Question Insanity: What to Ask Progressives
The two women who showed up early for my book signing at a small bookstore in Houston, TX, never even bothered to open my book. Wearing knowing smiles, they engaged me in a bizarre discussion that wound up leaping all around the known and unknown universe. They hadn’t the slightest curiosity about my ideas as an ex-Soviet immigrant in America, or what I had to say about my experience working inside the two ideologically opposed systems. As it turned out, they had spotted my flyer in the store window the day before, and the book’s title — Shakedown Socialism — had enraged them so much that they decided to return the following day and give me a piece of their collective mind.
Their act almost made me feel as if I were back in the USSR, where the harassment of people with my opinions was the norm. The shorter, pudgier woman was the soloist bully, while her skinnier, older comrade provided backup vocals and noise effects. The duo’s repertoire was an eclectic collection of unoriginal talking points, each branded with an almost legible label: NPR, Air America, MSNBC, and so on. Not only were those mental fragments mismatched in key and rhythm; the very existence of harmony seemed an unfamiliar concept to them. But compared to the hard-core screaming I used to hear from card-carrying Soviet bullies, this was almost elevator music. If I had survived the original cast, I could certainly handle a watered-down remake.
Framed on their terms, the debate zigzagged from the evils of unbridled capitalism to global warming to Bush’s wars for oil to Sarah Palin’s stupidity. Since my opponents wouldn’t give me a chance to respond, I soon became bored and tried to entertain myself by redirecting the flow of mental detritus against itself in a way that would cause its own annihilation. I did that by asking questions.
I remembered an old trick invented in the fifth century B.C. by Socrates. Instead of telling people what he thought was true, Socrates asked seemingly simple questions that put his opponents on the path of finding the truth for themselves. Seeking genuine knowledge rather than mere victory in an argument, Socrates used his questions to cross-examine the hypotheses, assumptions, and axioms that subconsciously shaped the opinions of his opponents, drawing out the contradictions and inconsistencies they relied on.
As the two women faced my questions, their knowing smiles turned to scowls. Sometimes they would backtrack and correct their previous statements; sometimes, they would angrily storm out of the room in the manner of Joy Behar and Whoopi Goldberg on The View with Bill O’Reilly. After a while they would return with more talking points, and then they had to answer another logical question. My friends who witnessed the scene told me later they saw the shorter bully beginning to foam at the mouth.
Some heads contain an enormous number of facts that never bind with one another to form a fertile soil from which original ideas will grow. Each piece of information exists independently from the others, all of them continuously shifting and rolling around like grains of sand, forming ephemeral dunes in the lifeless deserts of their minds. The “open-minded” owners of such heads like to open their minds in the company of peers and admire each other’s fanciful sandy mindscapes. Every new whiff of wind or shaking of the head tosses the sand in more quirky patterns, forming new whimsical outlines. As previously covered facts are exposed and facts once exposed are concealed, a semblance of new ideas will emerge without any true change in content.
Excellent questions…but I wouldn’t wanna ask too many to liberals as it would make ‘em froth at the mouth!
And how is that bad???
You must be careful challenging deeply held beliefs. If you corner the person to soon, they can and will react with violence.
Keep in mind the eternal question: Why are gun control advocates so violent?
Chris Baker
“And how is that bad???”
… because they might start biting next…?
Chris, Chris, Chris! That’s a dumb question!
1. It’s messy. They get their saliva all over the place, and all over the questioner!
2. It’s a health risk. Remember, these people aren’t exactly the clean living types.
3. They’ve been known to get violent. All their professed concern over the violence of gun-toting conservatives? One word: PROJECTION.
Chris, THINK before you ask!
Instead of telling people what he thought was true, Socrates asked seemingly simple questions that put his opponents on the path of finding the truth for themselves. Seeking genuine knowledge rather than mere victory in an argument, . . .
That’s the best way to handle these people. The millions of zombies who vote Democrat are people who believe they wise and competent because they have the ability to turn on TV and remember parts of what they hear.
The biggest threat to America is stupid people who think they are smart.
Bill,
Thank-you for this post. Yes, it’s been said for years, “I love stupid people. Just don’t talk!”
Another important point that ought to be brought out is that being smart is in no way a virtue… it is just handy. What is much more important is to be good. (Of course, that requires the knowledge of what things are good.)
I’d rather have a stupid, but good, man for my neighbour, rather than an evil, intelligent man any day.
I’d rather have a stupid, but good, man for my neighbour, rather than an evil, intelligent man any day.
Dittos Benjamin. IQ is not a virtue.
Also, IQ is not synonymous with wisdom, which is a virtue. A person with a low IQ can be wise and a person with a high IQ can be a fool.
I think the first step to wisdom is understand what it is that you don’t know, followed by why it is you believe the things you do.
I probably should have said that the biggest threat to America is foolish people who think they are wise.
This is what a dear friend of mine does so well, and what I have tried to emulate. I call it mental jiu-jitsu. First, you must realize that you will never win any arguments with liberals/leftists. The way to defeat and utterly humiliate them is to take whatever position they have and then take it to its extreme. They will be totally gob-smacked and you will win by forcing them to see how utterly ridiculous their position is.
As a for-instance, I now tell anyone and everyone that I voted for Obama simply because he’s black. No other reason is needed and anyone who disagrees is racist!
Try it! Works like a charm!
And…why are people supporting abortion called pro-choice and people who are for life called anti-abortionists? Shouldn’t people in favor of abortion be called pro-deathers or anti-lifers???
My thoughts exactly. I call them pro-abortion. There is no choice where they are concerned.
Why is a teen who has an abortion brave but the one who chooses to keep her baby misguided? Isn’t it braver to have and raise a baby alone braver than killing it outright?
It’s even braver to place an infant in a good adoptive home.
Its because the lefties know “abortion” is an ugly, evil, violent, hate filled word that has very negative connotations to most people…
and they dont want it associated with thier PRO Abortion movement for obvious reasons…
Their enablers in the media enfore the labels, and call us “anti-abortion ACTIVISTS” because “Activist” also has negative connotations with most people, along the emotional lines of “troublemaker” and “radical”…
Thats why the Abortion on Demand crowd always gets the warm and friendly “pro-choice supporter” moniker from the Label Enforcers
They know the score, they have to fudge the debate every way they can
I’m printing this out and putting on the wall at work. I agree completely. I learned long ago you can’t argue someone into a change of heart. Socratic irony is a good tool to at least get them thinking, if higher brain functions haven’t already been destroyed and reporpused by the virus of collectivism. These girls are a good example of something a friend told me a while back. Fanaticism is liberating. You never have to think for yourself. The soloist was obviously a fanatic. Maybe you helped the other one.
” You cannot reason a man out of something that he did not reason himself into in the first place.” – Jonathan Swift
Rich, you told us about reasoning with a man…
But, reasoning with a woman is a complete waste of time.
They didn’t “reason” their way into their opinions, and reasoning with them just makes them angry. (E.g.– the women in this article)
Listen, guys, you’re doing no service to her, and no service to yourself, and no service to society, by arguing reasonably with women. So, find another tack, as this author did, or better… simply decline every opportunity to engage with them.
“Why has no politician ever run on men’s issues or promised to improve the lives of males?”
Too true man, it’s about time someone stood up for the male sex. The phrase “It’s a woman’s world” has been true for too damn long and we should demand equal treatment, special programs to empower men so one day we will be on equal footing with women in the world.
“If Al Gore is right and our consumption of planet’s resources is a moral issue, doesn’t that make genocide an ethical solution? How about an artificial famine?”
Seriously, why would we attempt to reduce our dependence on dwindling and finite resources for the benefit of future generations, when we can just kill off a couple billion people and call it a day so the remaining folks can consume their capitalistic hearts out? What possible objections could a human being with humanistic, progressive ideology have against the slaughter of great numbers of humans? I must be a total moron because I just can’t bloody well figure out why soulless liberals aren’t stumping for mass executions day and night!
Yeah well ok, who gets to choose?
Trouble is, socialists always seem to define “we” as “we enlightened socialists and, if it’s absolutely necessary to include them, the rest of the stupid fools infesting the planet who continue to do everything wrong in spite of our efforts to make them behave correctly.”
This is, in fact, what environmental extremists are beginning to call for with some regularity, for example: “The earth has cancer: homo sapiens.”
Restore constitutional government!
Oh, but they do; just using weasel words and talking about ideal population levels. Here’s a taste:
“Giving society cheap, abundant energy would be the equivalent of giving an idiot child a machine gun.” — Prof Paul Ehrlich, Stanford
My three main goals would be to reduce human population to about 100 million worldwide, destroy the industrial infrastructure and see wilderness, with its full complement of species, returning throughout the world.” — Dave Foreman, co-founder of Earth First!
“Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn’t it our responsibility to bring that about?” — Maurice Strong, founder of the UN Environment Programme
“The Earth has cancer and the cancer is Man.” — Club of Rome, Mankind at the Turning Point
The only hope for the world is to make sure there is not another United States. We can’t let other countries have the same number of cars, the amount of industrialization, we have in the US. We have to stop these Third World countries right where they are.” — Michael Oppenheimer, Environmental Defense Fund
“I root for hurricanes. When, courtesy of the Weather Channel, I see one forming in the ocean off the coast of Africa, I find myself longing for it to become big and strong—Mother Nature’s fist of fury, Gaia’s stern rebuke. Considering the havoc mankind has wreaked upon nature with deforesting, strip mining, and the destruction of animal habitat, it only seems fair that nature get some of its own back and teach us that there are forces greater than our own.” — James Wolcott, Vanity Fair Contributing Editor
Great post. I will keep these quotes for the next save the planet discussion around the holiday dinner table.
Don’t you know much history? Every socialist government to date has eliminated it’s population of “undesirables”, sometimes numbering into the tens of millions.
Guess you were out smoking a doob while your history class covered Mao, Lenin and Stalin, and Pol Pot. Not to mention their many friends and imitators. Did you miss that part?
I would guess that, between bong hits, you also overlooked the ‘progressive’ enthusiasm for eugenics and what’s been euphemistically termed ‘population reduction’ – you know – to save the planet. Did you miss that, too?
“Soulless liberals” don’t always have to “stump for” mass executions to encourage mass death. Like, for example, the soulless Sierra Club which sued to ban DDT, leading to millions of deaths of poor “people of color”, even after there was clear evidence that this ban would be disastrous to people. Explained diplomatically here by Michael Crighton:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aSYla0y9Wcs&feature=related
If it is ‘racist’ to criticize Barokeydoke Hubris Obozo or his policies,is it ‘racist’ to observe that the white half of him sucks just as bad as the black half of him does?….or is that only ‘semi-racist’?
“knowing smiles…leaping all around the known and unknown universe..[zigzagging] from the evils of unbridled capitalism to global warming to Bush’s wars for oil to Sarah Palin’s stupidity. .hadn’t the slightest curiosity….mental fragments mismatched in key and rhythm…”—-Takes me back through forty years of rotating in academic circles.
You can gash and abrade their smugness but never penetrate it.
The shifting-sands metaphor is a literary gem.
Here’s a question: How would you define “neo-conservatism?” When I ran for Congress in 2008 I was interviewed by the editorial boards of all of Maine’s daily newspapers ((four). None of them could supply a definition even all regularly published letters and columns denouncing the neo-cons.
Last I heard, a neo-con is a person who became disenchanted from the empty promises of the left and became conservative. It was primarily coined in the early fifties when communist aggression was spreading throughout the world and many of its acolytes became disillusioned. These former adherents became staunch conservatives and helped to influence Western (i.e. American) industry and government to resist all forms of communism (think McCarthyism). Please correct me if I’m wrong.
Common usage of the term these days is much narrower. In common modern usage, it refers to Jews who are distressed with the way the left and Democrats have abandoned support for Israel. It also has come to include Evangelical Christians and secular defense hawks with the same concern.
I thought the common “rationale” (among lefties starting in 2000) was that any conservative voice heard after Clinton was an automatic Neo-con….
Clinton, the perfect president, validated their liberal view. And with TWO terms, his reign clearly stretched from the dawn of time until “just yesterday” during the Bush years.
Then, somehow, a desenting voice was heard, and since no conservatives ever existed in recent memory, these had to be “new”, strange, alien reconstructions of some ancient and unfamiliar (and just so WRONG!) idiology…
It was “new” it was “neo” because CLEARLY no one they took seriously EVER thought that way, or ever HEARD of anyone subscribing to such beliefs before.
In the eyes of liberals, being conservative is bad enough, but a of course a deserter from the left is an especially vile creature that the MSM must attact at all costs.
I recall a Mercedes-Benz commercial from some years ago, concerning M-B’s non-enforcement of the patents on its safety innovations, in which the punch line was that “There are some things in life that are too important not to share.”
This article is a good example of such a thing. I’ve just forwarded it to everyone in my Address Book. Thank you, Mr. Atbashian, and Merry Christmas.
It’s not ‘racist’ or racist to levy legitimate or constructive criticism at anyone, but thinking you can divide anyone into their white half and black half is astoundingly simple, and not really something I’d be advertising to the world were I you.
great points, sir. I will plan on using the simple question device.
Agree with all except the logging one. The difference there is that the organic matter falls as ash or the remains of tree trunks rot which provides the fertiliser for the next generation of plants, taking away the trees completely impoverishes the soil.
Apart from that love the list.
What works best one place will destroy another. SE Alaska needs no regrowing and so is best left alone. Other areas need to be replanted, or burned over, or who knows what else.
Why is it ok to kill an unborn baby, but it’s not ok to kill a murderer or rapist?
That was the question I wanted to ask, but you beat me to it!!
Wow! That question will cause a progressives head to spin like a top and fly off!!!
If forcing a woman to have an unwanted child is a virtue, why is rape a crime?
Well, are we talking rape.. or “rape rape”?
AS long as the “woman” was aware of the NATURAL CONSEQUENCES of her “activity”, I must maintain that allowing nature to take its course is a much “lesser” crime than killing the child, who unfortunately had no choices at all to ponder…
Not if to be concieved, or if to live.
Selfishness is a bitter label to apply, but what other (real) explanation is there?
“If capitalism makes some people rich without making others poor, who will benefit when capitalism is destroyed?”
“If a politician gets elected by the poor on a promise to eliminate poverty, wouldn’t fulfilling his promise destroy his voting base? Wouldn’t he rather benefit from the growing numbers of poor people? Isn’t this an obvious conflict of interests?”
That is the song of the liberal left and for all socialists. Capitalism is bad and the state MUST take care of the poor by waging a constant “war” on poverty. But the war is never, ever, won and, in the process of waging this war, capitalism is destroyed bit by bit as socialism takes its place. Just look at Obama. He is trying to destroy capitalism and convert American into a bankrupt European-style socialist nanny state. And how’s that working out for us? We are still at about 10% unemployment, the economy stinks and isn’t getting better, and we have even MORE people dependant on the Socialist nanny state Obama is creating. Hopefully, the incoming conservative Congress can start to put an end to this madness.
Thanks for this list of questions. My next-door neighbor asked me for advice concerning how to deal with her in-laws and her two boys’ teachers who all resemble the two women you described. The boys hear this leftist propaganda from their public school teachers, and she is teaching the boys to think for themselves. I will print this article for her.
Good questions, funny story. And I thought Texas ladies prided themselves on their manners, these two must be transplants.
And for those progressives who believe government should have more control over the economy, are the people in North Korea better off than South Korea? Were they better off in East Germany than West Germany? Mainland China or Taiwan? California or Texas? Alaska or Illinois?
it was in houston— realm of the notorious dimwit – shiela jackson lee
While speaking years ago at the University of North Carolin-Asheville, Os Guinness recommended Socratic questions to a student who asked how to get his points across to liberal professors. To paraphrase Guinness, “Don’t get angry. Ask questions.”
I tried this approach with my brother,a liberal Democrat (and that’s not meant as an oxymoron), and the results were exactly as depicted here. He became extremely upset while I watched in amazement. My favorite exchange ran like this: “I hate George Bush.” “I’m curious. Why do you hate George Bush?” “Because he got Cs in graduate school.” That really was his first reaction. Today I might ask him then what President Obama got in school.
At any rate, a great article. I plan to bring these questions into my classroom and remind my students that those who aim for real answers must first ask real questions.
May I add one question?
If it’s bad to eat meat or wear fur, how come so many lefties wear leather (i.e. shoes, belts, purses, etc)?
I’ve used that one many a time, and it always stops them dead in their tracks.
Some will claim that they do not use leather. At which point you must ask them if they use glue, gelatin(hooves), fertilizer, calcium supplements (ground bones), shampoo (collagen)……
Question 2: if it’s beautiful and natural and part of the Circle of Life for other carnivorous and omnivorous species to eat meat, why is it wrong for omnivorous man to do the same?
Question 3: Which is crueler: to raise and shelter and feed and protect an animal, secure the safety of its offspring in a similar manner, then end its life swiftly and mercifully to feed yourself…. to find an animal in the wild, and end its life with a single bullet– a death so sudden that they never even hear the crack of the gun… or to let them wander in the wild, hungry and afraid and cold, to eventually die in terror and agony as they are ripped apart by a pack of wolves?
Actually, I’ve worked out a way to keep them from claiming they don’t use leather… I look at their obviously leather belt, shoes, or purse and say something like, “Isn’t it wonderful how they can make plastic look just like leather?” Since plastic is another lefty bugaboo, they usually respond with an indignant, “This is real leather!” At which point I spring the question above on them.
If eating meat is bad, how come human beings have canine teeth? and if one is serious about vegetarianism, have they filed down or had removed their canine teeth?
One of my favorite liberal gob-stoppers is this one: “Did you know that everything you have and everything you eat is either farmed or mined? Oh, the horror.
And for those Luddite, back-to-nature types, I have two words: modern dentistry.
One dimwit tried to dismiss that by claiming that, well, didn’t I know that the Indians had perfect teeth? My response was, archeaological evidence has shown that rotten teeth and the side effects were frequent causes of death, and that those considered tribal madmen were often those with dental problems. They were driven mad by the pain and infection.
The response to that was: “Well, all that science stuff is just crap.” Invincible ignorance.
Some furs takes hundreds of animals to create. In my opinion where that is the case, it’s decadent.
And often only the fur is being used whereas leather is usually from skin of animals where the entire animal has bin put to use. And single animal can produce many belts and leather purses.
Great list. I through trial and error discovered that going on the offensive by making them answer questions like the ones you have written is the only practical way to debate these self selected thought police. it’s not ethical to just slap them, but my God the urge is there. You can’t win on their terms, since as you said they never let you answer.
My favorite one was if racial profiling is wrong what do you make of the last election?
He got over 90% of the black vote. If McCain had gotten that much of the white vote… could we say it was a matter of racial pride and praise it as healthy and just?
as the media excused the black vote for Obama.
The white vote is always divided among differring politicians from different races and genders.. does that make it wrong that they don’t unify behind a politician from their race?
just sayin… the left always excuses what would be called racist if a white did it… when nonwhites do it for their candidate.
Actually, Camo, you are mistaken about the origin of the term “neo-conservative.” It was first applied in the early seventies, rather narrowly, by the American socialist writer, Michael Harrington. The Socialist Party of Norman Thomas split in December, 1972. One wing eventually became the Democratic Socialists of America. The other became Social Democrats, USA (there is currently a group with the same name but not the same group). Harrington referred to the SDers (I was one) as “neo-conservatives,” conservatives in social democratic clothing by his estimation.
For want of anything else I call myself a neoconservative although as its founding father, Irving Kristol, once pointed out, it’s a tendency rather than an ideology–we don’t have clubs, membership cards, secret handshakes, that sort of thing. Someone quipped that a neoconservative was “a liberal mugged by reality,” and Kristol himself once said it was a rabbinic rather than a prophetic approach to politics.
Of course today in a lot of circles it’s a code word for “Jew.”
One might add some additional questions on the Middle East, such as why do feminists and supporters of gay rights enthusiastically back the side that finds those ideas anathema as opposed to the side that generally supports them? But asking this question presupposes what seems to me to be clear, which is that whatever truly motivates the left, it’s not the values that the left claims it holds.
Consider who is going to win in the pantheon of altruism:
– A “middle of the road” Democrat is an altruist working *through* the mechanisms of a capitalist government to make people “do good”
– A Socialist is a power-lusting altruist working to undermine a capitalist government to make people “do good”;
– A Communist is a power-lusting megalomaniac using altruism as an excuse to seize government on the pretense that he will make the greedy capitalists do good;
– A Neo-con is an altruist pretending to be a capitalist and calling himself a “Conservative”, working to undermine capitalism in his self-deluded belief that he can persuade capitalists to “do good”.
Who is going to win this game of charades? This is why neocons are the greatest danger to anyone opposing the Left.
Like the George Bush neocons were — they gave us Obama (and wars of attrition rather than victory). Like the Paul Ryan presidential campaign machine is — he’ll bring worse than Bush did if elected President, because he’ll undermine any sane opposition to the Left with his own brand of melding altruism and capitalism. (Ie, a Ryan presidency will undermine anyone defending the *cause* of capitalism — government with the sole function of protecting individual rights, a function completely incompatible with enforced altruism.)
Why is it that death penalty for murderers is inhumane, but slaughtering hundreds of thousands of unborn children is a right?
Since there are about a million abortions a year, and since half of new born children are female, doesn’t “women’s choice” neglects the the rights of about half a million women who are killed before being born?
Why is it that a father who doesn’t want his new born baby has to be forced to pay for raising him but a mother who doesn’t want her baby can abandon him in the hospital and walk away free?
Why is it that is cool to denigrate the image of Jesus Christ, but showing a drawing of Mohamed would be insulting a “religion of peace?”
If every person has to be respected, wouldn’t it be an insult for healthy, smart and strong poor people to make them dependent on subsidies paid by other people who had to work hard to make their wealth?
A good question would why do the regression’s what to turn back the clock to the 1950 when it 2010?? make no since to t that unless it’s to clean up the corruption in government right
This “question” makes no sense.
Wow. That’s beyond incomprehensible.
Throw in a few references to “light” and “the universe,” and it could be a Jon Anderson lyric in a Yes song.
Brilliant! I’ve heard it said that liberals grasp of history reads like a cut-and-paste ransom note. The Yes song reference fits even better for some of them.
“Some heads contain an enormous number of facts that never bind with one another to form a fertile soil from which original ideas will grow. Each piece of information exists independently from the others, all of them continuously shifting and rolling around like grains of sand, forming ephemeral dunes in the lifeless deserts of their minds.” – one of the most entertaining and trenchant observations ever. Your column was a treat to read and if anyone knows the nature of the beast, you must be the one. We need more people who hail from the dark side to tell the rest of the oblivious in America just exactly who is taking over their country and their lives. We used to be aware of the “commies” many years ago, but then when the “collapse” of the Soviet Union took place, many ignorantly thought there was nothing to worry about. The “collapse” was another brilliant Soviet deception. Does the “new” Russia seem any different than the “old” Soviet? What a laugh. The word “progressive” has to be made every bit a label of revulsion like communist, socialist, fascist, and liberal. Because they are all SYNONYMS.
These are truly excellent questions. Here’s one:
Why is it that the Left’s mantra is “Celebrate Diversity” yet they all think the exact same and anybody who has a “diverse thought” is taken to the town square and hung?
Nice article from Mr. Atbashian. I love the picture of the shifting sands of the (alleged) minds of the left. I have often enough mused on the schizophrenic tendency of the professional left to pack their minds with volumes of contradictory facts and findings, which they are able to elicit, individually, in response to any topic, but somehow never realize that their positions/talking points, taken together, illustrate a confusion that cannot be mistaken for coherence.
Well structured case. I shall go buy the book as soon as the snow is cleared.
A brief request — May we abolish the misnomer “progressive?” Do not give the left a propaganda tool. Call them what they are – statists!
Remember that “Bolshe” means “bigger” in Russian. The lying “Bolsheviks” were the smaller group but stole the word “majority party” for themselves, the arrogant monsters.
yes the socialists/statists/elitists/MARXIST always play these word games. usually the truth is exactly the opposite.
..they are truly regressives …not progressive in an sense of the word.
Oleg …you book is on my to get list
regards
Progressives? no. They are not statists either, exactly, but regressives, as in regressing to a time of the “God King”. I like the term “Regressive” as a handle for these people. They don’t like it and soon leave me alone.
Thank you.
I have a pet peeve with the hijacking of the word “progressive” (they are not — as their ideas are neither new nor make any progress) and especially the word “liberal” (I find nothing truly liberating or liberal in the statist’s ideas). At this point I don’t know which annoys me worse: the fact that the statists have destroyed those two innocent words, or that the rest of us have allowed them to do so and now spit them out with a vehemence neither term deserves.
The Founding Fathers were both liberal and progressive in the true sense of the word, and our Constitution and the society formed around it truly revolutionary…it disgusts me to see a bunch of fascist statists — whose ideas have been around since the first oppressive aristocracy/oligarchy formed, since the first meglamoniacal strongman stepped out in front of the first crowd of rabid toadies and demanded submission from all — have taken over those two terms.
They don’t deserve them, and we should all be ashamed of ourselves for rolling over and just letting them claim ownership. Time to take them back.
Whenever I think of “progressive”, I always think of the term “progressive disease” or “progressive cancer”, meaning sooner or later the one with the disease will be dead. The first definition of the word means “moving forward, for better or worse”. The word was high-jacked by liberal politicians of the early 20th century, like the word “gay” later by homosexuals.
You actually need to understand the basis. Check out the Fabians, to start with. The fundamental idea is that all previous history and thought is now irrelevant, since we (they) have progressed beyond cultural limitations, and now can dispense with all historical institutions and opinions. Such as the Constitution, science (really — it’s just an expression of bourgeois pseudo-rationality), the Bible, religion in general (unless it’s one vehemently opposed to Christianity), etc.
Western society and thought, because of its success and dominance, is the prime target and font of all evil, which progressives will progress beyond, since they are post-cultural and post-modern.
Chomsky is a pretty good example of the above viewpoints.
But the net message is familiar: “Put your fate in our hands, because we, and only we, know best and have the sole principle(s) for determining truth.”
….and my favorite for my anti-capitalist “friends”
Why is it I’ve never worked for a poor person?
I’ve never gotten an answer to that one.
Great questions Oleg, but the Libs will never lower themselves to contemplate them.
Once a normal person (a mere mortal) realizes and comes to terms with the fact that their are some very fundamentally unreachable sections of a Liberal’s psyche, that person can then concentrate his or her effective strategies he or she will need to eliminate or get around the Liberal demons in their midst.
Liberals think they are gods. And YOU other than a Liberal are a mere mortal who needs to be groveling and supplicating real quick like.
When you are a god, the only critical thinking you really need to accomplish can be classified in 2 categories.
1) What more aspects of my own wonderful self are there left for me to discover?
2) In what manner should everyone who is not a god be worshiping me?
This is why they react so angrily when you confront them with ANYTHING outside of these areas of focus…no god ever tolerates mortals disturbing his concentration upon his own continuous self-deification.
It is physically painful for them to have their focus wrenched aside from this objective – the manner of a dog having his wagging tail caught beneath the runner of a rocking chair.
They only tolerate other gods because they might be able to use them to discover their own new aspects of deity.
Hit them with this line then, “Gods though you may be, offspring of the Most High, all of you, you shall perish like mortals.”
My favorite has always been, If fetuses are not human, why don’t we cook and eat them?
Diligent study of Dialectical Materialism
will resolve all your doubts—Not.
When the Heinleins toured the USSR,
Ginnie learned Russian, and D.M., for
the trip; She collected enough data
to get her charged with espionage,
had KGB found out, and caused mental
meltdowns in Communists trying to convert her,
by converting _them_, using their own arguments.
When the Heinleins toured the USSR, Ginnie learned Russian, and D.M., for
the trip.
What the heck is “D.M.”? After several minutes of pondering this, the only reasonable guess I have is Dialectical Materialism. Unreasonable guesses are “Driving Moskvas”, “Dancing Mambos”, etc. etc.
May I kindly suggest that you not abbreviate in future posts unless the abbreviation is dead obvious, like “US” for “United States”?
D.M. = Dialectical Materialism.
My favorite is from the old MAD magazine:
” If Communism was such a shining example for everyone, why
didn’t the put up a “Picture Window” instead of an Iron Curtain?”
I recently asked questions like these (in a slightly different way) to an idealistic young American who lives in China while studying green technologies. He seems to distrust both politicians and business. The Chinese government could have censored my questions. Maybe he would have answered them if he didn’t live in China.:
1. If you think the Right doesn’t “Believe in Climate Change” but you think it’s wrong for the Right to say “The climate is always changing”, why did Global Warming activists change the term “anthropogenic global warming” to “Climate Change”? And why do you, personally, insist on using such a general term when you mean something so specific?
2. If you think that corporate control of the media keeps Americans from getting the truth about “Climate Change”, how do you feel about the UN’s desire to control the internet – a primary way to exchange information without corporate control?
3. If China is “not that much different than USA in terms of being totalitarian”, why is Thomas Friedman always pining for Chinese-style power?
http://pajamasmedia.com/instapundit/107609/
http://pajamasmedia.com/instapundit/111693/
4. If “any real solution (to “Climate Change”) will have to involve extreme reduction in carbon output per person”, whom do you trust to enforce these extreme reductions?
I should maybe have asked if these extreme reductions in per-person carbon output would mean that elite environmental activists would have to give up their mansions, private jets, energy-wasting movie productions and rock concerts.
This is a great article, and The People’s Cube is a great site, Oleg.
If I may add a question to your list, KarenT…
“If man’s activities are making the planet too warm, then what should the ideal temperature be?”
That might make a grain or two of sand move around.
I asked that in an earlier round. Didn’t get a direct response.
More warming questions
1a) Of all greenhouse gasses, what is the effect of CO2 on warming?
1b) Of all CO2 sources how much is produced by humans?
1c) Multiply the percentages together (answer: 2.5% caused by human CO2.)
2) The Earth has been getting warmer since the last Ice Age, about 20000 years ago. What caused it to get warmer? What were humans doing to cause it?
2b) How much food can you grow on a glacier? Do the Canadian central plains produce more food now?
“2) The Earth has been getting warmer since the last Ice Age, about 20000 years ago. What caused it to get warmer? What were humans doing to cause it?
2b) How much food can you grow on a glacier? Do the Canadian central plains produce more food now?”
Actually, the Earth has been gradually cooling since the end of the last ice age.
Satellites have shown that the Earth is greening up and their best reason as to why is… increased CO2.
More aluminum anyone? Aluminum-laden aerosols spewed globally through chemtrailing should solve adverse greenhouse effects and the genocide issues at the same time.
There won’t be life forms or resources left to manage, and the few survivors who don’t succumb to the insanity of alzheimers will be dining on genetically modified something or another disguised as food. World-wide toxicity levels are nearly 10 times more than those of 4 years ago, even in the water at high elevations.
Whenever there are more than two people together, there are politics. So be it. Is it really so important to focus on littleness?
Excellent list, I will be sure to credit Mr. Atbashian and link to this piece when I borrow some of his questions and especially his shifting sands analogy. Genuinely priceless in its clarity.
One clarification if I may. 10 years ago, former Congressman Bob Dornan was discussing the Catholic Church’s problems with priests of the homosexual persuasion. He made an important distinction that I think needs be noted. He made a convincing case that the Church’s issue was pederasty, not pedophilia. Pedophilia is a sexual deviancy different and distinct from pederasty. The effort to make the case about pedophilia was a concerted effort to deflect from the homosexual aspects.
I would agree with the pedophilia-only interpretation if the media reported more female victims. I need to know the actual ratio of male to female victims of priestly abuse.
According to the John Jay Report, 81% of the victims of clerical sexual abuse were males, the majority of
whom were between the ages of 11-17.
My observation that the biggest flaw with the progressive left is that everything that fixes society for them is external to them. One example is that if the rich would pay more taxes, fill-in-the-blank would be solved. With this concept we can never solve any of the problems we have. Everyone needs to be able to make personal sacrifice for the common good. One other progressive irritant is that charity is something you force on other people, not a personal sacrifice. When someone says “Jesus was a socialist” it bugs me as well. As far as my limited understanding goes, I think most of the socialism of Christianity is a personal struggle with oneself not forcing it on other individuals.
As I see it, there are both passive leftists and aggressive, controlling ones. Rewards for productive activity are envied and sometimes despised by the both types. CONTROL of societal institutions developed by others, as well as most fruits of productive activity, must be ceded to controlling leftists for the benefit of passive leftists. It’s how controlling leftists gain meaning in their lives.
Oleg, this is a wonderful piece. Thank you so much for the hard work and your contribution.
However, it is important to understand what the answers will look like and from whence they came before today and forever after.
You see, Oleg, leftists are permanent prosecutors. Prosecutors ask the questions, they don’t have to answer them.
In the court of public opinion, the lapdog media are the courtroom stenographers. They have machines that automatically distort the meaning of ever word uttered. Hollywood is a video-stenographer, with the same task. Distortion and deceit are the hallmarks of those whose purpose is to advance the cause of leftism, truth be damned, reason be damned, honor be damned.
And we…dear Oleg…are the permanent defendants. We, the people, are always on trial. Non-leftists stand accused and there is no acceptable defense except surrender to leftism.
Your questions will be twisted, distorted or erased from the record. The “mischief” you intend to cause will either be ignored, or you will be dealt with swiftly and harshly.
You see, Oleg…leftism is a movement. Resistance is not organized, sporadic, we are snipers in the mist…they are entrenched and behind a fortress of lies.
Letting your questions loose, like a bouquet of multi-colored balloons, to ride on the winds of fate, to go where they might, until they drift over the vast seas of ignorance and apathy, lose energy and fall harmlessly to the ground…is a likely fate. Nobody will force them to be noticed.
We don’t get to ask the questions, Oleg. Only to answer them. Unless and until we realize that this is so, we will never accuse the prosecutor of prosecutorial misconduct…the court won’t allow it. And the stenographers will cheat the jury out of the truth yet again.
permanent defendants. very scary and unfortunately very true.
that may be a reason the trolls delight in commenting on PJmedia. they don’t care that they are wrong but like to make us defend ourselves when they never have to.
So, Oleg, why didn’t you tear your book into shreds and burn it for these sweet ladies? And break down and cry and thank them for showing you the error of your ways in America? And, and, and,,,,,,
Many silly questions in the article. For example:
If all cultures are equal, why doesn’t UNESCO organize International Cannibalism Week festivals?
But UNESCO has endorsed practices and agendas morally on par with cannibalism. For some examples do a google search for “unesco sharia”.
Why weren’t there demonstrations with anti-feudal slogans under feudal rule?
From Wikipedia: “The term feudalism was unknown and the system it describes were not conceived of as a formal political system by the people living in the Medieval Period.”
In a free capitalist society, anti-capitalist demonstrations are commonplace. Is capitalism really the worst system?
A leftist could say that the possibility of some form of popular protest does not by itself show that capitalism is better or even freer than, e.g., Soviet Communism. It may be that the capitalist system utilizes expressions of protest as a safety valve, allowing for a controlled release of pent up frustration while the system is in no danger of being overthrown.
If capitalism makes some people rich without making others poor, who will benefit when capitalism is destroyed?
Not only do critics of capitalism obviously not share that premise, but as a fixed principle it is demonstrably false. The proliferation of various socialist and anarchist movements in the 19th century were a rational response to the realities of 19th century industrial capitalism. A “conservative” who can’t even concede this is an idealogue living in fantasy land.
Why, on the rare occasions when Obama’s actions benefit America, does his base get angry?
When have Obama’s actions benefitted America?
I thought the same thing about the feudalism question. Maybe the author doesn’t know about the Peasants’ Revolt in England or the Jacquerie in France, both recorded in Froissart’s Chronicles and elsewhere.
An article in Wikipedia provides a wider treatment of medieval revolts: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popular_revolt_in_late_medieval_Europe
I think the answer regarding protest in capitalist societies is extremely weak. It cannot be observed that there is an agent called “capitalism” or “capitalist society” that controls people’s behavior to the extent that it can “allow” protests or “prevent” them. On the other hand, we know that in communist and some socialist countries, regulations forbidding public protests come from an easily-identified agent: the communist or socialist government.
I didn’t understand the question about the destruction of capitalism. As you say, communists tend to believe capitalism DOES make some people rich while making others poor, and that the destruction of capitalism will benefit the poor. I do agree with you that the revolutions of the 19th century were rational – or at least understandable – reactions to the economic and social inequities that prevailed at that time. Whether they did any good is another question. Under capitalism, the rich have gotten richer since those days, but the poor have also gotten richer – at least in absolute terms. The grievances of the left today seem to be more about relative wealth than absolute wealth. My feeling is that having enough resources to survive is vital; equal distribution of resources is not necessary.
Marx’s actual position was that the bourgeois phase of economic evolution would generate such a flood of wealth that it could afford the disruption of being taken over by the proletariate. Actually, it was a pre-condition. The application of Communism to under-developed non-capitalist societies was jumping the gun, and bound to fail.
Of course, it will always fail, but Marx’s ideal targets were Britain, Germany, the U.S. To this day leftists say that the U.S. would/will make the ideal Communist model state.
That’s interesting. But it confuses me because, if a successful capitalist society is so necessary for communism to develop, why do leftists constantly rail against the evils of capitalism? Why do they push so hard for leftist “reform?” Doesn’t popular resistance to such measures in the US simply indicate that we’re not ripe for the change yet? It seems like they want to jump the gun in developed economies as well as underdeveloped ones.
I also wonder about their justifications today. Like the previous comments mentioned, in the 19th century you really did have fat-cats living in mansions while many workers lived in abject poverty. Today – not so much. Our system may not be totally *fair*, but it’s nothing like as oppressive as 19th century Europeans had to deal with. As long as *most of us* have three hots and a cot and aren’t dying of TB or phosphorous poisoning, who cares how much money some other guy has? Why is that issue so critical to liberals?
And that is because leftists fundamentally and sometimes willfully are ignorant of human nature. Anyone with a lick of sense knows that people will not work and strive if all their hard work is unrewarded. Also they don’t admit that most people will do nothing productive if everything is provided at no cost to them.
Leftist also see themselves as the new benevolent overlords. Some one has to organize the peons, oops sorry, proletariat.
Gulags are never far behind the kindness of “progressives/leftists”.
Anyone with a lick of sense knows that people will not work and strive if all their hard work is unrewarded.
The large majority of Soviet citizens knew that perfectly well. They had a universally known saying that encapsulated this idea: “We pretend to work and they pretend to pay us.”
I didn’t see this question asked. If it is okay for the United States and the rest of the world to enforce sanctions on North Korea and Iran (to punish them for their anti-social behavior and thus causing the innocent citizens of those countries to suffer hardships) why is it not okay for Israel to do the same to Gaza.
After all, though Hamas doesn’t [yet] have nuclear weapons, it continues to call for the destruction of Israel, continues to directly or indirectly fire rockets and mortars into the country (targetting schools and hospitals), continues to call for jihad against Jews, and continues to glorify those who kill or attempt to kill innocent civilians.
You would think that Israel, which is under physical attack from Hamas/Gaza, would have the right to enforce sanctions and blockades to prevent the inportation of weapons. Or am I just being a silly, conservative, non-Jew who doesn’t get it?
But Israel is not doing the same to Gaza.
exactly right..great point
with DADT’s passage the gates of hell have been opened against the Catholic Church
matthew 16:18 ~Godspeed PB16
“What to Ask Progressives”
How does it feel to be one step below a cockroach on the evolutionary ladder?
When you become a progressive, and they remove three quarters of your brain…is that painful?
Those are the sort of questions I pose to progressives.
I like to spice up the Socratic Method a tad.
Yap. I’ve used questions like these to make libs upset too. And I am also from the former USSR. I remember I got one poor girl very pissed – she told me that all cultures were equal, and I asked her to tell me if she thinks human sacrifices were okay with her. One question – and she shut up about equality of culture.
Here is a quick question for libs: If Cuba is a socialist paradise, where people have excellent healthcare, why don’t American poor simply move to Cuba and live there? After all, Cuban reactionaries risk their lives to escape and come to US – why can’t American progressives buy a plane ticket and move to Cuba? Could it be because healthcare for American poor is better than Cuban healthcare?
“If all cultures are equal, then why are the liberals down on red-necks and conservatives?”
“…leaping all around the known and unknown universe..[zigzagging] from the evils of unbridled capitalism to global warming to Bush’s wars for oil to Sarah Palin’s stupidity. .hadn’t the slightest curiosity….mental fragments mismatched in key and rhythm…”
Just to note a historical reference to this kind of thinking, Adolph Hitler did this constantly; one of his Generals referred to it as a “Flickwerk mind,” dancing around and never settling on any one thing for more than a moment.
Asking questions is a good strategy in any confrontation like this. I find that simply asking “Why?” enough times will get you to the bottom of things pretty quickly. You’ll either find out that your interlocutors have solid, defensible reasons for holding the positions they do, or that they simply have an attitude about them. Sometimes there’s real logic behind them; other times the logic is just a veneer covering an emotional attachment – usually something involving anger.
Asking “why” repeatedly may be good for uncovering the roots of a political position. But I like Thomas Sowell’s repetitious question for the feasibility of utopian liberal programs: “And then what”?
Might save us a lot of grief if liberals thought a few decades ahead of their sweet dreams. Might help the less-indoctrinated see why, for example, LBJ’s War on Poverty increased violence between children in crumbling ghettos rather than decreasing poverty.
That’s a good question, too. It points to the practical aspects of political theories – what happens when you try to apply them in the real world.
I think that’s one thing that distinguishes conservatives from liberals: We KNOW the consequences of our political beliefs. We have history to teach us, human nature to inform us, and common sense to guide us. Leftists have nothing. With them, it’s all theory, all guessing, all baseless predictions of future goodness. They can tell us what’s *wrong* with history, human nature, and common sense. They can’t tell us why their theories are superior. They have no proof.
Inventors are full of big ideas, too. They’re visionaries. They have faith that their ideas will make the world better – or at least make them a few bucks. They can even patent their ideas without ever proving that they actually work. But before the world adopts an invention, there has to be a prototype – a working example that demonstrates some kind of superiority over previous devices and old ways of getting the job done. It has to be safe. It has to work without creating unpredicted negative side effects. And people have to accept it – which they might not, even if it works as planned.
Leftists have created their working examples, their prototypes. The Soviet Union, the PRC, North Korea, Venezuela, and any number of other workers’ paradises. The principles appeared sound, the drawings looked great, the sales material presented to investors (the ‘working class’) was extremely slick – but the actual product was considerably less useful than anticipated.
Yet like the enthusiasts who keep inventing perpetual motion machines, leftists never give up. *This time* maybe we’ll get it right…
the problem with left wingers is they believe in the altruism of government. Apparently, they’ve never heard the saying ‘power corrupts and absolute power corupts absolutely’.
And here’s Rummel’s Corollary to Acton’s Rule: “Power kills, and absolute power kills absolutely.”
Check out Professor R. J. Rummel’s website.
I like Dennis Prager’s description of a better society than one with a compassionate government: “A just government with compassionate citizens”. Because a government can only be compassionate to some groups of people by harming other groups of people.
“A just government with compassionate citizens”
That is why lady justice is always depicted with a blindfold.
Leftists have created their working examples, their prototypes. The Soviet Union, the PRC, North Korea, Venezuela, and any number of other workers’ paradises. The principles appeared sound, the drawings looked great, the sales material presented to investors (the ‘working class’) was extremely slick – but the actual product was considerably less useful than anticipated.
I’ve debated Marxists on a number of occasions and have repeatedly defied them to show me even a single village that operates on Marxist principles and is successful and prosperous without anyone being coerced into participating. So far, they have failed to identify a single example of a village that meets the criteria I proposed. The reason, of course, is that when the rubber meets the road, Marxism simply does not work on a voluntary basis. As soon as someone tries to implement a Marxist society, even on a very limited local basis, they find that participation is minimal so long as people have a choice. The only way they can even hope to implement programs that people participate in is if participation is mandatory: “join this collective farm or you will be sent to the gulag – or shot”.
Yet like the enthusiasts who keep inventing perpetual motion machines, leftists never give up. *This time* maybe we’ll get it right…
Another tactic that I have used in debate with communists is to point to historical examples of mass murder in communist countries and ask why any new attempt to implement communism shouldn’t have the same bloody consequences. They inevitably assure me that things will be different this time. When I ask what they will do differently, they inevitably drop out of the discussion. It is my belief that they feel beholden to the ideologists that have gone before them – Marx, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, etc. – and can’t bring themselves to propose any changes to their programs because this would disrespect these men by implying they were less than perfect in their wisdom and insight. Therefore, I see no reason to believe that their new attempts to create socialism/communism won’t be every bit as disastrous as those of their predecessors since they have no intent to change anything.
Most importanly, don’t forget to tell the liberals that you understand their frustration, and that you realize that they are very emotional about such-n-such issue. Keep telling them that you sympathysize with their feelings and that it’s obvious they are angry/upset about the topic.
Here’s plenty more that I have discussed in my blog for the past year:
- If national borders are bad and everyone should be allowed to live wherever they want regardless of their citizenship status and ethnic heritage, why do you think Christopher Columbus was so very evil? Also, why do you think that it so wrong for a big corporation to move its factory (or some fat Western retiree to move his ass) to some poor Third World country? Why is it in these cases so very wrong to cross this “imaginary line” that is only a “dangerous anachronism”?
- Why are the European and American cultures so bad that they need to change to be more like the other cultures, but these other cultures must forever remain exactly as they ever were instead of becoming more like the European and American cultures, and it is wrong for us to act otherwise?
- Similarly, why are Native Americans entitled to live in their ethnically pure homelands, but white Europeans are not? If this right somehow comes from the fact that their ancestors lived there millenia ago, well then, do the Jews in Israel similarly have the right to expel other ethnic groups from there, by force if necessary?
- Speaking of which, don’t you think it’s at least a little bit contradictory for your “anti-fascist” march to chant death to Israel and Jews?
- If Cuba is such a wonderful paradise of equality, why do they need to kill everyone who tries to leave? More generally, why do all leftist states have to build walls to keep their own people in, whereas rightist states have to build walls to keep other people out?
- Why is leftism never judged by its reality but only by its lofty promises?
- Spanish is the native tongue of which native American tribe or ethnic group? What does the word “conquistador” mean? Among all ethnic groups in the world, why are the native Americans specifically “noble”? Especially if all ethnic groups are really the same in every way?
- How many new Jumbo Jets would we need to built if every American visited some foreign culture every five years or so, the way you insist those rubes should do? (Yes, we know all you “creative thinkers” just hate math, but really, do this one illuminating calculation anyway.) What effect would all this carbon-wasteful travel have on the global warming that you tell us is such a huge threat on humanity?
- On the other hand, if all cultures really are the same and it’s racist to ever claim otherwise, why does one even need to learn about other cultures, or ensure that all cultures are equally represented in corporate decision-making?
- If there are too many prisoners and longer sentences don’t really deter crime, why are harsher sentences now so very desperately needed to deter hate crimes and rapes? What would be an appropriate sentence for someone who raped you?
- How is it possible that liberals are superior because of their higher IQ, and morally superior because they know that IQ is meaningless, and finally, cognitively superior because they don’t think that this is a contradiction that matters?
- If the fact that liberals are overrepresented in academia automatically proves the innate correctness and superiority of liberalism, what can we infer from the similar overrepresentation of white males therein? Does reality perhaps have a straight male bias?
- Speaking of overrepresentation of various political and ideological groups, what percentage of illegal drugs do you think is currently consumed by liberals and conservative? Do you think that the ideological spectrum of people with HIV infections is identical to that of the general population?
- Speaking of ideologies, what exactly does Sarah Palin say or believe that makes you hate her so much that +98% of the world’s muslims wouldn’t also believe and consider perfectly acceptable and normal? Why is your opinion on muslims then so very different from your opinion on Sarah Palin?
- Are there any liberal criticisms of conservatives that wouldn’t apply at least twice as much to mainstream muslims? From “homophobia” to “inbreeding”, I sure can’t think of any. So why do liberals sheepishly adore muslims and defend them at every turn instead of loathing them at least as much as they loath conservatives? Why do muslims get a free pass on every liberal shibboleth that the left loves to enforce on conservatives?
- Puzzle: If all pro-life groups are automatically terrorist, but it’s offensive to suggest that some muslim group supports terrorism, which one of these properties is the salient one when it is a pro-life muslim group?
- Meta-Puzzle: In all puzzles such as the previous one, how do all you liberals always somehow just know, without any visible prompting or preparation or coordination, the correct answer? Are you some kind of hivemind? Or is there a deeper standard in effect that tells you the correct answer that you all hold but don’t admit doing so?
- Speaking of which, how are those women’s reproductive rights doing right now in muslim countries? Are the muslim societies superior or inferior to Western countries in this sense? If all cultures and societies are always equally good, how can you even claim that the changes that you advocate would make our society better?
- Here’s my pet theory: Could it be that liberalism, in the end, is nothing but group identity politics and narcissistic status signaling for people (especially of verbally intellectual persuasion) who can’t signal their status in traditional material means yet are desperate to distinguish themselves from the white proles who they consider their inferiors? To disprove this theory, can you name even one position on any issue held by liberals that could not be fully predicted and explained with this extremely simple explanatory model?
- Since you oppose capitalists who you say gouge and bleed the masses in every turn by charging as much as they can for food and other necessities, why is Wal-Mart evil for selling these to the masses at a low cost and keeping the profit margins of all those nasty capitalists down? If Wal-Mart was otherwise exactly the same except that it was 100% owned and run by the state, wouldn’t you be celebrating it?
- Since you love to tout Darwinian evolution as your tribal signal (come on, it’s not like most of you understand even the basics of Darwinism), why do you then so furiously deny its every logical consequence? For example, how does your blank slate theory of how all humans are born identical jibe with the essential and important hereditary variation between individuals that evolution by natural selection requires pretty much by definition?
- And once again, what percentage of world’s muslims do you think support Darwinism instead of creationism?
- Speaking of knowledge of science, would you personally pass an eighth-grade science exam? Do you think postmodernism is totes “cool” and “edgy”? Do you believe that women have innate ways of knowing that are superior to patriarchal and phallogocentric male science and reasoning? When you fall ill, do you rely on homeopathic medicine? Do you think that the traditional beliefs of other cultures automatically need to be respected and obeyed, instead of condemned as primitive superstition? Isn’t tradition bad and should be smashed?
- Sure, you have your good reasons of why you say “happy holidays” instead of “merry Christmas”. Do these exact same reasons also make you say “happy holidays” instead of “merry Eid” and “happy Diwali” and “happy Kwanzaa”? If not, why not?
- Why is it “transgressive” art to dunk a crucifix in a jar of urine, but a despicable hate crime to draw a cartoon of prophet Mohammed? Speaking of which, do you ever wonder why all your “transgressive” artists and thinkers are celebrated toasts of the town, while the people who disagree with them are routinely denounced? Who exactly is the “rebel” and “underdog” here?
- Answer this one honestly: who is more transgressive and rebellious, Dan Savage or Pat Robertson?
- Speaking of projection, why do liberals get to say that all conservatives are secretly nazis and a hair away from becoming violent, but any conservative who notices any similarity or co-operation between liberalism and socialism is automatically a paranoid nutcase who sees commies under every bed?
- Why are right-wing marches and demonstrations peaceful, whereas the left-wing marches and demonstrations always become violent and smash everything in sight? So who are the real jackboots and brownshirts here? If one misspelled tea party sign is enough to discredit the whole movement, why can’t we conclude from thousands of angry communist signs so ubiquitous in left-wing marches that leftism has at least a teeny tiny connection to communism?
- What did W. do to restrict the freedoms that your heroes Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro didn’t do a hundredfold? Do you ever realize how utterly stupid you look advocating “freedom” while you are wearing a Che T-shirt?
- Why is death penalty wrong when America does it, but “meh” when China and Iran do so? And aren’t these cultures much older and wiser than America, so why do you think you are automatically right when you say the death penalty is wrong? (Again, while wearing that Che-shirt? Do you think it makes you look “cool” and “with it”?)
- Since you deny basic economics and believe that by dictating prices (rent control, price ceilings on health care, oil etc.) you really wield the power to command the reality itself and the very real scarcities therein, do you similarly believe that preventing the mercury in a thermometer from rising or falling past some point would also prevent the weather from really becoming that warm or cold?
- Since your economic theory of Keynesianism (that Obama also believes in, even though liberals deny he does) proclaims that World War II caused a massive economic stimulus that lifted America out of the Great Depression, do you also ascribe similar recession-busting and stimulative powers to the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan? What do you think causes the difference?
- Fast food and nuclear energy should be banned because of their health hazards, but gay bathhouses need no regulation whatsoever. Did I get this right?
- The fact that the majority opposes nuclear power is sufficient to prove that nuclear power is evil. The fact that the majority opposes unlimited immigration and gay marriage proves that the majority is evil and needs to be thoroughly re-educated. Is this also now correct?
- Speaking of majorities, why are you so sure that once the country becomes minority-majority so that white liberals become a minority that the new majority realizes it doesn’t really need for anything, this new majority will keep respecting all the shibboleths of white liberals such as gay rights, women’s rights, environmentalism, transsexual rights etc. etc. ? (See California’s Prop 8 and Toronto mayoral elections for a sneak preview of the interesting future of liberalism.)
Regarding your pet theory: I think it applies to MOST people of MOST political persuasions, left or right. As we do with music, clothes, and cars, most of us use politics as a fashion accessory. We use it to define ourselves, to associate ourselves with certain people and to separate ourselves from certain others. It has more to do with primate social instincts than with reason, logic, or practicality. How each of us ends up with the politics we do is as mysterious as how we come to prefer one type of music over another.
Outstanding. And slip this one in there:
If it’s wrong for western countries to build walls and fences to keep outsiders out, why is it righteous for socialist countries to build walls to keep their chattel in?
Ilkka – thank you for sharing. Your questions show a sharp mind and an outstanding ability to think logically. In fact, some of your longer questions could be broken down into smaller ones, dealing with related contradictions separately. They are great as a mental exercise for any debater with “progressive” non-sequiturs.
Thanks. I have plenty more of these, and I’ll post another batch in the comments eventually.
I am a Finn and lived there for the first 26 years of my life. So it was nothing like what you had to go through, but every time I see the word “progressive” I remember the Finnish left-wing intellectuals who always called the Soviet Union the most “progressive” of all countries. Therefore I find it is so funny and apt whenever Western leftists proudly proclaim themselves “progressives”.
In Finland, all media (especially the only channel that was state run and whose reporters and editors were literally Stalinists) was of course thoroughly leftist, basically if America had only one channel that played Rachel Maddow. I think I was 19 years old and in university the first time I ever saw some American conservative position depicted in a positive light. That is why I also think it is so tragically funny whenever a Western leftist complains that they don’t get to silence the dissenting views in media.
Ilkka -
I’m delighted to make your acquaintance, albeit virtually. I suspected that Finland might be going the same way as Sweden, but I didn’t realize it was that bad. What decades in Finland are you describing?
Oh, Sweden is currently way ahead of Finland in most respects. In Finland it is still legal to quote police statistics that certain immigrant groups are disproportionally responsible for certain types of crimes, although the Finnish progressives are working hard to follow in Sweden’s example to change that.
My childhood and teenage years took place in the eighties, and I went to university (and first used the Internet) in the early nineties. Back then being “anti-soviet” wasn’t literally a crime, but all media co-operated in never saying anything bad about the Soviet Union and never saying anything good about the United States (heh, that now reminds me of this one book by a dissident Finnish professor who complained that our news media always only shows America’s slums but never its mainstream middle class suburbs where the average American has about three times as much living space as the average Finn), and of course Ronald Reagan was the dumbest man in the face of the Earth. These days, of course, we know that our Useful Idiots got all their talking points directly from their KGB masters.
One reason for the contradictions in liberalism is that when collectivists hijacked the word “liberalism,” they accidentally absorbed a few individualist opinions and haven’t had time to dump all of them yet. (For example, they kept a belief in freedom of speech for a while before dumping it.)
At the rate they’re going, it will only a few more decades until they’re entirely authoritarian … but that hasn’t happened yet.
A Liberal’s political positions, and their religious devotion to those positions, stems from a deep insecurity that hatches an unhealthy level of the fear of failure.
http://gaultfalcon.blogspot.com/2010/06/fear-of-failure-guides-them.html
Once one accepts this premise the only questions left to answer are, where does this insecurity come from and can it be cured?
Perhaps I am becoming more pessimistic in my older age, or maybe just frustrated and lazy, but I am starting to believe that the root of this insecurity is a weakness in their mental foundation. I have thought of many of my own questions. The answers would seem to support this current theory.
-Of the Liberals you know, how many are using a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor drug (or some other antidepressant, personality disorder drug, anxiety or depression drug? If you’re not sure I’m betting they’re using.
-Of the Liberals you know, how many are obsessed with their family life? Most I know are more obsessed with their own life and find their family lives burdensome and interfering with their own.
-Of the Liberals you know talk about other people’s success in a supportive or admiring way instead of a suspicious or envious way?
There are more of these questions, and although there are exceptions to every rule, Liberals tend to be medicated, overly narcissistic, jealous types. I find discussing, arguing, or even asking them the great questions that Ed has come up with, is a waste of my time.
The state of mind you are describing can also be used to describe the condition called Asperger’s Syndrome, which researchers are now finding to be originating in the language part of the brain not having enough connectors.
It wouldn’t be Asperger’s by itself, but rather combined with Narcissistic Personality Disorder. Normal Aspies find lying to be very unnatural. Besides that, leftists are intellectual lightweights and Aspies tend not to be.
An argument stopper for ‘Bush lied about WMD’s': What then was the real reason for invading Iraq? What was so dastardly that he couldn’t tell 300 million people?
How about the WMDs that Saddam used on his own people, but couldn’t have since he “didn’t have them?”
Oleg, very fine article. I’ve asked many of those same questions myself of liberals, leftists, liberal/leftists, religionists, card-carrying Democrats, and dumbed-down college graduates now in their twenties and thirties. Sometimes they got angry and sputtered nonsense in reply, other times they just blinked in confusion, their neural synapses stalling in their brains, unable to gain traction on their numerous fallacies. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could subject Senators and Representatives to the same Socratic method? Do you know how soon you’d be clapped in jail for trying it? That’s why they’re inaccessible, to avoid questions, for every one of them is laden with an embarrassment, not of riches of knowledge, but a poverty of knowledge and of principles. They know it but hope no one else notices. Next in line for the Socratic treatment would be NPR, MSNBC, the Huffington Post, Airhead America, et al. We got a hint of that kind of ignorance when Diane Sawyer “embarrassed” James Clapper, the so-called “intelligence director,” and she didn’t even mean to expose his ignorance, she’s a “friendly” for the Obama adminstration.
Two more that I remembered after pressing “submit”:
- Why do you call yourself “anti-authoritarian” when you advocate total submission to the authority of the state? Why do you consider yourselved advocates of “change” when you try to create a society of cradle-to-grave safety in which absolutely nothing ever changes, no company ever goes bankrupt and all jobs are lifetime appointments? Why are you so seemingly incapable of even conceptualizing change that you view world as this perfectly compartmentalized machine in which no change ever has unintentional consequences on anything else? (For example, you believe that if the minimum wage was doubled, everything would still be exactly the same except that minimum wage workers would have twice as much money.)
- In matters other than sex and drugs, what exactly do you advocate that would give me personally more freedom of choice? Name just one concrete thing, please.
Two kinds of people in this world: Those who mind their own business (Conservatives) and those who have to mind everyone else’s except their own (Progressives)
Excellent article! Since I figured out a while ago that liberals are impervious to logic, facts and reason, I have been using the ‘unanswerable question’ method as my favorite way of shutting up these pretentious progressive boors. A few of my favorites:
-Since ‘climate change’ can cause temperatures to rise or fall, droughts as well as floods, etc.etc., how will we know that we’ve finally licked the diabolical problem?
-If John Kerry lost the 2004 election due to the 250+ swift boat vets lying about him, why is there no clamor for prosecuting these highly decorated miscreants for undermining the integrity of the election?
-Since banning trans fat and sugary sodas will make for a healthier society, and lower healthcare costs, why not ban all contact sports, thus saving society from expensive sports-related injuries?
-What hospital claims to be Obama’s birth hospital?
After a while though, it’s like shooting fish in a barrel; liberals aren’t nearly as smart as they believe themselves to be.
I recommend also the method of Mr Sarcastic—please excuse the length—, from Thomas Love Peacock’s novel, Melincourt (1817), chapter Twenty-One, “The City of Novote”:
MR. SARCASTIC.
Nothing, you well know, is so rare as the coincidence of theory and practice. A man who “will go through fire and water to serve a friend” in words, will not give five guineas to save him from famine. A poet will write Odes to Independence, and become the obsequious parasite of any great man who will hire him. A burgess will hold up one hand for purity of election, while the price of his own vote is slily dropped into the other. I need not accumulate instances.
MR. FORESTER.
You would find it difficult, I fear, to adduce many to the contrary.
MR. SARCASTIC.
This then is my system. I ascertain the practice of those I talk to, and present it to them as from myself, in the shape of theory: the consequence of which is, that I am universally stigmatised as a promulgator of rascally doctrines. Thus I said to Sir Oliver Oilcake, “When I get into Parliament I intend to make the sale of my vote as notorious as the sun at noon-day. I will have no rule of right, but my own pocket. I will support every measure of every administration, even if they ruin half the nation for the purpose of restoring the Great Lama, or of subjecting twenty millions of people to be hanged, drawn, and quartered at the pleasure of the man-milliner of Mahomet’s mother. I will have ship-loads of turtle and rivers of Madeira for myself, if I send the whole swinish multitude to draft and husks.” Sir Oliver flew into a rage, and swore he would hold no further intercourse with a man who maintained such infamous principles.
MR. HIPPY.
Pleasant enough, to show a man his own picture, and make him damn the ugly rascal.
MR. SARCASTIC.
I said to Miss Pennylove, whom I knew to be laying herself out for a good match, “When my daughter becomes of marriageable age, I shall commission Christie to put her up to auction, ‘the highest bidder to be the buyer; and if any dispute arise between two or more bidders, the lot to be put up again and resold’.” Miss Pennylove professed herself utterly amazed and indignant, that any man, and a father especially, should imagine a scheme so outrageous to the dignity and delicacy of the female mind.
THE HONOURABLE MRS. PINMONEY, AND MISS DANARETTA.
A most horrid idea certainly.
MR. SARCASTIC.
The fact, my dear ladies, the fact: how stands the fact? Miss Pennylove afterwards married a man old enough to be her grandfather, for no other reason, but because he was rich; and broke the heart of a very worthy friend of mine, to whom she had been previously engaged, who had no fault but the folly of loving her, and was quite rich enough for all purposes of matrimonial happiness. How the dignity and delicacy of such a person could have been affected, if the preliminary negotiation with her hobbling Strephon had been conducted through the instrumentality of honest Christie’s hammer, I cannot possibly imagine.
MR. HIPPY.
Nor I, I must say. All the difference is in the form, and not in the fact. It is a pity the form does not come into fashion: it would save a world of trouble.
MR. SARCASTIC.
I irreparably offended the Reverend Doctor Vorax by telling him, that having a nephew, whom I wished to shine in the church, I was on the look-out for a luminous butler, and a cook of solid capacity, under whose joint tuition he might graduate. “Who knows,” said I, “but he may immortalize himself at the University, by giving his name to a pudding?”—I lost the acquaintance of Mrs. Cullender, by saying to her, when she had told me a piece of gossip as a very particular secret, that there was nothing so agreeable to me as to be in possession of a secret, for I made a point of telling it to all my acquaintance:
Mrs. Cullender left me in great wrath, protesting she would never again throw away her confidence on so leaky a vessel.
-How is it that the Constitution is a living thing, but a six-month old fetus is not?
ZING!
If I knew where you were I’d hand you a giant stuffed panda, you winner, you!
If I had to classify myself ideologically, I would say I am probably a bit more of a liberal than a conservative, but I am definitely somewhere in between. And I think most of these questions are good ones. In my opinion, it is the extreme partisanship of most discussions on these types of moral, ethical, environmental and social questions that is a big part of our problem in society today. Why can’t we discuss all these issues without resorting to labelling it as “us” versus “them”, “Liberal” versus “Conservative”? These are all questions that are important to be debated in a open, democratic, society. On many of these issues I expect I would agree with the author’s position, but probably not on all of them. Life just isn’t that simple.
A very thoughtful point. I believe that there was less “labeling” and more open debate of ideas before the rise of “critical theory” among activist faculty on college campuses. “Critical theory” seemed to lead to criticism for the sake of criticism – but only criticism of the Right. It is often accompanied by the “No Enemies to the Left” mantra. Eventually, the Right started to push back.
I like this little observation from “Whited Sepulchre” concerning shout-downs of visiting speakers on college campuses whose views are less “progressive” than those of activist professors: “Note to self: do some research on whether college campuses are the most likely places for attacks on free speech”
“Critical theory” seemed to lead to criticism for the sake of criticism – but only criticism of the Right.
Correct. And here are the roots of that meme. In its takeover of our cultural life, the generation of the 60s has adhered loyally to the course of action set down for it by two Marxist philosophers, the Italian Communist prophet Antonio Gramsci and the German emigré Herbert Marcuse, whose doctrines acquired a wide popularity among teachers, students and intellectuals.
In his Prison Notebooks, Gramsci argued that in order to change society, one must first change consciousness, which can only be done by seizing control of a nation’s social institutions: schools, churches, government agencies, the academic disciplines, entertainment, the arts and, of course, the media. This is precisely what has happened as Gramsci’s hegemonic idea pursues its “long march through the institutions.”
The Left has also prioritized Marcuse’s concept of “discriminatory tolerance” or “repressive tolerance,” developed in his influential 1965 essay Repressive Tolerance, in which he argues that “freedom (of opinion, of assembly, of speech) becomes an instrument for absolving servitude.” Marcuse urges “intolerance against movements from the Right and toleration of movements from the Left, which, as should now be evident, serves to justify repression in order to alter the social structure in the direction of a socialist, totalitarian state — what Israeli historian Jacob Leib Talmon has dubbed “totalitarian democracy.” In the name of freedom of thought, freedom of thinking is progressively curtailed.
Thus, the price of admission to any reasonable debate – facts, reason, logic, intellectual honesty – simply can’t be found among so-called ‘progressives’. The often overlooked effect of the Gramscian, Machiavellian ‘long march’ is that of the corruption of the very language that we use to frame our debates. As Jean-Francois Reval has said in his “The Flight From Truth: The Reign of Deceit in the Age of Information:
The “elephant in the living room” is this: Once reason, facts, logic and freedom have been taken off the table – what then?
Thanks for the details. I believe that your point concerning corruption of language is especially important.
you are wrong. A LOT OF the questions are that simple. you are on one side or the other. …if you wish to compromise can you still be right? there is no half right or quarter right. Life isn’t black or white but truth is.
2 kinds of people ..producers and parasites.
conservatives don’t care what the liberals do with their money their time …until they cross the line and demand that the rest of the world conforms to their ideals.
…it is that simple.
That’s an interesting point. Unfortunately, I think there are different cultures, different worldviews involved and bridging them is not as easy as simply agreeing on on individual issues.
For example, when the Iraq War was gearing up I thought it was a very bad idea. Not getting rid of Saddam – that was fine as far as I was concerned. I just objected to the half-assed way Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld conducted it. (I was more a supporter of the “Powell Doctrine.”) However, I couldn’t bring myself to actually protest against the war because doing so would put me in the same camp as Cindy Sheehan, Michael Moore, Code Pink, and most of the commies in Hollywood and San Francisco. To me, a victory for Cindy Sheehan, et. al., was a victory for the radical, anti-American left in general. Such a victory would give them a huge boost of political and cultural capital, which they would spend on re-making America in their twisted image. Rather than make common cause with “people like them,” I preferred to stay out of the debate or else support the administration as it tried to make the best of a royal cluster f**k.
I’m not sure that’s a strong or admirable position to take. Would I, like some Germans in the 1930s, support the Nazis just to keep the Communists from taking power? Or vice-versa? Maybe that’s the essence of politics: pick a team and live with the consequences.
To answer those who object to my use of the word “progressive” – I use it deliberately, usually placed in sarcastic quotes, to deny the Left their unsubstantiated claim to anything related to progress. In the same way I would use scare quotes to describe David Frum as a “conservative.”
The “progressives” like to call themselves “progressives” because they have completely squandered another previously good word, “liberal” and felt the need to steal another good word.
As rrbs pointed out above (comment #32), everything that fixes society for “progressives” is external to them. That is because they can’t create anything new – they only redistribute that which already exists.
I thought they called themselves “progressive” before they called themselves “liberal.” You might say they’re returning to their roots.
I hope Mr. Atbashian will not sue me if I copy these questions and send them to all on my email list. This needs to go viral.
The Progressives’ Transformation of the 10 Commandments
President Barack Obama promised during his campaign and inaugural speeches that we would witness a fundamental transformation of America. To be sure, his idea of a transformation is more akin to Karl Marx or Hugo Chavez than to Jesus Christ and the Holy Trinity.
Perhaps we should be grateful that, so far, President Obama and his progressive cabal are fixated on health care, cap & trade, climate change and other big government projects. With so much on his plate, Obama hasn’t had time to fundamentally charge the very basis of our legal system — the 10 Commandments, as given to the prophet Moses by Yahweh on Mount Sinai.
But rest assured, there will be many — gay activists, atheists, hard-core leftists, etc. — who will eventually get around to fundamentally transforming God’s 10 Commandments.
I. I am your leader, Obama. When I and my minions are around, who needs God?
II. Obama, Pelosi and Reid must be exalted with carved images throughout the nation.
III. Prayer will be banned in public, but praise, song and poetry honoring Obama will be constant.
IV. Remember the Sabbath Day. Don’t observe it, simply remember it.
V. Honor thy mother and thy father if they love Obama; otherwise, call child protection services and claim they’ve abused you.
VI. Thou shall not kill or abuse terrorists or criminals, but unborn babies may be killed right up to the moment of their birth.
VII. Thou shall marry anyone or any creature you wish with the full protection of Obama.
VIII. Thou shall steal from those who work and save and give such bounty to those who are slothful, irresponsible and non-productive.
IX. Thou shall not bear false witness against your neighbor, unless they refuse to accept Obama as their god and their leader.
X. You shall covet your neighbor’s house. When Obama is done transforming America you will have it.
If socialism is so great and grand and wonderful, explain why East Germany gave up socialism and re-united with free West Germany. Why didn’t West Germany give up it’s freedom and join with socialist East Germany?
Since the end of the Korean War, both North and South Korea started at roughly the same place economically. Explain why after more than 50 years the GDP of South Korea is over 900 billion a year and the GDP of North Korea is only 25 billion a year.
Hey guys I am a conservative but one question, does abortion start when my 14 year old son masturbates? Who decides when something becomes human? If my wife takes one of those day after birth control pills is that abortion? Is she and I guilty of murder?
Is that a trick question or something?
If you want to raise the question of life beginning at conception, let me throw this one into the area:
People trying to corner a pro-lifer with the idea that a single sperm-cell or unfertilized egg is a life are people who are trying to take the argument into the land of absurdity. To do this, they need to drag everything back to a point where something is obviously not a life.
Oddly, this defeats their argument. Because it points out by contrast that their stance of a fetus not being a life is NOT OBVIOUS.
Now here’s my advice to you: if you honestly don’t know, don’t do it. I mean, what a thing to be wrong about!
Say there’s a cardoard box in a field. Someone hands you a machine gun and says, “Shoot at the cardboard box.” You ask, “Is anything in the box?” “Well,” the guy says, “some people think it has a baby in it, some people think it has a batch of kittens in it, some people think there’s a guy in there but he MIGHT already be dead.” Tell ya what: Put the weapon down and go find something better to do with your time! (Or “Put the machine gun away and leave the box alone”… puns intended.)
That’s my advice on sex: If you’re confused about the result, or unwilling to accept the consequences, or what it’s all about in the first place… GO FIND SOMETHING BETTER TO DO.
Every human being has a god-given right to life … until they’re born, of course. (That’s a joke)
I’m with you on this one. To some people, yes, a morning-after pill is murder. While I acknowledge their philosophical rigor, I don’t think that’s a useful point to start from. Spanking the monkey doesn’t count because there hasn’t been a conception – but yes, that’s also a fairly arbitrary starting point.
Here’s the big problem for the most hard-line, zero-tolerance pro-lifers: nature (or god, if you prefer) aborts WAY more babies than we do. The statistical claims vary, but some studies show that most pregnancies are aborted naturally, usually so early that the mother isn’t even aware that she was preggers. From an intelligent design point of view, either the human body is a rickety piece of junk or god hates babies – take your pick.
On the other hand … I don’t think anybody who is sane can regard a late-term abortion as anything other than an horrific tragedy. Nobody sane is “pro abortion”, any more than anyone sane is “pro war”. Where to draw the line between “no big deal” and “holy crap – we shouldn’t be doing this”? I reckon consciousness is the go. Unfortunately, that’s not going to make anyone happy, because I think it’s around 26 weeks – too late for pro-lifers, and way too early for pro-choicers.
But we know what happens if we “ban” abortion. Women are going to look for ways to do it anyway, and it’s potentially very risky (to the mother) without medical assistance. I don’t think we should go back to that. I know it’s arbitrary, but I tend to assign more rights to the living than the unborn.
Personally, and from a utilitarian point of view, I think the emphasis should be on education, encouragement to get it done earlier rather than later, and to begin keeping much better records so that policy can actually be informed. People who claim to know how many abortions have been performed are just guessing – the stat-keeping is generally woeful (try it – pick a state or country and try to find reliable stats on abortions). Anyone who has a plan to reduce the number of abortions – we should pay attention to them. Provided that their plan isn’t just brow-beating or attempts to restrict/ban access.
I kind of agree with the criteria. If it doesn’t have a nervous system, then it a) can’t feel pain and b) can’t be conscious. It’s “alive” in the same sense a plant is alive – performing biological functions but not necessarily aware of anything. Therefore, morning-after pills work ok for me.
Late term? The most important question is: does the fetus suffer? It’s got a nervous system, it’s got a brain, so it *can* feel pain. But does it? It *can* be conscious. But is it?
“It *can* be conscious. But is it?”
I’m no expert, but I think the consensus is that that by the third trimester yes, a fetus can feel pain. That was the basis of my 26 weeks. It is horrific, there’s no doubt about that. Unfortunately, people who start and end with “never ever under any circumstances” exclude themselves from the problem of how to reduce the numbers. I can’t imaging that anybody WOULDN’T like to see late-term abortions disappear completely. That should be the focus of policy discussions, IMHO. Making it harder to get earlier abortions is (IMHO) at odds with that objective.
Now, I have to give you a big virtual *hug* for posting a rational response.
So you think it’s okay to kill the comatose? By the way, as the Creator of our lives, God owns our lives and can dispose of them as He pleases, therefore acts of God in this capacity cannot be used to justify human actions which usurp this capacity. (I wrote it like this on purpose so that no rational person could use my words to attack us for pointing to Jesus to justify our actions).
“So you think it’s okay to kill the comatose?”
Not if there’s a chance of them recovering. I didn’t say it was simple.
“By the way, as the Creator of our lives, God owns our lives and can dispose of them as He pleases”
“therefore acts of God in this capacity cannot be used to justify human actions which usurp this capacity.”
So that imago dei thing … does it mean anything?
“I wrote it like this on purpose so that no rational person could use my words to attack us for pointing to Jesus to justify our actions”
Hmm. I’m not going to try to pick on logical errors … but I do want to point out that it’s (a) entirely unnecessary to appeal to a higher power to see the value in human beings, and (b) your argument cuts no ice at all with the non-religious.
Myth-buster’s reasoning still applies, even when we take God out of the equation: if a baby–or any person, for that matter–died spontaneously from some natural condition, would we consider that homicide? No–we would say things like “It’s in God’s hands” or “Nature is cruel sometimes”. But that doesn’t justify taking a knife to a newborn infant because we wanted a boy, and got a girl instead.
The one I used on my brother was “if Sarah Palin is unqualified to be VP due to lack of experience, what experience does Barak Obama have that makes him more qualified to be President?” The answer to which was “he graduated from Harvard and she went to a state university”. To which I responded, “so if an Ivy league education makes one more qualified to be President than a non-ivy league, why was Yale educated G W Bush considered too stupid to be President?”
Then the discussion reverts to obscenities.
I was bitching about the fact that when I was a kid every house in my neighborhood (but one) had a dad, a mom and 2-5 kids who were related genetically to that same mom and dad.
A lefty friend of mine called that “outdated” and said we needed to progress away from it, because nothing stands still. Then there came the inevitable smack against “Ward & June Cleaver,” etc.
I asked him how he could possibly have ANY respect for Native Americans, since none of their communities – NONE!- had made any advancement (nothing technical or social) in over 6,000 years. A whole continent of separate societies and not ONE can come up with the wheel? Sheesh! If they can keep their system “pristine” and that’s OK with lefties, why can’t I keep things the way I like them?
Just today I have tried to reason with some leftie friends on Facebook using the Socratic dialogue method. Here are the responses from three different people to my questions: “I am not going down any rabbit holes with you.” “Why should I answer? You know where I stand.” “I won’t bother to answer.” “You are beyond enlightenment.” I rep[eat, this is just today! This goes on in every single discussion with a Leftist, to the point that I think Leftism truly is a cult-like dogma where the mind shuts down to all reasonable discourse and reality outside its “narrative.”
A fun follow-up question to at least one of these responses would be:
- If you won’t go down my rabbit-hole, then why should I go down yours?
- Precisely how poor do you think everyone needs to be to eliminate poverty here? elsewhere?
- Precisely how hungry do you think everyone needs to be to eliminate hunger here? elsewhere?
- Where does the power for that “green” car come from? A battery? How do you recharge it? An outlet? Where does that energy come from? How does that affect your “green” car’s real carbon footprint?
- You said higher taxes are the solution, so how much extra money are you sending the IRS this year? Nothing? Why not? You said …
- (In response to just about anything progressive … ) I see your point. Where are you planning to emigrate? Are you leaving soon?
What a great article. I marvel at this man’s view of our country. If only our sheeple could begin to think this way.
Another fave:
If restraint from sex is “unnatural” how come it can be accomplished using only the power of the mind, but the left will never call abortion “unnatural” even though it needs a clinic full of scientific equipment, a doctor who needs to be trained in a college – a college which needs to be built using bulldozers, cranes, rivet guns, welding torches and bricks… all of which need to be manufactured in factories… which need to be built… etc.?
Just what IS the carbon footprint of an abortion? What is the carbon footprint of 300,000 abortions?
…Did I mention that the abortion clinic and the medical college were both built on land stolen from Indians?
“Progressive,” eh? Progress towards what, I ask?
“Progressives” will demand the head of any CEO that is inept or crooked. So why is it somehow different when it’s one of their own? (Something of a rhetorical question, I admit).
“Progressives” will say they are vehemently against the use of force, but if it must be done, then we must have an “exit strategy?” Where’s theirs, then? Do any of their social engineering programs ever end?
Whenever by tax cuts, new paradigms, cutting edge industries, our GDP grows, the surplus is automatically taken and used to fund new/more programs. How is it then that “Progressives” always claim they are all for people “getting ahead,” when they keep taking all of our spare cash away from us?
Why do “Progressives” always demand that people must bear the consequences of a thing, but will exempt themselves from the same? When a radical “Earth First” member says the Earth would be better off without people, why do they never offer themselves up for elimination?
Meh. Just a few passing thoughts.
I can answer most of these. You guys would probably call me a liberal (whatever that means these days), but personally I think I’m just a pragmatist. Who wants me to post a list of responses? No, seriously. I actually agree with the premise of a few of the questions, but obviously I disagree with a few others. Some are just straw-men and at least one is a “have you stopped beating your wife” sort of question. I don’t think many of them are particularly challenging.
…actually you sound like one of those “no label” guys. lol
you are one sad puppy.
“…actually you sound like one of those “no label” guys. lol”
Actually, I had to go look that up. Mostly, I don’t think you guys actually know what the labels you frequently use actually even mean. I’d be inclined to be cynical about that no labels thing, but I don’t know much about it.
“you are one sad puppy.”
Er … why, exactly?
I am curious that nobody was interested to hear answers to those questions. If I were you, I’d be “yeah, alright commie pinko – let’s see what you’ve got”. But you guys seem to be all “oh god, nobody respond or he’ll ruin our questions”
I am curious that nobody was interested to hear answers to those questions.
I’m mildly curious, but I’m not in the mood of saying “Yeah, commie, bring it on!” right now.
If I were you, I’d just answer the questions anyway. But the questions aren’t given because they don’t have answers–the questions are given, to give statists something to think about, and to cause them to walk away, foaming at the mouth.
my question is—
why would one want to speak with, let alone question, a lib?
There are some good questions. However, I do have one disagreement.
“If capitalism makes some people rich without making others poor, who will benefit when capitalism is destroyed?”
Capitalism makes people richer and poorer. We are people, there is no perfect system and there never will be unless people become uncorruptable or if money becomes obsolete. Capitalism concentrates wealth at the top. Capitalism severely punishes laziness (a good thing) and misfortune (a bad thing). However, it has one advantage in that it tends to reward hard work. Socialism is the opposite, it rewards laziness and misfortune but punishes hard work.
Wade, I agree. That question was the only one on the whole list that had me scratching my head. I don’t believe Atbashian’s stated premise of Capitalism here is widely held. Capitalism is definitely NOT a zero sum gain (or is it ‘game’?), but I don’t think anyone maintains that no one becomes poor in the system. What about the investors in the Carbon Credit exchanges? What about unemployed New York Times staffers?
Wade, I see what you are saying, to a certain extent, but at the end of the day, we must always ask, “what is the alternative?” To say capitalism has its bad points is true, but we must ask what about the alternative, something like Socialism. Is it better?
If diversity is so laudable, why don’t the public schools require that a certain percentage of their teachers be pedophiles? Oh……….. well…, judging from all of the recent “female teacher has sex with her male students”, MAYBE THEY DO!!
Hangtown Bob, judging from the increasingly prevalent, reported cases of “female teacher has sex with her female students” of recent times…
Industrial logging is absolutely necessary, but so are wildfires. Total fire suppression leads to a build-up of dead limbs, leaves, trees, etc. which can lead to devastating fires that can destroy human habitation. When you have regular fires, there is very little fuel for them to burn and so the fires are small and easily contained if they threaten buildings. Fires can also reduce animal over-population in forests. Additionally, some plant species actually need fire to reproduce–for example, the seeds of the Giant Sequoias need to make contact with bare earth to germinate, and in the cool wet environment of their part of the Sierra Nevadas fire is the only way that the seeds can reach the soil.
Other than that, this was a great list! I’d love to know some of the responses to the questions you asked the socialists.
Question: Why isn’t George W. Bush, whose policies are singularly responsible for winning the right to vote for over 30 MILLION WOMEN in Iraq and Afghanistan, regarded as the greatest Suffragist since Susan B. Anthony?
I was one of the friends mentioned in the article who witnessed the frothing. The reason we saw it and others didn’t is due to the fact that we were sitting a little ways away from the scene of the pounding Oleg gave these two, and we got a good look at her as she brushed near us. She was not only frothing, she was beet red and rabid, ready to explode. She was an old hippie, living in a time warp, a mad old hippie, living a time warp. Surely the frother has stopped frothing by now, however, these questions will live forever as they make their way through the blogosphere and eventually to the lips of pundits who claim them as their own original ideas.
•How did the “war on poverty” end?
The war will end with the rout of the rich, and equality in which everyone is poor.
How come there are no liberal justices in the Supreme Court? There are 4 conservative extremists, 1 centrist, and 4 moderates, but no liberals.
TROLL!!!!!!!!!!!!
Hmmm. Did daxypoo miss the point, perhaps?
More baffling questions:
Why do American black folks side with “progressives” when they are for Margaret Sanger style eugenics that specifically have targeted blacks?
Why do people who want to ‘outlaw’ guns for the populace, favor their ‘government’ owning those and many other weapons at all?
Why does a half-black president want to tax tanning booths when that is the only way some black people can get the vitamin D they need (especially those who live in Northern climates)?
If America is so racist, why do Mexicans and just about every other ethnicity than ‘white’ want to come here at all (legally or otherwise)?
What makes watermelon ‘racist’ and bacon ‘racist by proxy’?
Why do Leftists rant about ‘diversity’ at the same time preaching out of the other side of their mouth’s about ‘equality’ whilst during the same moment, giving ‘labels’ to everyone (i.e.: Gay/Mexican/African-American/American-Indian-Women/et al).
Why is it okay to bash successful people in life but not the unsuccessful, poor people in life?
Since when on earth did ‘obesity’ become “poor folk disease” and why is it so rampant amongst the supposed ‘impoverished’ in the USA? Starving and suffering from obesity? Wasn’t there a time when being ‘fat’ meant you were ‘wealthy’? I guess we have new standards of ‘suffering’ now that we have obese people buying loads of food in motorized carts via food-stamp cards. Nice.
We can’t profile a ‘Muslim’ as a potential terrorist but we CAN profile ex-military as terrorists (as if I have fear of the guy who risked his life for my frickin’ country over some Sharia-law nut-job exremist? PLEASE).
If a fetus is not considered alive because it can’t survive outside its mother then why do we consider a newborn alive because it can’t survive outside its mother either without the mother feeding and nurturing.
If a fetus is not a life-form, then, why do scientists consider the smallest of microbial evidence found on other planets “signs of life”?
Think-outside-the-box.
Doubtfire wrote:
“If a fetus is not considered alive because it can’t survive outside its mother then why do we consider a newborn alive because it can’t survive outside its mother either without the mother feeding and nurturing.”
Some do NOT consider the infant to be fully human, and support killing it for any reason, or no reason, up until 24 months after birth.
“If a fetus is not a life-form, then, why do scientists consider the smallest of microbial evidence found on other planets “signs of life”?”
They don’t. There has never been any “microbial evidence” found on other planets.
Also, nobody argues that a fetus is not a “life-form” (sic). They argue that, while it is alive, it is not fully a human being.
Please become better informed.
If a fetus is not human then what is it? What is it’s DNA?
Here is another batch that I promised earlier.
- If the liberal philosophy is so great, how come the countries that have embraced it for generations are massively poorer places for the average person to live in?
- Can you name a couple of significant things that, were you granted the power to implement all your liberal social and economic policies, would be cheaper for the average person than they are now, including the time spent waiting in a queue?
- How can you even begin to justify calling yourself advocate for the poor and the working class when you constantly advocate open borders and similar things that don’t harm you (quite the contrary, allow you to hire some $5/hour servant who takes two buses to come clean your toilets) but mostly hurt people who are poorer and less educated than you? Will you be any time soon moving to a minority neighbourhood, and sending your kids to school there?
- More generally, do you think it is moral to intentionally advocate harmful policies to signal your status by showing off that you are rich, smart and strong enough to avoid the harmful societal consequences of these policies that only lesser people have to suffer? What kind of names do you like to call those weaker people who can’t similarly afford to escape your utopia but can only complain about it? Don’t you think that sort of hypocrisy is, pardon the expression, a bit “rich”?
- Do you ever secretly think that drugs and drug user lifestyle are a rather handy tarpit to keep at least some of those less intelligent proles and lower middle classes in their proper place so that they don’t get any uppity ideas of competing with you for the ever-diminishing critical supply of status and good jobs?
- Speaking of schools, did you ever notice that when it comes to elementary and high schools, liberals despise exclusive private schools and idolize public ones, but when it comes to colleges and universities, liberals despise state universities and idolize exclusive private ones?
- And doesn’t it just freaking piss you off that some stupid and ignorant prole who has probably never even heard of Jacques Derrida or Henry Louis Gates gets to live in a big suburban home and have all his material needs amply provided by corporations while you write your graduate thesis on the postmodern hermeneutics of oppression and can’t afford but to live in an apartment in an area where you don’t much want to go out after dark? Especially when you tell them what you study and they just ask you to get them some fries with that?
- When you read “1984″, do you actually believe and imagine that your side is most certainly not the villains in this story of “general human alienation” against “oppressive system of state capitalism”?
- Remember when you guys told us that burning the sacred symbols of your opponents is the most fundamental civil right of all, in fact, the epitome of patriotism?
- Looking at left-wing demonstrations, have you ever noticed how their tactics of shouting and lying down on the ground until their demands are met are really not that different from a toddler throwing a crying tantrum because some other kid has more candy?
- Since you seem to so enthusiastically support WikiLeaks, what do you think was so morally wrong with those hackers making those climate researcher emails public? And when are we going to see those JournoList archives? If you argue against their release by claiming that private conservations should remain private even if they shed light to the character of the speaker, can you show me where you ever made this argument for Mel Gibson and Dog the Bounty Hunter?
- With your enthusiasm for all types of alternative medicine, what do you think about the idea that the next time a dangerous epidemic breaks out somewhere in the third world, we send a planeload of homeopaths and other alternative medicine healers to take care of the problem? And isn’t their indigeneous natural medicine superior anyway?
- Why exactly do you idolize Japan, the country that has the strictest borders in the entire industrialized world and zero tolerance for any kind of diversity, and that mercilessly kicks out every gaijin the second they start disrupting the ethnically and culturally homogeneous harmony of Japan? Wouldn’t the nation and culture of Japan also be greatly improved by opening its borders for all comers?
- Rven though the Latin American countries are in every possible way superior to the United States, how come it is inhuman for the latter to send the captured illegal immigrants back there?
- Japan also has the death penalty, like most Asian states. Why is death penalty morally problematic to you only when the United States does it, but not when China and Iran (the latter with its executions of 5,000 homosexuals simply for being homosexuals) do it?
- Asian countries also famously like to execute drug smugglers. Why do you oppose this? Are you really such an unrepentant colonialist that you actually want to refight the Opium War to protect your sacred right to sell hard drugs to poor people?
- And speaking of drugs, why is it that you have the right to bodily autonomy to use as many illegal drugs as you want, yet you believe that the state should strictly control and ration actual medicine and all pharmaceutical drugs?
- Similarly, could you show me when you ever raised the ruckus about Cuba’s policy to lock up every HIV-positive person in a gulag? Or that recent United Nations vote where your beloved third world outnumbered the evil Western countries to remove homosexuality as a protected category against death penalty?
- Those of you who claim innocent people are constantly being executed for murders they didn’t commit, how many such people can you name? Those of you living in death penalty states, what do you estimate is your probability of you ever being executed as an innocent? Isn’t it ridiculously neurotic to get all worked up over something that with the lifetime probability of about one in a billion?
- Those of you who oppose death penalty for moral reasons regardless of guilt, is it just a coincidence that your every poster boy for the abolition of death penalty always seems to be some black cop killer? Have you ever protested against the execution of some wealthy white chauvinist and racist who murdered his battered wife?
- Doesn’t the strange asymmetry of how the conservative policies work pretty well in a nation with tall enough fences to protect it from the intruding moochers whereas liberal policies must always be universal so that productive people are unable to vote against them with their feet ever make you wonder if liberalism is really the only truly correct way to think about anything?
- Is it only a coincidence that sensitive liberal males who go do Peace Corps style work in the poor third world always seem to end up with a young local girlfriend… in a perfectly “equal” and “enlightened” relationship, of course?
- Even though all of your smart and cool friends agree about everything, do you like to think that you are independent thinkers as hopeless to “put in line” as herding cats? Do you proudly proclaim yourself a “dissident thinker” who is “suspicious of authority” all the while you are trying to create a society where all dissent from your views is actively marginalized, even silenced and criminalized?
- When you watch The Wire, do you imagine yourself being Omar? Or just gently held and caressed by Omar? (Meta-question: If the second question makes you angry, can you honestly admit why?)
- Every cancer that can be somehow tenuously connected to nuclear power is reason enough to shut down all nuclear plants forever, but millions of people dying of a communicable but trivially avoidable lethal disease doesn’t warrant any behavioural changes of them. True or false?
- Capitalism is morally evil because one old and seriously mentally ill homeless guy once died, but a hundred million people killed by socialism were broken eggs necessary to make an omelet and pretty much deserved it for being such ungrateful dissidents anyway. True or false?
- The 3,000 deaths of 9/11 are meaningless and Islamic terrorism doesn’t really even exist, yet liberals scream hysterically and run around like headless chickens in a panic and doom about Christian anti-abortion terrorism that kills about one doctor per decade and has so far blown up more abortion clinics in the fictional Law & Order television series than in real life. Why such a disproportionate response?
- Do the Geneva conventions then apply to abortion clinic bombers the same way they apply to terrorists in the Middle East? If not, why not?
- Speaking of terrorism, if terrorism is really just an imaginary bugaboo that Bush and his dastardly cronies whipped up to scare people and justify invading foreign countries for their oil, how come we then can’t build any nuclear plants because they are tempting targets for these non-existent terrorists?
- What exactly is the difference between the arguments “We should not build new nuclear plants because they are tempting targets for terrorists” and “Women should not go out after dark because they are tempting targets for rapists”?
- What exactly is the difference between “Since America took in all immigrants in the past, they must take in all immigrants today” and “Since she once consented to having sex with this one guy, she must therefore automatically consent to have sex with every guy”?
- If the massive wage gap between men and women who do equal work proves that women are oppressed, then does the equally (heh) massive wage gap between Americans and Swedes who do equal work prove that Swedes are oppressed and therefore Sweden ought to change their social, cultural and economic systems to be more like that of America?
- If you believe in “equal pay for equal work”, where “equal” is defined by the number of hours by your axiomatic labor theory of value, how much are you willing to pay me for running in a circle around your house for three hours? Is it less than what you currently make working three hours?
- Why is it perfectly OK for Canada to require that her immigrants must be proficient in national language, and to require that all voters must show a valid ID and prove their citizenship before they are allowed to cast their votes, but it would be almost unspeakably horrible racism for the United States to do the same?
- More generally, why is it always so very wrong for the United States not to have policies such as open borders and gay marriage that only a handful of other countries in the world (and zero in the Middle East) even have in the first place? Do you ever realize how absurd and idiotic you must seem to most people on Earth when you imagine yourself living in some totalitarian dictatorship where the jackbooted police can just ask an alien to show his papers?
- Do you ever have trouble combining your belief in open borders and unlimited immigration with your bumper sticker “Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell”?
- If you think that the reason America’s schools are so bad is that the best young minds of America go to business and science instead of education and resentment studies, do you think that America would really be better off if Larry Page and Sergey Brin had gone to become inner city high school math teachers after graduation, or studied grad school sociology?
- Do you ever find it odd how all the reasons why you dislike America are precisely the same as the reasons you imagine that people in other countries dislike America? For example, you think that people of China are now less willing to immigrate to America after Arizona enacted that law that you so hate and therefore think that the Chinese also hate as well? Is this really just an amazing coincidence?
- If genes really are as meaningless as liberals like to claim, how come you are willing to pay $30K for an egg of a healthy Harvard graduate once you have waited until 35 to get married and have kids, and find yourself infertile? Wouldn’t it be more in line with social justice for you to pay all that moolah to some trailer park single mom (of different race, since as we all know, races and racial differences are only a social construct) for her eggs? So why not do that? What exactly are you so afraid of?
- Speaking of “social justice”, what exactly is the difference between social justice and socialism? Can you list a few things that a social justice advocate and a socialist would disagree about? If two ideologies always agree and disagree about the exact same things, could we reasonably conclude that these two ideologies really are one and the same?
- You seem to think that human beings have nothing innate or immutable, but everything in us is either socially constructed or solely determined by environment and nurture. Do you also believe this about homosexual desire? After all, if you honestly believe that all gender differences are socially constructed but homosexuality is innate and natural, how does nature know to direct each gay man’s desire exclusively towards other humans who are socially constructed as “men”?
- If right and wrong really are just different points of view, why is it then so finger-quotes “wrong” for me not to actively fight global warming, gay bashings or islamophobia? (Speaking of which, when an Islamist beats up a gay guy whose homosexuality makes him vile in the eyes of Allah, who am I supposed to help?)
- If the humanities are more important than STEM because humanities teach us about truth and beauty, why exactly do we still keep them in the payroll after they have now lectured and hectored us for decades that truth and beauty don’t even exist and are nothing but patriarchal and oppressive social constructs?
- Speaking of sex, you tell us that it is sexual harassment whenever the victims feels like it is… except when the victim is a straight male who doesn’t want to shower naked in front of a gay co-worker? Is there any sort of coherent principle behind these seemingly arbitrary rules?
- Why do you automatically just assume that in a centrally planned economy, you would get to be the central planner? Do you perhaps imagine that come the revolution, the roused working class will recognize you as their vanguard and unanimously elevate you to that position for your superior knowledge of Derrida and Lacan?
Another excellent list. If it were mine, I’d spend some time editing the questions for brevity. And, even though the complexity of the subject explains the complexity of the questions, I have found that there’s almost always room for improvement with regards to making it sound simpler and more straightforward. Unfortunately for us writers, the effectiveness of our argument largely depends on such formalities.
There’s only one frikkin’ word for this article; Bravo!
Excellent article; it does remind me of the coffee shop I used to hang out in when my wife was working on her graduate degree.
I developed two approaches, one semi-stolen from Jonah Goldberg, one of my own. I have had both result in responses ranging from rage to thoughtful resignation followed by eventual revision of the leftist’s worldview. The last response was extremely rare, but amazing to see when the light bulb clicked on…
The first was simply the act of running through a list of policies and provisions of Socialistic governments (Fascist, Socialist, Communist, etc.), such as universal health care, state provided pensions and wage controls, ecologic worshipfulness, etc., and after getting the lefty to evince agreement with most or all of them, I’d simply ask them what else of the Nazi Party platform they liked? Genocide? Experimentation on humans? Long term plans for world conquest?
The second required getting the leftist to environmental issues, including global warming. After discussing the views of the leftist, usually inspiring complaints about how man was ruining the natural world. This was the cue for the question that freaked them out — I’d simply ask how long they’d been a Creationist? The result would be a flabbergasted leftist suddenly telling me that they didn’t believe that hokum, they believed in science and evolution, etc. etc.
My response was pretty straightforward — If you truly believe in evolution, and that mankind is the product of millions of years of trial and error, the result of natural events, then how can anything mankind does be construed as unnatural? If your faith lies purely with science, with evolution, then man is a product of nature, and anything man does is natural, no matter how it alters the surrounding environment.
That usually gets them sputtering
Thanks,
Q
Hail to the Master at the Cube. The Cube is a lot of fun but I like you best when you write straight, much of which apparently lands here. A suggestion on your book title. Your title attracts the choir but if you want to also get to back-pew-sleepers, try this. In large letters print out “SOCIALISM SUCKS”, then in small letters underneath follow with “the life out of its subjects”.
One other thing for all here to consider is the point made by a great Hungarian immigrant to America, Balint Vazsonyi. Balint pointed out that Marx used the term Capitalism to demonize all that Marx was against. Therefore when we call our economic system Capitalism we are falling into a trap that is pre-demonized in the minds of many leftists. He suggested instead a more appropriate term that does nor suffer from that demonization such as Free Enterprise, etc.
AKA Prehistoric Conservative
Not just a great article, but loads of the comments and questions were also well worth reading and internalising. Just wish I could retain all of this and then pop out the right question at the right time. Love to bait FeminNazis and mess with their heads, but you guys have really expanded the field.
your question, “If economic ups and downs are natural cycles, why is the downturn always blamed on unbridled capitalism, but the upturn is the result of a wise leadership of a Democrat president?” is a trick question. in order to answer this, you need need the existance of an upturn of the economy and a Democratic president.
There is one instance of a Democrat President improving the economy — John Kennedy. He did exactly what Reagan would alter be excoriated by the left for doing — lowered taxes.
Progressives/Liberals will coalesce into ‘Humanitarians’ once the current labels get enough negative publicity.
‘No labels’ seems to be going nowhere; So when the going gets tough, just change the label.
Norman Thomas (leading American socialist, pacifist, and six-time presidential candidate for the Socialist Party of America.)
I’m not so sure that “Humanitarian” is an alternate name for leftists that they would appreciate. I once heard someone raise the whimsical question “If vegetarians eat vegetables, what do humanitarians eat?” If humanitarianism were linked with cannibalism, even in jest, it would probably not have the effect desired by the left
If the war in Iraq was just about oil, where’s all the oil we received?
Where are the Nuclear Freeze protests regarding Iran and N. Korea?
If not for farmers shipping fresh greens to grocery stores by truck and rail, what would vegans eat in the Winter?
If being vegan is normal and natural, name one human civilization at any time in history that was exclusively vegan.
If a gay gene is found, would it be ok for a woman to abort a gay fetus?
Your first questions will probably just annoy most libs.
That last one!
OUCH! THAT’S GONNA LEAVE A MARK!!!!
If a gay gene is found, would it be ok for a woman to abort a gay fetus?
What if a gay gene is found and it turns out to be the same gene for pedophilia? The mother may want to abort a possible pedophile but would the gay rights activists have a say in this abortion? Do you believe that liberals or progressives would allow this abortion to happen without some type of law or regulatory oversight? Wouldn’t that mean that “back alley abortions” would now be done to bypass these very laws and regulations?
Articles and comments like these stimulate further reading. I suggest:
“The President Is No Prosecutor.”
Readers here will also remember that one of Obama’s ultimate goals is to be THE ONE that proved to the world that “The Constitution Is a Flawed Document”.
“If I had survived the original cast, I could certainly handle a
watered-down remakedinner-theater production.”An excellent list of questions, from a fan of The Peoples’ Cube.
After having lived in California for many years I came to the conclusion that Dr. Lyle H. Rossiter Jr. and Dr. Michael Savage were right. Liberalism IS a mental disorder.
At the very least, it’s an inability to process data rationally.
Thanks for improving my week.
Apart from your questions would you mind if I used some of your prose such as
like grains of sand, forming ephemeral dunes in the lifeless deserts of their minds.?
Too many questions, but I’ll bite:
1. Strawman. How many progressives claim true cultural equality as opposed to cultural parity-that other cultures deserve a chance at the table, and not to be discounted offhand?
2. Because one isn’t equal. Paying a woman less has nothing to do with the quality of her work, just her gender.
3. Because we aren’t that oppressed. There are some areas in which we are, like divorce law, but we really have it well.
4. Beliefs are valid when they are held in good faith. Valid does not equal correct.
5. That’s being human. How often have conservatives done the same thing lamenting the decline of the traditional family? It’s been declining for 50+ years. Shouldn’t it be dead by now?
6. Is the “truth” hate speech or not? If it is, you can trust him. If not, no.
7. This is a typical socratic “no-win”- supposedly to show the truth but framed to make answering impossible. If he succeeds in eliminating the poor, he loses his base. If he fails, the poor vote for someone else, and he loses his base. Therefore, the poor should be ignored entirely.
8. How did the war on drugs end? Both sides gave up.
9. There were demonstrations under feudal rule: they were called revolutions. They were often warranted. We had those too, and so do democracies: that’s why you gripe about the sixties.
10. It doesn’t make some rich without others poor. The rich make their money by shunting costs to others. Bill Gates would never be rich without cheap OEM Chinese labor.
Seriously, you need a better quality of questions to pull the intellectual card.
Let’s do some one-stop shopping here: original question, MisanthropeXL’s “answer,” my response in parentheses.
• If all cultures are equal, why doesn’t UNESCO organize International Cannibalism Week festivals?
1. Strawman. How many progressives claim true cultural equality as opposed to cultural parity-that other cultures deserve a chance at the table, and not to be discounted offhand?
(This is mainstream “Progressive” thought. You are simply denying that. You are factually wrong. But even under your formulation, how long do the other cultures get a “chance” before we get to decide they are inferior?)
• Why do those demanding “equal pay for equal work” never protest against “equal pay for little or no work”?
2. Because one isn’t equal. Paying a woman less has nothing to do with the quality of her work, just her gender.
(“One” isn’t equal? To the other? Why not? You didn’t answer the question.)
• Why has no politician ever run on men’s issues or promised to improve the lives of males?
3. Because we aren’t that oppressed. There are some areas in which we are, like divorce law, but we really have it well.
(Yes, men die earlier, do poorer in school, have 1/10th the funding for prostate cancer compared with breast cancer, never have the option of shacking up with some rich dude (unless you’re both gay), all legal presumptions are against us, but we have it comparatively well.)
• If all beliefs are equally valid, how come my belief in the absurdity of this maxim gets rejected by its proponents?
4. Beliefs are valid when they are held in good faith. Valid does not equal correct.
(Then aren’t those that ridicule the author’s belief necessarily accusing him of not holding his belief in good faith? What facts are they aware of suggesting the author’s belief is one held in bad faith?)
• Ever noticed that for the past thirty years, we’ve been hearing we have less than ten years to save the planet?
5. That’s being human. How often have conservatives done the same thing lamenting the decline of the traditional family? It’s been declining for 50+ years. Shouldn’t it be dead by now?
(Um, yes, it’s pretty close. Besides, conservatives haven’t said that “all” traditional families will disappear in any concrete timeframe, just that traditional families are being more and more persecuted and undermined. It’s still happening. Gay marriage and end of DADT?)
• Once a politician labels the truth as hate speech, can anyone trust him to speak the truth afterward?
6. Is the “truth” hate speech or not? If it is, you can trust him. If not, no.
(The truth is never hate speech. You apparently think that sometimes truth can be hate speech. You are therefore evil. Was that just hate speech?)
• If a politician gets elected by the poor on a promise to eliminate poverty, wouldn’t fulfilling his promise destroy his voting base? Wouldn’t he rather benefit from the growing numbers of poor people? Isn’t this an obvious conflict of interests?
7. This is a typical socratic “no-win”- supposedly to show the truth but framed to make answering impossible. If he succeeds in eliminating the poor, he loses his base. If he fails, the poor vote for someone else, and he loses his base. Therefore, the poor should be ignored entirely.
(If your premises are true, then politicians would ignore the poor entirely. They don’t. Why? The poor don’t vote for someone else if the politician can successfully convince the poor that the politician is trying, but those mean, evil Republicans are thwarting the politician’s efforts.)
• How did the “war on poverty” end? Has there been a peace treaty or a ceasefire? Who is the occupying force and who are the insurgents?
8. How did the war on drugs end? Both sides gave up.
(Great. Can we give up the War on Poverty, too? I can certainly use the tax cut.)
• Why weren’t there demonstrations with anti-feudal slogans under feudal rule? And under Stalin, no anti-communist demonstrations? And under Hitler, no anti-fascist demonstrations? In a free capitalist society, anti-capitalist demonstrations are commonplace. Is capitalism really the worst system?
9. There were demonstrations under feudal rule: they were called revolutions. They were often warranted. We had those too, and so do democracies: that’s why you gripe about the sixties.
(Demonstrations are not revolutions. Revolutions in feudal societies had to be plotted in secret, not on the street in full view of the “oppressors.”)
• If capitalism makes some people rich without making others poor, who will benefit when capitalism is destroyed?
10. It doesn’t make some rich without others poor. The rich make their money by shunting costs to others. Bill Gates would never be rich without cheap OEM Chinese labor.
(This simply deserves another question: Those OEM Chinese laborers, would they be richer or poorer without the work they get from Microsoft?)
“10. It doesn’t make some rich without others poor. The rich make their money by shunting costs to others. Bill Gates would never be rich without cheap OEM Chinese labor.”
Thank you for illustrating one of the fundamental truths about leftists.
Lefties have ZERO understanding of economics.
(HINT: Almost all rich people get that way by CREATING new wealth. The economy is not a zero-sum game.)
I mean seriously though, way too many to respond to. None of them really are that open and shut:
We are a consumer society because consumption defines us to the point of trumping things even like religion.
Experimenting on animals and embryos are both cruel.
Kyoto can be eliminated by a volcano, but so can the life of the unborn if an earthquake hits a hospital. Acts of God can’t be a basis for policy.
Holywood types tend to be opposed to capitalism’s excesses-intellectual property is not one of them. Why do conservatives pirate movies?
Socratic questions are not questions designed to show truth as to evoke a specific response. They often frame the debate in a specific way by using leading questions to corral thought into specific modes. This works for any political or ideological debate, and you can get so wrapped up in trying to respond to each leading question you get diverted from your original argument or the substance of positions. A lot of these are caricatures, not realizing that conservatives can be against the war on drugs or not in love with businessmen, and that liberals can be pro-life.
Just to pick one of your points: Holywood types tend to be opposed to capitalism’s excesses – intellectual property is not one of them. Why do conservatives pirate movies?
Intellectual property is not one of “capitalism’s excesses”? Hollywood types want pharmaceutical companies (for example) to have full intellectual property rights over their inventions? Movie stars who buy multiple jet aircraft and huge villas with their “intellectual property” revenues are not acting in an “excessive” manner?
I don’t think distinguishing between intellectual property rights and other characteristics of capitalism exactly explains why Sean Penn and Robert Redford are so in love with the Castros, who have billions tucked away outside Cuba, make a big deal of providing free health care (where common folk must provide their own sheets, etc.) and who ration food to support other national priorities. Where would their celebrated health care system be without the fruits of the intellectual property of people in other countries?
Perhaps Hollywood types think that intellectual property should only result in big rewards if it doesn’t produce something that people NEED. Only people who produce things that people don’t really need should have intellectual property rights.
And you can’t seriously believe that pirating movies is more common among conservatives than among liberals.
My favorite question is: Do you believe GWB orchestrated 9/11? Exactly how did a “moron” execute such a complicated plot and not one person has confessed, when they could sell a million books?
Bill Gates would never be rich without cheap OEM Chinese labor.
I wasn’t aware that Microsoft had outsourced writing computer code (which is what Microsoft does by the way) to the Chinese. I wasn’t aware because that’s not how he made his money you dolt.
Thanks for the read. Over the last couple years I have been a member of many different sites writing under many different monikers. The most fun I had when I spent 3 months at the Daily Kos and HuffPo destroying the minds of the weak and weary.
What I have found is that the intellectually weak go on the attack, those trained in the art of the left, use one of the tactics taught by Howard Dean, the pivot maneuver.
Thanks for all the reading at the People’s Cube and will be looking for the book.
As I can see by the LACK of any true responses to your questions from the trolls, they are scratching their behinds, former location of their brains. And to those in the comments that added your questions, bravo!
The only question I ask the leftists is this, if you hated and distrusted George Bush and other Republicans so much, why in the world would you give the government more power? Another Bush could get the seat again. There is NEVER a relevant answer to this question.
I usually prefer not to engage lefties, they are tyrants and tyrants cannot engage in discussion, they do everything except engage in debate.
The left has all the tyrants, this is another component that makes their heads explode. The left is totalitarianism, the right is anarchy. The classic left/right discussion. Oh they hate it when I say that the fascists and the socialists are two sides to the same coin.
Later peeps.
“As I can see by the LACK of any true responses to your questions from the trolls”
Hey, I offered. Nobody took the bait. These aren’t difficult questions, but there are a lot of them, and it’s going to be a long post. I’m not going to write it if nobody’s going to read it.
And fascism/socialism are quite different systems – economically and politically. They’re both totalitarian, absolutely. But they’re not the only two political systems like that. Various periods of history in europe under monarchy and the catholic church were pretty darn totalitarian as well. Any sort of theocracy tends towards totalitarianism. Question: according to your all-encompassing dichotomy, was the taliban socialist/fascist? How about the (at least arguably) slightly democratic iran? How about tibet before the chinese invasion?
Hey Matthew, go for it! I’d love to see your answers. Post them in the comments.
Excellent! Stay tuned. I’ll post them in batches. It’ll take a while – there’s quite a lot, and I have to occasionally interact with real life as well.
Never said they were the same system, just that they are on the totalitarian side. When I speak of the left/right I am speaking in the classical sense. Just as I refer to myself as a classical liberal. I define my position as a Constitutional Libertarian, and I define it by one tenet, that do no harm to another and do not infringe on their Rights to Life, Liberty and Property. The government has one job and one job only, to protect the rights of the individual, from everyone both externally and internally. This includes my fellow citizens that think it is their right to steal my property for the good of the collective.
Sorry, the Borg has nothing on the Socialists and Fascists, in all their myriad forms. Crony capitalists, communist, blah, blah, blah.
As I have said and will say again, the left have all the tyrants, classically speaking of course. Not in the new made up terminology, they have to recycle every couple decades, because they have exposed themselves again.
What purpose would it even serve for you to answer the questions? The questions are not hard to answer at all.
That is what makes it amusing that you would think anyone cares what the answers are that you would give. The whole thing is given for you to attempt to see the truth, that forcing your beliefs on someone else is wrong. Forcing people to your narrow view will ultimately end just as every other system of control has ended………….BADLY.
“That is what makes it amusing that you would think anyone cares what the answers are that you would give”
Then why refer to the lack of responses?
And as for dictators … until the russian revolution, it was pretty much all on the right of politics. Since then, the left has it on total numbers under subjection, absolutely. But hitler, franco, pinochet, suharto, marcos, mussolini, idi amin … not from the left. None of them. And before you play the “but nazism says socialist” I’ll just gently point out that north korea’s official name also contains the word “democratic”.
“Never said they were the same system, just that they are on the totalitarian side”
Hmm. Actually, that’s not what you said. You said:
“The left is totalitarianism, the right is anarchy”
You can’t go from saying that to saying that the left AND right can both be on the totalitarian side. You’ve contradicted yourself.
Perfect example of a debate tactic of those on the left. You attempt to snip out a component of a comment, by taking it out of context. When arguing I stated that the classic left/right argument was totalitarianism vs anarchy. Or in other terms, federalists vs anti federalists.
I then stated that the socialists and fascists are two sides of the same coin. I used the left/right of today, of the neo-intellectuals that attempt to subvert the discussion, and guess what, you jump on it like it is proof of some misnomer in the discussion.
Classic debate tactic of the left, intellectual dishonesty. Attempting to show there is a problem with logic by mincing definitions. This is why I usually do not engage. I have already won the argument but the hyperbolic mind of the left, seem to think the mincing of the verbiage is their victory. It is like jousting with a phantom.
Thanks for proving my point.
Tell me, if GWB was such a tyrant that the left decryed his every move, why are they blindly following Obama when he might just as well be GWB on steroids?
And the verbal jousting with a phantom continues.
Sorry if the original comment makes it in, it seems the browser ate my response. If it did make it in, just delete this one.
Classic, like jousting with a phantom. I bring to the table the problem in the debate, about the left and right being redefined, and what do you do, prove my point.
Thank you.
This is one of the verbose left I mentioned. Does not go on the attack, uses pivot maneuvers and fallacious debate tactics. Oh, you are one of the aware are you not? LOL
Tell me, if GWB was such a tyrant, why do followers of Obama still follow him? Since he might just as well be GWB on steroids.
TSA-like your 3rd base dates with the party apparatchik when flying?
Patriot Act II-must be nice to live in a 1984esque society?
Assassination of citizens-even GWB did not go this far.
etc etc etc But hey, keep up that cognitive dissonance, I hear it is great for one’s mental health.
“When arguing I stated that the classic left/right argument was totalitarianism vs anarchy. Or in other terms, federalists vs anti federalists.”
Er, that’s a bit nonstandard. You DO actually know what anarchy means, right? No government. None. In reality, it was one of the movements on “the left” to try to achieve an elimination of all government (google a chap named “bakunin”). It was obviously completely nuts. I have no idea where you’re getting your definitions from. Anarchy means anti-federalist? Wah? The right wing has never, ever advocated the elimination of the state. I don’t care WHAT point in history you’re referring to – even going back to the 18th century french revolutionary parliament (which is where the terms come from, I believe)
“I then stated that the socialists and fascists are two sides of the same coin. I used the left/right of today,”
I’m not quite sure what you’re using. The conventional understanding is that fascism is an epitome of “right wing” and socialism is “left wing”. Are you working with some other definition? If so, can you please supply it? And if you’re using jonah golberg as a reference, I’m going to laugh myself silly – just keep that in mind.
“of the neo-intellectuals that attempt to subvert the discussion, and guess what, you jump on it like it is proof of some misnomer in the discussion.”
Erm, it WAS a misnomer. But I’m going to wait and see what definitions you’re running with. I might just be misunderstanding you.
“Classic debate tactic of the left, intellectual dishonesty.”
I’m not sure if it’s classic or not, but I notice you completely ignored my response to “That is what makes it amusing that you would think anyone cares what the answers are that you would give”
“Attempting to show there is a problem with logic by mincing definitions.”
Actually, it was just an aside. Very few posters to this site have the foggiest idea what most of the political categories they refer to actually mean. It’s quite frustrating, because I’m basically debating with people who just make up their own meanings for words. Then they get snippy because I try to get the debate back into the realms of reality, and they call me a “neo-intellectual”.
“I have already won the argument but the hyperbolic mind of the left, seem to think the mincing of the verbiage is their victory.”
I’m sorry, but what argument did you win? I didn’t realise we were having one – I was just pointing out that I DID offer to answer the questions, then you backflipped on whether it mattered whether any of the “trolls” answered.
“It is like jousting with a phantom.”
Let’s see. Define some of your terms. It would help if you could check them with a dictionary first … because anarchy sure as heck isn’t “right wing”.
“Tell me, if GWB was such a tyrant that the left decryed his every move, why are they blindly following Obama when he might just as well be GWB on steroids?”
The left doesn’t bang on about tyranny – that’s your lot. I think the left just saw bush as dishonest and incompetent.
Well, you seem to be different than the normal that I spar with, I will give you that.
When in the discussion, historically speaking, People attempted to discuss the rule by government as either centrally located or dispersed, also with the degree of power. This was covered by many different writers and philosophers. I am not all up on everyone, only discuss this stuff partially over the last few years, and only doing some recent reading. Reading through the Federalist and the anti Federalists again doing a breakdown for my site.
Here is my basic tenet, back before the 1700′s different people discussed centralized control of power for the government and non centralized, basically no central control. Different ways of solving disputes in contracts and other activities were debated. Basic tenet was that you either have control in the center, or in the individual.
Left central (totalitarian) or Right individual (anarchy). This was discussed many a times and many different venues. I have only begun reading all the different philosophies. Got me learnnnning from publik skools. Quite bad ones by the way. A student without even trying. Pretty much learned nothing from school, until college. Engineering, accounting, mechanical and business type studies. So, over the last two years I am attempting to catch up to what I believe everyone should taught in this country. Politics, why is it that we are steered away from that in almost every avenue?
Trying to find the Lincoln quote about how we need to teach our childeren everything about self governance or the country will fall, will post if I find it. Some of his writings are inspirational to me.
I believe that the argument of left(totalitarian or central control) vs right (individual or anarchistic control) to have been subverted. Breaking up the components of the social, economic and other components to change the complete discussion. Basically when I reference the left and right it is the power that is given to the state.
But now, in most of the current discussion it is a subversion of this. The conservatives are labeled as fascist. And the liberals socialist. Well I am neither of those, I have been completely removed from the argument or debate. So have the anarcho capitalists. The true anarchists not the black anarchists that are really just thugs and criminals. An anarcho capitalist society is based on law and contract. It is not chaos as what is fomented in circles. It is just based on private courts and private police or several other forms to maintain the peace. I have not looked into that too much.
Will be back later to see if you understand my meaning. I have created a modification to the Nolan Chart that would be better used to describe the political field. Actually zombie here wrote up an article where I posted the pic, maybe I can find it.
“Well, you seem to be different than the normal that I spar with, I will give you that.”
I’m just looking for a good debate. I’m not taking any of this personally – I’m starting with the assumption that I’d probably like most of you guys if I met you personally. I’m not even necessarily trying to “win”, I just want to make my best argument.
I can see that we’re coming at some of these terms from different directions. I’m going to gloss over it. I don’t personally think the left/right split is about central/dispersed government – I think that’s an (largely) independent axis. I think you’re referring to a specifically american history which I probably don’t know anything about.
As I understand it, from a left/right point of view, a totalitarian government can manifest itself as communist/fascist (and they really are different, despite what some would like to claim) and a minimalist government (or not government) can manifest itself as libertarianism/anarchy. Roughly speaking
“Got me learnnnning from publik skools. Quite bad ones by the way.”
Me too. I hated all humanities subjects.
“I am attempting to catch up to what I believe everyone should taught in this country. Politics”
Hmm. I don’t think you can force people to learn things they’re not interested in. I WOULD like to see kids learn more about their own system of government, though – some posters here appear to have never read the bill of rights, for example. We (australia) have had a number of “hung parliaments” recently (I think it’s a western phenomenon right now) and the journalistic lack of understanding of how governments are actually chosen under the westminster system really started to show.
“But now, in most of the current discussion it is a subversion of this. The conservatives are labeled as fascist. And the liberals socialist.”
Hey – I agree. It’s part of the stupidification of political debate. Certain sorts of people want to label everyone who disagrees with them as extremists. There’s nothing liberal about socialism, and there’s sure as heck nothing conservative about fascism.
“The true anarchists not the black anarchists that are really just thugs and criminals.”
I suggest getting your hands on “The Secret Agent” by Joseph Conrad. That should dispel any admiration for anarchists
It’s a great book, but it’s pretty dark. And it does describe the anarchist “scene” in europe in the late 19th century – when there really were nutjobs wandering around blowing things up.
“Will be back later to see if you understand my meaning. I have created a modification to the Nolan Chart”
I’ll have to look it up. I tend to see things from the “political compass” point of view. It’s easy to overcomplicate things – at the end of the day, ideologies tend to be smokescreens for self-interest anyway.
On our local paper’s website someone tried this same avenue but he was a liberal and it just didn’t work. He said “why do some American’s wave the flag but hate their government?” I posted, “Why do people say a disagreement with the government is hate?”
I suppose I could add to that now “If disagreeing with the government or the president makes me a racist, why am I not arrested for hate speech?”
“If all cultures are equal, why doesn’t UNESCO organize International Cannibalism Week festivals?”
Firstly, I’m not sure that anyone who understands the postmodern impulse actually agrees that all cultures are equal. I think that’s a distortion. As I understand it (and keep in mind that I basically disagree with this anyway), that nobody has a purely objective point of view from which they can judge another culture. All cultures have their vested interests, prejudices etc. And the west has (historically) a way of assuming that it knows best in all things – and anything that differs from western culture is inherently flawed. There are a couple of good, practical reasons why this matters:
(1) if you want to understand a culture, you need to understand it on its own terms, setting aside your own presumptions (at least initially). Atheists often don’t “get” the religious because they don’t understand this basic principle and invading armies have a long history of fundamentally misjudging the local population – the british in india, the russians in chechnya and the US in vietnam.
(2) activists who try to reform other cultures will actually run into active resistance – often from the very people they try to help. Cultural relativism is a way to understand the world; anyone who thinks it’s an absolute, normative truth is a bozo (IMHO). I haven’t ever met anyone who’d think the spartan practice of exposing children is just fine and dandy.
Secondly – why don’t we have international cannibalism week? Two reasons. (1) There aren’t any actual cannibal cultures in existence any more (d’uh), and (2) it’s dangerous – it’s an excellent way to propagate some really awful diseases. It’s an objectively, provably bad idea.
As you can see, this is going to take a while. It’s a lot easier to make a glib bon mot than it is to explain.
The author admitted that “The resulting list may not exactly fit the definition of Socratic questioning.” Some of the questions are rhetorical, which means they don’t require an answer.
But since you insist, the main problem with “cultural relativism” is that denies validity to the main component of the Western civilization that has enabled its success – REASON, which resulted in LOGIC and THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD OF DISCOVERY.
True, the path to REASON wasn’t always smooth in the West as well, and yet it is this component that enabled the advancement of science, technology, education, medicine, individual freedoms, democratic forms of government, arts, literature, music, other cultural institutions, and the material abundance unseen in other cultures.
Foreign cultures that embraced this aspect of the West (Japan, S.Korea, etc.) are now also prospering without becoming like the West in other aspects, and no one expects them to do so. But cultures that continue to embrace irrational philosophies that deny REASON, will be stuck forever in poverty and oppression.
Now, “cultural relativism” reduces REASON to the level of all other cultural components, i.e., national language, dress, cuisine, or folk dances. Presented in this manner, the difference between rational and irrational becomes as irrelevant and culturally “equal” as the difference between a business suit and a kimono, or between whiskey and tequila.
Once REASON is discarded as an irrelevant detail, then yes – all cultures become equal at the table and a power-hungry tin-pot tyrant whose impoverished subjects are dying of curable diseases, has a legitimate claim to power based on the regional tradition, and an equal right to dictate to Western powers which policies they choose and how much aid they must give him this year.
But back to the questions -
Why do Indians come to America in large numbers from India and get well-paid jobs in Silicon Valley as software engineers, but American Indians are told to stick to their “equal” cultures and continue to rot in reservations? Wouldn’t you want to see American Indians in computer industry? Isn’t the difference here in the CULTURAL ATTITUDE first and foremost?
And by creating such a situation, aren’t proponents of “cultural relativism” do great injustice to those whose interests they claim to support?
“Why do those demanding “equal pay for equal work” never protest against “equal pay for little or no work”?”
I’m not quite sure what this is getting at. I’m going to assume it’s a swipe at unemployment benefits, but it could just as easily be a whinge about workers who don’t work, or perhaps a generalized complaint about people that oleg doesn’t think do anything (take your pick). But I’ll go with the unemployment thing.
Two things:
(1) The slogan “equal pay for equal work” has a specific meaning in context. It refers specifically to workplace discrimination, although I guess there’s no particular reason NOT to generalize it as long as you understand the context. The trouble with taking it out of context is easy to understand – I could argue that “pro-lifers” should logically be opposed to all forms of war and stridently oppose the death penalty. I might even go as far as to say they’re against the consumption of meat (unless it’s carrion). Otherwise they’re not pro-life, right?
(2) Who on earth gets “equal pay” for doing nothing? The unemployed? Really? Equal pay?
But seriously – unemployment “benefits” have a purpose. They help keep crime levels down, and the do insulate people to some extent from factors beyond their control. Is oleg really suggesting that there should be no form of support for people who have become unemployed because, say, their entire town’s industry collapsed? Has he thought through the economic consequences of that?
It’s not the unemployed – it’s the Union guys who get paid inflated wages for little or no work, while the non-union workers get paid only for what they’ve actually worked based on market prices. But these same lower-paid non-union workers must also support the overpaid and underworked Unions by paying for the overpriced Union-made products and services (cars, utilities, transportation, government services, etc., etc.)
This is clearly an unjust and unfair situation, and yet the proponents of “economic justice” will never protest against Union members receiving unearned benefits.
“If all beliefs are equally valid, how come my belief in the absurdity of this maxim gets rejected by its proponents?”
Maybe something to do with the church–turing thesis? Maybe russell’s paradox? Maybe the old “this statement is false” contradiction?
But seriously … I really don’t think anybody rational actually believes that all beliefs are equally valid. Don’t assume that all liberals agree with shirley mcclain, and don’t assume that all stupid beliefs are held by liberals. A bunch of people on this blog seem to think that cutting taxes increases revenue – that’s a corker, that is. Not a shred of evidence, but they still believe.
Indeed! Cutting taxes increases the revenues for businesses, which causes them to expand and multiply, which, in its turn, increases the number and volume of revenue sources for the government in the future. How crazy is that? What responsible man ever thinks about the future?
It’s as insane as saying that NOT killing the goose that lays golden eggs may cause you to go hungry one day, but will enable the supply of golden eggs in the future. That’s a corker, that is. Really.
Yep. That’s the theory. Now show me some graphs to prove that it has ever actually happened.
You should realise why I’m asking … I’ve already looked, and I know the answer
See, there’s no difference between theory and practice in theory … there’s only a difference between theory and practice in practice.
What you’ll find, if you bother to look, is that tax law tends to follow established trends. The CGT graph is a perfect example – advocates like to point out that revenues from CGT increased after various CGT cuts. What they don’t point out is that they were already increasing, and the cut slowed the rate of increase. Likewise for CGT increases. Such is the honesty of conservative economic discourse.
Well, it’s obvious that you have looked VERY carefully. VERY carefully indeed, because great care would be needed to avoid these facts.
And now … you’re going to provide the data, right?
Look up “Laffer Curve”.
Revenue is the product of GDP and tax rate. Higher taxes reduce GDP as more people decide that their after-tax income isn’t worth their time. The graph of revenue vs tax rate has a maximum because of the GDP varies inversely with tax rate. That maximum may be at a lower tax rate than the current tax rate. The government can charge a lower rate and “make it up on volume” on a hotter economy, just like a discount retailer.
“Ever noticed that for the past thirty years, we’ve been hearing we have less than ten years to save the planet?”
Well, you’ve been hearing it from SOME people. I agree with the premise, though. Fear mongers have always been with us. The end is always nigh. I wish they’d go away. And that goes for the people who’ve been predicting an imminent global caliphate for the last decade, and the people who endlessly decry the decline of western civilization. You know the ones – they’re usually harping on about how education standards have plummeted since “their day”. They’ve been doing it as long as I’ve been alive, yet somehow kids can still read and write. Some sort of miracle, I guess.
“Once a politician labels the truth as hate speech, can anyone trust him to speak the truth afterward?”
Which politician labeled “the truth” as “hate speech”. No, really. Show me where a politician declared that anyone who spoke the truth was a bigot?
I know what you’re getting at, but simply saying that certain statements (which you might happen to think are true or otherwise) are hate-speech doesn’t imply that all true statements are therefore unreliable. From what I’ve seen, politicians (outside of europe) are also fairly careful about declaring anything to be hate-speech. Activists, sure – but they don’t have to get re-elected.
Obama: Crowley made a “mistake” arresting Gates
Holder: dismissed Black Panthers case as racially motivated
Technically, unelected bureaucrats are responsible to elected politicians, so your distinction (politicians vs their minions) is a straw man.
“If a politician gets elected by the poor on a promise to eliminate poverty, wouldn’t fulfilling his promise destroy his voting base? Wouldn’t he rather benefit from the growing numbers of poor people? Isn’t this an obvious conflict of interests?”
No, because those previously poor people would want to see the results continue. If that guy really did make poor people well-off, they would be terrified that his eviction from office might take them back to where they were before.
Nice try.
Name one politician who has actually reduced poverty with a government program or otherwise.
Bush did with the TARP program, and obama did with various economic stimuli.
If you think things are tough, just imaging the US having to get by on barter. Because that’s what happens when all your banks close their doors. I really don’t think conservatives quite understand what broke back in 2007. You guys had a financial heart attack. Your economic oil pump – the financial system – stopped dead. Your preferred response was, apparently, to do nothing. Hats off to bush for having the nous to understand that something had to be done, and to the american people for electing somebody who could actually implement the necessary follow-up. Because the world would be screwed otherwise.
“How did the “war on poverty” end? Has there been a peace treaty or a ceasefire? Who is the occupying force and who are the insurgents?”
According to reagan, poverty won. It’s kind of like the war on drugs. And the war on the taliban, as it happens.
Does that mean you agree that war on poverty was a bad idea?
I have no idea. I was just quoting reagan. It might have been a good idea, but the terminology they used was obviously stupid. I’m all for reducing poverty – I’m just in favor of rational ways of doing it. Economic growth, for example, is very hard to beat.
“Why weren’t there demonstrations with anti-feudal slogans under feudal rule? And under Stalin, no anti-communist demonstrations? And under Hitler, no anti-fascist demonstrations? In a free capitalist society, anti-capitalist demonstrations are commonplace. Is capitalism really the worst system?”
I’m not sure I can point to any protests under feudalism, but I’m sure there probably were some. There were definitely protests against stalinism – particularly from peasants and farmers who had their stuff taken away from them. They were obviously not as well-reported as protests in modern democracies are, because the state owned all the newspapers. After stalin died, there were some SERIOUS protests, as you’d know. There were also protests against the nazis, particularly coming from the protestant and catholic church communities.
But that’s not really the point of your question. You’re basically right, but you’ve confused capitalism with a political system. It isn’t. It’s an economic system. The correct comparison would be with democracy. And yes, I’m much rather live in a democracy than in stalinist russia. I don’t think anyone would sensibly disagree.
You can actually have a capitalist economy without democracy. That’s what china is, right now – a capitalist economy with a oppressive one-party political system. It doesn’t appeal to me either.
I agree that capitalism is the bee’s knees. Provided that the power to make important legal and economic decisions rests with a democratically-elected government and not with companies. People who rail against capitalism tend to think that condition has become eroded.
“If capitalism makes some people rich without making others poor, who will benefit when capitalism is destroyed?”
Nobody.
“If the poor in America have things that people in other countries can only dream about, why is there a movement to make America more like those other countries?”
Which other countries? Liberia? Ethiopia? Who’s trying to make america more like zanzibar?
You know, it is actually possible to make the US a “fairer” place without becoming elbonia.
“Why, on the rare occasions when Obama’s actions benefit America, does his base get angry? And every time his actions are hurting this nation, his base is happy? Who exactly are these people?”
Hmm. I think that has as much to do with what you happen to think is good for america as what they think. Are you really saying that the economic bailouts and stimulus actually hurt america? Is the new START treaty really hurting america? How about extending unemployment benefits – is that really hurting america? This is the question I regarded as being like “have you stopped beating your wife?”. The presumption of accusation is written into the premise. Obviously, obama’s base disagrees with you about at least SOME of what is good for america. That’s democracy. Deal with it.
Yes, increasing the deficit is hurting America. In fact there might not even be an America left to pay those benefits. Ie. if the government goes bankrupt, government employees will not get paid. Unemployment benefits will not be paid. Socialists like yourself are impervious to the fact that ruining a country to do good is in fact not good in the long run.
And stimulus does hurt America. It is based on an unproved and false assumption that government programs can stimulate the economy. Socialists like yourself confuse their good intension with economic logic. Any kind of growth in any kind of system will only happen if the system is set up so that the most effective producers are given the most resources. Like for instance a capitalistic market naturally does. Government programs doesn’t. That’s why they don’t induce growth. If you look at it on a purely liquidity basis, government programs doesn’t distribute the money to where there actually is a liquidity problem either. Just because it sounds like a nice humane idea does not automatically mean it is also works as intended.
“If cutting out the middleman lowers the price, why are we paying the government to stand between us and the markets?”
That doesn’t even make sense. That’s just word-play. The government isn’t trying to take part in every transaction to make a profit, it’s setting out to regulate service providers to try to keep the lying and stealing to an acceptable level. Believe it or not, there are financial systems (australia’s, for one) that WAS properly regulated, and it sailed through the financial meltdown with almost no intervention. The australian economy did get some government stimulus, but the banking system barely noticed.
And if you’re talking about a “single payer” for health services – yes, that can actually result in lower prices. It does work.
What would you call salaries for government employees? Is that not profit? Do you think each government employee is actively working to lower his “profit”?
No, that is not profit. It is WAGES.
Bad arguments don’t help good causes.
So you’re saying that, when my employer gives me a wage and some benefits, I don’t profit from it? That’s rather stupid!
“If racial profiling is an abomination, what do you make of the last presidential election?”
If you REALLY think that obama supporters were only interested in race, I think you ought to go back and watch the debates again. Mccain was a weak candidate. He ticked off his own supporters by ditching his “maverick” persona and becoming a company man. Towards the end of the campaign he was visibly exhausted and making basic mistakes. By comparison, obama was a very GOOD candidate – he was smart, incredibly energetic, had a good campaign plan, understood his supporters, spoke well and very rarely screwed up (despite attempts by the MSM to make it seem like he only said 2 or 3 things during the whole election). If obama had been a conservative, you’d have seen him the same way liberals did.
Seriously. Watch the debates again. Watch mccain’s face when he realized he had wrong information about obama’s health plan – genuinely caught off-guard. Watch his disrespectful body language and truculence. Watch palin’s refusal to answer simple questions – and watch her actually admit to that. Then tell me you really don’t think that mattered, that it all came down to race.
If it wasn’t racial profiling, why was it such a big deal that America got its first black president?
Because it was a first?
A bit of familiarity with american history might help. Maybe google a chap called Jim Crow.
If hillary had been elected, then THAT would have been a big deal – there having never been a woman in the oval office before. But that wouldn’t have meant it was affirmative action – she just would have been the best candidate (at least in theory).
Some additional questions/points:
1) If you love paying taxes so much, why not send in additional money to the IRS each year? We can make it easier by putting an additional line on the 1040 form, “I do not feel like I’ve paid my fair share of taxes, therefore I am contributing an extra $xxxxxxx”.
2) Who is it that has the wisdom to know how much CO2 is too much? Who decided on the Kyoto protocol that a xx% reduction under 1990 emissions was the magic number?
3) If you believe truth is relative, why on earth are you ARGUING with me?? Wouldn’t a proper response be to agree that my viewpoint is just as valid as yours?
4) Can you not see by saying “there are no absolutes”, that you’ve contradicted yourself? Answer the question, “are you absolutely sure of your statement?”
That’ll do for now. More later. I have to go do some work.
One question that no ‘progressive’ has ever answered for me is: Why is it a ‘right’ to be able to kill millions of innocent unborn, but ‘barbaric’ to kill any adult convicted of a horrendous crime? Just baffles me!
I just read through this and posted a few of the questions on Facebook. We’re having some fun with them. Thanks.
A quick point – I’ve found a series of small leading questions that make the person think we’re having a dialog before throwing out the game-buster works best.
This dialog is important. Most political discussions are actually two people having monologues. When we seem to give ground and find agreement, taking the agreement away is more powerful.
The monologue is important. I only do this with monologists.
WARNING – you run the risk of losing friends doing this. If you don’t drive them completely off, they’ll usually avoid political or religious discussions.
Another deeper tactic is to go for the feelings underneath. I had a confused communistic friend who is actually envious of successful wealthy people. When I pointed his envy out to him, he exploded in rage.
We haven’t talked since, but I see him in some social situations. When he starts on his political rants, I remind him that his politics is not based on logic, but on hatred and jealousy and he shuts up and leaves. Usually after calling me a fascist.
Here’s a question for global warming scientologists:
About 14,000 years ago, most of N. America was covered by glacial ice nearly a mile thick. What caused all that ice to melt?
And a follow up question: If you could go back in time and do something to stop the warming that melted all that ice, would you do it? And if you succeeded, what would the world be like today?
Terry, I have come to the same conclusion that envy is a key to understanding the Liberal mind. I think the upper echelons of the Left seek power and control (bear in mind they only need a majority in order to control, not 100%. Another topic). They stoke the fires of envy by pitting group vs. group – rich vs. poor, black vs. white, male vs. female, religious vs. secular etc. The lower echelons dine regularly on a darkly satisfying meal of envy, maybe without even realizing it in many cases. In fact, I wonder if their desire to tax the “rich” into oblivion doesn’t have more to do with punishing them than it does with providing for the poor (the rich being Capitalist/corporate/self made type people). To tax them is a way to control them and diminish their influence in society and politics. The Libs must have the power over others, much like one moves an ox with a ring through its nose whichever way they desire.
“I wonder if their desire to tax the “rich” into oblivion doesn’t have more to do with punishing them…”
It sure does. Obama sees wealth as a zero sum game – the rich became rich by taking from the poor. And no matter how progressive the income tax is, it’s never progressive enough. Obama’s “spread the wealth around” remark made during his presidential campaign is telling. Redistribution is the goal of all his policies from taxation, to healthcare to the environment.
When my leftist sister-in-law started the speal about global warming at Christmas dinner. I asked her if she knew that Los Angeles (whence they came from to Texas) had the coldest summer in 100 years, Presto chango the subject was changed.
I agree that “like grains of sand, forming ephemeral dunes in the lifeless deserts of their minds”, is one of the best lines I have seen in a while….Thanks.
Matthew – may I suggest you start a blog of your own? You seem to have a lot to say about everything, and an answer for every question.
Victim classes seem to inevitably practice that which they claim is most disturbing.They call it activism and seem quite proud of the title if not the obsession.
Here is a third and probably the last batch. I really liked writing these down, since they are sort of summary and new reader orientation for my blog.
- Wal-Mart, fast food, nuclear power, industrial farming and fishing, shopping malls, automobiles, suburbs, drug companies, oil, cheap airline travel and mass tourism: do you ever wonder why all these things that are targets to so much of your intellectual disdain also happen to be the ones that have actually done more than all left-wing intellectuals put together to make the average people wealthier and healthier than the richest emperors of the past, and allow them to make the decisions of their lives without having to listen and obey you in a society that doesn’t need you as a central planner to organize its workings?
- Despite all the calls for “Power to the People” from radical intellectuals, the undeniable reality is that no societies have ever empowered so many people to such a degree as Western democracies. So why do you think that the intellectuals tend to hate the West and especially America so much?
- Speaking of suburbs, if our cities really are plagued by flight of the middle class to the suburbs, why not try returning the control of the cities and their culture to the middle class?
- Is it just a coincidence that all groups and ideologies on the left never seem to oppose, let alone fight, each other, even though basic logic would dictate that they would be mutual enemies, but they always act as an united front against white male conservatives, all the while vehemently denying that they are any kind of united front?
- Have you ever dismissed someone who disagrees with you by using the terms “false consciousness” and “internalized oppression”, when you thought that person should rightfully belong to your ideological side but has the audacity not to think for himself and realize that your views are correct?
- How can you proclaim yourself as the champion and vanguard of the working classes when you deride and sneer at basically everything that the actual working class “rubes” believe and like, and in fact do your best to elect a new people to displace them?
- Do you resent being called an “elitist” just because you assume that it goes without saying or explanation that your knowledge, tastes and values are just innately superior to those of the conservative bent?
- Ever notice that most liberal policies implicitly assume that your time has zero value?
- Those who say “No means No”, why do you never seem to listen to and obey our “No” to the policies that you force on us? Those who say “Consent is sexy”, why do you never seem to much care about securing our consent before you impose your insane policies on us?
- What basis do the opponents of “ageism” and “sizeism” and “racialism” who also usually believe that national borders are meaningless and all cultures are the same have for getting so angry over some old and fat Western man marrying a much younger and more slender Asian woman?
- White men tend to like Asian women and think they are wonderful enough to date and marry, whereas white women tend to dislike Asian men and think that they are disgusting. This discrepancy clearly proves that white men are the racist ones, yes?
- Since young women are clearly the most oppressed group of people everywhere in the world, shouldn’t all humanitarian immigration from the Third World to the affluent West be exclusively restricted to young women? If not, why not?
- Seeing that you oppose most forms of energy production and would wish the society to return to the levels of energy use of the year 1900, are you sure that any of your cherished freedoms and liberties could survive and exist in a low-energy society that has zero physical mobility? How does the welfare state work in what would essentially be a subsistence-level society with no surpluses of wealth to spread around for those who don’t work? What do you think would happen to sexual freedoms in a world where being a “bastard” would have very real consequences on your future and even basic survival?
- Are you adamantly “pro-choice” also when it comes to where we can live, where and what to shop, send our kids to school, and spend the paychecks that we earned? Or do you tell us that the effects of our choices on the rest of the society automatically gives you the right and power to override them?
- If you sniggeringly tell me that if I oppose abortion I don’t need to have one, do you conversely agree on that same principle with gun and automobile ownership and shopping at Wal-Mart?
- Is the real reason why you oppose genetic engineering that you instinctively suspect that acknowledging that different genes will lead to very different outcomes will not be very good for liberalism?
- Speaking of which: when thousands of years of history and massive parallel social experimentation has resulted in social and economic structures that proved their worth by surviving and outlasting the others, are you really sure that your wisdom and tastes are so massively superior that you should have the right to scrap all this at will and dictate your own alternative by force instead?
- Did I now get this right: Even though freedom of speech is sacrosanct, pro-life groups should not be allowed on campus at all because they advocate taking away freedoms and rights from other people. However, all socialist and Islamic groups should be free to operate and proselytize their messages on campus. (Again, what if it is an Islamic pro-life group? Which feature is then salient?)
- How did that “localism” work for Ireland in 1845-1852? Is it a coincidence that “localism” and “slow food” flourish in areas that essentially have no winter and thus get fresh produce year around? What are the people in all those other places supposed to eat after the snow comes?
- When you tell us that we should eat only things grown within 100 miles, a suspiciously round number, honestly, do you have some justification of why this limit is precisely 100 and not 95 or 105 or 150 miles? Or did you just pull that conveniently round number out of your ass?
- Now that your work for abolishing marriage has successfully come so far that polygamy is just around the corner with no arguments against it, how optimistic are you that your liberal ideas will continue to flourish in the future society that has to stomp down a significant percentage of its young males? You never really thought that one properly through, did you?
- Why did that young Miss California specifically become such a target of your concentrated liberal wrath just for saying when asked what she thought of same-sex marriage, her view such that at least 95% of world’s adults agree and have no problems with it? Why do the liberal women pile on her so much instead of, say, Barack Obama or Dalai Lama, whose views on this topic are essentially identical?
- Speaking of the Lamaster, do you actually consider him “Holy”? At least more holy than that creepy old Benedict XVI? (Silly me, and here I thought all religion was just nonsense!)
- Seeing that you also love soccer so much because it lets you show how European and cosmopolitan you are, say, did you ever happen to go see an actual soccer match played in Mexico or Europe? Did you notice that the audience consisted mostly of people who in America would be that icky Nascar crowd that you’d never want to be associated with? Did you understand what those songs and chants that the fans directed to the opponents meant? Do you speak Spanish well enough to know the word “maricon”?
- Speaking of which, even though you don’t much like to think about this, you do know what you are really saying when you proudly celebrate the gay-friendly and alternative neighbourhoods and societies as being wealthier, cleaner and safer places to live in, right?
- How about those gated communities? Doesn’t the accursed idea that some people can just buy themselves the freedom to walk away from your utopia just make you seethe in rage?
- Come on, admit it: isn’t the real reason why you hate the free markets that your ideas tend to fail the market test so that given a free choice, most people would move away from them?
- And you do know that all those exciting and vibrant countries of the Latin America are highly stratified societies based on race, and their ruling class are basically indistinguishable from those of Europe, right?
- Do you resent the conservative “Whitopia” communities for their racism and boring whiteness, unlike your beloved hip liberal cities of Portland, San Francisco and Austin?
- Aren’t dogs and cats just so much better than kids because you don’t need to move to suburbs once they turn five or six? Those damned suburbs are just so bland and uniform, unlike the apartments of a big condo building that resembles a termite mound, and intellectually uniform and stultifying, unlike the newsrooms or the humanities and arts departments in the best universities.
- Since you also love the enlightened Japanese culture so much that you think that even feces don’t stink if they came out of the butt of a Japanese kawaii girl, and you consider Japan superior to the American culture that stole the land from the native Americans, do you know who the Ainu are and what their unfortunate history is? How about the Burakumin?
- Since you deride the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atom bombs as proof of Americans being warlike, do you know what happened in Nanking in December 1937?
- Can you show me when the Japanese government has ever even acknowledged the above phenomena, let alone apologized and paid restitution for them?
- Pop quiz: which country that liberals believe is also peaceful and culturally vastly superior to America didn’t make slavery illegal until 1962, and it still remains a tacit widespread practice there? You know, that country where the poor immigrant workers silently hope that they get a Western expat master who doesn’t beat them every time they make a mistake, and occasionally rape them?
- Sarah Palin is thoroughly despicable and evil, but William Ayers should be given a free rein to completely redesign the American educational system to make it more fair and equitable, right? (At least as long as you personally are not forced to bus your kids to an inferior school twenty miles away, of course!)
- Do you just adore Lewis Black and other liberal comedians who bravely “challenge taboos”, but consider Lawrence Summers an idiot who sure deserved to be fired for suggesting that men and women might be different?
- Out of curiosity: all you people who are so worried about sprawl and population growth, have you ever travelled across the country on an airplane, and looked out the window? Didn’t it always look like a game of Sim City gone horribly wrong?
- Speaking of which, how you do combine your concern for population growth and slogans such as “If everyone lived like Americans, we’d need to have ten Earths” with your unbridled enthusiasm towards open borders?
- What percentage of people would have to go to college before you would agree that it’s too many and this is dumbing down the college education? Since you are so proud of your college degree, did you ever happen to learn the difference between “average” and “marginal”? (I guess not, since simple Econ 101 would already smash most of your ideas and arguments.)
- You sure seem to delight in calling us conservatives “anti-intellectual”! Could you give us some kind of reasonable operational definition for this term that you love to fling around? Can you also give at least a ballpark estimate of the percentage of Muslims or black people in the world who are “anti-intellectual” according to your very definition that you just provided? Have you ever criticized either one of these two groups for being “anti-intellectual”? Why not?
- If religion really is a sign of an obedient and weak mind that is scared to face the reality and facts, what can we logically infer from the undeniable statistical fact that white males are far less religious than black people and women?
- Do you also consider the right-winger to be brainless authoritarian personalities who worship their leaders as superhuman “lightworker” Gods on Earth, whereas the left wing has always been highly tolerant of dissent and debate whenever they have the power, as was amply proven over and over the world during the twentieth century?
- Do you often lament the tendency of most sheeple just to blindly accept what the authorities tell them, especially when you are not that authority?
- And doesn’t it just always freaking piss you off when people don’t automatically just shut up and obey the unassailable authority of the climate scientists when they smoothly transition from the global warming to how this phenomenon requires that the entire industrial society must be thoroughly smashed and reorganized more to their liking in unspecified ways that you are just too dumb to understand?
- Can you name a few items in the checklist of narcissistic traits that do not apply to the current liberal Hivemind?
- Can you name even one thing that fighting global warming requires from us and that has been historically opposed by the left? The curious lack of such things is merely an amazing coincidence, yes?
- Say, have you heard anything about that Cindy Sheehan lady after 2008? You know, that woman with the absolute moral authority? When she and her supporters were mass arrested October 2009 for raising a ruckus at the White House, did you get angry and scared for the jackbooted police state stomping down all dissent that way? In fact, was reading it now in here the first time you even heard about this incident? Were all our trusted media watchdogs really asleep that day? Why do you think that was?
- Be honest now: if Dubya had ever authorized the extrajudicial execution of an American citizen who is a terrorist, what would you have said? And done? Would you have written an angry rant in HuffPo?
- My, isn’t Emperor Liberalus III wearing such beautiful robes and only very stupid and evil people would disagree with this assessment? The emperor is so wise and smart, so if he has to hit us and call us dumb, it’s always because of something bad that we conservatives did.
Damn Ilkka! Thank you for your discourse on the current problems and situation that we are wrestling with everyday. You encapsulate so well the many open sores represented by Liberal causes that daily dominate the airwaves and conversations. Make mine a double Ilkka.
Genius!
My friends who witnessed the scene told me later they saw the shorter bully beginning to foam at the mouth.
Always an encouraging sign
In due course, they panicked and walked out, never to come back.
How fortunate for you. It has been determined through scientific analysis that such shifting sands brains as you describe are impenetrable to anything resembling logic and original thought.
Plus they’re stuffed full with fixed assumptions and there is no room for new thought
I wonder how those women might react to this video where Eric Holder’s best friend, New Black Panther party guy and Grade A creep, Malik Zulu Shabazz, is bragging about his September meeting in New York with Louis Farrakhan and Arachnidjihad.
Just 3 cute little Muslim Brotherhood terrorists meeting for a friendly chat?
• How come the media uses the “People have a right to know” reason for making public classified information, but refuses to give the sources of the classified information because “that information is protected by law”?
[to be used when the usual accusations are made] What is the difference between disagreeing with your position, and hate speech? (or homophobia, or racism, etc…)
Anyone want me to answer another 10 or so questions? They’re not hard to answer.
What tripe! It amazes me that when someone spews out endless unrelated questions, people think that he or she is some kind of genius. The fact is, it is so easy to ask dumb questions but really difficult to come up with smart answers. Americans are easily amused these days, look at the crap the general population watches on TV. Look at the bad music that earns awards in Hollywood. This Oleg Atbashian is just another non-productive member of our society who wants to earn big bucks by being outrageous instead of thought provoking. Get a job!
“The fact is, it is so easy to ask dumb questions but really difficult to come up with smart answers.”
I tried. I don’t think oleg’s questions are very hard to answer.
Ever met a vegetarian who is pro-life?
Matthew…thanks for demonstrating the finer arts of reasoning and critical thinking. Though Oleg’s questions are crafted to point toward truths, it is not hard to see how they also point away from truths as well. But for your remarks, there would have been no evidence that this herd is any less monolithic in its dogma than the “progressives” against which they rail.
I’ll get off the bench and onto the field for one…
– “If describing terrorists as freedom fighters is justified by the journalistic principle of neutrality, what is the name of the principle that justifies describing U.S. troops as rapists and murderers?” –
Though there is indeed a journalistic _principle_ of neutrality, I haven’t heard anyone substantively argue that the _practice_ of journalism is neutral. Especially, I haven’t heard any journalist advance such a position.
But more to the point, I have never seen a mainstream U.S. media outlet, most of which lean toward the left, advance either the theory that terrorists are freedom fighters nor that U.S. troops are rapists and murderers. I have, however, seen them quote people who advance such positions. I believe that floating such edge positions in media, just as they are floated here, is essential to a discourse that vets the full range of political theory and belief. That such beliefs may be objectionable or unreasonable does not mitigate the fact that they exist, at least marginally, and somewhat materially in some realms. Still, again, I would be interested in citation of a single mainstream U.S. periodical that has represented its editorial position as affirming either of those positions. (If citing, please avoid confusing journalists with commentators.)
Assuming no mainstream media outlets are advancing those positions, it seems equally unsupported to suggest that there are some journalistic principles at play that have a propensity to advocate such positions.
In my own opinion, you have seized here on some of the more abhorrent views of a class we’re labeling “progressives” and ascribed those views to a class we’re labeling “journalists.” They are not the same class, and their similarity is not supported in this case.
I’m going to answer some more. These ones are significant, I think:
“If there are no absolutes and family is an antiquated tool of bourgeois oppression, why is having gay marriage an absolute must?”
Because people should still have the right to choose. Obviously there are a lot of liberals who don’t agree with your premise, because they get married. Actually, I don’t think there are many people on the left who see marriage any differently to the way the right sees it. Except for the necessity for procreation, of course. And not all gay activists see “marriage” as the most important issue at this point in time – but there are obvious legal and financial advantages that flow to people who are married, and most fair-minded people can’t see why they shouldn’t apply equally to all couples. Call it marriage, call it civil unions, whatever. But gay couples are clearly here to stay, so let’s get sensible about the law.
“Would you know from the media coverage that there are more sex offenders among public school teachers then among Catholic priests?”
Yes. I would, because those stories tend to get reported around these parts. The main reason why there more sex offenders among school teachers (public AND private) is because … there are more teachers than there are priests. Lots more. So all else being equal, I’d expect the numbers to be larger. Aside from that, I have also read that the incidence of child molestation among priests is actually quite low – about half the rate of the population in general. That probably helps too.
“How come the church gets the blame and the Department of Education doesn’t?”
Because the department of education didn’t engage in widespread, organized cover-ups. If the departments of education dealt with cases by simply moving teachers between schools and hushing up the victims, then you’d have a pretty good case. The way the church responded to the cases is the problem that gets people exercised.
“Why is the media so outspoken about sex abusers being priests, but avoids calling them homosexual pedophiles? Who are they afraid to offend?”
Because it’s not always a case of same-sex molestation, and they’re not always technically “pedophiles”. Pedophilia and homosexuality are two entirely different things – homosexuals are no more likely to be pedophiles than straight people. I don’t see oleg saying that priests who molest girls should be labeled “heterosexual pedophiles”, so what’s he trying to imply?
“Why is experimenting on animals cruel, but experimenting on human embryos compassionate?”
Because animals can feel pain. Excruciating, agonizing, blinding, bone-wrenching pain. The embryos used for stem cell experiments don’t feel pain. And I’m not sure I’ve ever seen any medical experiments described as “compassionate”.
“How come industrial logging is a crime against nature, but the destruction of forests by wildfires is a natural cycle of life?”
Round these parts, fire really is an important part of the ecosystem. We have trees here that have seeds that have evolved to open when they’re burned. Fires also don’t quite “destroy” forests – they do clear out undergrowth, but they don’t damage the soil as much as logging can if done badly. But in principle I agree – if loggers do actually replace the trees they remove with appropriate new plantings, I can’t see a big problem with it.
I have a follow-up question: Greenpeace was founded in ’71. Since then, the writing was on the wall – that political opposition to old-growth logging was eventually going to be a problem for the industry. So why didn’t they start planting their own trees? Then they’d own the things, and nobody would be able to tell them what to do. Instead, logging companies still insist that they need to chop down natural timber. If france can manage its oak plantations on a 70-something year cycle to ensure supply of wine barrels, why can’t the logging industry do the same?
“Why do those who object to tampering with the environment approve of tampering with the economy?”
The type of tampering matters. Some tampering can be destructive. Some can be beneficial. While I personally suspect it’s a rort, the UK has a system called “high-level stewardship”, wherein farmers are actually paid to do things like provide seasonal food for migrating birds, to leave green corridors for animals and wotnot. On the other hand, some maniac introduced cane toads to queensland. See the difference?
“Isn’t the economy also a fragile ecosystem where a sudden change can trigger a devastating chain reaction?”
Sure, but nobody said the tampering had to be blind or malicious. In the modern world, there is no such thing as a completely “free” economy. The moment that somebody starts printing official money and regulating its supply to control inflation, you’re tampering. An economy isn’t entirely a natural construct.
“Isn’t the latest economic crisis such a chain reaction?”
Yes, but not because somebody “tampered” with it. The current problems are due to a very flawed business model and a bunch of very dishonest people. They took out the financial system – the economic woes followed from that.
“Isn’t the economy also a fragile ecosystem where a sudden change can trigger a devastating chain reaction?”
Sure, but nobody said the tampering had to be blind or malicious. In the modern world, there is no such thing as a completely “free” economy. The moment that somebody starts printing official money and regulating its supply to control inflation, you’re tampering. An economy isn’t entirely a natural construct.
It doesn’t matter if the tampering isn’t intended to be blind or malicious, if the results are the same. Take Health Care, for example: the near-nationalization of it is the result of tampering with wages, of all things! Employers provide it as a tax-free benefit…people complain about it, because you had no choice in health care, once you found your “lifetime” employer…so laws are passed to “fix” things…which causes more problems in Health Care…so more laws are passed…which creates big cycle that destroys our freedom in health care.
An economy can be a natural construct, but it’s not–even the attempts to tamper with the money supply have caused unnecessary grief! Which is why I don’t just want a gold standard: I’d like to see money done away with entirely, and go with trading in gold and silver, or whatever other medium I feel like trading in (if others want to trade in it too).
“How come those who hate humanity for its faults are called “humanists” but those who love humanity for its virtues are called “hate-mongers”?”
Er … humanists hate humanity? Really? All of us? I don’t think so. And show me an example of somebody being called a hate-monger simply for “loving humanity for its virtues”. Generally, if somebody is being called a hate-monger, it’s because they’re deriding somebody else for NOT having virtues.
“If economic ups and downs are natural cycles, why is the downturn always blamed on unbridled capitalism, but the upturn is the result of a wise leadership of a Democrat president?”
Do you actually believe that the current downturn is part of a “natural cycle”? I don’t – I think it was an almighty screw-up. And maybe the stereotype would be challenged if a republican president perhaps presided over a period of strong economic fundamentals. Come on, admit it, it’s been a while.
“Why is there never a media story praising capitalism for the booming economy?”
Because nobody gains from that. Show me one political leader who’s willing to say “hey, don’t thank me – I didn’t do anything, it’s CAPITALISM that’s making you all rich”. Not a chance. They’ll always claim responsibility through “wise economic stewardship” or something. Meanwhile, the press is usually interested in one of two stories: (1) why is everything so rubbish, or (2) when are the good times going to end? It sells papers.
If the United States is so bad how come so many people born elsewhere move here?
And if Marxist utopias are so wonderful, why do those countries need fences to keep people in?
If religion is the opium of the masses, and humans are merely advanced biological creatures, does this not mean man-made “global warming”…ah, um, I mean “CLIMATE CHANGE,” a natural result of nature? Would this not make it a good thing?
take the Liberal Indoctrination Exam.
http://ittbbb.blogspot.com/2004_10_01_archive.html
Its easy and multiple choice. My childhood friend foamed at the mouth and kicked me out of his blog for just posting the first section..
Yet right wing-nut conservatives are *pro-life* yet support capital punishment, view war as the political answer for all international problems, and think that poor children have no need for education or health care. *Pro-Life* must mean just their own life.
We are pro innocent life. Not a hard concept unless you are trying to miss it.
We also don’t think poor children have no need for education or health care. We disagree about whether gov’t is the best provider.
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