.
To get to the pragmatism issue, let’s assume that our government has gotten much bigger, far beyond apparent limits sent by the Founders because it seemed to work, and we were becoming the richest, most powerful country in the world, not just a feisty upstart. Almost by definition, the Constitution has changed, both because it has been amended, but also because the culture has (or thinks it has) different needs. Literal strict constructionism is impractical, not to mention impossible, so some patched up version thereof is really all we have. The SCOTUS may rule that the commerce clause can continue to expand, or that it has for this particular case, reached its limits.
I think that they reached being the most educated humans ever, supermen, better than anything that had gone before, kinda like the OWSers think of themselves, and when people like that came to actual power, they didn’t need no stinking limits from old-fashioned stuff like laws, religion, morals; the healthy opinion of the Volk was enough to justify anything – and did.
And I think Americans would line up behind a charismatic leader in exactly the same way; just a question of who we’d be sending to the ovens. There ain’t a whole lot of thinking ability out there and there are lots of celebrities for the idiots to follow.
Art, you’re right, and it’s very scary. Refer to “Liberal Fascism” by Jonah Goldberg and “Modern Fascism” by Gene Veith and it’s easy to see the process repeating itself.
@C.P. – you either are painfully stupid, can’t read for comprehension, or are blogging while drunk or drugged; neither of these are good things.
I gave up AD HOM in elementary school. My grandfather instructed me to not mud wrestle with pigs, he said:
1) you will get dirty
2) you will lose
3) the pig will enjoy it.
And you also need to learn what argumentum ad hominem actually means. I didn’t say your argument waw wrong because you were stupid, I just said you were stupid.
But you choose not to acknowledge just how wild and chaotic things had gotten in Germany by that time. They were not a bunch of supermen, brooding over their next conquest, but desperate people. It would be like taking the worst of our Depression and adding our Vietnam Protest years times two or three. People and not just in Germany were looking for some kind of energy and organization to save them. The Germans made a terrible choice and paid terribly for it.
No, the Germans were deceived by a demagogue, just like we have been here. At some point, Hitler achieved total power, and the legislature went along with it, because they were afraid for their lives. Sure, many Germans went along with such nonsense, out of ignorance, and evil and all the other usual reasons. As usual, though, it was a tyranny of the minority, not the majority.
What made it all really possible is that they had succeeded in taking away the German people’s guns and votes both. All the talk about everything else is meaningless. They couldn’t vote Hitler out, and they could not force him out, either. Whether they supported him or not is Moot. There was no way to effectively oppose, anymore.
Guns and votes. The tyrants know that these are the only things which truly matter. All the rest are empty words without them, arguments for the Moot to take up. That’s why gun and ammo sales are through the roof here.
Are you talking about Obama, or FDR?
When you make the Hitler equivalency, you have pretty much ceased serious conversation.
I have heard about the Nazi gun control laws, but I have NOT heard of millions of Germans turning in their guns. In fact, I have never heard any accounts of lack of guns being a factor in German oppression, except when some anti-gun control group is dragging out the fact that there was such a law. If anyone has evidence of German citizens turning in their guns and the numbers involved, please cite chapter and verse. At most, private gun ownership is only one of MANY factors in why we are not post WWI Germany and why Obama is not Hitler.
No, Dwight, they were desperately unhappy but not desperate; things in most of the US were far worse because the US was almost totally devoid of a social welfare system beyond private charity and poor houses and orphanages in some places for the very worst off. Further the general standard of living in Germany despite the deprivations of WWI and the blockade was much higher than the general standard of living in the US. What they weren’t was as well off as they had been and once the Worldwide depression kicked in in the early ’30s the social welfare system in Germany couldn’t keep up. The German labor system had allowed wages to inflate with the mark so that while you might be carrying marks to market in a wheelbarrow, you had both the marks and the wheelbarrow. By ’33, the downturn was such that government revenue couldn’t keep up with the inflation and the business sector couldn’t keep up with the wages. German labor had the sort of interest arbitration that cops, firemen, and COs have and by the time of the downturn, business and industry simply hated the arbitration scheme and the communist dominated unions that drove it. That’s why the NSDAP found it so easy to find favor with German business. Throw in some carrot and stick for coordinating with the NSDAP and you’d prosper, fail to cooperate and your business ceased to exist.
Anyway, to US eyes, Germany is simply a mythological place, almost nothing we “know” is true, and most of what we “know” is a product of WWII Soviet and post-war US propaganda. Much of what the US left yearns for today was in place in Germany by Wiemar, much of it in place under the Kaiser; almost universal unionization with something akin to card check and rigid interest arbitration, a rudimentary universal health care system, elaborate job security and unemployment insurance, and an elaborate social welfare system for “the most vulnerable among us.” And when they found themselves not living up to their expectations, they installed a madman and dashed their country to pieces.
@Marc – That would be a good story if it were true. Actually, sweeping gun control in Germany was enacted under the Wiemar Republic to try to rein in the NSDAP and other political parties with private armies in 1928 five years before Hitler and the NSDAP lawfully came to power in Germany.
C’mon Barry, admit it — you’re a conservative now. No place else for you to be.
Nadine, for some years when asked for my political orientation I say, “Neoconservative, in the actual, Kristolian sense of the word.” I still do, but I realized some months ago that neoconservatism is no longer distinct from conservatism, it is a subset of it. At some point I’ll just probably call myself a conservative.
And you know what? I’m OK with that. Given what liberalism has become, I would have to echo Lezlek Kolakowski in a different context: “If that is left then hell, no, I am not left and do not wish to be.”
Mr. Rubin has hit the nail on the head. The liberal indifference to empirical evidence is because for most liberals, political views are adopted in order to display one’s moral (self-) righteousness, This is why, as you point out, they don’t care about what works; the point is not to do things, it’s to feel that one is superior, caring, etc.
You notice liberals always tell you how courageous they are. If someone said at the women’s studies department lounge, “I don’t agree with the pro-life people but they raise serious moral issues,” that would be real courage.
I call myself a “mugged liberal.” Trite but true.
There are two real problems this sort of thinking causes.
The first is radicalization. Since to be “virtuous” it is not enough to hold the “correct” opinion, but to have others hold the “wrong” views so you can feel superior, what is “correct” shifts progressively (no pun intended) leftwards.
E.g., in the past, declaring homosexuality is not a pathology, like the APA did in the 1970s — a claim equivalent, logically speaking, to Constantine the Great’s firm belief that homosexuality causes earthquakes (by angering heaven) — was the “correct” view, because most people, rather reasonably, thought it obviously is. Since the leftist intellectual’s one fear is to be like most people (after all, most of them cannot actually DO or PRODUCE anything, so if their views aren’t SPECIAL, what are they worth?), declaring homosexuality to ne normal was the new “right”, and everyone else was racist and homophobic.
But now they are the victims of their own success — most people think homosecuality is “normal” (of course, it still isn’t, but that’s only one example of obvious nonsense which one’s own eyes show is false but which people are afraid to claim so as not to be called “homophobic”).
So the next stage is to make transsexualism, sexual incontinence and unfaithfulness (“polyamorous” people), sadomasochism, etc, etc., “normal” as well. Once THAT is totally “normalized”, the leftists will again be left without a perversion to support to show they are “really less judgmental” than average Joe Schmoe, who has been browbeaten to declare in public transexuals should have their sex-change operation paid for by the government. This is nearing completion now.
What then? Pedophilica and necrophilia, I suppose. No, I am NOT kidding — I have visited left-oriented blogs where people are proudly supporting necrophilia, (“who does it hurt?” “You’re just against it because YOU consider it icky, don’t judge others!”, etc.) After all, there always will be SOME pathology for the leftists to support to show how MORALLY SUPERIOR they are to others, if they have to go throught the whole 120 DAYS OF SODOM to find it. (Need I note De Sade is lionized as a “liberator” against “conservative sexual hypocrisy” in academia today?)
The second problem is that leftists no longer think. They just mouth cliches. Any disagreeing thought is “racist” or “sexist” or “homophobic” and that’s it. For example, no leftist I know can make the distinction between homosexuals having the right to TOLERATION — to not be prosecuted or fired for being homosexuals, for example — but not to ACCEPTANCE, that is, to force other people to declare homosexuality isn’t pathological, just because they wish it weren’t, or to hear obvious truths they dislike just because they dislike them.
Nor does any liberal I know seem to realize that saying something is pathological is not to say those who have the condition are morally evil or inferior, any more than saying (say) diabetes or blindness is a pathology is to think diabetics or the blind are somehow evil.
I am a Jew. I was in the USA for a long time. In my view, if a second holocaust is ever to occur in the USA, it won’t be the “backwards, stupid religious folks” who will do it. If anything, those folks would be the first to resist it and stop government troops from rounding up the Jews.
It will be the fashionable left — once their herd mentality, needing some new bogeyman to hate to explain why their “caring” and “progressive” policies only make America go downhill — settle on the Jews (or as the antisemites fashionably call them today, “the zionists”). There will be no ability to argue with them because it would not be a position based on any rational argument, but simply on what group “everybody” they agree with hates this week. Nor will there be any point to appeal to their basic humanity and compassion, since they have none for those they dislike.
Some of them might not be all 100% on board with this “US Army sent to gather up the Jews” part, but, you know, unlike those stupid, backward rednecks, they do not ever resist the government, you know — only fascist religious radicals would ever think something the government uses power to do is wrong. They would convince themselves they’re quite sure the all-knowing experts and superiors in the federal government who gave those orders are right; who is some redneck moron to resist them by hiding Jews in hia basement subverting federal authority like that?
It is fashionable to have attended expensive “institutes of higher learning”, to subscribe to the NYT and the WaPo, to read the New Yorker and The Nation, to listen to NPR. Socialism has become the “In” cult. Which one of the steadily failing weeklies was it which asked on its cover, “Aren’t We All Socialists Now?”
I do not understand your reluctance, and that of many of your co-columnists, to use the words SOCIALIST” or COMMUNIST, and play into their fashionable hands by calling them Leftists or Liberals – just about as wimpy and innocuous euphemisms as you can find. It is like calling a tiger a feral pussy.
Every writer in conservative ranks should become a Radical for Exceptionalism. It is a gut thing. Goddam it! – or Republic IS and should remain unique: in its inception, its Constitution – the greatest document for Freedom since the Magna Carta – and its achievements that have benefitted the whole world. We should follow Alinsky’s Rules For Radicals and rub their fashionable noses in their slavish obeisance to Lenin, Stalin and Mao. The logical strategy is to hammer them where they are vulnerable, pour acid on their wounds, make them scramble in denial. What is so hard to understand about that? Victory is not for the wimpy, those who fear the fashionable will call them McCarthyites.
My biggest concern with Romney is that he will be McCain Redux; play by Marquess of Queensbury rules, and, like you, fashionably avoid using such a dirty word as Socialists even as they liberally prepare to slit our throats.
“pretending to be liberalism”
Thank you. We owned that moniker before the leftists stole it from us when a newspaper declared that FDR had ushered in a “new form of liberalism”.
Home run.
Mr. Rubin, first time I’ve commented on pjmedia. Spot-on, sir! Thank you. With all so-call themselves intellectuals – my intuition, if I may say so myself, is getting better and better – and they are NOT intelligent people at all. Common sense is God’s sense. The left replaces God with govt. That is why they are incredible failures with same results (failed). I, myself am a failure when I physically place myself in the middle of any situation in my life that needs to be sorted out. I, cannot ‘fix’ anything. I, do not ‘know’ anything. God (Love) does. He’s first, I’m second. Always. And, in all ways. That IS the Left’s problem in a nutshell. No God in their lives, you are a weak hick if you need Him or want Him or talk of Him in your life. It’s really a sad thing for them. They will find out in the end.
You’re premise is exactly right about fashion. You can pretty much spot the left miles away – and know exactly the reaction you’re going to get when you approach them. I think we should all play ‘em from now on. Intentionally. I think God would approve. After all – it will be OUR survival in the end… Mr. Bozell doing a mighty fine job. Oh yeah, give a listen to Mr. Glasov on ‘United in Hate’ (a 3-part series). Excellent, also. He talks about why the Left hates Valentine’s Day, dating, two-people relationships, etc. It is really, really good and enlightening. Have a beautiful spiritful season all. LOVE.
Very good.
There was an article in February 2010 by David Brooks titled “the Power Elite” that, although approached this problem from a different angle, came to the same non-conclusion. The one group the vocal right does not want in charge of fixing things, “the country club, blue bloods, old rich”, but they were the ones that ran the banks, created the symphonies and art museums and Rotary clubs and ran the governments back in the day before the 60′s when they ran according to the Constitution, professional ethics and moral principles. The Founders were land owners and blue bloods and couldn’t get elected today. They would be called RINOs or the Establishment; that is what they were. The Establishment; it used to be the rally against the establishment that the hippie left in the sixties were screaming against. Now, it is the Right. Ironic isn’t it. It is the only thing right and left can agree on. Something to think about.
“The Founders were land owners and blue bloods and couldn’t get elected today”
Actually they were an American version of “blue bloods” in that they did or had shared the toils and virtues of the common person and had a deep respect for same. Quite unlike the perfumed effete blue bloods found in England and elsewhere. Our founding documents are nothing if not an absolute celebration of the founder’s trust and respect for the virtue and ingenuity of the common person. The non-American blue bloods of yesteryear and the American elite of today would never possess similar respect.
However, there is hope. Given that the liberal “elite” in America have such buffoonish icons as Bonnie and Clod Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, Joe Biden, Jimmy Carter, Michael Moore, Al Sharpton, Noam Chomsky, Teddy Kennedy, etc. then surely there must be much weakness to exploit. We certainly are not currently being prevailed upon by geniuses.
Very good point. You can see Benjamin Franklin gliding through social classes, as easy in manner with a Boston blacksmith as with a Duke of the landed gentry in Old Europe. Our “dead rich white men” were …rather remarkable ones.
My daughters had a ballet instructor – no children, vegetarian, animal rights activist, anti-gun, reminisced about the 60′s. She insulted Walmart shoppers, promoted the book Cider House Rules to my 8 and 10-year-old daughters, invited my daughters (4-year-old as well) to sign a letter to a judge for a ruling she made in a case my daughters knew nothing about and my 4-year-old couldn’t read (the other parents allowed their children to sign the letter! Groupthink?).
Best thing that happened to us because my daughters saw at a young age what liberalism was all about – snobby, cowardly, mindless behavior parading as virtue, intelligence, and “for the people”. Thankfully, my daughters have many women in their life who provide the contrast. Too bad so many children do not.
See my website for details about our experience – it was like I was a fly on the wall watching a liberal woman with a class of children – I think she considered me a fly – that annoying parent just won’t leave!
Wouldnt leave?
Why should you…better yet, why does she WANT you to?
I spend almost two hours a day watching my son do Karate….
Actually, I spend almost two hours a day making sure strangers arent grooming him for some unsavoryactivity…political or OTHERWISE if you get the hint.
Excellent article.
What you describe is why most TV programs today are so insufferable. The arrogance and superiority of the clearly liberal characters (and writers) who mock and denigrate anything remotely Conservative, small town or or a non-PC approved religion.
Remember when open and free debate were viewed as desirable things, to be respected and striven for? That once defined Idealism. But now that word’s been redefined as ‘anything goes for the cause’ and any dissent is spun as evil.
The author needs to move away from the provicincial and effete Leftist Blue states to the real America that still exists.
Mr. Rubin, the author, lives in Israel.
Who said unfashionable bitter clingers don’t have a sense of humor?
http://legalinsurrection.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/Bumper-Sticker-Dripping-Springs-TX-Obama-EMS2.jpg
hehe, ObamaCare EMS Unit #1, love it!
The left’s embrace of good intentions regardless of results reminds me of something I have heard the English say of the French: They don’t care what they, just how they say it.
What an excellent, excellent essay!
This is the other side of the coin that Roger Simon talked about – the perniciousness of “cool”. These aren’t good times to be a nonconformist.
Oh, it’s perfectly acceptable to be a non-conformist, as long as it’s a sanctioned non-conformity.
My kids go to a very liberal private school. I subtly disabuse them of notions learned from lefty teachers.
The odd thing is that the parents and teachers are overwhelmingly nice people. Of course, I don’t tell them what I truly believe because that my impact my kids, and what’s the point of arguing anyway.
My line in the sand is Israel. If they start telling my kids lies about the ME, then the gloves come off.
How subtly?
I’m the father of two boys. One of the things they value is consistency. You sound like a first-class guy so I am only responding to, I hope, the spirit of your comment.
If you are TOO subtle, your defense of Israel may, to your children, seem an irrational anomaly. “Where is this coming from?” they think.
If you find that it’s just easier to let the “little stuff” slide, your children will suck that stuff up through their pores. They, too, will be inclined to choose the easier road.
Diligence, my friend.
One thing I have never been able to understand is, If the intellectual elite are so smart and so correct why do they continually have to censor and filter the entire media? Instead of having to pass the bill to find out what’s in it, you would think it was all so great that the contents of the bill would sell itself to everybody. Why does Obama have to go public claiming he did the exact opposite of what he really did? If liberals have such good ideas, why the unending subterfuge?
Mr Rubin you have just defined the new racism, the new black, the new white.
Black and White are less defined today by skin color as by ideology. Bill CLinton was the ‘first black president’. The left does not consider Clarence Thomas and Thomas Sowell to be truly black.
November nears. Take heart.
An excellent column. I think we conservatives often get stuck focusing on the obvious hypocrisies of socialists (I’m with Stuart Williamson at #16 on this one). They say they’re for freedom of speech until they hear something they disagree with, then they’ll call for a boycott (Limbaugh, Coca Cola, and Wal Mart being only the latest examples). They’re for women having the freedom to do what they want – until someone like Sarah Palin comes along. Mr. Rubin goes beyond this and tries to get at what really makes socialists tick.
First, socialists have always been so. Raymond Aron’s book “Opium for the Intellectuals” provides a good historical perspective – even Hayek’s “Road to Serfdom” addresses some of this.
Second, socialists are all about control and power, and a lot of it is done through speech. The OIC has promoted a “religious freedom” agenda, which is really suppression of criticism of Islam. Hillary Clinton said the U.S. would promote this cause through old-fashioned peer pressure and shame. Indeed. She clearly acknowledged how socialists use these powerful forces to control public discourse and, ultimately, thought. How much public speech is now “politically correct”? Look at how much grief befalls anyone who steps over the ever-moving PC line. They even justify it with critical theory, saying that because discrimination is so ingrained in our culture, certain forms of speech are inherently discriminatory and shouldn’t be allowed.
So yes, socialists are promoting their agenda as a tyrannical religion. Like the worst of falsely religious folks, they use it like a bludgeon to make themselves feel powerful and righteous.
“Most people really don’t know how to evaluate someone in terms of their character and values. They lack the time or ability to do so.”
I’ve been thinking about this article and how well Rubin expresses the root of the problem. Not just with right and left, but with any issue; politics, religion, team sports, cloth diapers v/s disposable.
Through my life, I’ve come to the realization that there are good ideas and bad ideas. It’s pretty simple, really. Good ideas have good consequences and bad ideas have bad consequences. Some consequences matter little and often it is impossible to to know or judge which is which. Evil is the intentional destruction of good for personal pleasure or gain.
But we all know really good, nice people to whom this quote well applies regardless of what beliefs or politics they profess to hold: “We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth, and listen t o the song of that siren till she transforms us into beasts.” Look at the left and their love affair with MSNBC. What a mockery it makes of the “intellectual” elite. Al Sharpton? haha.
But how is it that otherwise good, intelligent people cheer as they watch the destruction of the greatest most generous civilization that mankind has known? How is it they are willing to stand proudly among fools, proclaiming themselves wise?
I used to think that perhaps they were born “logic challenged”, ie: much like many intelligent people are dyslexic, these people were born incapable of understanding the complexities of IF A=B and B=C then A=C. But that alone does not explain it.
Sadly, Rubin nails it here on so many levels. I say “sadly” because is it really that easy? Most of the people that I know (left, right, any issue) whom will willfully close their eyes and support ideas that clearly are destructive, do indeed do so out of fear that they will be called out as “unfashionable”.
Stalin understood it very well. It is just disheartening to see so many truly nice, intelligent people applaud and throw flowers along the path to hell in exchange for a simple high five and a smile from those who use them as a means to an end.
People are people. The problem for liberals today is that it has become painfully obvious to everyone, including themselves, that the song of thir siren is destructive and will transform them into beasts – and yet they willingly sing along.
“Yet the abandonment of pragmatism — measuring things by what works rather than by ideological standards or intentions — is the start of the abandonment of successful democratic life.”
Unfortunately, pragmatism can’t answer the question of which “what works” one should select. Pragmatism, Dewey’s progressive philosophy, either has to accept the default cultural values it operates in as a given, or smuggle in other “ideological value judgements, standards, and intentions” from outside in order to make that prior selection of “what works.” The circularity is vicious.
“What works” survives the millenia. Sure, pragmatism can not answer “what works” with 100% certainty, but it does predictably play the odds.
It is better to invest $100,000 in a home than this week’s lottery tickets. Not always true, but true enough to answer the question of “what works” and what doesn’t. The concept of moral equivalence will not survive the millenia.
Yep!
No, the issue I was raising was not probability (certainty or lack there of) or the efficacy of cost benefit analysis or utilitarianism (what maximizes pleasure) or pragmatism (what works). What you choose to apply those tools to (the purpose or ends) still presupposes a value position from which to make the choice or selection of those ends. One normally doesn’t go through life throwing darts blindfolded at a dart board papered with, for example, your “hookup” selections for the evening. I suppose the closest one could come to a truly random event where all things are equal for the players is the battlefield, and even that event is selected.
Ayn Rand called it “the aristocracy of pull.”
I’m fed up with hearing that the college-educated, and especially those holding advanced degrees, overwhelmingly vote Democrat. The majority of those advanced degrees are Masters of Arts in Teaching degrees, which are showered by schools of education on those seeking advanced degrees to automatically improve their pay grade. Such people have degrees not only from the weakest academic school on any campus, but they also overwhelmingly work for government-funded school systems. They are part of the “middle class” (read “government worker unions”) the Democrats are always talking about. Don’t even get me started on the subject of those who hold degrees in journalism, sociology, psychology, international studies, communications, ethnic or women’s studies, or from any of the other departments on campus that have been created in the last 60 years, so that those without academic talent and drive can get a degree. There are plenty of studies around that indicate that the majority of college graduates have learned not much more than they knew upon graduation from high school. In terms of this article I just read, college degrees have become fashionable, and a path to one has been government-created for even those with no talent or drive. How do I know all this? I was a college professor for over 30 years, and I’m here to certify that the majority of those graduating from college these days have no more talent or knowledge than the better graduates from almost any high school. So, don’t wave your degrees in my face. I’m unimpressed until I have certified copies of the results of your IQ test, your SAT scores, and your college transcripts. And there are no exemptions for those who graduated from “elite” institutions.
Excellent comment. My wife is a H.S. Special Ed teacher for Mild/ Moderate learning disability folks.
We’d lived in an East Coast school district where she had the choice to be a union paying member. She opted out and ‘surprisingly’ her colleagues (whereas most had an M A Teaching degree but knew Jack and s hit and treated their customers, i.e. kids like paeans) found out and tried ‘encouraging’ her to no end in ‘joining the team’. She declined.
I’d run into 1 of these ‘break room Bolsheviks’ with my wife at a grocery store. That person saw me – a long-haired, bearded person with hemp sandas and Coca-Cola shirt (the shirt actually read, ‘Enjoy Capitalism’ in Coca-Cola like calligraphy) and immediately began a conversation with me.
Within 2 minutes she realized I ‘wasn’t part of her team’ – she couldn’t retreat fast enough. i.e. my working in the private sector, have a real degree & job in sciences and find AGW to be a crock and ‘settled science’ to be nonsense, am in charge of and have done well regarding our retirement portfolio, a huge Capitalist construct advocate, find Greenpeace, Peace Corps, UN/UNESCO and pesticide-free/ organic fruit, veggies to be a waste of time & resources, forced health insurance purchase is still forced and unconstitutional per Commerce Clause, thought/think Goldwater’s message was as important in ’64 as today, am a weekly sometimes bi-weekly church goer et al.
The piece de resistance was the health care discussion. Whereas were in Whole Foods when this is going down and I told her WF ALLOWS their employees to CHOOSE their health benefits whereas she should entertain boycotting WF.
I saw the same person while playing (at a crummy Georgetown club playing Deep Purple covers.. badly) a few weeks later. She saw me and made a b-line for the exit!
The best ammo is FACTS rather than the, ‘..make one’s good intentions the test..’ Mr. Rubin’d spoken of.
No, it’s because there’s no difference between Romney and Obama: http://youtu.be/VgrktRgjBXk
Both are Progressives, so Constitutional Conservatives lose, regardless of who wins the next election. Obama is actually the less-dangerous-choice, because he’s so radical his intent and motivations are obvious.
Bill Whittle rocks! Thanks for the link.
I believe I have now heard the perfect description of the—traitor class!
This breaking story will undoubtably be an example of what you are saying: http://evilbloggerlady.blogspot.com/2012/04/john-derbyshires-talk.html Before the left goes off and paints every conservative and Republican as a racist, I would caution some introspection. I do not agree with Derbyshire, but I have also heard what he has said many times from people of all races, ethnic backgrounds, sexual orientations, and political persuasions. I have heard what Derbyshire said by leftist who work in social government services (usually after a couple of drinks in a private conversation). So if you disagree, great, rather than engage in faux outrage, how about discussing this rationally and with facts, argument or humor.
Rather than doing that, many on the right will be quick to denounce John Derbyshire so as not to be labeled racists themselves. Why? Why do we give the left that power? Some of what Derbyshire said was not racist. Some arguably was. Why not discuss it and be honest about it? Because of fear. Fear of being labeled.
To me, the racism charges are easily countered. For example, the Tea Party stands for smaller government, lower taxes, personal responsibility, and personal freedom. I don’t see any of that as racism, and would ask why leaders of racial special interest groups don’t join. Second, as a conservative, I would look to replace racism with equality, as Frederick Douglass advocated. Reverse discrimination, as advocated by liberals, is just another form of racism or birth right; it is not equality. In addition, the evidence is that liberal reverse discrimination has not had the desired effect. Third, for those who advocate for reparations, I would ask: Is over 600,000 deaths in the Civil War not enough?
With what part do you disagree? With what would you refute Derbyshire’s assertions? The single greatest fear of sane whites is taking the wrong exit in a doughnut city. A huge percentage of the black population is essentially feral; born to a baby momma who may or may not know who the baby daddy is but the odds are 75-25 she’s not married to him and raised in a culture that glorifies being a screw-up or a playah, denigrates any honest achievement and has no sense of right and wrong, only caught and uncaught. I well remember the taunts of the street thugs when Maynard Jackson’s election was imminent in Atlanta, ” you wait til we gets our black mayor, honky, you won’t have that store no more.” I should have written that in ebonics, I grew up fluent in it, but somebody might think that was racist. They were right, there are essentially no stores anymore in Downtown Atlanta, at least not south of “Sweet Auburn,” and even the flagship store of The South in its day, Rich’s Downtown was government offices on the lower floors and empty on the upper ones. They foul their nests.
“They foul their nests.”
When the deadbeats take over a neighborhood, this is quite true. But I had to see it for myself to believe it. How did that happen? In my work as a home health nurse taking on Medicaid & Medicare cases. The worst neighborhoods were remarkable in that there were NO places of business near them. Not many cars. Many people sitting on their front porches (hence the racial epithet “porch monkeys” sometimes heard) giving one funny looks as one slowly drives by looking for that current case’s address. Conspicuously wearing one’s stethoscope around one’s neck seemed to work as a forcefield through which onlookers would not tresspass; didn’t do much though to allay my discomfort. My patients though were all good people. Really. Those from whom the bad boys stole their communities.
I was not at all offended by Derbyshire’s observations; no doubt because I saw first-hand what former talk show host/author Ken Hamblin (a black man) referred to as “dark town.” Until the black community forges the resolve to rid its neighborhoods of these bad boys, expect the prejudices to continue. One is judged by the company one keeps; one is judged by comportment. It’s human nature.
I agree with the sentiment but not the racial attributions. In my city, we don’t have much in the way of racially segregated neighborhoods. However, we have bad parts of town, and I avoid them. I don’t go to dive bars or biker bars. I’m not out in the wee hours of the morning – bad things tend to happen then. I find plenty of unintelligent and ignoant people, but don’t see that as racial – rather, they seem to be liberals.
Your mileage may vary. Just don’t miss an exit.
The single greatest fear of sane whites is taking the wrong exit in a doughnut city.-Art Chance
There’s a black comedian with a line that goes something like, “If you’re white and your car breaks down on Martin Luther King, Jr. boulevard, what should you do? (pause) Run!”
It’s time to get real. The statute of limitations on the wrongs of Jim Crow laws has expired and non-black people are beginning to wake up to that fact. Indulging people of a certain skin color in their social pathologies and personal bad choices because of events that happened to other people of a similar skin color over half a century ago is starting to become unfashionable.
Sure, the trend is young but if it continues then leftists will jump out of the newly unfashionable pandering to the irresponsible ones among blacks and into the leading edge of what’s newly fashionable. When the leftists make their move, blacks are going to have a rough time.
Yes!
Not much new here, but it still needs saying loudly, often and well, and he does. The implications are more interesting.
Somebody else is going to have to save America, because the academics, journalists, Washington insiders, and various “experts” aren’t going to do it.
That too is kind of obvious, isn’t it? — and has been for years. Though it’s not hard to find honorable exceptions, overall and by a large majority the elites of the western world are a corrupt and catastrophic failure, surplus to requirements and not fit for purpose. In other words, disposable trash. And very, very vulnerable. Just a few well-placed pushes…
The propaganda doesn’t work well any more.
Odds of violent revolution are rising fast.
How to react to accusations of racism?
Look them in the eye without blinking.
Ask them “Do you mean that?”. “I take this stuff very seriously”.
The room will go quiet and the liberal in question will squirm.
“‘Oh, those people don’t think like us.’”
Mr. Rubin,
These are the words which caused a rift with one of my friends and colleasgues with whom I was very close. While visiting from out of state and enjoying my hospitality and after my suggestion tha he was welcome to extend his stay, he intoned that he couldn’t wait to get to get back to Ann Arbor where people thought the way he did.
This is revealing on two levels. First, that he actually said it, and second that he didn’t even realize that he was insulting the hospitality of his close friend while doing it. A life-lesson that evinces the thesis of your essay.
But why wouldn’t the same apply to a righty visiting lefties? Are righties truly more respectful of diversity? It’s possible that if they really value individualism and practice what they preach, that could be the case. At any rate, a further discussion with your close friend seems to have been warranted.
Yes, Dwight, we Righties are more tolerant. We have had to learn to be, maybe, or perhaps it is just how we are. My religion and politics are not the be-all-end-all of me. Sure, I am aware of the Leftist leanings of some of my buddies, but I will get together with them to do other things. Sometimes, the disagreements will filter in, despite efforts to avoid them, but I do not let such disagreements ruin everything for me. People, to me, are more than just their politics.
Let’s put it another way: If the other person is a hottie, would you still boink her, if you did not like her politics?
Right? Yes. Left? Yes. But the Right guy would boink her and would try to have her enjoy it, too. The Left? Look at the hateful fantasies about Sarah Palin for their approach. For the Left, their politic views are the core of their foundation, their identity… and your identity, too, in their eyes!
Are righties truly more respectful of diversity?
Oh dear. To many, ‘diversity’ is a code word for the leftist agenda drearily familiar to all, a goal to be achieved, usually, by coercion. ‘Respect’ is a squishy word co-opted by the left, usually meaning only what the agenda requires. Conservatives worthy of the name believe in the right of others to be left alone with minimal interference by the state and its bureaucratic enforcers. Organized oppression, especially if sanctimonious and preachy, is right out. That seems to be news to you.
Let’s just say that I was aware of the irony in using that word.
Barry, you really nailed it with this piece!
Fear is the primary motivator. A long time ago everyone was afraid. There was no ready source of light, heat, or food and an animal could bite your head off at any time.
Some cavemen started watching the animals and world around them. They made tools and weapons. They learned how to handle fire. They only fashion they worried about was what would be practical for the task at hand.
Other cavemen started discussion groups with such topics as “How to achieve a fire-free world” and “Pit Vipers-a history of reptile oppresssion”. Because they hung around the cave a lot they decorated themselves and the area with bright attractive colors and animal skins.
It was not so important for the first group to be liked and accepted. Dag may have been a jerk but he made the best stone axe in the valley.
The second group were clever enough to develop social rules requiring all members of the clan to be treated equally and goods shared by all. They set aside special caves for themselves where they produced painted rocks, the meaning of which was never understood but was assured to be of great importance.
The first group is still wondering when the second group are going to tell us what to do with all of the painted rocks.
I share their contempt. The only difference is they have contempt for me because they think they are smarter, but I have contempt for them because I KNOW I’m smarter, and I also know from the perspective of humanity, it simply doesn’t matter who is smarter.
Nobody is smart enough to create the iPhone. It would have taken tens of thousands of arrogant aristocrats tens of thousands of years. But it only took a bit over 200 years when millions of not-so-arrogant peasants were freed from the yoke of eternal serfdom.
But they like it a lot better the other way, don’t they? Maybe the world suffers unimaginably, but who really knows if nobody bothers to reveal it. And THEY sure don’t intend to suffer, in any event. And better yet, this time, they are definitely going to contol the information flow a lot tighter than anybody thought to do around say, the 1770′s. If it wasn’t for the US, they would have got there in the 1950′s. Too bad about freedom, and all that. Spilled beans, sure, but lessons learned as well. They won’t make that mistake again. Dumb em down before you reduce them back to servitude
Sign me up as a nerd and a peasant, then.
If you didn’t want people voting on fashion, you shouldn’t have passed the 19th Amendment. Fashion is a term inextricably tied up with the word “women,” and it makes far more sense to reduce the power of fashion in politics by restricting the franchise to people who don’t talk about fashion all the time.
You missed the opportunity to tell your son about women and their values, which will serve him far better than a vague treatise on the role of ‘fashion’ in politics.
There was a reason why the ancients believed that humility was one of the most important of all virtues. The truly humble man (or woman) is always on guard for the sin of false pride. This requires a certain amount of honest introspection and genuine soul-searching. Being “fashionable” is the acme of false pride. Such a person believes that they are entitled to bask in the glow of “achievement” by merely professing adherence to some way of looking or thinking.
These are very “unhumble” times. Among the most stomach-churning things about the OWS crowd was their totally unwarranted sense of achievement and adamantine belief in their own moral infallibility. But then again there is no such thing as a humble mob. s
You nailed it. It is peer-group pressure, “keeping up with the Jones”, absolute conformity that the Left dispises, not knowing it is doing simply that. Amazing how we humans can rationalize. In the meantime our country is going to the dogs.
I guess I’ve always been a little out of touch with the Mainstream.
2 examples to retort the following;
“To agree with anything said on talk radio, for instance, is equivalent to wearing two different colored socks,”
I often wear one either green or with green trim on my right foot and alternate red or red trim on my left. When I have this pointed out I simply say, “Yes, port and starboard.”
The other method, when pointed out that my socks don’t match is to look at them with an astonished expression and say, “Really? I have another pair just like this at home.”
In either case, I genuinly enjoy watching thier reaction.
I have always got the impression that most liberals never out grew high school. They are always trying to prove to everybody they are “the in crowd” . Question what they do and beleive and you are riduculed or lectured on how “uncool” you are.
Depending upon the group or where it is said, any opinion can be inflamatory. I was repeatedly called a “murderer” by a conservative. I have found they have as little respect for other’s opinions as the liberals I know. The only way to stay out of the fray is to say virtually nothing.
That´s why leftism and islamism go so much hand-in-hand. They both share a utopical world where lies are truth and where stupid arguments repeated plenty of times by self-agrandized morons become high-level wisdom.
You couldn’t make this thing up even if you tried: Islamic “scholars” held in high esteem by their peers believe that adultery produce earthquakes, that sharks are Mossad agents, that Jerusalem is an arab city which is mentioned thousands of times in the Koran. They even believe that Moses and Jesus were moslems, or for that matter, “palestinians”. They can repeat these and dozens of equally perverse and twisted “truths” over and over again, fully convinced and with a straight face.
Not very different from global-warming theories, homosexuality-is-cool attitudes, carbon-footprint-measuring gadgets, organic-lettuce and deep-well-water designer food-shops and a plethora of equally laughable paradigms held as ultimate truths by the western leftists. If islamic “truths” seem more primitive than western’s “truths”, it’s only because islam itself is more primitive (with my apologies to the politically-correct crowd) and has yet to catch up with more fashionable concepts. Their “kill-the-Jew” open and true-to-honest motto has yet to become the elegant, polished “anti-Zionist” rhetoric of decent leftists. One can sit for endless nights listening to the words of wisdom coming of the likes of Katie Couric or Rachel Maddow or Oliver Stone, right? Even one can follow for days on end the adventures of bimbettes like Paris Hilton or the Kardashian sisters, right? Not very different from the muslims listening day-in day-out to the vitriol spewed by their admired imams. One keeps you incapacitated to even come out of a permanent moronic status. The other one pushes you every day a little deeper into a moronic status that causes you to vote for someone like Obama for president.
But ultimately the leftists will find that their utopia is not the muslims utopia. Comfortable western leftists are delighted with their organic spas, their cocaine-enhanced capuccinos and their naked women in films and magazines. So are the muslims, but only in secret and not out in the open. Any public display of such “perversions” will be severly persecuted and the perpetrators promptly decapitated.