Talking Back to the Talkbackers
Reacting to Glenn Beck’s interview with filmmaker Patrick Courrielche, who broke the news about the National Endowment for the Arts plumping for Obama and his major pieces of proposed legislation, one talkbacker who goes by the sobriquet of Smokey expressed his anger not at the NEA but at Glenn Beck. His formulation left little to the imagination: “We should be encouraging art that portrays Beck’s head exploding from internal pressure.” Smokey cannot believe that “people watch hours and hours of this gasbag.”
True, Beck is no stranger to intemperate remarks, but he rarely errs on the side of gross indecorum. He makes solid points, delivered polemically and with spontaneous enthusiasm, and his books in particular are backed up by extensive research and careful auditing. The trouble is not with Glenn Beck but with the Smokeys of the informatic domain.
For some time now, I’ve been diligently scoping out the comments and talkbacks to articles posted on various internet sites. Some of these are intellectually provocative, well-informed, logically sound, and historically erudite, and I have gained enormously from them. But far too many stubbornly refuse to connect or “dock” with the propositions, hypotheses, or contentions being developed in the articles they are presumably annotating, and indeed frequently steer perilously close to gutter talk, if not actually wallowing in the verbal gutter.
And I’ve found — no big surprise — that the great majority of these crude and invidious remarks come from patently left-leaning readers. Moreover, certain sites feature articles, reports, and analyses of contemporary events that, in their content and phrasing, differ little from the productions of the most thoughtless and vitriolic commenters themselves! I refer to proudly leftist newsletters like Counterpunch, which describes its method as “muckraking with a radical attitude,” or sites like the Soros-funded MoveOn.org. But the distemper is pervasive and, as I say, is far more a phenomenon of the left and even of the liberal-left than it is of the conservative-right. Pat Buchanan is an anomaly; Alexander Cockburn is not.
Looking at the more conservative sites, such as Pajamas Media and FrontPage Magazine, it is obvious that most of the commenters will be of kindred disposition and frame their glosses in a reasonably civilized manner, approving, sometimes disapproving, expanding, or correcting the postings. But often the minority of commenters who take vigorous exception to the articles in question will fall back on invective, vulgarity, and execration in lieu of weighing facts and arguments or accessing primary texts for confirmation before rendering judgment. And even in those instances when an article’s reasoning is firmly anchored and readily verifiable, it seems as if it had never been written or had simply evaporated before the reader’s grudging perusal.
And there’s the rub. One of the things I find most disturbing is the stubborn resistance to data that does not consort with a prior and deeply held conviction, the unwillingness to reflect upon one’s own prejudices, assumptions, and ideological stances. I believe it was Jonathan Swift who said that “what a man has not been reasoned into, he will not be reasoned out of.” Was he right? One would like to believe that intellectual curiosity can always be stimulated and that acquired knowledge can have a salutary effect, despite so much evidence to the contrary.
I have, mirabile dictu, known people who are capable of changing their minds, rethinking their political positions, accepting fresh information, and revising their congenial opinions. Not many, to be sure, but enough not to lose heart entirely. I myself was frozen in standard left-wing groupthink for much of my adult life, until 9/11 clarioned its wake-up call. I spent the next five years trying to educate myself, reading everything I could get my hands on from all sides of the political spectrum and following world events with close attention. This led to the painful awareness that I had been wrong about nearly everything and eventuated in my book, The Big Lie, which represented the “moment” when I came of age and finally learned to take the world more seriously than myself. The result, of course, is that I have become something of a pariah in my own literary and political community in Canada.
How common is an experience of this nature? I know it has happened to others — consider the salient examples of David Horowitz (Radical Son) and Ron Radosh (Commies), among others. In my own more modest case, in the course of an evolving thesis I did my utmost to present the facts I uncovered over years of dedicated research — and I mean real facts that cannot be denied, like the actual articles of UN Resolution 242 (accepted by Israel but formally rejected by the Palestinians at the Tripoli conference on December 2-5, 1977) or the actual substance of the 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention or the actual history of the Middle East gleaned from impeccable documentary and archival sources, to cite only a few such items. Yet the response I frequently got was: “Well, let’s agree to disagree.” There was no recognition of what is.
And this is among friends! When it comes to those who are anesthetized by partisan desire and transfixed in a strict intellectual, literary, or political posture — members of what Jeff Barak calls “virtual communities of like-minded zealots” — the response is usually ad hominem. Rather than enter into rational debate or engage with presented arguments, such people almost invariably resort to threat, expostulation, name-calling, slander, and explicit profanity. Reactions of this kind are clearly ubiquitous but, once again, I must say that they occur disproportionately among those of a manifestly leftist and left-liberal persuasion.
“There is no incentive to “go conservative” — it is a question of conscience and entails pretty severe risks.”
Awww, poor baby. Sounds like you’re still pining to be accepted by your old pals & fishing for pats on the back for getting some clues after 9/11. Ok, so you’re a convert of only a few years & likely still quite young age-wise, but you’ll need to get more conviction and backbone if you want to play in the conservative sandbox. Too harsh? Welcome to the dark-side my friend.
Wow- you must have been on PunditKitchen lately and read what the “Tolerant” Left writes !!
The basic tenets are correct. The one item left out, it seems to me, is the apparent, perhaps even obvious, efforts being expended by some in the conservative camp to dictate to the rest of the community. We need to take care that we do not eat our own in the process.
I was reared in a liberal (at times *hard* liberal) home, and live in a very liberal area. (Seattle has a statue of LENIN.) As a child I was indoctrinated in atheism/agnosticism/marx, but I found too many things that did not add up, so I rejected those teachings. I became a conservative, much to my grandmother’s horror. I did find the whole process quite enlightening in regards to insight into human pyschology.
One thing I have observed, there is a real shallowness of character among liberals, especially the more radical ones. Their entire self-image is so caught up in the liberal ideologies espoused, that to question them is destabilizing to their id (for want of a better word). Think the android Norman from the original Star Trek. (and you thought the colloquialism of blowing a gasket were just words.
)
The reason your former “friends” attacked when they read your book detailing your research and enlightenment is that it *did* threaten to destabilize their id, only they weren’t ready to question whether *what* they were espousing was rational let alone OBJECTIVE FACT. So they behaved much like an animal – when it’s afraid, it attacks. Same concept. Rationality has no part of it. Hopefully, one day, they will develop the humility (not the same as humiliation) and self-confidence to question their beliefs in a rational and objective manner. Such is the beginning of wisdom.
*yawn*
So you don’t like lefties. No surprise there. So in response to alleged “ad hominem” tactics, you’ve responded with blanket ad hominem rebuke.
I’ll agree that lefties can be foul-mouthed and clueless. But so can wingnuts.
TO: David Solway, et al.
RE: Reasoning w/Fools
I’m reminded of an item that came to light earlier this year. It dates back to the 1980s but is the truth of the matter at hand in your article. It has to do with these peoples’ Ideological Indoctrination. It’s a YouTube item of considerable value from a former KGB operative who defected to the West.
Regards,
Chuck(le)
[It is as sport to a fool to do mischief. -- Proverbs]
P.S. The actions of these people is best described as the Third Option of the Lawyers Rule:
[1] If the Law is against you, argue the facts.
[2] If the facts are against you, argue the Law.
[3] If the Law and the facts are against you, call the other side names.
The Official Rules: A Compendium of Truths and Laws for Living
“And I’ve found — no big surprise — that the great majority of these crude and invidious remarks come from patently left-leaning readers.”
You contradict yourself and distort the facts.
You wasted your article.
The conservative trolls are sicker than sick.
Either you need to improve your research skills or just plain tell the truth.
Much like you, David, 9/11 changed my political thinking; my journey and conclusions roughly parallel to yours. This is not something you do to win friends on the left, that’s for sure.
The trolls will now proceed to prove your point. Let the ignorant vituperate.
Mr. Solway writes a very good article here. As a commenter on several blogs from Right to Left–and I am Right–I agree completely with his evaluation of the poor language and non-reasoning oft-employed by the illiberal.
BUT this (and I respond to this excerpt WITHIN the body of the text):
Pajamas Media, too, among the many excellent discussions that embellish the trailer segments, has its share of pugnacious commenters for whom the Marquess of Queensbury’s boxing code, as applied to the discursive ring, do not always seem to apply.
[AND this is completely legitimate given the CRISIS we are facing in the US with Obama at the helm. Solid reasoning and tough language are called for. These are no normal days, Mr.Solway!]
This is unfortunate.[I disagree!]
Certainly, though pugilistic strategies may be employed and blows exchanged, none should be below the belt.
[I see NOTHING below the belt on pajamasmedia, Mr. Solway. This is no utopia but REALITY. WE ARE in a fight for the future of this country!]
It would be nice if we could do better and allow the norms of chivalry to govern our forensics.
[Yes. I agree. IT WOULD be nice but NICE does not work with the illiberal, Mr. Solway.]
Yes, you wrote a good article, but your concluding paragraph is quite a flaw in my view!
What a pretty collection of words, all of which boil down to:
DO NOT FEED THE TROLLS.
Interesting article, but I think you are looking for a parity between left and right political ideologies that doesn’t exist, even though the labels seem to suggest as much. Unfortunately, the labels “right” and “left” only serve to differentiate and not to describe. The main functional difference between the right and the left falls on the question of where emotions belong. The right consists of individualists, who believe that the proper placement of emotional decisions lies with the individual and not in the government. Essentially, this is an adherence to the idea of the rule of law and self-reliance. The left, on the other hand, feels that emotional considerations are to be handled at the political level. This is what bears ideas such as the living Constitution (rule of man) and empathy being a desired, operative feature of a judge. This basic difference in political ideologies goes a long way to explaining why the leftists tend to be more emotional and unrestrained in their commentary.
There are other differences – collectivists on the left versus individualists on the right – which animate each sides ideas about the ideal structure of government, with the collectivists drawn to democracy (Democrats) since democracy is an essentially tribalist/collectivist structure that provides unlimited power to the whim of the majority collective, while the individualists are drawn to Constitutional Republics (Republicans) since Constitutional Republics (tend to be structured so as to) limit all powers of government, including the whim of the people, and places the most discretionary power and responsibility with each individual.
Left and right political ideologies are not mirror images of each other and many are lead to some confusion in attempting to find parity between them. It would be much more accurate if, instead of “left/right” we talked about “collectivist/individualist”, or “rule of man/rule of law” (as is pretty explicitly stated in the labels given to the different judicial philosophies). In those contexts the differences in commentary that can be expected from each side is made more obvious.
You clearly point out a problem and yes, I do see this problem as mainly manifested by Leftist trolls. I don’t really see a solution however. There are some people who simply cannot argue a point rationally. And that really is the way it is — ultimately, they they don’t use rationality, and they don’t interact with the world in a rational way.
Their two favorite tactics are to respond with the one-two punch of (a) the red herring to lead away from the presented topic and (b) the ad hominem to dismiss the topic by attacking the person presenting the topic, or the persons referenced by the topic (if favorable to conservatives).
Comments?
David, it takes intelligence and a degree of humbleness to understand one does not know everything and one could be wrong about their body of “knowledge”.. Those whom you have described who changed their minds are intelligent people with the emotional stability to understand and correct their basic understanding of what is the truth. For many in this country the emotional level has been abused by the left to firmly affix in the minds of their victims the left wing propoganda pretending to be knowledge. It is entertaining to see a blithering braying leftist who really believes he is correct when he doesn’t understand he has been used as a well…useful idiot. The left has let it be known that if you support their agenda you are better informed, more pious, more virtuous, hip and cool, a revolutionary who is part of the vanguard overthrowing the “establishment” The useful idiot doesn’t realize how he is being USED to undermine his own life, how he is actually supporting the establishment, and how his vanity, ego, and pride have been used to achieve all this. Need proof? Look at the state of black America and the breathtaking truth that they have destroyed themselves because of whom they believed. Add to this mix, the threat that if you are on the right side, both in truth and politics, you will be vilified and “tortured” for your position. It takes courage to stand for truth to power, it takes a coward to go along. We are the revolutionaries now. We are fighting the establishment. We are the ones who must “stick it to the man”. Power to the (right) people.
David – You can add Norman Podhoretz and Irving Kristol to those who have moved from left to right.
As for the world view of leftists (labeled Liberals or Progressive, but being anything but liberal or progressive) it appears to me to be based on what they would like to the world to be, not as it is. Moreover, how they would like it to be becomes a matter of “belief” any should anyone disagree with them, that individual become a “denier.” Show them evidence that nationalized health care doesn’t work (as in Canada or the UK) and they are dismissive; show them evidence that male/female earnings differentials can be explained by factors other than discrimination, and you are labeled as anti-feminist; show them evidence that the factors others than human carbon output may be affecting the weather, and indeed that the earth may be getting cooler, and you are labeled a global-warming denier rather than a skeptical scientist; show them evidence that gun control doesn’t work, and you’re labeled a gun nut or NRA shill; show them evidence that black/white earnings differentials can be accounted for by factors other than discrimination may account and you’re labeled a racist; and so it goes. For such leftists, facts and reasoned inferences from facts have no weight. It is only what they want to be so that is so, and usually what they want to be requires more government control and less freedom. It is not for nothing that I have repeatedly said that the only thing “liberal” about such leftists is the liberal use of other people’s money and the liberal use of government power to restrict individual rights.
Mr. David Solway, and this is news? It’s taken you this long to realize that ultra left-wing trolls attack web sites like this one just to spew their ignorant venom? Come on now, anybody who has been on the Internet for more than a couple of days can see that. If you take a look at any of my comments on this site, you’ll note that my first comments are always a direct response to the main article. The only time it starts to get “personal” is when left-wing trolls decide to make snotty personal remarks against my original comment. I’ve learned a long time ago that you can’t ignore jerks like this. They know they can never win in the arena of ideas, so their only recourse is to attack people personally. And I’ve learned a long time ago never to just ignore such comments. If you do and let them stand, it only encourages these nuts to attack more people. Only by standing up to them and giving their comments right back at them can you effectively deal with them. It also shows that clear thinking people have no use for personal attacks that have nothing to do with the original post that people should be commenting on.
Also, one should also ask why left-wing nuts would even be on a site like this? Why are they so anxious to insult people who don’t agree with them? I can only think of two reasons. First, they are paid employees of some George Soros-based operation that is supposed to disrupt any site that doesn’t agree with their political agenda. There are lots of them out there and the left can tolerate anything EXCEPT people who disagree with them. So the people who disagree with their warped view of the world need to be silenced at all costs. The mainstream media has done this for years, cherry-picking the news they decide to cover and not covering any stories that may interfere with their political agenda (just take a look at the pathetic coverage given by the mainstream media to the ACORN and Van Jones stories). The left-wing web sites sponsored by Media Matters, MoveOn, Daily Kos, Huffington Post, among others, simply take this liberal bias to the Internet and are now trying to ram it down the throats of everybody who is on the Internet. So web sites like these are not allowed to be left alone simply because they disagree with what these nuts have to say.
Another question you should be asking yourself is why these left-wing nuts are here at all? If they are “true believers” in the left’s cause and love to parrot all the talking points found on MoveOn or Media Matters, why don’t they stay where people like them congregate? Why do they feel compelled to come in here to spew their venom when they know that they are clearly not wanted by the rest of us? Well, again, either they are being paid to do this or they are so mean-spirited and warped by ideology that they want to come to sites like this and disrupt discussions. Either way, there is a clear agenda on their side on why they come here to attack people who’s only “crime” is that they disagree with the propoganda that is being supplied by the left.
And, before the attacks begin, I’ll save you some time. I’m sure you’ll get the usual trolls like Vivo or Now and Then that will take one sentence of mine and try to use it as “proof” that I’m, of all things, trying to “stifle” their free speech. But that’s how they operate. They will take one of your sentences out of context and try to use it against you. Well let me save you the trouble. If any of you DO decide to do that, it will just prove that everything I said above is true, and that you’re not interested in any intelligent discourse, only personal attacks. Let’s wait and see how long it is before someone here proves me right. I give it about a few minutes.
An excellent analysis, Mr. Solway. The typical behavior of self-styled “progressives” (the term they prefer now, having succeeded in making “liberal” a by-word and a hissing, as E.E. “Doc” Smith would say) has always reminded me of an old trial lawyer’s axiom;
“If you don’t have the evidence, bang the witnesses.
“If you don’t have the witnesses, bang the evidence.
“If you don’t have either one, bang the table.”
Most “progressive” arguments consist mainly of table-banging. Plus irrelevant appeals to sentiment (“it ‘feels’ right”). And of course the morality card gets played (“it is immoral for us not to do this”). The objective being to convince anyone who dares to disagree that they’re a “bad person” for doing so.
The “health-care” debate is a case in point. The main argument of those supporting it is “Other countries do this, therefore it is wrong for us not to follow their example”. The fact that the “other countries” in question (the UK, Canada, Sweden, etc.) all now have been forced to admit that their systems are complete failures both in financial terms and health care terms is irrelevant; we must “make the correct gesture”. Success or failure, practicality or ineffectiveness, become irrelevancies when the only criteria for desirability is “looking like we’re Doing The Right Thing”.
Most “progressive” dogmas boil down to doing what “looks right”- to the progressives, who see things through the narrow lens of their own (often limited) ideation. The amount of groupthink in left-wing circles is probably only exceeded by that in extremist religious groups of all types. And like those same groups, any contrarian view, no matter how heavily supported by factual evidence, is not considered merely wrong, but evil- actual apostasy.
“Progressives” claim to be “free thinkers”, and in favor of “vigorous debate”- but they believe that the only true “freedom” is the freedom to agree with them, and follow their orders. And their definition of “debate” consists mainly of lauding each other for their “enlightenment”, and excoriating anyone who doesn’t agree- because they are obviously too stupid to deserve anything else.
I will be very surprised if the “usual suspects” don’t come after me for saying this.
clear ether
eon
Very good. But no review of blogging is complete without asking the question: will VIVO ever enter the sphere of rationality?
How true!
Many of us who seek a well-crafted, thoughtful and intelligent debate on the merits of leftist ideas are greeted instead with “You’re a great big doodyhead!” This pattern repeats itself so many times it’s become some sort of law that’s as predictable as the sun rising in the eastern sky.
It’s proof that you can’t have a battle of wits with someone who brought no ammunition to the field.
I suppose the best defense is to realize how moronic and frankly irrelevant most trolls are. My physical proportions are off? Interesting, I thought being similar to classical sculpture was a good thing, but I guess the anonymous commentator knows my body and the definition of beauty better than myself…
Once we have a rational view of the impolite commentator you may want to highlight fundamental problems in their decision process, but your words won’t reach a troll and all you could hope would be to enlighten another person who only holds those misconceptions because they hadn’t heard anything else discussed.
That being said, don’t shout in an echo chamber or you’ll make yourself deaf.
I love the way you write, Mr Solway.
You don’t even have to make conservative statements to get these people to return smears and act crudely.
Just wait for them to make a statement about their leftist beliefs, and then just ask them questions and try to get them to justify what they just said. Whether it be “Bush Lied”, or “It’s an illegal war”, or “The world hates us”, or “Barack Obama is going to save the world!”, all you need to do is ask probing questions that would lead any rational people to see that they are either wrong or don’t know what they are talking about.
They don’t want to be questioned and they don’t want to have to justify their immature, emotional positions.
After just a few questions, you should notice that they become very agitated. Ask a few more and they will erupt, calling you a neocon, a Limbaughista, or worse.
Without you even having to utter a single conservative position. It will be assumed that because you’re questioning their beliefs that you must be a horrible, stupid neocon and that you’re just following the pied pipers of conservative radio.
This happens to me all of the time. I laugh out loud at how they get their panties all twisted up and ultimately they end the conversation with “I don’t care and I don’t have to explain myself to you because you’re too dumb to understand and you’d rather live in a world where the Chimpy McHalliburtons are screwing the world.”
I’ve learned there is no hope. It’s the extremely rare soul that can make the transition from this lunacy back to enlightened reason.
I’m glad you did David. Congratulations and thank you for writing about it.
Thank you for the article. The left has been using this tactic from the 1960′s forward and it has been met with an enabling spirit by left leaning academics, pols, and media types all in the name of “conversation”. Sadly, it is the interruption in the speech that receives media coverage, not the content of the speech. For lack of a better example, it is the ‘don’t taze me bro’ moment that attends to the liberal agenda of shouting down other ideas.
I can’t wait to see what the likes of jharp, now & then, and bartyman have to contribute to this thread.
The Left doesn’t like being exposed, and if you shine a light on them, they run.
They also have no real arguments left, so the resort to the time honored method of bullying and insult—i.e., “You’re a stupid, red neck, Rethuglican Neanderthal! Your SAT scores must have been really low, and you never went to an Ivy League college, bleaaahhhhhh!” They hope to shut you up by intimidating you.
People are catching on.
These guys will never understand this is not about personal attacks but the direction this admin is taking our country. We have to fight for our future.
Sign up and join the fight at http://www.handsoffamerica.net
Aren’t moderators of blogs able to weed out the “comments without content”? If the blog owners hand a weapon to their vituperative enemies, whose fault is its misuse?
Great article with many dead-on points! Unfortunately, I believe you are shouting into the gale.
Unless and until persons these ignoramuses care about start to call them on their errors, lies, faults and backstabbing ways they will never change. They don’t care what YOU say, or any of the rest of us, for that matter. They care what their friends think of them. They care what their socialist / communist teachers & professors think of them. They care if they say the same things Hollywood luminaries say.
The root issue is that the truth is irrelevant to them. We struggle for truth and they struggle for “enlightenment”. We believe in facts, but they believe in feelings; in opinion. We attend some denomination of the Church of Jesus Christ; they attend the church of political correctness.
We cannot reason with them; they don’t use reason.
We cannot teach them; they’re not listening.
We cannot help them; they’re running away from us as fast as they can!
We can only defeat them, marginalize them, mock them, ridicule them, humble them. We can get to the new generations before they do and take away their recruiting ground. We cannot save them!
You’re right. I’m wrong. And not just about how I respond around here, which has been selfish and harsh. I’m starting to doubt Obama. Things aren’t going very well, aren’t going like I expected them to go. I’m staring to feel like I was sold a bill of goods. I guess this is what they call a crisis of confidence.
“ked5″ #4,
Since you mention “human pyschology,”
are you familiar with this writer?
http://www.americanthinker.com/robin_of_berkeley/
you should pass this article along to your colleague, Ron Rosenbaum, who has written a series of posts on the idea that the conservative talkback is much more insane and hate-filled.
What strikes me most about sites like PJ are the left trolls that seek to provoke conservatives into wasting time in responding to their typical inane writings. They should just be ignored. If you feel you must respond, do so gracefully by just saying:
“Obtw, it’s good to see is now reading facts and analysis. There is hope for their recovery.”
But never,ever engage the trolls. It just demeans you and leaves a very bad taste in your mouth and makes them feel important in the shadow life they live.
Well put! I agree with the correlation, at least in a statistical sense, between the general disposition of the trollers and the lunacy of the left kind. By the way, I find it amusing that the Italian word for “left” is “sinistra”. I sometimes wonder whether the virulence of the practitioners of the vituperative overflow can be a measure of the value of their target.
Those who find their comfort in the rituals of drive-by emoting and conclusion jumping may have somewhere in a well guarded recess of their mind, some potential for rationality, awaiting liberation from the grips of bullying emotion. Is it possible that this latent capacity detects rationality, but is consistently frustrated by an internal form of tyranny, the exigency of an equally frustrated rebellion?
So, what to do with the trollers, and their sniping? This is an authentic problem (not a contrived one), that is, one without a pre-ordained, nor satisfactory, solution. They need their breathing room, too. At the minimum, we owe them their chances of self redemption. It’s a matter of civility, reciprocated or not.
If 9/11 didn’t wake you, you are permanently somnolent, caught in a world of dreams and “feelings,” where facts matter less than wish-fulfillment. Thus the desire to view our implacable foes as our better selves in the mirror, tolerant; merely misunderstood. “We all love our children”… eyewash. The Iranians used their children for minefield clearance. The tyrants are emboldened, dictatorship is on the march. The slavers are ascendant, indeed.
I’m glad you mentioned Milosz in the context of “changing one’s mind”. As the opening quote of his great book “The Captive Mind” (which, incidentally, played a huge role in my own intellectual development) goes,
“When someone is honestly 55% right, that’s very good and there’s no use wrangling. And if someone is 60% right, it’s wonderful, it’s good luck and let him thank God. But, what’s to be said about 75% right? Wise people say this is suspicious. Well, and what about 100% right? Whoever says he is 100% right is a fanatic, a thug, and the worst kind of rascal.”
Just reading the typical troll comments, one can sense the “100% right” fanaticism behind every word. And not just “100% right” as it pertains to their own lives, but to the lives of others. I’m “a fanatic, a thug and the worst kind of rascal” when it comes to doing what I decide to do, but I don’t even consider myself at the “55% right” level when it comes to telling someone else what to do, yet these fools feel 100% confident that they can tell a country of 300 million people what to do down to the minutest detail. It’s a human form of madness akin to rabies.
“Republican Congressman Joe Wilson’s famous outburst during Obama’s health care speech at a joint session of Congress on September 9, 2009, was palpably churlish, but we might recall in context the heckling leveled at George Bush, not by a single representative who happened to lose his temper, but by a contingent of primed, irascible Democrats.”
Boy, talk about the Big Lie, comparing Wilson’s outburst IN CONGRESS to Dems heckling Bush …where? W rarely faced the public. His staged “Town Meetings” (“I’m glad your my president” … “How can I help you, Mr. President”) were beyond embarrassing.
“One can move both ways, of course, from left to center-right as did David Horowitz, or from right to liberal-left, as did Andrew Sullivan.”
You neglect the most interesting case: Paul Craig Roberts, the “Father of Reaganomics,” who now writes blistering anti-Semitic and anti-U.S. diatribes for the aforementioned CounterPunch, but still sticks to his Reaganesque economic principles.
“I have no statistics at my disposal.”
And no facts.
In sum, Davie, if you have such thin skin, you should stop spouting nonsense.
15. Jack in Silver Spring:
David – You can add Norman Podhoretz and Irving Kristol to those who have moved from left to right.
~~~
Michael Medved.
Now and Then (#29)
Welcome! Sorry about your disappointment. There was reason to hope, and the disilluion is painful. Perhaps our president is performing a public service after all, unvoluntarily debunking the various notions of happy-face utopia. By the way, “utopia” in Greek, literally means “not a place”, so abandonning it is not such a terrible loss!
Good article, but I think you can boil the differences down to a few basics:
1. The “right” believes in individual responsibility, hard work, and competition in the workplace; if you succeed, great; if you fail, try again.
2. The “left” believes in taking wealth from those who have worked hard and giving it to those who, for whatever reason, can’t (or won’t) work within the existing system.
By basically stealing from the most productive through extortionist tax rates and then “spreading it around,” they solidify their position of power (and wealth) while creating a society where everyone subsists (see Europe for a good example of this.) Forcing the citizens to spend most of their free time standing in line for basic products and services helps keep them docile (think waiting four or five hours to see your primary care physician.)
It’s all about the elitists having complete control over every aspect of everyone’s life . . . and they are absolutely ruthless in the means that they will use to accomplish their ends.
Look at the number of dead caused by leftist regimes (Mao, Hitler, Lenin, Stalin, Chavez, Ho Chi Min) and it’s in the hundreds of millions . . . . . which is the reasonable outcome when man rejects God and tries to replace Him with man and man-made institutions.
Which also explains the extreme violence that you always see from the “left”; look at Pelosi and Reid calling those will legitimate concerns over the deficit “Nazis,” “Fascists,” “rednecks” . . . . really chilling.
Can you imagine the response when Bush was president if Republican congressmen and senators had done the same thing? The MSM would’ve blown a gasket; every headline would’ve been a hemorrhage of ink calling for their immediate impeachment.
We live in interesting times.
Great article. Like a shave and a haircut knock to Roger Rabbit, they flock to prove your point with their six bits invective. It’s just so easy.
(I will soon probably regret this.)
Why NAT, #29, if you are for real with this comment and are not merely setting up a snare for poor sentimental saps like me, I would have to say your comment is the best I’ve read in a long time. It does you credit, and it cheers up my view of the future considerably.
Every now and then its nice to get an article thats just about dribble and yack..going on about those you do not like or agree with. This is a good example, and the author might be getting paid for it or even become famous by doing it.
Good Job David…congratulations.
Your still in the running to becoming America’s next top model…
David, I think your efforts would be better spent in chronicling the phenomenon you’ve touched on here with “How common is an experience of this nature?”
It is extremely common.
It’s a difficult transition, however, for exactly the reasons you note. It takes a 9/11 for some. For others, all it takes is direct exposure to overweening government and a mind interested and open enough to search for the cause.
Given the regularity with which this transition occurs, it’s obviously also a natural one. To mature is a natural process. We mature intellectually, chronologically, sexually, spiritually and morally. It’s this last facet of our character – our level of moral maturity – that is most closely associated with our choice of political ideology AND the manner we choose to manifest it (i.e., acting like an adult vs. an adolescent).
Morality is learned. Not surprisingly, self-described “liberals” (actually leftists) exhibit preference for an incomplete, adolescent definition of morality, while self-described “conservatives” (actually classical liberals) subscribe to a holistic, mature morality.
Successful, sustainable societies of the past (e.g., Greece) have been governed by policies which embody a holistic, mature morality grounded in five fundamental intuitive ethics, equally valued. Fleeting, self-destructive societies (e.g., USSR) have been governed by policy based on only a subset of these ethics. The fall of most civilizations can be traced in large part to its abandonment of mature morality by its body politic. This is exactly what’s happening in America while we watch.
None of this is a guess or an anecdotal observation, it’s a phenomenon revealed in the implications of extensive research in the area of moral psychology, and it explains completely the phenomena you’ve written about here. The dichotomy between conservatives and liberals can be seen perfectly as a conflict between adult parents and their adolescent children, respectively.
But there’s a problem. The moral adolescents in this case are otherwise mature – at least intellectually and chronologically. So when it comes to social policy, we mistakenly treat them as adults. Instead of completely ignoring their morally adolescent demands about how to run the household, we keep compromising with them. By appeasing them and entertaining more and more of their morally adolescent notions, we have helped to create a 2 + 2 = 5, Bizarro World that is quickly sliding down the slippery slope into the bottomless chasm of socialism. This needs to stop, or we will experience first-hand the same fate of every great society and culture that has come – and gone – before us.
David, having read the comments, have you noticed that some non-lefties are not all that welcoming either? They don’t appear to want you to agree with them because you’re not agreeing properly. Perhaps you’ve been permanently tainted.
#8: Vivo wrote:
You contradict yourself and distort the facts.
You wasted your article.
The conservative trolls are sicker than sick.
Either you need to improve your research skills or just plain tell the truth.
Exhibit A.
I have the feeling that most Jews who moved from left to right after 9/11 is all about Isreal and their protection of it, nothing more. Don’t be fooled by their change in perspective it is clearly a single issue move. Mr. Solway is not even an American let alone an actual journalist. Our problems in this country are mostly domestic and they won’t be solved by coddling Isreal or bombing the middle east. All will go away if we stop abortions, gay marriage and elect Palin tho.
“I don’t have to read what’s in this ginormous bill I want to pass, all I need to know is that everyone else I know who didn’t read it either likes it for the few parts we barely understand, now shut-up.”
This is the mentality we are dealing with all the way from the TOP.
Challenging someone who’s mind is rigidly set tends to make them uncomfortable. -And, let’s be honest here…’thinking’ outside of your comfort zone takes some actual work and Leftists are often loathe to thoroughly read someone else’s POV and forget about actually comprehending it enough to even debate/discuss/relate.
Hmm. Should there have been a comma after, “either”? I’m not awake apparently.
Kathy@1
What’s your point exactly, apart from patting yourself on the back for being 100% right 100% of the time?
I’ll be 60 years old next year and I lost every friend I had but one after 9/11, all because I supported the war. People I’d known for 30 years and more, people whose kids had grown up with mine, stopped trusting me as a human being over a difference of political opinion. Leaving the left is a heresy, and those who do are shunned. I have no regrets and I say good riddance to them all, and you can be damned sure I’m not looking for a pat on the back from you. But I do suggest you help yourself to a chill pill. Questioning and re-evaluating the beliefs of a lifetime isn’t as easy or superficial a process as you seem to think, whatever a person’s age. And bitchy condescension doesn’t require any backbone at all. (Poor Citizen, take note)
Apparently boiling rubber frogs is a sin against the universe.
All you have to do is ask who craves more centralized power in Washington, over companies, individuals, speech { the recent warning to insurance companies, the hungry urge for the “Fairness Doctrine”}the potentially crippling budget deficits, and on and on. Then who says what and how becomes purely academic, actions really do speak louder than words.
The poor boobs who have committed their sorry selves to what is laughably still called liberalism are in a bind. They are not well enough to admit they might be wrong, their entire selves & identities are involved in leftist politics. They’re going on for the whole destructive ride with the equally destructive Obama.
You only need judge the nuts on this site to see what torment they are undergoing.
BTW, just when IS Gitmo closing ??
Add Charles Johnson to your list. But I think that this swing to the left may be more short lived than most chatterati are echoing, and these people may end up on the wrong side of the fence once again. Obama, Pelosi and crew are doing their damnedest to shed the “cool” image that liberals have spent decades creating, in the minds of independents. By the time this cycle is over, they’re going to look like ubernerds, and libertarians will be the “cool” crowd.
Neither does moral vanity.
Articles like this are expected at PJM, and actually help to put the lie to the author’s conclusions. He readily admits that he has no statistics, no evidence, nothing to back up his assertions – but nonetheless is confident that his conclusions are sound.
One paragraph in particular gave me pause, as it so clearly applies to much of the invective spewed in comment threads:
I do hope that my fellows in the comment threads at PJM will take this thought to heart. The emphasis on reason, and on intellectual curiosity, are in complete accord with my own efforts here at PJM. Despite the ongoing ad hominem attacks that persist at PJM, I am confident that there is a cohort of reasonable and intellectually curious readers who appreciate the efforts of folks who bring dissenting views to these pages.
I would have more respect for the author if he had addressed this problem in the rational and intellectually honest manner that he proposes, rather than using the entire article as a platform for his own ad hominem attacks on the left. The author claims to have found “that the great majority of these crude and invidious remarks come from patently left-leaning readers” but can offer nothing more than his own personal impression, no doubt clouded by the ideology. He describes the problem well, while providing a great example, too.
When I read the line “certain sites feature articles, reports, and analyses of contemporary events that, in their content and phrasing, differ little from the productions of the most thoughtless and vitriolic commenters themselves” the first site that came to mind was the one the author is posting on. I want to thank Mr. Solway for putting the lie to his own thesis so elegantly.
Peace.
DS
36. biblio44 wrote:
Boy, talk about the Big Lie, comparing Wilson’s outburst IN CONGRESS to Dems heckling Bush …where? W rarely faced the public.
Peter writes: Try at the State of the Union addresses. And gee, lookie at that, the address is held in… wait for it… CONGRESS!
But libtards like biblio probably don’t get out form behind their computers enough to actually interact with the real world and find out what goes on there unless it it filtered through their liberal masters and the published talking points.
“By the way, I find it amusing that the Italian word for “left” is “sinistra”.”
And the French word for “left” is “gauche.”
Even more amusing is the way our resident libtrolls have responded to Mr Solway by ingenuously making his point for him.
There is a more simple truth in this that transcends left or right, conservative or liberal. Those who shout the loudest, get the most upset and attack with the most vitriol are usually those who have adopted beliefs that are the most un-provable, un-supportable by any empirical facts or unachievable based on calm reasoning. The more unsupported by evidence a belief is, the more ardently and vehemently it is must be promoted in compensation.
Observe that although left-liberals are in power (and about to wreck havoc with all of their legislation and programs IMO), they are still in great numbers red-faced angry over anything that challenges their belief systems.
The rise in angry and uncivil conservative and libertarian bloggers can be partially explained by the affect of the left being put in a position to force the consequences of their beliefs on others. In this case the recipient “non believers” can get pretty upset as well.
You can see this principle writ large in various religious conflicts around the world.
17 Eon
The “health-care” debate is a case in point. The main argument of those supporting it is “Other countries do this, therefore it is wrong for us not to follow their example”.
~~~~
I think this also proves his point that leftists cannot stand by themnselves – they must congregate with those like them so they feel “liked”. They are desperate to be liked, as they think approbation of their peers is equivalent with doing what is right. (and force anyone different, to be like them. Heaven forbid people be “different”.)
As someone else pointed out, the trolls come here to spew their venom because they *are* mean spirited. They also have a desperate need to feel self-righteous. I’m all for treating them as the two-year old tantrum throwers they are – ignore them.
23. mac:
The left has been using this tactic from the 1960’s forward and it has been met with an enabling spirit by left leaning academics,
~~~
Those same left-leaning academics are the ones who decide who get into PhD programs and become . . . academics for tomorrow’s students. It goes without saying, they will choose left-leaning PhD wannabe’s.
Calvin Bell@53
I agree completely. That was my point in chiding the poster for being so self-congratulatory and dismissive. My remarks about my own experience were intended solely to support the author’s claim that breaking ranks with the left comes with a price that those who make the opposite transition do not have to pay. That is not a tribute to me or anyone else in the same boat but rather to the overall tolerance for dissent that is characteristic of the right, despite widespread leftist (and, sadly) popular belief to the contrary.
25. BettyBlue:
The Left doesn’t like being exposed, and if you shine a light on them, they run.
~~~
Like a cockroach.
@43. goy:
I appreciate your devotion to your cause, but I take issue with your reasoning. You haven’t provided any compelling reason to accept your formulation of “moral maturity” – only your own opinion. You appeal to an imaginary golden era in Greece as a pinnacle of moral achievement, which it assuredly is not, and claim that this misogynist, martial, slave-owning society is the best model for “moral maturity”. This is a morally bankrupt position.
The abandonment of tribal morality is the key to the flourishing culture that the world now enjoys. True moral maturity requires an ethical system that does not rely on appeals to authority, in-group and purity ethics, which are inherently biased and therefore not a basis for shared decision making. You use the term “moral maturity” as a bludgeon, providing an excellent example of the ad hominem tactics the author deplores.
Although you frame the dichotomy as one of children versus adults, the conflict is more properly between the educated, who understand and appreciate the value of universal moral precepts, and the indoctrinated, who claim moral superiority based on tribal associations. The long term future of human morality cannot depend on ancient tribal customs and beliefs, because they are not fit for the world in which we now live.
Peace.
DS
David, thank you so much for putting into words many of the things I have piecemeal commented on for quite some time.
Lovely article and nicely assembled.
I have a couple of homespun theories, not tested…but simply observed over time.
As a general rule, those who tilt left on the spectrum are rulebreakers…those who do not tend to be rules followers.
Behavior patterns, therefore…seem to follow along those lines…leftists are always looking for ways to challenge the “establishment”…and the further left you go…the more “rage against the machine” you get.
And it turns into an imprint upon the essence of leftism and leftists…almost to the extent where its fervor turns to the level of religious dogma…They NEED something to rage against.
Like a dog chasing a bus with blind intent, once the leftists gain control of the “establishment”, they have lost their bearings, their raison d’etre.
The reason you see them with eyes still bulging in rage and no discourse is absent the rocket propelled spittle and venom …is because they are so conditioned to pick fights…that strawmen and paper tigers need to be invented or they would lose all oxygen and die…from atrophy of the “I’m against” gland.
The reason that they have lost the ability to reason…is that ALL the places where public debate, public dissemination and public access to FACTS, OPINION, AND DISCOURSE take place…have been stormed, occupied and fortressed by leftism.
Entrenched media, ALL venues of entertainment, academia…have not only crushed even the mildest of differing worldviews…they have isolated the whole of our means of public testing of ideas and built a wall around “groupthink” so thick, that no sound reasoning can get in…or out.
Therefore, in order to maintain…what might otherwise be improved by rational debate and testing of ideas…gets hardened in its seminal state…protected, sheltered and preserved, even if diseased.
And the means of protection can extend to fakery, scam, misdirection, lies, fraud…whatever.
Facts now are intentionally buried. They are photoshopped, hidden, distorted, manipulated.
Leftists are so atrophied at fair debate, they now MUST cheat the system…deny the public the information stream they deserve.
The rulebreakers are making new rules. The game therefore is fixed, even before it begins.
26. HandsOffAmerica:
These guys will never understand this is not about personal attacks but the direction this admin is taking our country.
~~~~~
do you suppose when they’ve outlived their usefullness, and are hauled off to the camps (re: weather underground and their reeducation camps) with the rest of us, they might at least question their basic premises? I didn’t think so either.
30. Ed Wallis:
“ked5″ #4,
Since you mention “human pyschology,”
are you familiar with this writer?
~~~
I’ve read her column’s on AT. I congratulate her on waking up and smelling reality.
33. Professor Guvinoff:
By the way, I find it amusing that the Italian word for “left” is “sinistra
~~~
I myself prefer the Latin. Sinister. Don’t'cha just love Latin?
“Ladies & Gentlemen, your President is a Robot”:
http://spiegelman.tumblr.com/post/196636529/ladies-and-gentlemen-your-president-is-a-robot
President Obama has the exact same smile & pose with everyone; this is just creepy. The photos are compressed into a 20 second segment for the effect. Empty meet Suit.
“We are the revolutionaries now. We are fighting the establishment. We are the ones who must “stick it to the man”. Power to the (right) people.”
This is interesting. We need to spread this message – could be quite effective. Even Paglia said something like this, that the Democrats do not represent the people anymore, that the Republicans do. Maybe the tide is finally shifting (as the USA runs out of money and jobs). No doubt the Democrats running things are in the pockets of big business!
Good luck metamorphosing minds;
Harry Potter would hesitate here.
Compare to the Copenhagen School of physicists trying to come to terms with Quantum Mechanics;
“We agree your idea is crazy, the question which
separates us is whether it is crazy enough to be
true; I, myself, do not think it is sufficiently
crazy.”
And they were merely trying to accept a new
scientific concept which would invalidate
their status as experts; The Left is literally
trying to abandon a religious belief.
@62. David S: – … I take issue with your reasoning.
When you’ve demonstrated that you’re capable of reason we can entertain your issue. Meanwhile, it’s obviously necessary to remind you that you lied. You got caught. You got pwned.
You’ve rendered your own commentary irrelevant, Zippy.
But far too many stubbornly refuse to connect or “dock” with the propositions, hypotheses, or contentions being developed in the articles they are presumably annotating, and indeed frequently steer perilously close to gutter talk, if not actually wallowing in the verbal gutter.
Looking for substance in a typical Leftist’s argument is like looking for peanut chunks in smooth peanut butter.
Frankly, I’d feel much better (about “the world”) if Barack Hussein Obama’s devotees could muster cogent and on point arguments, as opposed to regurgitation of predictable talking points and snarky diatribe.
But one can always hope that a saving skepticism regarding one’s own motives and inevitable myopia may kick in at some point and compel one to reexamine one’s condign prejudices and emotional investments.
Don’t waste your time…
It’s too crowded in there, there’s no room for skepticism
43 goy said: It’s a difficult transition, however, for exactly the reasons you note. It takes a 9/11 for some. For others, all it takes is direct exposure to overweening government and a mind interested and open enough to search for the cause.
I have a Russian imegre friend that tells me how his father watched his grandfather go to his death, still making excuses for Stalin whom sent him and his entire family to a gulag, goy. Some people will never see the light…
54
He readily admits that he has no statistics, no evidence, nothing to back up his assertions – but nonetheless is confident that his conclusions are sound…I want to thank Mr. Solway for putting the lie to his own thesis so elegantly.
How surprising that one of the 100% certainty crowd is 100% certain that the author is wrong, even though he himself cites “no statistics, no evidence, nothing to back up his assertions”. Even to admit that the author COULD be correct through sheer luck is beyond his abilities. You want to know why people go “ad hominem” on you, David S? It’s because your smug egocentricity (and the fact that we can’t reach through our monitors and throttle you, at least in my case that’s true). You’re the traveling salesman who assures us that if we only purchase your snake oils, all will be well. We tell you a hundred times, “Nope, not interested, I’ve got my own things going on and I’m not looking to add any snake oils to my collection”, yet you keep pushing it. You have got to be one of the most annoying people in the history of the planet.
Brillian article. Rarely do we see such literate and intelligent writing. Good work!
@70. goy:
When you’ve demonstrated that you’re capable of reason we can entertain your issue. Meanwhile, it’s obviously necessary to remind you that you lied. You got caught. You got pwned.
Thanks for another ad hominem attack to prove my point. Keep up the good work. Let me know when you are willing to defend your arguments rather than engage in personal attacks. You might want to remind yourself about the topic you are posting on (hint: it’s about civility).
You’ve rendered your own commentary irrelevant, Zippy.
Hardly. You just keep proving my point. Thanks!
Peace.
DS
54 David S said: I do hope that my fellows in the comment threads at PJM will take this thought to heart. The emphasis on reason, and on intellectual curiosity, are in complete accord with my own efforts here at PJM.
You the same David S I had discussions with a few months back? The one that makes facts up and then got all prissy when people didn’t take him seriously or made fun of him? The problem with you is that your “facts” tend to be as reliable and convincing as the assurances from a used car salesman that the car he is selling you is in primo condition. Don’t blame others for not taking you seriously.
@63. cfbleachers: – As a general rule, those who tilt left on the spectrum are rulebreakers…those who do not tend to be rules followers.
There’s actually clinical evidence to back this up, cf’, so your observation – like pretty much everything in Solway’s article – is in fact “tested”.
One characteristic of individuals who possess a comprehensive, holistic morality is that they tend value respect for authority. The opposite is true of those whose selective morality is driven by an unbalanced emphasis on “fairness” and preventing “harm”. This phenomenon is surprisingly consistent, and seen in the results of research conducted not only in America, and in fact not only just in Western Cultures, but globally. This holistic-vs.-selective morality describes the respective attitudes of self-described “conservatives” and “liberals” perfectly.
- Leftists are so atrophied at fair debate, they now MUST cheat the system…deny the public the information stream they deserve.
This is another observation that is “tested”. In fact, this exactly describes the left’s history in America. In the 1930s, huge portions of FDR’s so-called “New Deal” were repealed when the Supreme Court determined that they were unconstitutional. This even included FDR’s so-called “Recovery Act” – the one recently copied by BHO and the socialists in Congress.
In response to these SCOTUS decisions, FDR attempted to change the structure of the Court in order to pack it with more justices sympathetic to his brand of socialism. He failed in that attempt, although the entire affair has been all but completely airbrushed from U.S. History (certainly, as taught in public schools).
FDR’s legacy, and the manner in which he is glorified to this day on the left, is this: if you can’t get what you want, cheat. If you cheat and still lose, hide the evidence.
@ David S: (#62)
Your otherwise logical argument hinges on the notion of “Universal moral precepts“.
Would you care to explain the foundations of this notion?
@75. David S: – Thanks for another ad hominem attack to prove my point.
Demonstrating that you lied is not “ad hominem”, Zippy. Neither is having the patience to wait until you’re capable of reason – especially given how long that’s likely to take based on your incessant stream of baseless drivel.
@73. venividivici:
How surprising that one of the 100% certainty crowd is 100% certain that the author is wrong, even though he himself cites “no statistics, no evidence, nothing to back up his assertions”.
Perhaps you did not actually understand my comment. I agreed with the author in large part, only taking issue with the hypocrisy of his delivery, and his willingness to reach a conclusion without evidence.
Even to admit that the author COULD be correct through sheer luck is beyond his abilities.
I don’t deny that the author could be correct about leftists being less civil – but he hasn’t provided any reason to believe that he is right. Incivility is a problem on the left and the right, and pretending that it isn’t is foolish. Pointing fingers is for children.
You want to know why people go “ad hominem” on you, David S? It’s because your smug egocentricity (and the fact that we can’t reach through our monitors and throttle you, at least in my case that’s true).
In other words, my confidence in myself and my arguments, and my rational responses, only serve to further inflame commenters who prefer violence and personal attacks to reasoned discourse? Why am I not surprised?
You’re the traveling salesman who assures us that if we only purchase your snake oils, all will be well. We tell you a hundred times, “Nope, not interested, I’ve got my own things going on and I’m not looking to add any snake oils to my collection”, yet you keep pushing it. You have got to be one of the most annoying people in the history of the planet.
I only wish you could see how hilarious this statement is from my perspective. You’ve clearly demonstrated the problem the author identified: an “unwillingness to reflect upon one’s own prejudices, assumptions, and ideological stances”. I welcome you to offer a rational critique of my positions – by refusing to do so, you only make my argument stronger. You can call me a snake oil salesman, but that doesn’t constitute an argument – it’s just another example of the ad hominem attacks so common here.
Please try reading my post at #54 one more time, and see if you can understand what I am actually saying. I know it is difficult to rise above the personal, but this is an issue that demands such extra effort.
Peace.
DS
David, I often contemplate these same issues, although less elegantly.
I have been on the web less than a year and still have many problems navigating and accomplishing my goals, I also run a business, so time is of the essence. So thanks for all the references, I will enjoy motoring around in them.
I have been a Conservative since the Goldwater Era and have never faced doubts as to my Conservative convictions. I do wonder at the reasoning of the rabid Leftist, I read their websites and comments to try and understand the nature of their belief system.
Just as the terms Left and Right evolved during the bloodbath after the French Revolution, I believe there is purpose for both political fores to exist. However, there seems to be an intellectual vacuum and a willingness to embrace corruption and fraud that is endemic of the Left. The concepts of selling out the United States for the purpose of promoting an International movement of the Left has captured the imagination of the Left along with the belief that they can accept “any means” to accomplish the goal of living under an International System of Blanket Socialism.
This will be their downfall in time. Eventually, even the most cerebral deficient among them will see that the International Leaders of Socialism are the most corrupt murderous thugs on the earth.
In the mean time we are contending with dupes and dupers, There are few dupers with charisma and intellectual talent among the Left, consequently their mindless and witless followers are limited in number by the fact that a follower must make concessions to intellect and honor in order to listen and accept the pablum of the Left. There are only so may willing deny their innate ability to analyze and employ cognitive thought process.
Aided by a compliant Public School System and a Leftist University System the Left has been able to produce compliant Leftist Ideologues by the tens of thousands for decades. This device or machine we buy at Wal Mart that you are using will inevitably bring down this hegemony of ignorance in time.
For a Conservative to read the writing of the Leftist Leaders is usually only accomplished because of a sense of dedication and duty, then the inane cheerleader comments belies a minimal claim to rational thought. There are only so many simpletons that can identify with such insipid and shallow nonsense and still pretend to maintain a sense of personal dignity. For these are not the cheerleaders of a sporting event, no, these are the cheerleaders you might find at a whore house, so lacking in substance is their message.
It is no wonder we have so many Trolls who spend their time on Conservative Websites, the Liberal sites are so boring and superficial and the comments are on the level of grammar school.
Obviously, you grew up in Canada, a country that can be secure in its experiments with Socialism, because of its proximity to what was until a few months ago, the most powerful country in the world. The only question I have for you David, since you write like a fairly intelligent man, is what the hell took you so long to see the truth?
It’s because your smug egocentricity (and the fact that we can’t reach through our monitors and throttle you, at least in my case that’s true).
Monitor throttling, what a dream !
David S is one of the most consistent, if not the most consistent, regurgitator of knee jerk Left talking points I’ve encountered in my lifetime.
On any and all topics.
Further aggravation in that he offers his not stop, jet stream tripe as enlightened, intellectual dissent.
If some Soros organization is paying PJM trolls, it is having the opposite from intended effect.
@75. David S: – Keep up the good work. Let me know when you are willing to defend your arguments…
We’ve already been through that exercise, Zippy. It went exceedingly badly for you.
If anyone’s actually interested in your sophomoric blather on this topic, and your transparent misrepresentation of Jon Haidt’s thesis, all they need to do is click here and read it. Your position on this is completely bereft of any supporting data whatsoever.
And just as cfbleachers has observed, you had to LIE – completely misrepresenting Jon Haidt’s statements by cherry-picking them and eliminating their critical context – in order to form any argument at all. You lied. You got caught. You got pwned.
You’ve rendered your own commentary irrelevant, Zippy.
Eventually, even the most cerebral deficient among them will see that the International Leaders of Socialism are the most corrupt murderous thugs on the earth.
Don’t hold your breath.
ché, mao et al. are heroes in many quarters as we speak.
We’ve got a diversity czar at the FCC that can’t praise Oogoe Chavez enough.
(Mark Lloyd is also on tape recently saying that whites are gonna hafta move over so blacks can take over the power slots)
“That the Left postures as though it is on the side of social justice, but it is on the side of the greatest and most pernicious violators of social justice. And its hands are drenched in human blood in terms of the mass murdering ideologies and regimes it has supported and aided and
abetted.”
~Jamie Glazov, United in Hate: The Left’s Romance with Tyranny and Terror
@78. Professor Guvinoff:
Your otherwise logical argument hinges on the notion of “Universal moral precepts“.
Would you care to explain the foundations of this notion?
Certainly. In brief, the theory that goy is promoting is based on the research of one Jon Haidt; he proposed a theory of five moral precepts: fairness, harm, authority, in-group and purity. Empirical observation and surveys have demonstrated that virtually all people around the world accept the first two – rendering them universal. The other three precepts have been identified as a common thread through insular and tribal societies around the world, but are absent or deprecated in societies that depend on a rational moral framework.
The moral precepts of fairness and harm are the only two of the five that could properly be called “universal”, because by their very nature the other three are insular. I could go into more detail on the problems with these three precepts as a basis for morality, but that exceeds the scope of your question. Just let me know if you would like to pursue this line of reasoning further.
Peace.
DS
I find (most of) the comments here very stimulating.
One amusing player is this “David S” who seems to possess an erudite air in writing.
Too bad the words are blind.
Blind, that is, to all the trolls (AKA “the usual suspects” here at PJM) who are only too disruptive to be “invisible” to anyone as ostensibly educated as the poster pretends to be.
The only alternative to such “blindness” is utter intellectual dishonesty.
Yeah well…to be expected.
“And I’ve found — no big surprise — that the great majority of these crude and invidious remarks come from patently left-leaning readers.”
Really now? Go look back at the posts on the right wing blog sites when Kennedy succumbed to brain cancer and try to explain how that fits in with your premise. Actually, you just need only to look at the everyday comments directed at Obama on sites like this to see who’s really “crude and invidious” — not to mention nescient (aka friggin’ clueless).
@79. goy:
Demonstrating that you lied is not “ad hominem”, Zippy. Neither is having the patience to wait until you’re capable of reason – especially given how long that’s likely to take based on your incessant stream of baseless drivel.
Calling me a liar is an ad hominem. Again – you can’t address the argument, so you revert to personal attack. You are welcome to engage in rational debate; if you persist in your preference for personal attack, you only weaken your own case.
If you think what I am arguing is baseless drivel – prove it. Otherwise, you are just reinforcing my argument.
Peace.
DS
Then you haven’t been looking hard enough.
Conservatives are more than happy to dip into the gutter as the left as long as the subject is homosexuals, abortion or atheism. There are just as many knuckle-dragging idiots on the right as on the left. The so-cons like to portray the left as the mean-spirited ones, but there is just as much idiocy and mean spiritedness on the right; its just on different subjects.
Make a conservative remark on say daily kos and see what happens. If you do not get the difference in comparison to the treatment of “modern liberals” here on a conservative site, you are blind. And this blindness is a basic condition for being a “modern liberal”. Stupidity is a luxury. You can only afford it if you do not have to suffer the consequences of your egalitarian ideas. I come from the left dear trolls. I know your mindset inside out. A conservative would not stay long at something like daily kos. It would just be boring and disgusting. But you my dear peacebrother with “emphasis on reason” and the other lefties do not get bored here. You have a mission to accomplish. But behind this is also fascination. On the long run this could be just a little more reality as you can bear. Beware. Reality is poison for a “modern liberal”. To much discrimination if you know what I mean. Even if the remark of Now and Then was a fake thats what you are heading for: ” You’re right. I’m wrong. And not just about how I respond around here, which has been selfish and harsh. I’m starting to doubt Obama. Things aren’t going very well, aren’t going like I expected them to go. I’m staring to feel like I was sold a bill of goods. I guess this is what they call a crisis of confidence.”
@85. David S: – The other three precepts have been identified as a common thread through insular and tribal societies around the world, but are absent or deprecated in societies that depend on a rational moral framework.
This is a pathetically specious misrepresentation, Zippy: i.e., a Lie.
Your lie is utterly discredited by observable reality – specifically, every failed communist ‘experiment’ in history, the dying EU, and the measurable degree to which America has been degraded by the increasing influence of socialism these past 70+ years. Sustainable societies – as recognized by the research you’ve chosen to misrepresent – rely upon a holistic morality comprised of all five intuitive ethics, not just the two that appeal to morally adolescent leftists.
Furthermore your Lie is directly refuted by the author of the research (Haidt) himself, as he goes from one leftist group to another, chiding them for their lack of moral diversity and recommending as a matter of social progress that they appreciate and use MORE, not less, of the three intuitive ethics they reject.
Nice try, but once again you’ve knowingly misrepresented the research. You got caught. You got pwned.
You’ve rendered your own commentary irrelevant, Zippy.
80
I only wish you could see how hilarious this statement is from my perspective.
And one of my wishes, thus far, thankfully, having been granted, is that I never see anything from your perspective again, like I did when I was, oh, an idiot of 22.
I welcome you to offer a rational critique of my positions – by refusing to do so, you only make my argument stronger.
History really starts anew every day with you, doesn’t it? “Rational critiques of your positions” litter the PJM thread landscape. YOU refuse to see the rationality therein. The problem, such as it is, is YOU. So, to switch metaphorical gears, you aren’t only a snake oil salesman, you’re the proverbial horse led to water who refuses to drink. Again, that’s due to YOUR flaws.
In other words, my confidence in myself and my arguments, and my rational responses, only serve to further inflame commenters who prefer violence and personal attacks to reasoned discourse? Why am I not surprised?
Your MISPLACED confidence in yourself (cf. all those “rational critiques of your positions” you’ve ignored, despite the evisceration they provided of said “positions”). Confidence in oneself is natural and a sign of an integrated personality, when warranted. I don’t prefer violence, but I don’t abjure its use, either. Contrary to Leftist cant, violence is the great problem-solver of history. You don’t see the Germans talking about “lebensraum” any more, do you?
@85. David S:
Thank you for sharing the theory and its source. Like many theories, it can have intellectual appeal and lack practical usefulness at the same time.
I am skeptical because, when it comes to constructive steps taken in wrestling with conflicts, recognizing the moral contrasts is more useful (and also more difficult) than hoping that they do not exist.
If you think what I am arguing is baseless drivel – prove it.
Prove that what you’re writing isn’t baseless drivel.
You cherry picked 2 of the 5 precepts and claimed (baldfacedly, without any evidence) that “Empirical observation and surveys have demonstrated that virtually all people around the world accept the first two – rendering them universal…” and went on to discount the other 3 and state that they’re commonly “deprecated in societies that depend on a rational moral framework.”
So, prove what you’re saying isn’t baseless drivel
And, while you’re at it, give some examples of societies that “depend on a rational moral framework”*
*by your lights, American society under non-Liberal governance could not conceivably be rational or moral
@88. David S: – Calling me a liar is an ad hominem.
“Calling” you a liar is not what I did and you know it, Zippy.
I DEMONSTRATED that you lied. That is quite a different thing from merely “calling” you a liar.
You intentionally misrepresented Jon Haidt’s thesis by extracting a quote from one of his papers, eliminating the context – context that directly refuted the assertion you were trying to support with the quote. Anyone can click on the link above and see that for themselves. You can’t hide from it.
You’ve lied again up above by misrepresenting the facts of the research Haidt conducted. Anyone can read his research and determine that fact for themselves. You insist on lying, just like all leftists who have no facts. You got caught. You got pwned. QED.
67. Sebastian Shaw,
HOLY CRAP! That is SPOOKY. ROBAMA!!!!!!!
#72 said, “I have a Russian imegre friend that tells me how his father watched his grandfather go to his death, still making excuses for Stalin”
That’s it in a nutshell. In Education Training Courses they speak of a schemata that must be developed in the mind before liberal doses of education can be applied. It’s like a framework or scaffolding around a building to ease in construction. This thing dictates what gets put where, what’s discarded as irrelevant, and what becomes enshrined in our minds as gospel.
Ever get the feeling when you’re talking to someone that you’re just talking past each other? Even when dealing with the same facts or set of conditions? In large part your differences are based on the differing construction of your individual schemata’s.
Once this thing has been set up, it’s hard as hell to take down or rearrange. To do so changes who you are, after all.
Reason is, in part, the ability to make changes in your heads scaffolding, to entertain unknown concepts, or harder still, alter known ones. #72’s friend’s father’s grandfather was locked in and unable to make the changes necessary in his head to fully understand the situation.
This is why so many on the right are disturbed when they see school children sing praise for Obama or hear about lesson plans from the White House. They see a political party putting the scaffolding up.
Anyway, just a thought, but doesn’t it seem like the mean-spiritedness from the left is the result of the strain their minds are working under as they address the issues of the day?
43. goy:
Very interesting, if factually unsubstantiated, argument.
So basically what you are saying is that a conservative (right-wing) morality is a more mature moral position than that of a progressive (left-wing)?
You also compare this to the progressive changes an individual goes through as they mature from childhood through adolescence, adulthood and finally into old age. Following your metaphor I would propose that it is the adult mature individual that is representative of the progressive (left-wing) moral stance. After adolescence, where people are drawn to extremes, but not yet stymied by fear what tends to overwhelm them in old age, the adult is the driving force of measured progress. While the old man (conservative) is focused on retaining what ever he has accumulated in some vane hope of averting the inevitable the adult is still seeking solutions, making changes for a better future. The Universe, Life and humanity is all about change. What ever or who ever refuses to change o accommodate the changes around them will be destroyed. All “great” societies collapsed when the old men (conservatives) decided to dig in there heals and not accommodate the tide. The moment that a persons moral outlook on life starts to be dominated by fear of lose is not dictated by thier age. Some people skip over adulthood and move straight into old age. Conservatives are motivated by fear of lose (that’s why they keep bringing up 9/11), progressives are motivated by hope for the future – which one is the higher moral ground?
Here are the definitions of Right-wing (Conservative) and Left-wing (Progressive) that I am using. If you disagree with these please feel free to supply your own.
Right-wing – term used most commonly to refer to support for preserving traditional or cultural values and customs or for maintaining some form of social hierarchy or private control of the means of production.
Left-wing – term most commonly used to refer to support for changing traditional social orders or for creating a more egalitarian distribution of wealth and privilege.
How blind someone must be not to see the forces of “authority, in-group and purity” working in every liberal, left wing, egalitarian etc. movement claiming at the same time to depend on a rational moral framework. This is your big lie, Mr. Peace. Your blind spot. Seeing reality would tear you apart. People like you are food for cunning charlatans. You really have the president you deserve.
87 BC said: Really now? Go look back at the posts on the right wing blog sites when Kennedy succumbed to brain cancer and try to explain how that fits in with your premise.
Where you upset because people pointed out that using Kennedy’s death to push that disastrous government takeover of all healthcare dollars and decision making being sold as a cure for the healthcare woes made by the same crooks now pushing for us to let them take over 1/6th of the economy, even before the corpse was cold, was a horrific thing? Or where you angered by those of us that reminded all the people lionizing him and pretending that life had dealt him a bad hand, that most of his ills where self inflicted? Or was it that some commented on the fact Kennedy had gotten away with murder? Because none of this stuff was made up or intended as anything but a direct and callous reaction by the left to profit from his death.
Put in that context, I think your attempt to equate the usual drive-by-posting from the left with what happened with Kennedy, falls to pieces.
@90. Thomas Fink: – Make a conservative remark on say daily kos and see what happens. … this blindness is a basic condition for being a “modern liberal”. Stupidity is a luxury.
And – especially at a place like dKos – that stupidity is jealously protected. What’s fascinating is the self-deluding depths to which these people will go to do that. dKos is like a microcosmic communist politburo – commentary is “rated” there in a manner that effectively erases anything that sets up a baffle in their echo chamber. The beauty is – they can claim that “unsavory”, “troll” commentary isn’t actually deleted. Such posts remain – they’re simply “trollrated” into oblivion and rendered unviewable.
In the minds of the addled kosacks, this scheme is different from deleting commentary outright, and provides them with a basis to claim the moral high ground.
The left’s is a truly fascinating mindset. Thank God it’s not taken seriously outside a place like dKos.
Oh, wait…
68. Conservative Mom:
“…that the Democrats do not represent the people anymore, that the Republicans do”
Do statistics count on this site as meaningful? If they do I would like to point out the steady decline of people who consider themselves aligned to the Republican Party – if this continues by the next elections it will be under 20%
“vivo:
“The conservative trolls are sicker than sick.”
Congrats — you’ve just proven the author’s argument once again…
@91. goy:
You can keep posting your favored link, and you can keep claiming that I lied – that’s a great tactic for you at this point, since you haven’t found a means to address my actual arguments. Haidt’s research clearly indicates that only two of the five “intuitive ethics” are universal. Haidt may advocate for making use of all five ethics, but his research clearly indicates that only two ethics are universal. Moral diversity is not what I am talking about – I am talking about the common ground that we can already agree on.
@92. venividivici:
Despite your protests to the contrary, “rational critiques” of my positions are few and far between here. Most of the responses are like yours – you tell me I’m wrong, then can’t explain why, other than making ad hominem assertions. You claim my self-confidence is misplaced – but so long as my arguments stand unrefuted, there is plenty of reason for me to be confident.
@93. Professor Guvinoff:
Thank you for sharing the theory and its source. Like many theories, it can have intellectual appeal and lack practical usefulness at the same time.
No doubt.
I am skeptical because, when it comes to constructive steps taken in wrestling with conflicts, recognizing the moral contrasts is more useful (and also more difficult) than hoping that they do not exist.
Recognizing moral contrasts is certainly important – but the key to consensus morality is recognizing moral concord. That’s the basis for common moral understandings. Moral contrasts are useful to recognize, but the solution to moral dilemmas is finding common ground.
@94. tanstaafl:
You cherry picked 2 of the 5 precepts and claimed (baldfacedly, without any evidence) that “Empirical observation and surveys have demonstrated that virtually all people around the world accept the first two – rendering them universal…” and went on to discount the other 3 and state that they’re commonly “deprecated in societies that depend on a rational moral framework.”
So, prove what you’re saying isn’t baseless drivel
If you haven’t read the research, your confusion is understandable. Here’s a place to start.
You can study the Haidt’s work as well:
In other words, Haidt’s theory proposes five intuitive ethics, of which only two are common to all cultures.
And, while you’re at it, give some examples of societies that “depend on a rational moral framework”*
*by your lights, American society under non-Liberal governance could not conceivably be rational or moral
See above. Western Europe and the US are liberal democratic societies that are broadly individualist, and therefore rely on the rational moral framework provided by the two universal intuitive ethics.
@95. goy:
You did not demonstrate anything but your own opinion. You have asserted that I am a liar because you disagree with the conclusions of the researcher who you cite for your pet theory. The quote that I cited is equally valid in the original context, despite your protests. The fact that you disagree with me does not make me a liar, and your insistence that it does only goes to show that you can’t argue this topic on the merits.
You’ve already stated that you don’t agree with the conclusions that Haidt reaches, because you think he lets his political perspective intrude. Try looking in the mirror. Nothing I have said here is incompatible with Haidt’s work. You can keep calling me a liar, but you can’t prove it.
Just one more time, consider the context here. You keep attacking me rather than my argument – you are proving my point on civility on a daily basis. Thanks for that, but it’s getting tiresome. It’s a shame you can’t stop.
Peace.
DS
After adolescence, where people are drawn to extremes, but not yet stymied by fear what tends to overwhelm them in old age, the adult is the driving force of measured progress.
Can you tell me how the Soviet gulags, Chinese Cultural Revolution, the “killing fields”, Tamil Tigers (inventors of suicide bombing), Vietnam following the American withdrawal and the other variations on the “progressive”/democidal mindset represent “measured progress”, as compared to the ideas and ideals enshrined in classical liberalism/conservatism? Don’t claim those aren’t manifestations of those ideals because AT THE TIME, when it mattered, the Left supported all of those regimes. Now, in hindsight, the attempt to rewrite history and say those regimes did not manifest the “progressive” mindset will not go unchallenged with the FACTS.
Plus, your hypothesis that “fear” dominates old age is ludicrous. One of the fears I have had in the past is fear of flying. It is a fear that develops just as the ego is maturing and a stable sense of self is developing. Do you know when that time is? Right about college age. Old people almost never spontaneously develop fear of flying precisely because they’ve already lived their lives (well, not “already”, but you get the point). So, if the developmental processes behind the fear of flying (one of the best-known and, statistically-speaking, irrational fears) are any indication, it is precisely people at the age when most leftists become leftists that people are most afraid. As they grow older and less fearful, they become more conservative. Yes, there is also an aspect of wanting to protect what one has achieved in there, but that is an aspect of the human condition, not something limited to one side of the political spectrum.
My own hypothesis is that those who develop leftist tendencies at that age are manifesting a fear of failure to live up to the standards of Western culture. Hence, the need to denigrate and deny the validity of those standards (cf. David S called Ancient Greece an immoral culture. I guess he’s been reading his Frankfurt School.) Most of them end up in a vicious circle of denigrating Western standards and “living down” to whatever standards they do feel they can achieve, which then makes them envious of those who do live up to those standards and so on.
Don’t forget one of the originals: George Orwell. And of course Ronald Reagan, although he was never as ‘left’ as some of these others.
98. Cichawoda writes: Right-wing – term used most commonly to refer to
support for preserving traditional or cultural values and customs or for maintaining some form of social hierarchy or private control of the means of production.for those that think the consequences and cost of change matter, and change for the sake of change, is a bad idea. Especially when it erodes individual freedoms and punishes those that produce.Left-wing – term most commonly used to refer to
support for changing traditional social orders or for creating a more egalitarian distribution of wealth and privilege.the people that want change because they don’t like the fact the world is not ordered the way they would prefer it and think doing good with other people’s money makes them somehow better people. Individuals be damned. All should be equal, even if that equality is just misery.I corrected that for you.
Despite your protests to the contrary, “rational critiques” of my positions are few and far between here. Most of the responses are like yours – you tell me I’m wrong, then can’t explain why, other than making ad hominem assertions. You claim my self-confidence is misplaced – but so long as my arguments stand unrefuted, there is plenty of reason for me to be confident.
By the time I typically get to a thread, the critique is complete. I just like throwing ad hominems at you because I don’t like you. At all.
There was a thread last week, where, again, the topic of which morality was the more mature came up and where you claimed Stalin didn’t represent the “progressive” worldview, yet, when I cited the fact that contemporary documentary evidence shows that very few, if any, “progressives” of note came forward to make that point when it would have been meaningful, you failed to respond. The FACT that, on an objective historical basis, people calling themselves “progressives” and who must, in order to have any legitimate claim to “maturity”, take ownership of the fact that they share a “genealogy” in the Nietzschean sense, with Stalin, refuse to do so is a sign of significant immaturity in the “progressive” perspective. People who are not “progressives” have ZERO reason to believe that the same things will not happen again, if “progressives” are handed the levers of power without checks and balances. Behind your “Peace” signoff is a sadistic ideology that represents all that is base in humanity.
Yet, here you are again arguing the point with goy. That’s what I mean by every day history begins anew with you and that you don’t take to heart the arguments that undermine your perspectives. You can continue to claim victory in your encounters here, but none of us have to enable your delusions.
@98. Cichawoda: – So basically what you are saying is that a conservative (right-wing) morality is a more mature moral position than that of a progressive (left-wing)?
No.
What I recognize in the data produced by Jon Haidt’s and his colleagues’ research is that self-described “liberals” (actually leftists) are attracted to a selective, incomplete morality, while self-described “conservatives” (actually, classical liberals) subscribe to a comprehensive, holistic morality – as measured based on a set of five intuitive ethics identified in the data produced by Haidt’s research – the only wide-ranging research of this kind conducted to date.
What I recognize in reading Haidt’s and others’ work regarding the nature of morality and human psychological development, is that morality is learned, and is a function of individual maturity, recognizing that individuals also mature intellectually, sexually, chronologically, spiritually, emotionally – all at potentially different rates.
What I recognize in the thesis Haidt consistently presents on this topic (e.g., if you watched his TED video or have read any of his papers) is that sustainable societies, that have contributed to the progress of humanity, did so by “using all the tools in the toolbox” (per Haidt), that is, by subscribing to a comprehensive, holistic morality, not a selective, incomplete one. I also recognize that, based on this understanding, Haidt – a self-described atheist and liberal academic – consistently advises his liberal colleagues to more closely examine their own lack of moral diversity and accept that a comprehensive morality is valid.
What I infer from the above – at least in the context of what makes for a truly progressive, sustainable society based on Haidt’s criteria (which I agree with) as demonstrated by America’s history – is that the selective, incomplete morality subscribed to by the left is akin to moral adolescence, whereas the comprehensive, holistic morality exhibited by classical liberals is akin to moral maturity.
Your characterization of what motivates conservatives isn’t based on anything factual. What motivates conservatives (actually, classical liberals) is freedom, individual liberty, individual responsibility, true fairness, charity for the truly needy, religious faith, respect for authority and cohesive national identity aimed at preserving all that, i.e., preserving the way of life they deem valuable. Again, this is all found in the research on this topic.
It’s pointless to proceed down a path littered by nebulous definitions of “left-wing” and “right-wing”. These concepts contribute to a completely distorted understanding of political ideology.
The ideology furthest to the Left results in an omnipotent State, that is totalitarianism – everything inside the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State. That is the human condition under which everything is politicized and every facet of human behavior is totally regulated by the State, by definition.
At the far Right of the political spectrum is no government whatsoever – Anarchy.
In the middle – at the Center – is the Republican form of representative, democratically elected government guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution that is the gift of classical liberalism.
- Left-wing – term most commonly used to refer to support for changing traditional social orders or for creating a more egalitarian distribution of wealth and privilege.
This of course is the condition to which leftists claim to aspire. Notably, however, this aspiration has never actually been achieved using leftist ideology – and not for very long even when it comes close to doing so. In fact, societies governed using leftist ideology have universally turned out to be anything but “egalitarian” and have, more often than not, self-destructed under the imbalance of morally adolescent ideology, with attendant loss of life in the tens of millions (e.g., Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Che, Castro, N. Korea, Vietnam, Ethiopia, etc.). The USSR is the most famous recent example. The dying EU-cum-EUSSR will be the next.
Socialism and leftist ideologies will always fail. The reason is simple: you can’t undo four million years of Darwinian evolution with a slogan and some redistribution of wealth at the point of a gun.
Unlike bees, termites, ants and other various forms of life which self-organize as an egalitarian colony, each dedicated to the needs and wants of the rest, human beings are individual organisms first, and social organisms second.
Capitalism and the Republican form of Government guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution are, to date, the best means of harnessing humanity’s basic instincts, given our Darwinian forebears. This is proved by America’s rise from literally nothing to the world’s only cultural, economic, scientific and military superpower in a scant 200 years, followed by the slow decline we’ve experienced as socialist – morally adolescent – ideology has come to control more and more of our social policy.
@104. David S: – You can keep posting your favored link, and you can keep claiming that I lied…
Not “claiming”, Zippy. Demonstrating. It might take another 6 years of school, but you’ll figure out the difference eventually.
It’s not my “opinion” that you disingenuously quoted Haidt out-of-context, completely misrepresenting what he actually wrote. It’s a fact that anyone can verify simply by following the link. You lied. You got caught. You got pwned. Own it.
- You’ve already stated that you don’t agree with the conclusions that Haidt reaches…
Wrong. And now you’re lying through intentional misrepresentation again. I’ve stated quite clearly that I disagree with the conclusions that aren’t supported by his data.
I would add that there is another, very deep, very important distinction between leftist ideologies and rightist. The leftist are STATICISTS – they form their political theories around a static, unchanging world. The left cannot handle dynamicism in society and imagine that everything is as it has always been and remain exactly the same. This is why history, and historical context, never figures much into their reasoning. Anyone who has spent any time on Isreali kibbutzim (the purest implementation of leftist ideas, at workable scales, ever) has seen this in action, as growth and change are the bane of leftist ideas. This inability to understand the natural dynamics of the world is what leads leftists to push for centralized control, since unchanging systems are easily amenable to it.
Now, leftists will argue that they understand dynamics, and they like to point to their religious fervor in pushing for evolution to be taught as the law of the world, but you will notice that, while the left claims to believe in evolutionary theory, the left has never seen an evolutionary pressure they don’t think they know better than. Pick any species and any situation and a leftist will tell you whether that species should live or die. They claim to be evolutionists, but work to centralize control of any evolutionary system they run into. It is not merely coincidence that the left is against “climate change”; they are against all change (other than forcing society to accept all sexual fetishes as “normal”).
This is the weakest part of leftist political theory and it is also what leads to their extreme emotional reactions to any evidence that goes against their theories. The left wants to stop the world in a perfect state and they actually believe that such a perfect state exists. The right, on the other hand, is based on the processes that the world works under, understanding that change and dynamics are part of nature and, therefore, cannot be frozen into any sort of efficient centralized control or management.
No leftist has ever used reason, logic, or facts to change my mind, probably because when I used reason, logic, and facts, I went from being an Independent (who voted slightly more often for Democrats) to a conservative.
Some like Lawton Smalls lays it out perfectly: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YVWLLR_WaQA
In other words, Haidt’s theory proposes five intuitive ethics, of which only two are common to all cultures.
Based on the little bit you quote, Haidt’s point is that liberals value the first 2 to the exclusion of the other 3.
Which is not the same as saying that only 2 of the 5 are common to all cultures.
I’ll echo Mr. Fink’s point in #99.
@94. tanstaafl:
“You can study the Haidt’s work as well:
Much of our present research involves applying the theory to political “cultures” such as those of liberals and conservatives. The current American culture war, we have found, can be seen as arising from the fact that liberals try to create a morality relying almost exclusively on the Harm/Care and Fairness/Reciprocity foundations; conservatives, especially religious conservatives, use all five foundations, including Ingroup/Loyalty, Authority/Respect, and Purity/Sanctity. In other words, Haidt’s theory proposes five intuitive ethics, of which only two are common to all cultures”.
Interesting: The conservatives are more ambitious than the modern “liberals” when it comes to moral standards, 5-to-2 according to your summary of Haidt’s theory, with which I am not familiar. Yet, this disparity is consistent with the soft spot our liberal companions seem to have towards the values of primitive societies, as well as the ardent desire of the conservatives to preserve the hard-earned values which made the modern world and all its benefits, all the way up to individual liberty.
What’s interesting is that the people living in those more primitive societies have more and more access to satellite TV and the Internet, and are also increasingly yearning for an elevation of their moral standards, not just their physical comfort. For instance, the Bible is today’s best-selling book in China.
Folks yearning for higher standards breathe the same oxygen than those indulging in the nostalgia for lower standards, but they metabolize it differently. Sharing the oxygen is not the same as sharing values and morality. My personal preference is for the elevation of the third world standards rather than the degradation of the modern world’s. But that’s only a personal preference, not a plan of action.
If the condition of the less fortunate is to be elevated, the liberal world (in the classical sense of the word, that which is based on individual rights) needs to get busy defeating the tyrannies (based on their very denial). This is why so many brave Iranians are today demonstrating in the streets in spite of the great risks they must take in doing so.
Let’s keep in mind that nowadays the number of tyrannies is much greater than the number of free nations, and the number of the oppressed is overwhelmingly greater than the number of free people, by roughly 6-to-1.
Moving from 2 moral principles to 5 is a lot of personal hard work, as well as external help, because it necessitates the defeat of the tyrants. Moving the other way around amounts to futile attempts to illustrate the moral counterpart of the laws of gravity.
…the selective, incomplete morality subscribed to by the left is akin to moral adolescence, whereas the comprehensive, holistic morality exhibited by classical liberals is akin to moral maturity.
Excerpt: Seduction
On the Seduction of the Liberal Agenda:
“The liberal agenda’s favors seduce the people a little at a time, always playing on their regressive longings to be indulged. Favor by favor, accompanied by the constant drumbeat of entitlement propaganda, the otherwise intelligent citizen is led to an increasingly erroneous conception of the proper role of government in a free society. Like a child molester, the liberal politician grooms his constituents until their natural cautions against yielding power in exchange for favors dissolves in reassurance.”
“Under the creed of modern liberalism the individual citizen is not called to maturity but is instead invited to begin a second childhood. Like the child at play, he is given, or at least promised, ultimate economic, social and political security without having to assume responsibility for himself. The liberal agenda requires him to remain in an artificial environment–the daycare program of the grandiose state–where he need not become an adult, take responsibility for his own welfare, nor cooperate with others to achieve what the state will give him for nothing.”
Not my kind of world
109. goy:
“What motivates conservatives (actually, classical liberals) is freedom, individual liberty, individual responsibility, true fairness, charity for the truly needy, religious faith, respect for authority and cohesive national identity”
Wow, this could be part of any Right-wing propaganda pamphlet especially with the inclusion of the undefined “true” before certain criteria. I believe Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Pinochet all would like the sentiment. They all also claimed to champion true freedom, true individual liberty, true individual responsibility.
You also show your colors by the dismissal of the Left-wing:
“It’s pointless to proceed down a path littered by nebulous definitions of “left-wing” and “right-wing”. guess in your eyes not realy worth of consideration and true fairness.
Your presentation of Jon Haidt’s research seems a knowing misrepresentation.
Haidt found that Americans who identified as liberals tended to value care and fairness higher than loyalty, respect, and purity. Self-identified conservative Americans valued care and fairness less, and the remaining three values more. Both groups gave care the highest over-all weighting, but conservatives valued fairness the lowest, whereas liberals valued purity the lowest.
When he talks about conservatives he means “social conservatives” not Libertarians:
http://bloggingheads.tv/diavlogs/13700
109. goy:
Thank you for getting me to listen and read some of his stuff.
In the video he says that according his criteria and research the far left – Lenin, Stalin, Pol Pot etc – should be considered conservatives because they all value tribal collectivism and have a higher tolerance for inequality, hierarchy and are resistent to change.
Hey, that’s what I said a few posts ago.
109. goy:
Well that was fun – just took the Moral Foundations Questionnaire http://www.yourmorals.org. According to Haidt Progressives (left wing) favor the 2 “individualizing” foundations harm/care and fairness/reciprocity. Where as Conservatives (right wing) felt strongly about the collectivizing foundations ingroup/loyalty, authority/respect and purity/sanctity. So everybody has a little of all but guess what I’m a flaming lefty
foundations harm/care – 4.5
fairness/reciprocity – 4.7
ingroup/loyalty – 1.2
authority/respect – 1.2
purity/sanctity – 0.7
Hey Goy you should take this thing too – I bet your all pumped on the ingroup/loyalty, authority/respect, purity/sanctity stuff – you old commie you.
My take is that the ingroup/loyalty, authority/respect, purity/sanctity foundations stem from fear. They seem defensive because it makes it easier to organize people for a singular purpose and makes it easy to define an enemy. Hard to see enemies when you are all about harm/care, fairness/reciprocity. Haidt seems to be saying if we focus to much on the conservative 3 foundations we may evolve a social structure of the mole rats. Hey maybe that should be the new Republican mascot – what do you think?
Anyone who has spent any time on Isreali kibbutzim (the purest implementation of leftist ideas, at workable scales, ever) has seen this in action, as growth and change are the bane of leftist ideas.
The kibbutzim example, in a rational world, would forever disprove the foundational assumptions of Leftism. Not only were the kibbutzim the most workable-scale attempts to put Leftist ideas into practice, they were filled to the brim with individuals who were absolutely STEEPED in socialist history and theory. These people were the socialist equivalent of Albert Einstein in physics and they still couldn’t make it work over the long haul.
If God Himself were to come down to Earth and tell the David Ss of the world that their ideas were ridiculous, David S would claim God “didn’t provide a rational critique of my positions”.
Per the generalization of such realms of discourse being “virtual communities of like-minded zealots”, I feel this misrepresents the function of discourse and worse yet, characterizes the community by the quality of the message, not their underlying mind and experience. If anything, I’d suggest that claim is patently false.
Consider, I tend to post from what others would interpret is a predominantly libertarian perspective. Behavioral economics applied to Austrian economic thought, strong constitutional advocacy, disinclination for any organized religion but strong respect for its practice (as long as it doesn’t encroach upon others), disinclination for abortion but respect that another may need to make that choice, etc. That I find Obama to be a woefully under-educated, exceptionally inexperienced faux Marxist Fascist usually sets off the leftists, and unfortunately encourages mindless posts of little conversational or entertainment value.
But like many here, my experience and education rejects the assumption of “like minds.” I am certainly more studied on Marx than all but academics who specialize in the field, as it has been necessary to my professional work on Deleuze. When I critique Obama for his predominant fascist tendency, there’s a foundation for it, just as discussions of economics, risk and finance would have that reference. More importantly, I’ve found that my perspective is not unique. Many on the right that blog and comment are professionals with decades of experience. I’m always shocked to learn about what expertise others in the community possess.
What it all means in the end is unknown to me, other than I’m convinced that 1) the mainstream media is certainly a dead-end field, given its employment of persons who are exceptionally, expressly unqualified to objectively and credibly report on anything professional, technical or political, and 2) the left blogosphere has no equivalence to the right given their rejection of self-critical thought.
To the right, I’d encourage we all push further out of our comfort zone. If you haven’t read Alinsky yet, get it done asap! Get “The Coming Insurrection” by the Invisible Committee read immediately as well, and pay attention to anti-globalist groups. Historical texts on the 1968 Situationist movement in France is equally valuable. When the anti-globalist Marxists of the left discover that they were tricked by the globalists and they’ve empowered a fascist tyranny (ala strong USFG + GM + GE + Soros + etc.) via Obama, they’re going to be terribly upset. We’re going to have to deal with the violence of the anarchist Left against the fascist Left pretty soon (this is what I believe Chris Matthews keeps on fearing per “someone’s going to do something stupid” – though they’ll try to pass it off on the right at first). At a minimum, I’d expect we’re up for a Paris ’68 level of violence within the next two years and the survival and success of the libertarians and the right will depend on our navigating that terrain.
@115. Anonymous: – My personal preference is for the elevation of the third world standards rather than the degradation of the modern world’s.
I think most people would agree. I certainly do.
Furthermore, if you haven’t actually read Haidt’s work, you can be forgiven for responding to another one of David S’ lies as if it were truth. To wit, he claimed:
“…Haidt’s theory proposes five intuitive ethics, of which only two are common to all cultures.”
This is a gross misrepresentation of Haidt’s thesis, even in the context of the others he’s trying to use to obfuscate the facts. Again.
Nowhere does Haidt make this assertion. In fact, what he’s recognized is that the most remarkable, sustainable cultures are those which learned to incorporate a comprehensive, mature morality into their social structures. The best example of this is the history of the United States of America. This is why Haidt’s spent so much effort lecturing self-described “liberals” (pointing out their own blindness, in fact), exhorting them to consider opening their minds enough to recognize the value of other 3/5ths of morality they tend to reject.
“…they all value tribal collectivism and have a higher tolerance for inequality, hierarchy and are resistent to change.”
SOUNDS LIKE THE ÜBER LEFTIES OF TODAY…100%.
The Left is an amalgamation of very bad ideas.
117. Cichawoda said: Wow, this could be part of any Right-wing propaganda pamphlet especially with the inclusion of the undefined “true” before certain criteria. I believe Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Pinochet all would like the sentiment. They all also claimed to champion true freedom, true individual liberty, true individual responsibility.
You did not try to put Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot on the right based on the fact that they “said” they where doing something, but then did not, now did you? With the exception of Pinochet – whom actually fixed Chile and gave the people a much better country once he was done – these murderers where all followers of leftist economics and progressive beliefs of justice. Just because progressives/collectivists talk about being for freedom and promise Utopia doesn’t mean they actually deliver, as the history of the last century proves without fault.
54. David S wrote:
Articles like this are expected at PJM, and actually help to put the lie to the author’s conclusions. He readily admits that he has no statistics, no evidence, nothing to back up his assertions – but nonetheless is confident that his conclusions are sound.
Peter writes: All you need to do is read almost any article on PJM, particularly if the title has the name Palin anywhere in it, and you can see clear evidence that the author’s conclusions are more than sound. They are FACT!
As if raging insults and baseless accusations from the right wing radicals weren’t bad enough, now they’re killing innocent, hard-working Americans, good family people, single fathers, out in the Kentucky woods. Why? Because Glenn Beck tells them to. Yes, our country is in a heckuva mess, thanks to the brainwashed conservative creeps out there. Well, it looks like you’re gonna get your chance to use all them bullets you bought, because you’ve awakened a sleeping bad ass.
125. AlexinCt: and 123. Czar of Defenestration:
Hey, I’m just quoting the Goy’s darling social scientist Haidt. He has found scientific proof that Conservatives value tribal collectivism and have a higher tolerance for inequality, hierarchy and are resistant to change. It makes sense to me. Go read his work or take a break from FOX and listen to the discussion. You can also take the tests to see if you are a Conservative or, if your luckey, maybe not.
Than again I bet anything that might contradicts your current assumptions scares you – “and are resistant to change.”
@98-Chichawoda,
“Following your metaphor I would propose that it is the adult mature individual that is representative of the progressive (Left-wing) moral stance. After adolescence, where people are drawn to extremes, but not yet stymied by fear that tends to overwhelm them in old age, the adult is the driving force of measured progress. While the old-man (conservative) is focused on retaining whatever he has accumulated in some vane hope of averting the inevitable the adult is still seeking solutions, making changes for a better future.”
First, “the adult is the driving force of measured progress.” OK, we’ll work off that premise.
Who is the “adult” in your opinion? Progressives (Left-wing). What do they do? Seek solutions, making changes for a better future.
Who is (apparently) not an adult? Old-men (conservatives). What do they do? Focus on retaining whatever it is they have accumulated in some vane hope of averting the inevitable.
Let’s take our public education system and its failures. Who is focused on retaining whatever it is they have accumulated. Progressives. Who fights tooth and nail to avert the inevitable (unsustainable tax-payer funded pensions)? Progressives. Who fights against competition (school choice)? Progressives. Who fights ridding our schools of bad teachers? Progressives.
I could list numerous other examples involving unions, welfare, trade, SS, etc.
Who the “adult” is, is a figment of your imagination.
The fact is conservatives have ideas about everything, just like progressives, and sometimes they even agree.
Your myopic view only reaffirms what has been obvious to me for a long time. Progressives are really in love with the WORD progressive. They somehow think that labeling themselves as something translates into their views/policies as BEING something, i.e., progress.
Also, you ask if statistics count on this site as meaningful. Yes, and more Americans identify their political views as conservative than liberal.
117. “Cichawoda”: -I believe Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Pinochet all would like the sentiment.
When you see them, ask them.
- You also show your colors by the dismissal of the Left-wing:
I didn’t “dismiss” the Left-wing and I’m sure you’re well aware of that.
I dismissed the nebulous definitions of “left-wing” and “right-wing” because they can’t be used to resolve contemporary political issues. These “wing” notions distort the realities of political ideologies by – especially – misrepresenting classical liberalism as something akin to fascism, a/k/a national socialism.
- Your presentation of Jon Haidt’s research seems a knowing misrepresentation.
No, that’s what your “pal” Zippy has been doing – knowingly misrepresenting Haidt’s work.
Here’s an(other) example “The other three precepts have been identified as a common thread through insular and tribal societies around the world, but are absent or deprecated in societies that depend on a rational moral framework.” This is pure nonsense, and it’s completely contradicted by Haidt’s New Yorker presentation, where he states in his Conclusion – outright – that most cultures use all 5 ethical intuitions as a basis for their moral foundation, and that this has been true throughout history.
- Thank you for getting me to listen and read some of his stuff.
You should try being just a tad less blatantly obsequious.
- My take is that the ingroup/loyalty, authority/respect, purity/sanctity foundations stem from fear.
Your “take” is based on ignorance of the science.
But as long as you’re arbitrarily attributing motives to others, again, recognize that your simplistic notion works just as well with “harm” and “fairness”: leftists justify any means – including statutory coercion and physical force – to achieve their egalitarian goals of preventing (undefined) “harm” and promoting (undefined) “fairness”, not out of altruism, but out of fear that they’ll be “harmed” or treated “unfairly”.
- …what do you think?
I think you should advise your “pal” Zippy that sockpuppetry is probably not the best way to go about shaking the stigma of having been exposed as a craven liar.
128 chicawoda says: Hey, I’m just quoting the Goy’s darling social scientist Haidt.
Not a chance. It sounded to me like you where posturing and spouting the usual leftists talking point about how great you leftists are, and conversely, how bad those that see your ideology for the deficient thing it is are. Even your examples where deficient at best. Trying to make a point that because murderous collectivists gave lip service to things conservatives believe in, while never meaning or doing any of them – something that is SOP with the left – what goy said is wrong, is a joke.
Than again I bet anything that might contradicts your current assumptions scares you – “and are resistant to change.”
Actually I was quite a liberal till about the age of 14. Then reality made that fantasy world come crashing down, and I have never had a problem looking back and laughing at all those dumb things I used to believe in. There is no fear, just sadness at how dumb and naive I was. I do have to admit that I do not miss the smug self assurance, based on nothing but empty and meaningless false belief of superiority, which is required to be a liberal, though. I can tell you still embrace it with gusto. Take some of your own advice.
@128. Cichawoda: – Haidt. He has found scientific proof that Conservatives value tribal collectivism…
Interesting. Your lies and intentional misrepresentations have the same pathological quality Zippy’s have.
I can’t imagine why.
Okay, that’s a lie.
tanstaafl:
If some Soros organization is paying PJM trolls, it is having the opposite from intended effect.
I am of the same opinion, these trolls are getting paid by someone to write this gibberish.
127
That’s got to be a parody. Any violent conflict between the Left and Right in this country would be like putting a Little League team up against the 1927 New York Yankees.
Hey, the Roman Civil Wars set the stage for the Pax Romana, so I’m not necessarily averse to the cleansing potential of a good civil war. I just would think that the side that is guaranteed to lose would be a bit wary of going down that path.
OK, this is truly hilarious. The leftie trolls have made a brilliantly successful effort to prove the author’s point. Well done kiddies!
@132. goy:
Interesting. Your lies and intentional misrepresentations have the same pathological quality Zippy’s have.
I can’t imagine why.
Okay, that’s a lie.
Funny how you can’t resist the ad hominem, and then throw in an implied conspiracy theory for good measure. Bravo! Way to deflect from your deflated argument.
Enjoy your self-righteousness and insular worldview while you can. You can’t take it with you.
Peace.
DS
Anyways David Solway,
You dont get flashy jobs at the Uni or Easy Jobs as Spokespersons for the Diversity Department of the Institution, or media adulation. You get spit on, and villified, and accused of the most vile of motives.
You are now a Defender of Western Civilization and no good deed goes unpunished….especially that one.
130. goy:
When you conjure up “classical liberalism” I assume you mean the notion that laissez-faire economic policy will bring about a spontaneous order or invisible hand that benefits the society? Or another words the Victorian, robber baron notion – all capitalists good, all government bad.
“I dismissed the nebulous definitions of “left-wing” and “right-wing” because they can’t be used to resolve contemporary political issues.”
But you can’t even start to have a rational discussion of issues without defining at least the basic terms. I proposed a standard definition for Conservative (right wing) and Progressive (left wing) in post 98 – do you disagree, if so give me one that you think works. BTW conservatives=good, liberals=bad – doesn’t work as rational.
“You should try being just a tad less blatantly obsequious.”
No I’m serous, I read some stuff about his research but never bothered to dig into it. I still think you misrepresent and simplify his research and conclusions. Well at least from what I have read and watched so far. In the discussion a have a link too he blatantly supports my statements about conservatives and says “Libertarians are not conservatives”. I haven’t heard the TED interview yet but by the discussion on the page I can gather the there also his conclusion is that the conservative mind has a propensity for the collectivist moral foundations. You should take his test – maybe you are not a conservative after all.
I do find the revisionist idea you are selling that Conservatives are the motivators of change and progress in society absurd. It could be a great Monty Python skit. When the last administration was in power were you as incensed about the rise in government power and illegal incursions into private lives?
“…“harm” and “fairness”: leftists justify any means… but out of fear that they’ll be “harmed” or treated “unfairly”.”
Well no, and it’s not my argument but Haidt’s. He says that the “individualizing” foundations are harm/care and fairness/reciprocity and collectivizing foundations are ingroup/loyalty, authority/respect and purity/sanctity. He also says that everybody has all 5 and almost all societies and individuals favor harm/care. After that Liberals tend to strongly favor the first 2 and Conservatives have a predisposition for the collectivizing 3. Don’t take my word for it, check it out yourself and take the 5 Foundations Morality test.
To embrace harm/care and fairness/reciprocity foundations you can not be fearful of people, change or the future. The collectivizing foundations are what you employ when you think you need to circle the wagons for protection from change and those evil foreigners.
Than again if you don’t agree with the premise of Moral Foundations you shouldn’t have brought it up.
134. venividivici:
“I’m not necessarily averse to the cleansing potential of a good civil war.”
Bring it on Bubba – judging by the results of the last civil war the backward and ignorant don’t stand a chance. This time we may not opt for Reconstruction and simply wipe the scum of the windshield.
132. goy:
“Okay, that’s a lie.”
At the end of the “How a liberal’s gut reactions differ from a conservative’s” Segment towards the end – “…if by conservative you mean tribal/collectivist that would be true…”
http://bloggingheads.tv/diavlogs/13700
So Bubba looks like your pants are on fire :-0
Bring it on Bubba – judging by the results of the last civil war the backward and ignorant don’t stand a chance. This time we may not opt for Reconstruction and simply wipe the scum of the windshield.
See, there’s your problem, you’re judging by the results of the last civil war (as if the “Northerner” of today could hold a candle to the Northerner of the 1860′s). Kinda like the French thinking that Maginot Line was going to defend them from the Germans.
I’d love for there to be a civil war. It would finally shut you people up. For good.
131. AlexinCt:
“Actually I was quite a liberal till about the age of 14.”
Sounds like the start of a country and western lament. Since you don’t present any rational arguments that I can take issue with. All I will say is I’m sorry you lost your self assurance and for your sadness at how dumb and naive you were. Maybe if you didn’t give up on your dreams your non-liberal life wouldn’t be so empty.
129. Walworth:
“Let’s take our public education system and its failures.”
Ah… the failures of public education. Yes my whole family for generations have been victims. My parents had to suffer through it – he became a lawyer and she a media producer. After that horrendous outcome I had to go through the process, my parents thought it would build character, and I became a designer. Just to keep with family traditions all my children are forced to attend. My son is a programmer, my oldest daughter will finish college in 2 years and my youngest daughter is top of her class in high school. I don’t know how I managed with the public education system and it’s failure. Would have been better with religious or private schools.
You get out of it what you put into it.
BTW I have not met harder working and more dedicated people than the teachers that schooled me and my children.
This time we may not opt for Reconstruction and simply wipe the scum of the windshield.
Ha. You probably couldn’t wipe your *ss without instructions from the government.
the backward and ignorant
I’m pretty positive I’ve got more and better education than you. I just don’t choose to use it telling other people what to do, i.e. doing what ever Leftist with a B.A. in “Ethnic Studies” (as if that were a real education) longs for.
@139
Ha! Palin could take out 3 metro-sexuals in one shot. For every one hit, 2 faint. The progressive women might be a little tougher; but still, they’re only used to un-armed babies.
133. George S.:
“write this gibberish.”
I am smitten by the power of your well researched and reasoned argument. Hmmm… kind of like this article – cudos for “fair and balanced”.
Cich wwrote after considerable postulating:
Bring it on Bubba – judging by the results of the last civil war the backward and ignorant don’t stand a chance. This time we may not opt for Reconstruction and simply wipe the scum of the windshield.
Gentle people, after reading your efforts at intellectualizing an argument that is 200 years old we are reduced to this!
Imagine you are a straight man, it will be more difficult for some of us, and you are watching a fat woman walking away in a pair of shorts that are too tight. There is a continuous battle being waged between the left buttock and the right, neither one can gain an advantage over the other. Yet without the other, there is no reason for existence of the other, so a symbiotic relationship exists for the benefit of both at the expense of both.
You Conservatives have wasted an excellent opportunity to discredit the degenerates of the left by using these guys as sparring partners. They are Ideologues that are more prepared than most, but a waste of time none the less. Dave presented us with an excellent article and you allowed these Trolls to hijack or steal an opportunity. Their main purpose in life. We can’t engage them in debate at their web sites because of the unending mindless and witless farting that passes for discourse.
I respect you Conservatives and your ideas, if we work together we can build a greater resource of ideas and or knowledge. It is true that Conservative ideas are revealed in this banter with Leftist Trolls, but we, no You are capable of much more, I am an older student and I am here to learn. If I wanted to listen to individual meaningless battles, I could go to chicken fights or football games.
130. goy:
Again with the precession of definitions. here is a definition of National Socialism just so we can be clear that it is not the same as Socialism or Marxism. Not that definitions matter when you feel so angry that words don’t make sense – right Goy?
“National Socialism opposes capitalism, communism, democratic socialism and liberalism. National Socialism was a Messianic movement, centered in the Fuhrerprincip and anchored in the thesis that only through racial purity could Germany find her salvation. The movement was based on antisemitism, anti-Marxism and hyper-nationalism, manifesting itself through Pan-Germanism and the quest for Lebensraum.”
Cichawoda
When…..ever. We won’t be fighting the last war, like you are.
No flags a-wavin, drums a-beatin, bugles a-blaring canons roaring in this war.
It won’t be north vs south but Urban vs rural.
We grow the food you eat. A week without food and you will change your mind. Granted it will be a small change, but one that produces a notable improvement.
BTW, the North won the last time because of Sherman and his march to the sea. One long massive war crime, 80 miles wide.
Lee could have done that instead of swinging by Gettysburg for some shoes.
This time around we won’t be so soft hearted.
The ideal solution would be splitting the USA into several parts. That way the Blue states can do their blue state thang and the Red States can do ours. You guys get wall street and we get the Delta and Texas becomes it’s own country. That would make those trying to destroy America glad and those that don’t want anything to do with the ‘new’ America happy too.
Change Peace Hope and Love eh, Cichawoda? Your colors are showing. Plan to make us die laughing do you?
Haidt is a nutbag.
His “Happiness Hypothesis” is a classic example of junk science. There are millions of human motivators, at least. I would go so far as to say EVERY human has different motivators.
Classic THEORY is flight/fight based. Not real keen on that theory either, but it is better then cherry picking 10 things and then rationalizing a route from there to where you want to be politically. That is what Haidt did. Instead of following the data, he cherry picked it and found the things he needed to get to where he wanted to go.
Junk Science at it’s worst.
The conservative claim to being the font of technological advancement is based on the left brain/right brain theory. Which is also mostly junk science, or at least was back in the day. When I studied Psycho babble at dear old cow flop U. there was no way to measure brain wave activity and location.
Psychology is barely beyond junk science, one jump ahead of the witch doctor. In another century, as tools improve there is a chance of it becoming an valid field of study. Not at this point in history.
Back on topic, the source, IMHO of internet discord is the left’s propensity to censor. They go moonbat when faced with non-standard ideas because they never get exposed to anything that isn’t dogma. Go to DU or HuffyPo and post anything that gores one of the left’s sacred cows and see how fast you get deleted.
I posted the simple SCIENTIFIC fact that Ice displaces it’s volumn in water so if the Artic Ice cap melts it will just fill in the hole it was making in the ocean. I even offered a simple experiment that a low IQ, left brained liberal could do to prove what I said was a fact. Deleted and banned.
Now there are legions of moonbats wandering around worrying about the Artic Ice cap melting and floodin their mom’s basement and forcing then too GET A JOB. Horrors.
Point out the simple fact that the USA has thousands of times the OIL that KSA does and they go ballistic.
Liberals and some lazy conservatives ( yes, there are a few) thionk thatthe USA imports it’s OIL from KSA. KSA is #4
http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/oil_gas/petroleum/data_publications/company_level_imports/current/import.html
Less then a million bpd in May ’09 Canada is first at 1.7 million bpd.
@138. “Cichawoda”: – … I assume …
Naturally. But in this case your assumption only made an ass out of u.
Me, I tend to think of classical liberalism in the classical sense – that is, of strict constructionism where government does not provide social services, does not arrogate unto itself the authority to ensure equality of outcome or regulate industry and banking into dysfunctional states. That is a very different thing from the “all government bad” straw man you assume it to be. Government has its place, and its limits. Both are elegantly and explicitly enumerated in the U.S. Constitution.
- But you can’t even start to have a rational discussion of issues without defining at least the basic terms.
You’d best try to catch up then. The rational discussion of issues started long ago using basic terms that work just fine: totalitarianism, fascism, communism, socialism, (constitutional) republicanism, classical liberalism, libertarianism, objectivism, anarchism, etc. Superfluous abstractions of these involving “wingery” only serve to confuse the issues.
If you find yourself incapable of thinking without the crutch of left/center/right analogs, however, feel free to consider that any ‘ism’ which approaches or leads to an omnipotent State (or monarchy, or despot, or tyrant, or junta, etc.) to be leftist (e.g., totalitarianism); anything that tends toward elimination of formalized government as rightist (anarchism); and anything that provides a constitutional, republican framework whereby the People are self-governing through democratically-elected representatives as centrist (republicanism / classical liberalism).
- I do find the revisionist idea you are selling that Conservatives are the motivators of change and progress in society absurd.
Of course you do, since that’s your own straw man and you’re the one who’s selling it. And what you’re selling is indeed absurd – especially given the sloppy manner in which you’ve conflated change and progress, which are not necessarily the same.
Self-described “conservatives” (actually, classical liberals) understand that revolutionary change simply for the sake of “Change” – e.g., some nebulous notion ostensibly labeled “fairness” or “social justice” like the one we saw peddled during the last election – is destructive of human society; conservatives understand that true progress can only proceed from a socially stable, geopolitically secure, economically viable base.
This is the central premise in Haidt’s thesis, in fact. Haidt consistently preaches the value of a comprehensive, holistic (in my words, mature) morality. He does so quite gingerly when speaking to his liberal colleagues. The reasons for this are self-evident. Haidt knows how completely lacking in moral diversity and, thus, how completely close-minded they are, despite their characteristic openness to just about every other type of change. This is an odd paradox I’d love to see him explore further, since he’s made a point of recognizing and commenting on it. I have faith he’ll do so if he ever starts to ask himself why there’s an ideological, 2/5ths-vs.-5/5ths moral dichotomy at all – in every culture he’s examined. Gee, he may discover that it’s a facet of human nature (i.e., human psychological development) and not just a facet of American or western culture.
- Well no, and it’s not my argument but Haidt’s.
So far I haven’t seen you cite a reference to this argument, per se. And I expect that if/when you do, we’ll find that you’re engaging in some fallacy of equivocation here with respect to the term “collectivizing”, because here‘s what Haidt says about this [my emphasis]:
“Conservatives generally have a more pessimistic view of human nature than do liberals. They are more likely to believe that if you stand back and give kids space to grow as they please, they’ll grow into shallow, self-centered, undisciplined pleasure seekers. Cultural conservatives work hard to cultivate moral virtues based on the three binding foundations: ingroup/loyalty, authority/respect, and purity/sanctity, as well as on the universally employed foundations of harm/care and fairness/reciprocity.”
Collectivization, at least with respect to the binding of groups into tribal structures in pursuit of a common purpose, is not the same as the Marxist collectivism to which you’re speciously and rather ham-handedly attempting to equate it. What’s even more interesting about this terminology is that leftist social policy, based solely on what Haidt paradoxically (or, perhaps, knowingly – he’s a psychologist after all, with an intimate knowledge of his audience’s largely broken psyche) refers to as the “individualizing” foundations, pretends to support a pseudo-egalitarian condition which all but eliminates individual liberty and individual responsibility – at least if you look at socialist ideology in practice, where the practical reality is cradle-to-grave dependence on and submission to the State, as well as conformity to politicized norms.
Also, like poor Zippy (no surprise here), you seem to be laboring under the illusion that self-described “conservatives” don’t value the harm/care and fairness/reciprocity foundations. This illusion is manifest in your comment claiming that “Haidt seems to be saying if we focus to much on the conservative 3 foundations…,” which he doesn’t say at all – seemingly or otherwise – because there isn’t a statistically significant sample of subjects in the data that focus “too much” on the 3 binding foundations (look at at the charts).
So your illusion is not supported by Haidt’s research, let alone even a cursory understanding of classical liberal philosophy. In fact, the underlying point in all of Haidt’s presentations and papers is the inescapable fact that the holistic, comprehensive incorporation of all 5 intuitive ethics into one’s moral framework perfectly epitomizes the yin-yang / vishnu-shiva ideal he prescribes.
- To embrace harm/care and fairness/reciprocity foundations you can not be fearful of people,
Self-contradictory. If you’re basing a system on prevention of harm, then by definition you fear that harm will come. Well, you do unless you’re mentally defective and you claim you’re only reacting to harm you’ve witnessed, in which case you’re a moron if you don’t fear future repetitions of the same harm. Can’t whine about “harm” and not fear it too. “Fairness” pretty much falls under the same rules.
Fear, by the way, is a healthy result of four million years of Darwinian evolution. It helps to preserve us from real harm. The concept you were searching for here is baseless, unfounded fear – the type Democrats use to foment endless “crises” that they dare not let go to waste.
- … the backward and ignorant don’t stand a chance.
You can go ahead and re-fight the Civil War if you like. However, in contemporary society it’ll be the willfully ignorant and, concomitantly, the virtually unarmed who don’t stand a chance.
- Funny how you can’t resist the ad hominem…
Again, pointing out a lie is not ad hominem.
- here is a definition of National Socialism just so we can be clear that it is not the same as Socialism or Marxism.
Save it. Socialism has never existed in a “pure” state in practice. In practice, we have seen socialism manifest as communism (international socialism), fascism (national socialism) and what Zippy refers to as democratic socialism, which manifests today as various blends of corporatism, communism and syndicalism. If you look at the roots of national socialism, particularly in Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, you’ll learn that both forms grew out of the Marxist, “class struggle” foundation inherent in socialism. As directed by their respective egomaniacal pragmatists, these were then honed using nationalist tropes like the Nazis’ Aryan Race and Mussolini’s martial Italian populism. The resulting various antisemitic, anti-Marxist and hyper-nationalist rhetoric did not reflect the roots of these movements at all. They were simply a swinging watch used to hypnotize and manipulate the mob – much like the empty, hypnotically recited concepts of “Hope” and “Change”.
“Bring it on Bubba – judging by the results of the last civil war…”
You mean the one where the Republicans beat the living snot out of a bunch of Democrat traitors?
Looking forward to the next go around. Now, that we got the South on our side, and the Dembots are merely a bunch of urbanite, purse-carrying, nancy boys, we ought to be able to stomp their guts out, no problem.
I can just see the Democrats fielding an army:
The 124th Gay, Lesbian and Transgender brigade
The Code Pink Commandos
Nancy Pelosi’s “I get All Weepy When I Think About Violence” Rangers
And, of course, Barack Obama’s “Peace at Any Price” Corps.
Yup, it’s going to be a real bloodbath.
16. Libertyship46:
“They will take one of your sentences out of context and try to use it against you.”
You do that all the time.
18. Terry Gain:
“But no review of blogging is complete without asking the question: will VIVO ever enter the sphere of rationality?
Not YOUR ‘rationality’.
I think it’s the adrenaline rush that keeps liberal trolls coming back. Maybe some of them are paid a pittance by SEIU or ACORN but I think they get an emotional high out of battling us devilish reicht-wingers.
There are people on these comment threads that argue with the liberal trolls. We are getting an adrenaline rush too. Why don’t we go to liberal blogs to argue? Why don’t us right-wingers who love to argue go to the Democratic Underground or Daily Kos to battle the demon communists there? Because where liberals have control they ban, not battle. There’s no battlefield at a liberal blog, just the cozy warm glow of uniform consensus. If you try to argue with them you’re gone.
I get most of my adrenaline rush from dodging cars with my motorcycle. Liberal blog commenters are much safer than I; they only risk damage to their tender psyches and not their bodies. Are they smarter or just cowardly? Since riding a motorcycle saves gas compared to a car, I say liberal trolls are just cowardly. Ride a motorcycle you hypocrites.
Obama has issued a call to arms for the good war in Afghanistan. He’s going to send even more troops there than Bush ever did. Are you liberal trolls going to volunteer to go or are you a bunch of chickenhawks?
Feels good to smite mine enemies. Take that you rascals.
I appreciated reading the lengthy writing, goy.
…leftist social policy, based solely on what Haidt …refers to as the “individualizing” foundations, pretends to support a pseudo-egalitarian condition which all but eliminates individual liberty and individual responsibility – at least if you look at socialist ideology in practice, where the practical reality is cradle-to-grave dependence on and submission to the State, as well as conformity to politicized norms.
Exactly. And this social policy is one whose operative effect is to trammel the human soul, in contrast to how it presents itself under the hopeandchangey umbrella of “helping” the individual.
I would surmise that cichawoda has been taught (and integrated) a complete body of assumptions about modern conservatism (classical liberalism, whatever)which allows him to rest comfortably in notions of an old, stolid, backward crowd standing boringly in juxtaposition to fearless and brave “progressives”.
The real story is far deeper than all of that, cichawoda.
Your current set of views provides a comfortable basis for that which Obama & crowd would impose, a new vision of morality and the citizen’s role, one in which the individual serves government and one in which government is the source of the individual’s rights.
This body of thought works to supplant the ideas of those old, white conservative “Founders”…i.e., that the only job of government is the protection of the citizen and the preservation of the individual’s inalienable rights, rights which exist completely outside of and independent of government.
It won’t be north vs south but Urban vs rural.
We grow the food you eat. A week without food and you will change your mind. Granted it will be a small change, but one that produces a notable improvement.
Oh, come on, according to the postmodern theory so enamored of the Left, everything is a “social construct”, including the “need” for food.
I’d prefer that the country just peaceably split in two. Since the Left seems to love big, corrupt government, they could make Chicago the capital of their section. They could spend their time debating whether or not they should go “hard-hard Left” or just “hard Left” in all their decisions, e.g., should overall marginal tax rates be 90% or 100%.
It would be political Nirvana for them without any “stoopids” around to say, “Hey, how about a center or center-right solution to this issue?”
153. Dave Surls:
“Now, that we got the South on our side . . . ”
Well, there’s no arguing that.
http://www.buzzfeed.com/awesomer/most-convincing-argument-to-impeach-obama-yet-cci
A proud member in this, the Republican guard:
The Town Hall Geritol Brigade
Lindsay Graham’s Gay Militia
The Wide-Stance Commandos
Rush Limbaugh’s Butt Pimple Deferrers
The Todd Palin Mister Moms
Ted Haggard’s Crack Squad
Ralph Reed’s Willowy Casino Crusaders
Sean Hannity’s Charity Waterboarders
The Duke Cunningham B-Block Butt Boys
The O’Reilly Falafal Fighters
Appalachian Trail Minutemen
The John Boehner Leaky Eyes Permatans
The Howdy Doody Jindal Warriors
The only shots you’ll ever fire will be in the bathroom. But just to make it fair, I’m taking up a collection to distribute 40,000 packages of Depends and 2 million doses of Flomax.
Conservatives = John Wayne. Liberals = Bruce Lee. Here’s the difference. John Wayne only ACTED tough. Bruce Lee was a GENUINE killing machine. That’s all the difference we need, Pilgrim.
157. venividivici:
“they could make Chicago the capital of their section.”
Great, we’ll take Chicago and the lower 48. You can take Wasilla.
Great, we’ll take Chicago and the lower 48. You can take Wasilla.
Try this on for size, *sshole.
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mejn/election/2008/countymapredbluer1024.png
From a Canadian observer
In America, especially since the end of WWII, it has been an obvious goal of public policy to keep the Great American Lardassmass ignorant (failure to adequately fund public education, Christian fundamentalism, etc.), poor (predatory lending, regressive taxation, union busting, etc.), and sick (the commercialization of illness, etc.).
When Americans face the grotesque contradictions between their professed political principles (pursuit of happiness, etc.) and the political reality of their enforced misery (continuous warfare, widespread unemployment, rampant drug abuse, etc.), they are easily led by their exploiters to continually act against their own best interests. Hence, the inexplicable irrationality of opposition to the single payer option for health insurance, support for continual warfare (next up: Iran), and tolerance of massive corporate welfare.
Exploitation of the distressed is best done via fear, and tacit and/or explicit racism has always been the favorite tool of fascists of all stripes since the dawn of man.
The goal of those propagating racism is to stampede the electorate in the direction needed to continue the exploitation. If you have ever been in a riot situation when the mob gets rushed, it is irrelevant if you yourself agree or disagree, you must follow or get crushed.
Conservatives = John Wayne. Liberals = Bruce Lee. Here’s the difference. John Wayne only ACTED tough. Bruce Lee was a GENUINE killing machine. That’s all the difference we need, Pilgrim.
I typically don’t recommend smoking crack to people, but in your case, smoking some might actually improve your cognitive functioning. There’s no doubt that in the past the Left could muster some significant manpower to overthrow governments around the globe. Once the Left became disconnected from the rural and blue-collar segments of the population, which happened across the industrialized West (hence the theory of “Western Marxism”), this ceased to be true. A relatively intelligent liberal like Camille Paglia has been lamenting this for a while, including her latest Salon column:
http://www.salon.com/opinion/paglia/2009/09/09/healthcare/index.html
Why has the Democratic Party become so arrogantly detached from ordinary Americans? Though they claim to speak for the poor and dispossessed, Democrats have increasingly become the party of an upper-middle-class professional elite, top-heavy with journalists, academics and lawyers (one reason for the hypocritical absence of tort reform in the healthcare bills). Weirdly, given their worship of highly individualistic, secularized self-actualization, such professionals are as a whole amazingly credulous these days about big-government solutions to every social problem. They see no danger in expanding government authority and intrusive, wasteful bureaucracy. This is, I submit, a stunning turn away from the anti-authority and anti-establishment principles of authentic 1960s leftism.
How has “liberty” become the inspirational code word of conservatives rather than liberals? (A prominent example is radio host Mark Levin’s book “Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto,” which was No. 1 on the New York Times bestseller list for nearly three months without receiving major reviews, including in the Times.) I always thought that the Democratic Party is the freedom party — but I must be living in the nostalgic past. Remember Bob Dylan’s 1964 song “Chimes of Freedom,” made famous by the Byrds? And here’s Richie Havens electrifying the audience at Woodstock with “Freedom! Freedom!” Even Linda Ronstadt, in the 1967 song “A Different Drum,” with the Stone Ponys, provided a soaring motto for that decade: “All I’m saying is I’m not ready/ For any person, place or thing/ To try and pull the reins in on me.”
But affluent middle-class Democrats now seem to be complacently servile toward authority and automatically believe everything party leaders tell them. Why? Is it because the new professional class is a glossy product of generically institutionalized learning? Independent thought and logical analysis of argument are no longer taught. Elite education in the U.S. has become a frenetic assembly line of competitive college application to schools where ideological brainwashing is so pandemic that it’s invisible. The top schools, from the Ivy League on down, promote “critical thinking,” which sounds good but is in fact just a style of rote regurgitation of hackneyed approved terms (“racism, sexism, homophobia”) when confronted with any social issue. The Democratic brain has been marinating so long in those clichés that it’s positively pickled.
You don’t win street-fights with a team of “journalists, academics and lawyers”.
160. venividivici:
the president, the house, the senate . . . I guess we’re lucky that the blue parts are where the people actually live . . . icehole
Looking at that Nov 2008 red/blue map, I often wonder where in the hell Barack Obama (& handlers) get the notion that they were handed some kind of gigantic mandate in the last national election and, therefore, that it is incumbent on the rest of us to simply STFU and let them get on with some kind of mandate to, in Obama’s own words, re-make America.
Not to mention that the man did, as a matter of fact, run as a centrist, particularly when it became apparent to him (and handlers like David Axelrod) that he had to tone down the more radical aspects of the agenda, at least until he took office.
142. Cichawoda says:Sounds like the start of a country and western lament.
Man, or in your case, wo-man, are we smug huh? At least I grew up and left behind the fantasy ideology of kids. Does not seem to have happened to you. I pity you.
Since you don’t present any rational arguments that I can take issue with.
As if you would know a rational argument if it came up and introduced itself to you as such. That’s because liberals always react to facts, logic, and that rationality you seem unable to identify, like a mythological vampire reacts to holy symbols, holy water, or garlic.
All I will say is I’m sorry you lost your self assurance and for your sadness at how dumb and naive you were. Maybe if you didn’t give up on your dreams your non-liberal life wouldn’t be so empty.
More of the liberal projection at work. Self assurance? What is it again that the bible says was Lucifer’s crime? Oh yeah: vanity. Liberals confuse their vanity with self assurance. It is not coincidental that the liberal ideology places more weight on god intentions than results either. There is another biblical quote for that too: “The road to hell is paved with good intentions”. There is a pattern there, and no it is not religious in nature. I just used that to illustrate the problem. Collectivists told the world stupid people believe in god, religion, and morality, and promptly create their own versions of those things. Only problem is that theirs seems modeled after the dark side while passing itself off as good.
And my life is as full as it can be. I made the American dream mine with satisfying and hard work and did not wait to have it handed to me. If it got any fuller I would need two lives to lead. Yours sounds like it is filled with nothing but false bravado.
the political reality of their enforced misery
Never experienced any of that personally. Seems a rather knee jerk assumption on your part about a soceity in which you don’t live.
Hence, the inexplicable irrationality of opposition to the single payer option for health insurance, support for continual warfare (next up: Iran), and tolerance of massive corporate welfare.
I read the North/northeast of the United States is positively brimming with doctors and nurses who’ve come over the border to practice their art, completely fed up with the clumsy automaton single payer in Canada has become.
Not to mention those that can afford to do so circumventing some of those monstrous waits you people
are subjected to and coming on down here for surgeries.
Shall I go on ?
162. venividivici:
You forgot to mention the role of our military in any such future conflict. Guess what color they are? It’s not coincidental that the blue staters hold low opinion of those in our military as well. and the members of our armed forces know, and remember that slight…
163. Hung FED says: the president, the house, the senate . . .
Let’s see how well that works in the 2010 elections.
I guess we’re lucky that the blue parts are where the people actually live . . . icehole,/i>
Again, let us see what those people say in 2010. And those blue parts tend to be the mega urban cities. The places where those that practically always have no skills or chance to actually make it on their own, flock to..
The Democratic brain has been marinating so long in those clichés that it’s positively pickled.
You can say that again Cowboy (john wayne reference
…I guess Paglia is a cowgirl.
160. venividivici:
the president, the house, the senate . . . I guess we’re lucky that the blue parts are where the people actually live . . . icehole
The first month of no food shipments into the cities will change that, eh? Maybe cutting off a few key water supply lines into the cities too. I hear dehydration is a hell of a way to go.
Face the facts, the Left has allowed its “supply chain” to become dependent on people it despises (corporations and people who live “in the sticks/flyover country”, not to mention the military). That is a strategic blunder of historic proportions, and actually, even though I have a Masters in History, I can’t think of a comparable situation in Western history where the continued arrogance and all-around *ssholery of one group was so dependent on another group for its material maintenance, except for maybe the French aristocracy, although even they owned land outside of the urban areas of France. We know how that turned out, right? First time as tragedy, second time as farce, I suppose. I only hope I get to see it play out. Maybe you can eat your “ethnic studies”/law degree. Of course, you could always just come to your senses and stop ramming sh*t down people’s throats. But, I’m guessing you’re too full of yourself to do that. As Caesar said, surveying the dead bodies of his opponents in the Roman Civil War, “They wanted this.”
goy and tanstaafl: Excellent comments!
tanstaafl wrote:
I would surmise that cichawoda has been taught (and integrated) a complete body of assumptions about modern conservatism (classical liberalism, whatever)which allows him to rest comfortably in notions of an old, stolid, backward crowd standing boringly in juxtaposition to fearless and brave “progressives”.
Exactly so. cichawoda is a person of shallow mind and thought and as such, does not dream of “questioning authority” – not when the authorities are left-wing professors, media, government officials and so on.
Let’s face it, the left-wing version of history and current events is a romantic one – the brave progressives vs. the old, fearful and selfish ones – and that is why it appeals so much to young people. Not many of them realize they are every bit as conformist as any 1950′s man in a gray flannel suit. It’s immensely self-flattering to think of yourself as one of the courageous enlightened ones (never mind that being left-wing on a college campus requires no courage whatsoever)and it makes life easy and simple. You simply agree with what Marxist prof X says, echo it back to him and viola! you’re teacher’s pet.
I was a lib in college and it took 10 years of soul searching and reading texts that I had never heard of in college (Russell Kirk, Whittaker Chambers, and Hayek to name a few) to make me change my mind. Rethinking ones basic, easy assumptions about the world, history, and human nature is a painful task, and yes, there is the danger of losing friends along the way. Some of my former friends no longer speak to me, not because I cut them off, but because I stopped being politically correct.
So I don’t expect liberal trolls to suddenly have a “I coulda had a V8!” moment because some PJM commenter or article turned them around. In my case, it wasn’t any one thing, it was the cognitive dissonce that developed when I could no longer avoid the fact that reality did not conform to the neat political categories I had in my head.
I read the North/northeast of the United States is positively brimming with doctors and nurses who’ve come over the border to practice their art, completely fed up with the clumsy automaton single payer in Canada has become
The Chief of the Medical Staff at the hospital I work at is from Toronto. The leading Orthopaedic surgeon is from Alberta. Since I live in a northern state we can dismiss sunny skies and warm temps as the reason those distinguished practitioners choose to live here. It truly is a mystery as to why any Canuck would want to escape from the Great White Utopia to our north.
I agree with our Canuck commenter about 1 thing – US public education certainly does suck. As it has been under the control of the Left for 40 years, it’s really something he should take up with them.
;… of Drs emigrating to US, 68% returnmed – Sats Canada bulletin 2008
78% of Canadians satisfied with health care
46% of Americans satisfied with health care
86% of Danes satisfied with health care (single payer system)
Danes happiest people on planet
.0001% of Canadians needing health went to US, of which 48% received complete Canada coverage
The whole civilised world laughs at US cutting off its nose to spite its face regarding health care
167
You forgot to mention the role of our military in any such future conflict. Guess what color they are? It’s not coincidental that the blue staters hold low opinion of those in our military as well. and the members of our armed forces know, and remember that slight…
I mentioned it in passing in my next post, but it’s definitely another factor (and a huge one at that). I remember watching a conference on C-Span in the early 1990′s where a military official was laying out some scenarios for the US over the coming decades. As I recall, he gave about a 25% chance to the idea that there would be a military coup in this country, arising from the split between the military culture and the popular culture.
The attempt to overcome human nature by the chicawowas of the world will always fail. As Horace said, “Push Nature out the front door with a pitchfork, She comes running right back in the back door”. That’s not to say reforms and improvements to society can’t happen (obviously, they have and the Left, when it was sane, was part of some of those), just that they have to happen in ways that recognize the invariants in life.
Fundamentally, the issue is one of trust. When I read the comments from the Leftist trolls here, it actually hardens my opposition to them having any power whatsoever on what happens in my life. The bile they spew makes me doubt that a person who disagreed with them could ever get a fair hearing, whether it was in front of a “death panel” or a friggin’ zoning board. So, I’d rather just follow what I think is the optimal strategy at all levels of government, which is a “minimax” strategy, i.e. vote for whomever will “minimize” the “maximum” amount of damage the government can do to the civil society and the economy. I am willing to give up what the Left tells me will be the wonderful gains (e.g. whatever Obama is using as his health care reform selling points this week) in order to limit my “downside” from government activity. It’s a very standard technique in risk management, which is really what politics boils down to for me, “How do I manage the risk that these idiots will f-up my life?”.
MAYBE, if people like chicawoda weren’t such d*ckheads, I’d have a slightly different take on the issue. I’m not holding my breath waiting for that to happen.
I was a lib in college and it took 10 years of soul searching and reading texts that I had never heard of in college…
It took me 20 years (literally) to undo my extensive Berzerkley brainwashing.
I am well seasoned against the Bill Ayers of the planet, as I used to have to walk through radical speeches to get to class and, eventually, was able to diagnose, firsthand, the monstrous egomania common to them all. Egomania is far more the driver than any of the philosophical paeans offered (“the poor, the downtrodden” etc.) as justification for the radical mentality.
That generalization can be offered for all kinds of tyrants throughout history, not just the low level rabble rousers at Berzerkley I watched play to the crowds.
It’s disheartening, to say the least, to see the disingenuousness at the core of the liberal shtick having another go round in the form of this administration and what it would impose on the country in the form of permanent (or, at best, very hard to dismantle) change.
The first month of no food shipments into the cities will change that, eh? Maybe cutting off a few key water supply lines into the cities too. I hear dehydration is a hell of a way to go
Veni: Give some advance notice to us urban conservatives living behind enemy lines, OK?
One of my favorite pasttimes is sitting at an nearby cafe and watching the parade of deep blue humanity strolling past. Based on long and careful study, I doubt the Marines or the Army would be necessary to conquer this particular patch of blue state America. A couple of Girl Scout troops armed with peashooters will bring my neighbors to their knees.
Save the Boy Scouts and the Daisy Air rifles for the really tough neighborhoods, like Berkeley and Cambridge.
“I always thought that the Democratic Party is the freedom party”
Right…the party of slavery, Jim Crow, Manzanar, military conscription, the Smith Act, and government control of everything and anything…is the freedom party.
Some people have some mighty odd thoughts.
“It took me 20 years (literally) to undo my extensive Berzerkley brainwashing.”
You think you’ve had it rough?
I was born there!
I thought it was those clever right wing, cowboy capitalist risk managers at places like AIG that brought your economy to its knees? Aren’t the the ones who use the ‘mini-max’ principle?… oh I forgot, they implemented the principle by attempting to maximise profit in a minimum temporal frame. You should straighten those guys out…hee, hee. hee
I’m tired of the predictable silliness here…remember, we really are laughing (…and your welcome to the DRs that do stay. The ones that return, and never left, are far more the kind of Dr I want treating me)
hee, hee, hee
#160 said “Maybe cutting off a few key water supply lines into the cities too”.
That’s one of the ways Rome was laid low.
Veni: Give some advance notice to us urban conservatives living behind enemy lines, OK?
I’ll be right with you “running for the hills” and hoping they’ll take me in as another pair of hands! I’ve lived in cities (Boston and Chicago) all my adult life and been surrounded by people just like our resident trolls. My conclusion is that there are some good aspects of cities, but most of them exist DESPITE the stupid Leftist politics of the typical metropolis. I live in the city because of business requirements and the selection of restaurants (most of which are run by the sort of small business person who isn’t a Leftist) and that’s about it.
169. venividivici:
How about we cut off something you value a lot more than water . . . TV. Master in History, eh? Colleges turn out idiots, at last that’s what everybody here says. So . . . what else you got?
169. venividivici:
How about we cut off something you value a lot more than water . . . TV. Master in History, eh? Colleges turn out idiots, at last that’s what everybody here says. So . . . what else you got?
I can only assume you’re joking, but, if you are really living in a dream world where you think you’ve made a valid point, my response is who gives a rip about TV? It’s all crap anyway, except for sports. Plus, there’s this new thing people use to communicate important information, called the Internet. Once people in Hollywood run out of the food in their fridge and there’s none left to replace it, I doubt they’ll be making many more episodes of “Gossip Girl”, anyway.
Regarding college, there are many subjects in which the graduates tend to be useless idiots. Not all graduates, but most. I had a good friend who had an English Literature degree, but he wasn’t your typical Lit major idiot. The reason I left my Ph.D. program was precisely because I realized I’d hate working alongside those people for the rest of my life.
“I thought it was those clever right wing, cowboy capitalist risk managers at places like AIG that brought your economy to its knees?”
As of 2008, we had the 5th highest per capita GDP(PPP) in the world, according to World Bank figures, and the countries that exceed is are all very small (Norway and a few very small countries like Singapore have better numbers). U.S. per capita GDP is $46,716, Canada, by way of comparison is #12 on the list with a per capita GDP(PPP) of $36,444.
In absolute terms the United States is still an economic monster with a GDP(PPP) about twice that of any other country in the world (the PRC is thought to have the second largest economy). U.S. GDP(PPP) is about $14.2 trillion, the PRC is $7.9 trillion (if you believe commie numbers). U.S. economic output is estimated to be a bit over 20% of the world’s total economic output.
We’re in a bit of a recession, but not exactly on our knees.
The greatest scams the Statists have perpetrated on the U.S. people is calling themselves “liberal” and “progressive.”
They are neither.
And by the way, Democrat states should be red, not blue. Another deliberat scam.
How about we cut off something you value a lot more than water . . . TV.
Uh, you can have mine. I don’t have cable and my remote gathers dust. I have only seen Beck on YouTube clips. I spend the evenings I have free either online or reading – presently working my way through de Tocqueville’s “Democracy in America.”
FED confuses “college education” with “well-read.” It’s the books I’ve read in my post-college years that have influenced me the most and some of the best receive scant attention on college campuses these days (“Witness” by Whittaker Chambers is a prime example) because they’re too busy reading bell hooks or whoever the trendy left wing author of the day happens to be.
You should straighten those guys out…hee, hee. hee…
We’ll straighten out the cowboy corporatist risk managers if you’ll straighten out the self-righteous morons who sit on sundry Canadian “human rights” commissions and attempt to make life difficult for any and all liberty lovers still left in Canada.
Deal ?
I’m tired of the predictable silliness here…remember, we really are laughing…
The attitude of hautiness/pretend superiority and pretend knowledge of what constitutes an “enlightened” society is one of the least attractive character traits of you people
Even Canadians got sick of the liberal shtick in the form of Chrétien & the corruption of Paul Martin and elected Stephen Harper PM. And re-elected, as I recall.
I’m tired of the predictable silliness here…
Great! Don’t let the door hit you where the good Lord split you.
remember, we really are laughing
And we’re just biting our nails to the quick worrying about what the Canadians think of us,…, If you’re happy with your tax rates and waiting lists and rationed health care, fine by me. Why do you care so much what we do? It’s none of your damn business.
There’s only one Canuck whose opinion I value – and he’s a resident of NH.
“Danes happiest people on planet”
What’s really amazing is is that they live right next to the Germans and pretty dang close to the French…and they’re STILL in a good mood.
178. albert says:I thought it was those clever right wing, cowboy capitalist risk managers at places like AIG that brought your economy to its knees?
I can tell who has been getting their propaganda from the DNC/MSM…
The people responsible for the current crisis we find ourselves in, are the politicians that decided to discard tried and true lending rules that require people to show fiscal discipline and have collateral for their loans, and go with a model that forced lending institutions to give money to high risk borrowers. People such as Barney Franks and Chris Dodd. Driven by ideology they decided that somehow making it easier for irresponsible people to borrow huge sums of money to buy a house, would change their irresponsible ways. When the lenders balked, they soothed them by promising to back their risk with tax payer money. When even that was not enough, they helped them set up an entire shady security trading scheme to make the thing palatable. That’s the scheme that caused the problems. Then they protected that fiefdom from all comers, only failing to prop up the scam right before an election by coincidence where they though a bad economy would help them win. It is the same bunch of ideologues that are now demanding to fix the problem and blaming capitalism & Wall Street for the problem.
Want another funny coincidence? It is the same bunch of ideologue politicians that pushed for, and got laws that made the healthcare system what it is today, so they could then call it in crisis and nationalize it.
From our economy to our healthcare system, it is these politicians and the things they make law that cause the problems. Then they blame capitalism and others for the problems and demand to fix them. I am certain I do not have to point out how the ideological arrogance plays a role here, and what party is predominantly the one engaged in this stuff.
I have the feeling that most Jews who moved from left to right after 9/11 is all about Isreal and their protection of it, nothing more. Don’t be fooled by their change in perspective; it is clearly a single issue move. Mr. Solway is not even an American, let alone an actual journalist. Our problems in this country are mostly domestic and they won’t be solved by coddling Israel or bombing the Middle East
American (and Canadian) Jews should take a hint from “Wowser’s” remarks above. Loads and loads of Americans who wave the “Old Gridiron” are very suspicious of the former socialist Jews who now call themselves “conservative”. Your welcome in non-Jewish countries is wearing very thin, and it is time to high-tail it home and leave North America to stew in its own economic collapse. There will be a terrible bloodbath in the world in not too long, but those of us in Israel will be safer than those Jews not in Israel.
NEXT YEAR IN JERUSALEM!!
Re: Bohemond/ Guvinoff/ Ked5: [...] By the way, I find it amusing that the Italian word for “left” is “sinistra
[...]
A respectful reminder/ etimology:
As far as I remember from my Latin classes, the original meaning of the Latin word “sinistra” was/is “left” as placement orientation term(sinistra vs. dextra/ left vs. right). Yet, with the time (we’re still in ancient Rome), after the advent of the very large gladiatorial masssacres, the dead bodies used to be wholesale dragged away through a left “sinistra” gate of the stadium for discarding, situation that added to the term’s original, orientational meaning, the sense of “odious, macabre… sinister”.
Best regards -
192. misanthropicus:
Congratulations, you’ve inspired the next Glenn Beck conspiracy . . . “Ancient Romans – Did They Warn Us About Obama?”
Goy
Thanks for the response and all the hard work and digging. When I said it hadn’t been “tested”…I meant by me…not by others or in general.
My “homespun” theories extend beyond those outlined…and I have not done any of my own testing, or even digging to support them. They were based upon anecdotal evidence and observation.
However, I am now thrilled to have a point of reference from which to launch an expansion of my “homespun” theories.
I also appreciate your elucidation of the actual points on the spectrum from left to right…eliminating the need to clump together “wings”. These distinctions are important, I believe.
I am so slammed at work, that I have little time left to comment much for the past few months. I glimpse and lurk when I can. As any reader who bothers to pay attention to anything I write knows…I have a “pet” theme throughout much of my writing.
I believe that leftism is a disease that has caused a national sepsis. NOT LIBERALS…LEFTISTS, a point I try to make quite frequently.
I also believe that our information stream has been polluted with lies, distortions, and is so diseased and untrustworthy that we are forced to fight an underground war against our own communications system.
The fools who troll here might stop by from time to time and read an occasional comment from me, and immediately “label” me a “right wing…” or a “neo-con”.
I find the designation at once laughable and illuminating. Kneejerk stereotyping is the NORM among the blind lemming crowd…while they spout “historical” epithets about the evils of “kneejerk stereotyping” BY “Southern Man”.
The hypocrisy and “leftist speak” is positively Orwellian.
But, I also believe we no longer “own” the words in our (pop) culture. I have been fighting an uphill battle (and losing, …ignored, really) against the adopting of leftist speak into our national conscience.
“Mainstream” media…if there ever was an Orwellian sick joke cast upon the national conscience, this is it. If our communications “main stream” is accepted as one that intentionally lies, distorts, corrupts and pollutes itself on a daily basis as this one does…I don’t wish to drink from it any more than I would wish to drink from an outhouse toilet.
Our entrenched (think outhouse trench) media is so corrupt, it not only has lost its moral compass, it has intentionally blown up the frame of reference so that we can’t see the sun, the moon or the stars to guide ourselves.
Leftists have so disoriented the lemmings, they are spouting hypocrisy with zombie-like predictability…they have stopped thinking and simply start chanting.
The trolls here are nothing more than zombie parrots and lemmings, being driven to the sea of brain dead, unblinking, unthinking, Jonestown collective “reasoning suicide”. If its not in the “playbook”…it won’t be heard from the zombies, parrots and lemmings.
I feel sorry for the trolls. They are so blindly attached to someone else’s commands…they have ceased to function as sentient creatures. You can’t reason with a creature who has given up his will to the commands of a master…whatever they are told to say and do…they say and do. It’s a cerebral bypass…until they regain their own will, you aren’t debating them, you are debating the master’s playbook.
They buy the lies, distortions, fakery and scams…and believe in them.
You can’t argue against their positions, it’s a dogma they are attached to and you have to argue against the masters who pull the puppet strings. THOSE folks…NEVER show up. They will never allow the curtain to be pulled back…iron or otherwise.
194 cfbleachers
Allow me to interrupt your kneejerk stereotyping for just a second . . .
“Kneejerk stereotyping is the NORM among the blind lemming crowd . . . Kneejerk stereotyping is the NORM among the blind lemming crowd”
Do you not see the irony in that? If not, just say so, that’s fine. But really, do you not see it? Anybody?
Paglia:
Why has the Democratic Party become so arrogantly detached from ordinary Americans? Though they claim to speak for the poor and dispossessed, Democrats have increasingly become the party of an upper-middle-class professional elite, top-heavy with journalists, academics and lawyers (one reason for the hypocritical absence of tort reform in the healthcare bills). Weirdly, given their worship of highly individualistic, secularized self-actualization, such professionals are as a whole amazingly credulous these days about big-government solutions to every social problem. They see no danger in expanding government authority and intrusive, wasteful bureaucracy. This is, I submit, a stunning turn away from the anti-authority and anti-establishment principles of authentic 1960s leftism.
Paglia has it exactly backwards, as I did for so many years. “The anti-authority and anti-establishment principles of authentic 1960′s leftism” were never any such thing.
It was a pose. A ruse. A hustle. A way to convince soft-headed, horny kids that the Left represented “freedom”.
But all it really offered was license: Sex, Drugs and Rock & Roll.
As for “the establishment”, it was nothing more than our parents, who were in our way saying “NO!”
Labeling it a political movement (instead of the mass juvenile delinquent petty crime spree that it was), and linking it vaguely with civil rights (after all the dangerous work was done by others) gave us the moral authority of a “movement” to get high and sleep around.
“Authentic 60′s Leftism” was just the same old brutal communism as always, but packaged in a pretty “freedom” gift wrapping that appealed to selfish, hormone-crazed kids. The underlying reality was always totalitarianism and group-think. Charlie Manson was a fair reflection of it, as was the SDS,a group out of which the current Apollo Alliance and ACORN emerged, with the same people, the same ideology and the same disrespect for individuality, personal responsibility, law, tradition and morality.
Those glorious 60′s also gave us the Black Panthers who today are rearing their ugly beret wearing heads at polling places to intimidate voters.
Rioters burned down their own neighborhoods in the inner cities, “Liberation” movements kidnapped heiresses and robbed banks in the name of “freedom”.
And the Grand Moral Stance: resistance to the Viet Nam war.
Please.
The “authentic Left” didn’t gave a damn about the Vietnamese. I think their celebrations in the streets while millions were being slaughtered by the communists after we tucked tail and ran establishes that beyond a reasonable doubt.
Not one in a thousand draft dodgers resisted the war because he did not want to KILL. Or believed the war was “illegal”. Every one hated the war because they did not want to DIE.
Now it’s perfectly understandable for children to feel that way—particularly as they were not volunteers but draftees. But it is hardly the moral high ground they pretended…a pretense the Left continues to this day.
Paglia’s “authentic 60′s Left” is a myth. She imagines it has morphed into something different than it WAS only because she finally sees what it IS.
The final step in her evolution as a clear thinker will be the realization that the ugly character of the Left today is what it has always been.
195
Do you not see the irony in that? If not, just say so, that’s fine. But really, do you not see it? Anybody?
It’s only ironic IF you agree with your counter-accusation that it is you who are being stereotyped.
If two men are accused of murder, but only one of them is a murderer, calling the one who is not a murderer a murderer isn’t “ironic”, it’s just plain inaccurate.
195
Also, for the umpteenth time, I don’t care who’s right in the stereotyping “blame game”. The ONLY solution is some sort of split of the country so that people who agree with you can govern themselves under their own set of presuppositions and laws. You will NEVER convince me you are right and I probably won’t convince you. Under conditions like that there is no reasonable solution but to part ways. We’ll see who ends up a third-rate nation and who ends up remaining a global superpower. I know the outcome of that “experiment” but you have clearly not reached that same level of historical, political, philosophical and logical insight. I am sick of carrying you and your ilk. Time for the mother bird to kick the baby birds out of the nest. If you fly (which you won’t), great. If not, nice knowin’ ya.
Now and then
No, I don’t.
1) A group of “A’s” stereotypes all B’s as lazy, shiftless, ignorant and worthless
2) C then stereotypes ALL A’s as ignorant, homophobic, racist AND accuses them of engaging in stereotyping, which C labels as unsupportable behavior.
I view what happens in (2) above…and call out the hypocrisy in it.
That’s not irony…it’s a form of logic via syllogism.
You, on the other hand…blindly defend the indefensible. Do you see the irony in that? Anyone?
Albert #172
Where in the world do you get your stats?
USA Today/Gallup, Sept. 11-13, 2009
80% are satisfied with the quality of their health care, including 39% who are very satisfied.
61% are satisfied with the cost, including 20% who are very satisfied.
Even for the 15% who are uninsured, 50% are satisfied with their health care.
Several polls have consistently come to similar results.
Danes happiest people on the planet? Well, there suicide rate is higher than Americans. Besides, it’s the liberals who are dragging down the ‘happiness factor’; Republicans are happier and have been since the General Social Survey began asking the question in 1972.
http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1005/republicans-happier
198. venividivici:
“I am sick of carrying you and your ilk.”
Give me one, just one specific example of that. Financially? Militarily? Morally? Legally? Tax dollars? Charity? Or are you just talking about shouldering more than an average load of asssholiness? Nothing avails itself of your victim’s fantasy. I suggest you try carrying yourself for a change.
199. cfbleachers:
It’s not enough to burp up vocabulary, a pathological behavior of desperate right wing hypocrites. It’s critical that principles behind the words apply. You have far to go before the latter occurs. Keep drawing circles and one day soon reality with intersect with your opinion. then you can color the shared area in bright yellow!
184. Dave Surls (responding to Albert) wrote:
“I thought it was those clever right wing, cowboy capitalist risk managers at places like AIG that brought your economy to its knees?”
As of 2008, we had the 5th highest per capita GDP(PPP) in the world, according to World Bank figures, and the countries that exceed is are all very small (Norway and a few very small countries like Singapore have better numbers). U.S. per capita GDP is $46,716, Canada, by way of comparison is #12 on the list with a per capita GDP(PPP) of $36,444.
Peter writes: You forgot to also mention it was the regulations (or lack of enforcement there-of) by Democratic politicians that allowed companies like AIG to get themselves into the situation they did where they could threaten the economy.
If Bush had been allowed to make the reforms he tried to implement around 2004-06 instead of being opposed at every turn by the Lib Dems just because the ideas came from Bush no matter how bad or good they were, we would never have had the houseing meltdown and bank bailouts and other problems that precipitated the recession.
Thanks again Bawney Fwank, Nancy Pelousy and The Won (I vote present) when he was Jr Senator.
Hey albert, are you still out there ?
Or did your (pretend) ennui at the “silliness” here pretend to overwhelm you ?
Here’s an article on the wonders of Canadian “healthcare” in yesterday’s Los Angeles Times
“What we have in Canada is access to a government, state-mandated wait list,” said Brian Day, a former Canadian Medical Assn. director who runs a private surgical center in Vancouver. “You cannot force a citizen in a free and democratic society to simply wait for healthcare, and outlaw their ability to extricate themselves from a wait list.”
My son went to an Ivy League school and neither him nor I go by the name Chimpy McHalliburton.
Please don’t bother liberals with proveable facts they have no use for them!! After all they have their own opinions to bolster!!!