Why Won’t Liberals Listen to Reason?
The left believes that a clever elite can fix all the world’s problems; conservatives accept that human error can lead to disastrous outcomes. Liberals fancy themselves rational in contrast to conservatives’ dour acknowledgment of tradition and tragedy. Why, then, is the left so impossibly, stubbornly, counter-factually dense when it comes to the state of Israel (among other matters)?
Liberal rationality is a pose. Knowledge is existential — that is, we tend to ignore facts that apply to a world in which we will not exist at all. I saw that before the 2008 banking crash, when I tried to warn the industry that a crash was inevitable. Most of them said, in effect, “If what you’re saying is true, then I shouldn’t have a job, so I won’t think about it.” Not long afterwards, most of them didn’t.
The left (and the European left in particular) doesn’t like certain facts because they are dying — literally. The triumph of the secular welfare state in Europe is associated with a catastrophic population decline. Three-fifths of southern Europeans will be elderly pensioners by mid-century. Of course, they’re going to go bankrupt. And Muslim society is fragile, and much of the Muslim world has entered a tailspin from which it won’t recover. The left clings to the magical idea that if only Israel would roll over and die, and validate the illusions of the Muslims, that somehow this horrific future might be avoided.
This is about as rational as the cargo cults of New Guinea after World War II. The sociologist Eric Kaufmann is an enlightened liberal, because he observes that liberalism is a self-liquidating proposition: “The weakest link in the secular account of human nature is that it fails to account for people’s powerful desire to seek immortality for themselves and their loved ones,” he wrote in a recent book titled Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth? Secular liberals don’t have children while people of faith do.
The existential irrationality of the liberals came to mind yesterday as I listened to Alan Dershowitz, Shelby Steele, and other distinguished friends of Israel on a Hudson Institute conference call. Hudson and Touro College are hosting a conference titled “The Perils of Global Intolerance: The United Nations and Durban III,” on Thursday, Sept. 22, across the street from the United Nations. Speakers will also include Ron Lauder, John Bolton, Elie Wiesel, Wafa Sultan, Ruth Wisse, and other dignitaries. It’s an important event, and deserves wide attention. (Note: Watch the proceedings live on PJTV, September 22.)
It seems so obvious when Profs. Dershowitz and Steele explain. The Palestine Authority won’t recognize Israel as a Jewish state. Period. And as the Wall Street Journal pointed out Sept. 18:
”We are going to complain that as Palestinians we have been under occupation for 63 years,” Mr. Abbas said the other day. That’s another way of saying that the “occupation,” in Mr. Abbas’s view, began with the creation of the state of Israel in 1948, and not with Israel’s takeover of the West Bank and Gaza after a war that threatened Israel’s existence in 1967.
If they listened to reason, they would no longer be Liberals. Liberals deny reason, and Reason denies Liberals.
“If you are not a Socialist (Liberal, Progressive, Moonbat)when you are young you have no heart but if you are STILL a Socialist when you are mature you have no BRAIN”
Winston Churchill.
YES !!!!!!!
Yes, but is the core of the liberal’s existential dilemma really a need to solve all problems or more simply to guarantee his self-righteousness in face of a world that he admits, on some cynical level, is hopelessly mis-created? How many really believe in a Utopian future, in this world, and how many simply insist on the need to imagine a Utopia as a way asserting that one is an elect, rejecting and standing gnostically above the obviously fallen creation we inhabit? If he does indeed have a cynical core, he might take some Satanic interest in insisting on “solutions” that, in his lucid moments, he knows can’t fully restore the world but that are nonetheless in service of his existential need to guarantee his image as the elect. In short, the proof of his rightness is that things can’t really be solved, but that he can insist that in a proper world, one he knows, they would be.
Truepeers,
Very well said! Liberalism well might appear somewhere in DSM-IV (near narcissistic personality disorder) as a psychiatric issue, if only the psychiatrists weren’t a pack of liberals.
No lover of liberals – in their current incarnation, nor of psychiatrists having been in their hands for years. That said, I think the best explanation, more of a corollary actually can be found in several ideas from Fromm’s “Escape from Freedom”. One benefit of being “right” or having a party line is that you do not have to think, merely judge and pronounce (we ain’t talking Learned Hand here). I am no humanist but can guarantee that no,God help us, PROGRESSIVE as we are seeing them now fits the idea of progress from Fromm’s Humanist Credo : “I believe that the man choosing progress can find a new unity through the development of all his human forces, which are produced in three orientations. These can be presented separately or together: biophilia, love for humanity and nature, and independence and freedom.”
Now the progressive’s unity is:
Progress = repression
Originality = conformity
Argument = agreement, elaborated
disagreement = heresy
The “liberals” David P. Goldman criticizes are not narcissists; rather they deploy that diagnosis to stigmatize classical liberalism. Rather, they are bureaucratic collectivists trying to micromanage group conflict. I wrote about their evolution here: http://clarespark.com/2009/12/12/switching-the-enlightenment-corporatist-liberalism-and-the-revision-of-american-history/. And in many other blogs on the website, for instance http://clarespark.com/2009/08/25/t-w-adorno-and-his-funny-idea-of-genuine-liberalism/. The second link is short and droll.
Lee Harris, author of Civilization and Its Enemies, recounts in his book a story in which, during his days as a 60′s Liberal, a friend decided to join an anti-war parade / protest. As the friend explained what they intended to do, Harris pointed out how nothing they had planned, especially given how they intended to do it, had any chance of changing peoples minds, or retarding the effort to fight the war in Vietnam. The friend freely admitted this.
“Why, then,” Harris asked incredulously, “are you doing this?”
Because, his friend responded, he thought it would be good for his soul.
It was at that point that Harris realized his friend was something of a fantasist in which reality, other people, friends, enemies, neutrals, whole countries, etc., were simply props in the man’s own personal morality play.
Being raised in a family that adhered to Dispensationalism (or, as I now call it, Dispen-sensationalism) I always thought Armageddon was to be this bloody clearly defined battle on a field in the Middle East. It may, for all I know, yet be, but for now I stand in awe of the near divine subtlety with which so many “strongholds” seem to be coming down, and the wheat and the chaff are being separated.
Lee Harris’ liberal friend sounds like me at 17. I remember the mindset.
I remembered a bit more of that story, and Harris’s incredulity was the result of a false assumption. He had assumed that the protest had a rational goal: to change hearts and minds about the Vietnam War. Yet, the methods used were so provocative they were sure to fail and only fools could not see this. His friend was not a fool (of that sort,) and it suddenly crossed his mind they almost wanted to ensure a failure of communication and an increased recalcitrance on the part of the opposition. The only conclusion Harris could reach was that the goodness to the soul of his friend would be measured by the degree of escalation to which the protest could provoke the other side.
“They make broad their phylacteries” doesn’t begin to cover that.
Sorry, had to look up that last reference.
“Everything they do is done for men to see: They make their phylacteries wide and the tassels on their garments long.”
–Matthew 23:5
There’s a lot of self-congratulation on the liberal side for feeling passionate and acting on one’s feelings. It’s enough that you feel angry and demonstrate that anger, or that you feel compassion and demonstrate that compassion. Some liberals manage to do this effectively. That is, they clearly identify the actual results they want to bring about, formulate a plan, and take actions that have at least a remote chance of working.
Others – the majority, in my opinion – simply act out. Most demonstrators are *literally* “demonstrating.” They’re exposing to the world their feelings about something they, you know, feel stuff about. Like Harris’ friend, they don’t expect results. They’re just making the gesture because they’d feel worse about themselves if they didn’t.
Ah, yes. But that’s the point, ain’t it: infantilism. That’s what western “education” produces these days.
Recall the nutter who started shooting at the UofVA? In one class there was an old former Israeli prof who held the door so the shooter could not enter, while younger and stronger students in their 20′s were jumping from the windows.
To oao: This is a small point, but the shooter was at Virginia Tech.
David,
I had different feelings at 17.
At 17, the long haired, pony tail wearing, out of shape, slovenly “creative writing” teacher that got stoned with us at lunchtime, was a sissy and a bum.
I had no respect for him, and, save for him supplying us with a rare and expensive commodity we would use to get LAID, we never cared for his daily “rage against the Machine”
When Regan was elected President, he took a day off to “mourn”
He was a buffoon.
Everything he believed in was ridiculed by us, but then again, the “establishment” in Public Education by 1980 was pretty far left already.
We rebelled against it with Pro-life and Pro-Capital Punishment arguments whenever possible, and enlisting into the Marine Corps right after graduation.
I relished him lamenting his “best students, throwing their lives away” to support the eeeevil United States when we told him our career plans!
Progressivism and Leftism are, at bottom, performance art for an audience of the Self and an indeterminate group of like-minded people. The utterances and actions are mostly intended to reinforce the sense of belonging to the Elect — as truepeer has noted.
This position is going to collide more and more with reality in the years ahead. The crash (as with all Big World Views that face collapse) will be chaotic, prolonged, and dangerous for those standing close to the action.
…he (the liberal) might take some Satanic interest in insisting on “solutions” that, in his lucid moments, he knows can’t fully restore the world but that are nonetheless in service of his existential need to guarantee his image as the elect.
Absolutely, the real enemy is a bunch of egomaniacal sissies.
David: You say: “Liberals fancy themselves rational in contrast to conservatives’ dour acknowledgement of tradition and tragedy.” The first four words of the sentence says it all. Yes, they may fancy themselves rational, but they really are not. In the same vein, they fancy themselves as being liberal and they fancy themselves as being progressive, but the reality is that they are not any of those things.
“…they fancy themselves as being liberal and they fancy themselves as being progressive, but the reality is that they are not any of those things.”
I think you are correct. Most of the self-styled liberals I know are deeply conservative in the sense that they fear change above all else. They really are in denial about how dangerous the world is, and how precarious is their own place in this world.
I think you’re bang on about the fear of change. Actually, they don’t fear change that they cause – that makes the world more like they want it to be. They do fear all other kinds of change. For them, the cure for that fear is control. They want to use their intellects to encompass reality and the power of government manipulate reality until it conforms to their beliefs and wishes.
They’re like white-knuckle drivers – people so afraid that their car’s going to crash that they keep a death grip on the wheel. They haven’t learned that most of the time the car can pretty much steer itself. All you have to do is give the wheel judicious nudge here and there to keep it on a straight course. And when there’s a crisis, it’s usually the white-knuckle drivers that crash straight into things.
Actually, modern liberals are quite reactionary. They keep being nostalgic for the glory days of the 1930s and the 1960s, their two great moments in history. One when they led the nation in the Great Depression preparing for World War II, and the other when they opposed the Vietnam War.
Hence they’re constant harping on the need today for a “new WPA” to fight unemployment, and their endless chanting of 1960s antiwar slogans as if those have anything to do with today’s foreign policy and military issues.
A new WPA? Really? Then why didn’t they do it when they had full control of the government? I’ll tell you why. Unions and environmentalists are core parts of the Democratic coalition. A WPA could not pay union wages and hope to make a dent in unemployment, and the environmental laws prevent any new construction project from being shovel ready for years. Only a Republican could do a WPA today.
The ‘world of tradition and tragedy’ is revolting to them. They are disgusted by a mindset that accepts things as they are and its homely attempts to come to terms with them. They yearn for being in impossible beauty and order, living in perfect tranquility and contentment. The Left is not doctrinaire, it is desperate. As long as there’s law and process and progress to a Good Place, life is on earth and not in hell……
Once it falls apart, they act accordingly…….
FYI, for those interested in the above mentioned book Heaven on Earth: The Varieties of Millennial Experience, Amazon has it for $29 off vs the full price of $35 from Oxford University Press.
Gagdad Bob, over at his One Cosmos blog (http://onecosmos.blogspot.com/), has been discussing Landes’ book at length over past couple weeks, in daily, thought provoking posts.
David,
First, there are several known factors that lead liberals to be anti-Israel, but I won’t list them all here.
Second, rationality is dependent on at least three major factors: one, people must be trained to think independently, critically and to rely on knowledge; two, such thinking requires serious effort; three, they must be able to withstand emotionally situations where rationality leads to negative predictions for which the response is difficult. There is nothing in current Western society to induce any of that. Education has turned into sheer schooling, training and indoctrination; everything is geared to induce people to avoid thinking (which is hard without education); and people cannot handle hardships or take compensating action to prevent them (hence the European surrender).
Third, the Western world is in a major crisis. Whenever such a crisis has occurred in history, expedient scapegoating has systematically accompanied it and the Jews were the traditional scapegoat.
I will add, in passing, that if the argument is that decline is a consequence of the secularization of the Western world, it is not persuasive, to undertstate the case, to claim that it’s the lack of religion that explains the loss of rationality.
Reason is not something that comes into the world independently (of revelation or anything else). Our reason, whatever kind we have, is a result of working through revelations, whether they be understood as traditional religious revelation or as some secular anthropological apprehending of events. In either case it is the event and its shared (hence sacralized) memory whose working through gives us our reason. In other words, whatever we have made sacred in the course of our shared experience of events is what shapes our reason and its limits. Reason in a world where the individual has been made sacred (as has happened, for the most part, in Judeo-Christian religion) is different from a reason in a world where tribal or clan totems remain the focus of religious and social interest.
Reason as it was glorified in the West in the Englightenment was a working through in secular terms of the originally religious worldview of the seventeenth-century (and earlier) West. It was a secular codification of what religion/human self-understanding had already revealed, if not fully grasped. Thus reason and religion are not in conflict, at least ultimately in the educated believer’s mind. What is potentially in conflict is my religion and reason with some Other’s reason and religion.
So to clarify, I consider modern childpoor liberalism to be either a religion unto itself or a sect/heresy or a larger Western religion, and as such it has its corresponding forms of reason for what they’re worth.
We should not forget that howevermuch we are today seeing the futile ends to which a certain kind of liberalism has come, it was not without its earlier moments when it motivated people to transform their nations economically and socially, and fight wars, or not fight them. It is because it has real historical weight behind it, hence a narrative and ritual life, that many people today still want to double down on it.
There are, of course, secular religions. Communism/socialism was one, fascism/nazism another, the fanatical belief in a free market yet another.
When I refer to rationality I exclude any such.
Fanatical – meaning unquestioning or unreasoning – is anathema to reason per se. There are many believers who argue their belief rationally, but it is still a belief, requiring faith in something, if only in a logical construct. I thing hte point of a lot of this set of discussions is to recognize that the “rational” part of the so called Liberal argument is really secondary – if present at all. Others can be equally (ir)rational.
Let’s set a rule for ourselves – whatever we believe, we should not act like an illustration from the Classic Comics’ versions of Civilization and Its Discontents.
Fanatical – meaning unquestioning or unreasoning – is anathema to reason per se. There are many believers who argue their belief rationally, but it is still a belief, requiring faith in something, if only in a logical construct. I thing the point of a lot of this set of discussions is to recognize that the “rational” part of the so called Liberal argument is really secondary – if present at all. Others can be equally (ir)rational.
Let’s set a rule for ourselves – whatever we believe, we should not act like an illustration from the Classic Comics’ versions of Civilization and Its Discontents.
Incidentally, I recommend Claire Berlinski’s analysis, based on Bret Stephens piece in the WSJ and the Turkish press on the US/EU collapse and the emergence of the PostWest. It won’t be pretty.
http://ricochet.com/main-feed/The-Noble-and-the-Ignoble-in-the-Eastern-Mediterranean
I share your total frustration and outrage with the abandonment of reason by the socialized Democrats. Any intelligent person who reads the open record on the Israel/Palestinian dispute and applies any degree of reason, understands that the “Palestinian” side has stood implacably, from the outset, on a determination that the Jewish state should be abolished, and all Jews cast out of the territory they now occupy. In all those years they have never made a single concession to this premise while the Israelis have offered many compromises. How can any thinking person defend such mindless arrogance?
The ideology of the socialist is directly comparable to that of the devout Muslim. They cling to the dogma, employ doctrinaire rhetoric and a priori argument, either ignore or contemptuously dismiss any logic in opposition. Complicit media keep them ignorant. Our Republic faces two major threats today, both non-reasoning theocracies: Socialism and Islam. Reason informs us that both are destructive to the freedom that has built our Nation.
They may be going to die, but we must keep them from killing us first.
For what its worth you can see this as evolution in action.
It’s survival of the fittest. “In evolutionary biology the “fittest” are defined as those who have the most grandchildren. Clearly people who are religious have the most grand kids, thus the future belongs to them.
“It’s survival of the fittest. “In evolutionary biology the “fittest” are defined as those who have the most grandchildren. Clearly people who are religious have the most grand kids, thus the future belongs to them.”
Heh, heh. Is that why religion is so vehemently anti-evolution?
Seriously, though, the future may belong to them, but it may also be a miserable future of self-destruction. What if there are lots of children, but no science or progress and they die of illness or starvation, or mutually kill each other in long term religious wars?
In other words, children are a necessary but not sufficient condition for a future and they are not, per se, evidence of the fittest.
WSJ Columnist James Taranto often asserts the Roe Effect (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roe_effect) “which suggests that since supporters of abortion rights cause the erosion of their own political base, the practice of abortion will eventually lead to the restriction or illegalization of abortion.” Isn’t this just another supporting example of Mr. Goldman’s conjecture?
I believe consensus is solidifying regarding the religious nature of Lefties and their impermeable adherence to Leftist dogma. While there are still many worthwhile battles to fight much of our success depends on waiting them out. The danger though is how they respond as they (and their dreams) vanish.
We may witness incoherent lashing out. Or, we may see anger more focused and vengeful. Like a cuckolded husband some Lefty won’t tolerate others happy in a world without him or his philosophy. He may choose to take some with him.
Fortunately, most of the Lefty true believers are old.
Don’t compare leftists to cuckolded husbands. The cuckolded husband is a legitimate victim: his wife has betrayed him and the interloper has done violence to him. The leftist rages over violations that do not exist and the refusal of people to accept things he has no right to implement. In more polite ages, adultery was a capital offense, but in those same ages, the leftist would likely be a capital blasphemer.
The Left has no stomach for wars, especially when the “inocent” die. However, they don´t mind the hundreds of million of future babies are killed through abortion every year. The make claims of “overpopulation” when – really – the only things that are filled to the brim with evil are their hearts and brains.
don’t be fooled by the term “fittest”.
in evolution it doesn’t mean the best (the ideal) the smartest or the most strong.
…………..it is the one who can make the most of his environment. and what may be the “fittest” today can easily become the least “fit” tomorrow.
an example is welfare. in our society we are allowing them to breed and live easily (not well or my cup of tea) ..so many will chose this path and their numbers will increase to a point where it become unsustainable and then they will decline or reach a steady state.
“Is that why religion is so vehemently anti-evolution?” What percent of which people of what “religion” does does the word “vehemently” quantify? I think the make-it-up media believes “…religion is…vehemently anti-evolution”, but that belief is part of their “religion” to protect them from having a real religion, with a real God, and real faith, based on reason. (Thank you Thomas Aquinas.) “IHS”
The liberals are willing to ignore 100 million dead bodies due to Communism and ignore the economic decline of every socialist nation. Why would anyone expect they would notice a much, much smaller problem like millions of dead Israelis or another Middle-East war?
Liberalism is a fanatical religion, facts don’t matter. “The beatings will continue until morale improves” or “we will ignore history and reality until we create Utopia.”
The word “liberal” is being misused here. John Stuart Mill would certainly not have the views described here as “liberal.” “Liberal” was introduced as a euphemism for “socialist.” Socialists are not liberal, though some of them (“social democrats”) are. Socialists like the Communists, Fascists (national socialists), and National Socialists (“Nazis”) were not.
PAthena – It wasn’t ‘introduced,’ it was usurped (as was the word, prgressive). So, today, we differentiate between Classical Liberalism, and Liberalism. Today’s conservatives are close to Classical Liberals; today’s Liberals are not. Today’s Liberals can be termed, liberal, only in a very different sense. It is in the sense of wanting to use government liberally to encroach on our freedoms, and in wanting to tax us liberally so that the government can spend liberally. In the same sense, today’s progressives are progressive only in the sense of wanting progressively increasing taxes, government spending and restrictions on our liberty.
The Left not only clings to that idea, but are actively supporting policies to make it so. And the Jewish State of Israel is not the only one under their guns. Every Eruo-Christian nation is as well. Multiculturalism and diversity promotion are part of the deligitimizing of the Euro-Christian state.
It works the other way, too. They will insist into the next ice age that the world is burning up, because they need be the solution, and thus need there to be a problem.
As far as that goes, what was it 64 years ago? 100 years ago? When was there ever an independent “Palestine”?
Bugs,
“There’s a lot of self-congratulation on the liberal side for feeling passionate and acting on one’s feelings.”
This is recognized in rational choice/collective choice theory. There is instrumental behavior–action as means to achieve an objective–and expressive behavior–action to express oneself–the action is the objective.
It begins in grade school, where liberals teach them the two big lies.
Myth Conceptions from Elementry School
Myth 1
It takes two to fight.
No, one not fighting back will still get the snot kicked out of him.
And if you haven’t got the self respect to defend yourself, then you deserve it.
Myth 2
War is evil.
No, people are evil. War is an event, it is impossible for an event to be evil.
War is like having your body cut open.
If done by a mugger to remove your wallet, it is evil.
If done by a skilled surgeon to remove an inflamed appendix, it is not evil.
The trauma to the body is the same.
The recovery is the same.
Only the intent of the person makes it good or evil.
When you make the war itself evil, you remove the responsibility from the people, and actually make a war more likely.
The so-called liberals find comfort in a mental trap of their own manufacture (the utopian counterpart of pragmatism?), but let’s not despair, the trap is not impossible to escape from. If you are 20 when you come out, you are doing exceptionally well. If you are 50 when you come out, you still have many productive years ahead of you. What is scary is the 70 years old liberals, will they ever pop out of it?
But that is not a reason to give up. They are bullies, basically, continually challenging us to regress into a child-like fantasy. But what bullies need is to be confronted, and if we don’t do it, who will? If successful, the confrontation is humiliating to them, but that’s only part of the treatment. If you have reached a point when they quit arguing, you may have planted a good seed.
WSJ Columnist James Taranto often asserts the Roe Effect (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roe_effect) “which suggests that since supporters of abortion rights cause the erosion of their own political base, the practice of abortion will eventually lead to the restriction or illegalization of abortion.” Isn’t this just another supporting example of Mr. Goldman’s conjecture?
I believe consensus is solidifying regarding the religious nature of Lefties and their impermeable adherence to Leftist dogma. While there are still many worthwhile battles to fight much of our success depends on waiting them out. The danger though is how they respond as they (and their dreams) vanish.
We may witness incoherent lashing out. Or, we may see anger more focused and vengeful. Like a cuckolded husband some Lefty won’t tolerate others happy in a world without him or his philosophy. He may choose to take some with him.
Fortunately, most of the true believers are old.
That almost makes sense, but the constituency is women, who benefit fanancially, economically, and socially from the ability to abuse unborn’s human rights at their convenience. They wont give up that easily. Just as the Southern slaveholders didnt give up their ability to abuse others human rights for their own economic benefit. It is to Western women’s eternal shame that one of the first things they did with their newfound political and economic power was to abuse the most vulnerable human beings on the planets human rights in the most brutal of fashion.
Women will have that albatross around their necks for eons.
Ah – But a sort of Darwinian natural selection will take place. Women more inclined to use abortion as a way of getting rid of unwanted pregnancies will be ‘out-birthed by women who are not so inclined. Eventually, the descendents of the not so inclined will outnumber and outvote those who are so inclined.
Sorry bubs, women are still born and attracted to empowering themselves by “controlling their wombs,” aka abusing unborn human beings rights.
Its gonna be a hard nut to crack.
“Why Won’t Liberals Listen to Reason?”
Because in reality, they are what they accuse us rightists of being:
Religious extremists.
“Why, then, is the left so impossibly, stubbornly, counter-factually dense when it comes to the state of Israel (among other matters)?”
Because the modern Left has bought into multiculturalism. When that happened, the Left pivoted from being pro-Israel (as most liberals were prior to 1970) to being anti-Israel.
Today’s Left is ashamed of Western civilization, and has elevated the peoples of the Third World to near-demigod status. These leftists are terribly ashamed of all the allegedly awful things we Western white folks did to the American Indians and to the Africans and to the Arabs and everybody else. Those peoples are given a pass and in fact are tacitly encouraged to poke a finger in the West’s eye.
And so when you have a pro-Western people of European descent (Israelis) vs. “brown people of color” (Palestinians), guess whom they’re going to side with. Even to the point of calling Israel “an apartheid state,” as if Israel is a latter-day South Africa and the Palestinians are today’s equivalent of black Africans.
Actually, Israelis are not exactly “people of European descent”. About half the Jewish population in Israel is comprized of recent (20th century) Jewish refugess from Arab and othe Muslim states, and their decsendants. At least 60% of the Israeli Jewish population has at least one parent from that group. As for the Ashkenazim (Euro Jews) – they are the only “people of European descent” who have the gene for Mediterranean Fever. The Ashkenazim are racially mixed with a siginicant Middle Easter ancestry. This community was founded about 1,000-1,300 years (which just happens to coincide with the rise and spread of the Islam in the Middle East, but it could be just a coincidence) by Jews who immigrated to Europe from the Middle East, settled around the Rhein, and from there spread around Europe. Some married locals and other converts, but remained a distinct, though racially mixed, ethnic group. All the major Jewish communities in the world, and many of the smaller ones, have common ancestry, though they also have non-common ancestry because of marrying local converts. All in all, since the Ashkenazi Jews are at least half Middle Eastern (probably more) and the Middle Eastern Jews are entirely or almost entirely Middle Eastern, Israeli Jews are predominantly of Middle Eastern ancestry, with some European contribution, plus minor contributions from other genetic sources (African, non-ME Asian, even Native American). Don’t let skin color confuse you. Many Middle Eastern Jews (as well as other ancient Middle Eastern groups) have light skin. Their skin colors range between white and brown. And ther are some brown Ashkenazi Jews too.
Why do I bore you with all this? Because I find it unbearably ironic that only about 80 years Jews were mass murdered in Europe for being “evil” “inferior” non-Whites, and for all their stay in Europe Jews were treated as Semitic aliens, but today Israelis are treated by the descendants of the same Europeans as alien European implant in the Middle East that should be destoryed due to being “evil” imperialist-colonialist Whites. My conclusion: Our real descent doesn’t matter to anyone, they will attribute to us whatever descent is more effective as an excuse to expell or destroy us according to the current ruling ideology. In the past the automatic “bad guys” were the non-whites, so we were considered non-whites. Today the automatic “bad guys” are the whites, so suddenly we’re considred pure Aryans.
Sorry for the million typos. I have some kind of flu and ache too much to even sit straight.
Pnina – I think there already were Jews living in Europe more than 1300 years ago. After the Desruction in 70, and somewhat after the Bar-Kokhba revolt, some Jews migrated to Spain and Italy (or may have been enslaved by Rome, and taken that way, and then were freed by payments of other Jews). I grant you, though, that the bulk of the Jews headed East rather than West.
There was a substantial Jewish community in Europe more than 2,000 years ago. The liturgy of Italian Jews preserves part of the practice of Jews in the Land of Israel during the Second Temple period. See
http://www.jija.org/ENGLISH/JIJA/Synago/MnhgMain.html
The true test of intelligence is the ability to make predictions.
Can liberals do that better than conservatives?
A case in point was a book from the 70′s called “The Promise of the Coming Dark Ages.” Basically, it told us how great living in then Yugoslavia was and how much greated it would be once Tito died.
Now, did that book, written by a liberal, make sound predictions of the future? I think not.
Same with liberals who proposed AFDC and other welfare programs. The result was the descruction of the black family.
I’m sure other commenters will have other examples.
In 1981 Ted Kennedy PREDICTED that if Ronald Reagan’s plans for domestic drilling deregulation were allowed that Gasoline Prices would hit $5.00 by 1986.
.
Shortly after the deregulation, out of nowhere a worldwide oil glut caused the price of gas to plummet.
If it hadn’t been for that sudden oversupply that occurred for no reason at all, Ted would have been right.
Not sure I’d make the ability to predict things an indicator of intelligence. Maybe the ability to predict the consequences of ones actions – “If I play in the road, I might get hit by a car.” But predictions about big, complicated things like the climate and world history are usually wrong. That’s not because the predictors are unintelligent. It’s because big, complicated things are difficult to predict. Yet our desire for security means people keep predicting anyway, and taking predictions seriously. What else can we do?
A big part of intelligence is knowing when one CAN’T make a prediction.
Climate modeling is one area where a wise person would know not to take action based on a model’s prediction. Smart scientists knew that but others were drawn to the fame and funding.
Predictions about the course of world history can have some wisdom. A conservative would predict that humans retain the same human behaviors seen through history. Liberals always seem to presume the “New Man” will evolve from their ideologies – and their predictions are always wrong.
Liberals won’t listen to reason because they are cowards. They have believe in unrealistic humanist utopian vision where everyone is equal. Unfortunately they rather die than survive. I have only one question to those who adhere to liberal ideology, show me one example where appeasement ever succeed? Today Jews are not the Jews of European ghettos, we are determined to survive and not commit suicide.
Liberals side with the Arabs for one reason. They think the Israelis won’t kill them(the Liberals). But they know the Muslims will.
Silly Liberals. They refuse to own up to the fact that once the Muslims are through with Israel, they are coming for them next.
And when Islam has run out of Kafirs and Jews to kill they will turn on each other. The Hate and Death CULT of Islam demands constant blood letting.
I think the visual image you are looking for is that of a snake devouring it’s self, starting with eating it’s own tail.
Israel poses a major problem for the liberal world-view. Israeli Jews are a cultural-religious-national entity which challenges the tenets of universalism and all the other blather of liberal irrationality. Israel doesn’t fit–even when it was more socialistic–hence it must be liquidated.
Yes, the Election of Israel is a stumbling-block to universality, and the notion of grace an affront to the liberal desire for control.
I don’t think one can make such a clear demarcation of Left and Right regarding foreign policy. Some of this seems in the head of our President. More than just conservatives say Obama is indecisive, always trying to split the divide and then traveling Left to recharge his batteries. He likes generalities and having two versions of a solution at the same time even if they are relatively mutually exclusive. For instance Obama’s UN-pleaser “next year there should be a Palestinian State” and then his response today which said “I always MEANT once the Palestinians and Israelis agree”. He sounded like he was selling a line he wasn’t comfortable with and did not take the clear and urgent opportunity to speak to truth regarding the real dangers and the nature of the Arab Spring. I didn’t see an advocate, but rather a reluctant salesman with the necessary gestures to Palestinians and Israelis.
Now PBS and Brzezinski are hardly conservative. The former Sec of State perhaps casting a strange puzzlement towards Clinton’s incredible absence of articulation, suggests the more muscular thrust of American leadership was lacking in Obama’s delivery. This was an opportunity lost to simply maintain US Leadership AND find a better solution. It is though he unintentionally didn’t think much of US Leadership. His mind was elsewhere.
Zbig suggested a more Reaganesque strategy where excite the UN and Palestinians to loosen them up and we offer observer status (I would argue “conditional on recognition and renouncing violence) bound by a clear and bench-marked vision of creating a Democratic Palestinian State and the necessary and mutual mechanism of security. What better way to address the Arab Spring and what America really stands for than articulating the difference between mere democratic voting and a the human rights and liberty the Un and certainly the US professes to stand for. Why was this opportunity squander to at least make these fundamental points with Assad, Iran, Egypt and the rest of chaos pressing by the vacuum created by our silence? Is this silence intentional? Zbig big point therefore was THIS PROCESS MUST BEGIN observer status with Palestinian acceptance of a Jewish State of Israel. Period. He thought Sarkozy displayed more urgency and smarts. Now coming from the Carter Days, the irony isn’t lost.
Some say Obama is more focused on the economy, so in a certain sense, our ME course could be worse. I think there must be other explanations when you do have advisers even in the WH camp must have cringed at lost opportunities and where this unnecessary vacuum will lead.
No Party as yet owns American Excellence or US Leadership trademarks. Neither side have very innovative and bold solutions or project much gravitas beside bashing each other. Discord is part of how we take our hand off the wheel and settle for having an accident to get us off the road. That is bizarre. Well, that’s my two cents.
All the facts, all the artfully articulated logic and history count for less than zero on the ‘world’ stage. The ‘world’ is not interested in facts. Political intentions will trump facts every time.
Were the Germans of the WW2 era interested in facts? They could have won WW2 if they had not targeted the Jews, and expunged ‘Jewish Physics’ in favor of Heisenberg’s ‘Aryan Physics’. They could have had the Bomb and dominated the earth.
The Left doesn’t listen to reason because they don’t want to listen to reason. They have an agenda, and reason gets in the way.
‘I don’t expect you to cooperate. I expect you to die, Mr. Bond.’
FWIW, “there wasn’t “Arian physics”, there was “German physics”, but Heisenberg wasn’t behind that, in fact he was ostracized for engaging in Jewish physics until he was rehabilitated through some connections involving his mother.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutsche_Physik
It was some nobodies who were behind the Deutsche Physik thing. The nuclear bomb Heisenberg was working on was Jewish physics. Hitler was a whore.
Thanks for the link and the correction. I had assumed that since Heisenberg was, according to his British captors, apparntly on the wrong track, that that was related to the fact that Jewish colleagues who might have helped him or the german atom project succeedd were long gone, expunged through the Aryan Physics movement. A quick read of your link suggests this possibility, but the wiki entry makes the suggestion that the German projevt would have failed or come insecnd to the American because the Nazis did not put the resources into it that the Americans did.
I am quite sure history would have been different had Germany not chased out its Jewish physicists early on. This left them, it would seem, with one ‘star’, Heisenberg, surrounded by mdiocrities, who ended up on the wrong path. I guess that was my point. Ideological forces or hatreds can cause people/societies to get on paths inimical to their success, and even their real goals.
http://www.sublimeoblivion.com/2011/09/17/the-russophobes-were-right/#more-6686
For the first time since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia is recording more immigrants from Israel than emigrants to Israel. Not that anyone has relinquished their Israeli passport for a Russian one, since Moscow doesn’t recognize dual citizenship but also doesn’t ask about other passports in most circumstances, in no small part due to the number of Russians with CIS country passports and of course, an increasing number with British ones too.
I say this only to make the point that Israel is hardly alone among countries in this world regarding which the Left (and a good chunk of the so-called ‘Right’) in Washington is clueless.
Islam to me for the most part exists in a welfare state. There was line in one of P.J. O’Rourke’s books from a member of the Northern Irish police, who said if they cut the welfare off in Northern Ireland there would be a lot less trouble because the trouble makers would have to go to work.
The Islamists either live off of oil sales or as in the case of Egypt, bribes from the US and loans. If The European economy crashes as hard as predicted those Islamist in Europe that have been living off of welfare are either going to have to find jobs or starve. If a conservative President is elected watch the price of oil fall like a gut shot goose and there goes a main source of money for food for a lot of them. Thing are likely to be very nasty over the next couple of years.
I firmly believe that a major war is coming in the Middle East. When that happens, our supply of oil will be cut off and prices for petroleum fuels will skyrocket. Thanks to the left, we have done nothing to develop our own supplies as a hedge against this kind of happenstance. The consequences to our country will be disastrous, and I fear that if our government declares martial law in an attempt to preserve order, that we will never see the Constitution again.
When that happens, worry less about the Constitution and more about the fact that Jesus is coming back. Evil shall indeed have its hour; that is inevitable. The question is, which side will you be on?
If the Palestinians succeed in destroying and taking over the State of Israel, they will turn it into the sxxthole that exemplifies the rest of the Arab countries.
Liberals are not stupid, they are largely victims of their own intelligence in that they make superficial comparisons between events and think they have made a great discovery.
Look at what Obama compared the Palestinian war to exterminate Israel and the Jews with, Northern Ireland for God’s sake! It isn’t that the comparison isn’t without merit, it’s just that the Irish conflict was never about the Irish exterminating Britain, or vice versa, it was about who was going to govern Ireland.
The Palestinians are in a war to destroy the existance of Israel and exterminate the Jewish People, or at least that is what their leadership incites the Palestinian people with. The Palestinians, with their non negotiable demand for the “right of return” of all Palestinians to Israel de facto negate their supposed acceptance of a “Two State” solution.
The Palestinians have never and will never negotiate in good faith towards a peaceful settlement with Israel. Indeed, since the Palestinians have largely given up the military option for exterminating Israel, their negotiations and diplomatic offensives are simply their new fronts in the war to destroy Israel.
Liberals cannot conceive of something as horrific as this, it flies in the face of their carefully crafted humanistic and moral view of the world. A fellow once said that the barbarians always win because they will not be restrained by the laws of war, actually think that the correct way to make war is to behave treacherouly, betray allies, commit war crimes, and that they hold their enemies in contempt for not wiping out women and children, or carpet bombing civilian cities.
The Palestinians, indeed the Moslems in general really believe that treachery is the highest wisdom and inhuman cruelty the highest behavior. They are the new barbarians, and Liberals are not equipped militarily, morally, or intellectually to deal with them.
“The Palestinians, indeed the Moslems in general really believe that treachery is the highest wisdom and inhuman cruelty the highest behavior. They are the new barbarians, and Liberals are not equipped militarily, morally, or intellectually to deal with them.”
Oh yes they are. You are just mistaking how ruthless liberals actually are. Ask yourself why liberals and muslims are allies in their battle to inflict the death blow to the west?
To put it in context, liberals hate people – period. Muslims hate Jews – period. Liberals figure the world has enough Jews in New York alone to make the proposition that killing an entire country of Jews to appease their muslim allies is a fair exchange for killing off Europe, and by extention, the US, Canada and Australia.
The ends always justifies the means to a liberal and they seriously want to depopulate the planet.
For many leftists, the positions they advocate and people and cultures they discuss are mere abstractions. Until they have personal, first-hand experience with something, it remains an abstraction.
I am acquainted with a jewish family in which the parents moved to Israel and the grown children remained here in the states. The daughter was a flaming liberal and despised Israel’s behavior towards the palestinians, whom she saw as a noble, oppressed people. When her parents would visit they would have raging fights and she would berate them and the state of Israel.
After she graduated college she moved to Israel with her parents. Within six months her position had taken a 180 degree turn. Having gained personal experience with palestinians and seeing with her own eyes the contrast between the cultures there, she had changed her tune. The last time I saw her she said to me; “It doesnt matter what anyone says, they ( the palestinians) are barbarians.”
Speaking of liberal idiots — the Jewish newspaper Forward today runs a piece by one Ben Hartman on Turkish Jews:
http://www.forward.com/articles/143047/
claiming that the 24,000 member Jewish community in Turkey isn’t afraid of Tayyip Erdogan.
First of all, there are perhaps half that many Jews left in Turkey.
Second, every Jew I talked to (and I davened at the main synagogue in Istanbal, Neve Shalom, and visited other Jewish institutions last March) is terrified and thinking of leaving. Most of the young people already have gone.
There’s no liberal idiot like a Jewish liberal idiot.
There was always a strain of Jews that operated on wishful thinking rather than reality or thought that keeping your head low, or kissing enemy’s butt will save them. That, of course, never worked, it only reinforced the contempt of the enemy.
It was thought that the creation of Israel would terminate these tendencies, but apparently it has not. In fact, there are even a lot of Israelis who continue in this tradition, not to mention Diaspora Jews.
Even the Holocaust has not managed to teach a persistent lesson.
If I was identified as a Turkish Jew, did not have the financial or other option of leaving Turkey, and was living in Turkey right now, I would scream to the high heavens how wonderful Erdogan is, how great the Turkish people are, and that it is better for a Jew to live in a tolerant and gracious Turkish Moslem society than to live in Israel.
This is because there is a very good chance that any Turkish Jew who dares to voice disapproval of either Erdogan or Turkey could easily find all of his friends and customers abandoning him, his house and business burned to the ground, and him and his family murdered.
And this is not cowardice, this is rational thinking.
The Forwards and the New York Jewish Week (as well as the Washington Jewish Week) are other newspapers I refuse to give a nickel to, as well.
How do the Liberals wrap their heads around this:
“After witnessing once again the situation on the ground there,” Bennett wrote, “I must ask ‘How long will the United States government allow the Government of Sudan to continue its jihad against the Black African Christians of South Sudan?’”
Backed by Muslim clerics, the National Islamic Front regime in the Arab and Muslim north declared a jihad, or holy war, on the south in 1989. Since 1983, an estimated 2 million people have died from war and related famine. About 4.5 million have become refugees.
Oh I know they ignore it, like all the “brown” muslim on “brown” christian violence and murder taking place in many corners of the globe.
It doesn’t fit into their neat little narrative that it’s THE JEWS or AMERICA!
I have been rereading Victor Klemperer’s, “I Will Bear Witness” 1933-” Klemperer, who is living through the first few years of Hitler as Chancellor and then President, too, has some possibly relevant observations, which do not fall in just one political direction:
In 1934 some Germans are getting disgusted with the National Socialists, because they are butting into or taking over everything, just as if they were communists. Many expect the whole economy to crash again.
The National Socialists criticize many in the middle who oppose them as “liberalists” with liberalist ideas (like freedom, individual rights etc.) The Nazis are also now in the process of dumping “the right wing” on whose wings they flew to power. Hitler is becoming everything.
Klemperer sees communists, national socialists and zionists as being pretty much birds of a feather in the way they believe and act.
He also sees a lot of tea party types glomming on to the nazi agenda, which de-emphasizes education and “elitists” and lets the mediocre, common guy get his shot at being a big shot.
Klemperer marvels at how emotionally unstable Hitler is, how he lets his emotions run amok in his speeches, but somehow gets the populace to share his angst and emotional agenda.
Klemperer is in furious despair both as a Jew and a German. He cannot believe that Germany would go in this direction, and at this time is disgusted with some of his Jewish friends who have completely renounced their “German” identity. However, he too is moving in that direction. He is happy that the crops may fail and hopes for any kind of disaster, which will bring down this government. Eventually…it takes the war.
34. Dwight: “He (Klemperer) also sees a lot of tea party types glomming on to the nazi agenda, which de-emphasizes education and “elitists” and lets the mediocre, common guy get his shot at being a big shot.”
I would remind you that the Nazis called themselves National Socialists. They were (and are) socialists with a nationalistic bent. The Tea Party does indeed want small government, but not National Socialism.
Glenn Beck constantly promotes learning the Constitution, reading the Federalist papers and so on. Apart from Beck, there are groups all across the country studying the founding principles of this country and American history.
The United States became very wealthy and powerful because of the belief that the “mediocre, common guy” can contribute just as much as a member of the self-appointed “elite.” I would ask what is meant by the word “elite?” Does it mean better character or more money and better connections? Klemperer’s characterization of Tea Party participants sounds like a mainstream media stereotype, i.e., the Tea Party consists of Nazis and the uneducated.
Liberalism is a faith based on the belief that God is irrelevant. It cannot be addressed via reason.
Any attempt to do so results in a strong emotional and extremely defensive reaction.
Amen Bill. The result of denying the wisdom of God and God’s laws is the underpinning reason that liberals are so clueless. Their basis for everything stems from Lucifer’s trickery.
A long time ago, shortly after the death of Arafat, it became clear that Abbas is weak and ineffective.
Alliances formed with Hamas last year only added to that view. Hamas guys know when they’re gaining the upper hand.
Interviewed on camera yesterday, Abbas even seemed a little confused as to what was, exactly, the point of this orchestrated brouhaha going on at the UN. Well, since the UN is slowly turning into an anti-Israel entity, why not try the in-your-face diplomatic route instead of the in-your-face flotilla route ?
Those of us who have watched Israel be attacked, and subsequently blamed for reacting to being attacked, for nearly our entire lives are getting a little worn out.
Every time I hear some high ranking US whatever, from President to Secretary of State, prattle on about the two state solution, I wonder…Haven’t any of you people read the Hamas Charter ?
“Cafeteria Catholics”, JINO’s (Jews in name only), Those who “talk the talk but don’t walk the walk”, there seem to be a lot of people who want to claim to be religious but they want it as a cover and for it to be easy and not judgmental of their own behavior. They spend most of their “religious” efforts on judging others. The “Liberal” religion seems to be much the same. I remember an actor on the Leno show talking about playing villains versus playing good guys, as I recall he said you had more leeway playing a villain, it was easier to make a villain interesting, trying to make a good person interesting was more difficult. I think that may hold for real life also.
I think it would be more useful to think of liberals as millennarians: it is religious impulse and we know the trouble revelations can cause. People forsake experience for belief.
Israel has plenty of people who agree with the liberal/millennial view, which is really about building a ‘heaven on earth’ floating in blood or perhaps broken eggs.
Perhaps events at the UN will help everyone clarify their thinking: ideology has been of no help up to now.
The 2005 Palestinian film “Paradise Now” washed my brain completely as to the essence of the Israel/Palestine standoff, including the terrorists’ glorification of the suicide mission (and enlistment of naive souls) in contrast with a human (any human) reservations about the insanity of such an undertaking.
The visual contrast between West Bank cities and Israeli cities was stark.
I considered it a surprisingly honest film but, based on the remarks of the film’s director accepting the Golden Globe (which I just reviewed in Wikipedia, for what it’s worth), it was intended as more conventional Palestinian propaganda than the impressions I took away.
(I’ve cited this book too many times, but the thesis of Liberalism as a mental disorder, with its roots in a wayward psychological makeup, makes sense to me)
The Liberal Mind: The Psychological Causes of Political Madness
This was all prophesied LONG AGO: both the problem AND the outcome. It will NOT be pretty.
Zech 12:3 “And it shall happen in that day that I will make Jerusalem a very heavy stone for all peoples; all who would heave it away will surely be cut in pieces, though all nations of the earth are gathered against it.”
I am very, very cautious about reading biblical prophecy into current events. After twenty years of reading the whole Pentateuch and sections of the prophets in synagogue every year, and reading what I can of the great commentators, I have an extremely modest assessment of my capacity to understand the texts. We end every prayer service with Zechariah’s description of the coming of the Messiah (in the “Aleinu” prayer). And none of us presumes to know when he will come; the standing orders are to wait for him, though he tarry.
Then you should know that Zachariah 12 goes on to say, “They shall look on Me whom they have pierced, and mourn for Me as one mourns for an only son.” The Messiah is coming, that I can assure you; the question is whether or not your heart is ready for Him. Perilous times are indeed coming, and 2/3 of Israel will perish in the time of testing that is coming upon the Earth. If the Lord did not personally intervene to bring the time of great distress to an end, humanity would be rendered extinct by it. Every nation on Earth will have more dead than living as a result of this time of tribulation, and there is plenty of reason to believe that Israel, which shall lose 2/3 of her people, will be the least afflicted among the nations.
These things must happen, however, because God cannot lie. However, when the appointed time is completed, Immanuel Himself will descend from Heaven to destroy the wicked armies; the man of sin will be cast into eternal Gehenna, and all who support him will perish and become food for carrion birds and beasts. Long for the Messiah, and pray for God to reveal Him to you. For two days, Israel wandered the Earth, because God hid His face from her because of her infidelity, but “After two days, He will revive us, and on the third day, He will raise us up, and we will live with Him.” So “Let us return to the Lord, for the Lord has rent, but He shall also mend, and the Lord has wounded us, but the Lord will bind our wounds.”
Have you not heard the word of the Lord crying out, “Why was no one there when I came?” Cry out to the Lord with lamentation and supplication, for He is loving and mighty to save. But your prayer must be sincere with repentance, and longing for the Lord’s Salvation. Oh son of Jacob, do not grieve your Savior!
The New York Times is callously indifferent to the plight of Jews in pereil. It is as simple as that. Please see (I think I mentioned this previously in a PM comment) the May 18, 1939 editorial supporting Britain’s decision to close Palestine to the Jews, six months after Kristallnacht. Want recent evidence?
No editorial from NYT criticizing Egypt for the attack on Israel’s embassy in Cairo. The left, including the Israeli left, is probably more concerned about the right than about anti-Israel Arabs who make no distinction between Jews.
Three NYT editorials, the past week or so , have heaped scorn on Prime Minister Netanyahu — most recently an editorial whose main subject was Turkey’s Prime Minister Erdogan. (Alsome somewhat critical of the Turkish prime minister, NYT did not point out that he rejected the UN report on the flotilla incident and the paper also missed the chance to note that Erdogan’s snipe at Israel’s as “spoiled child” is an echo of Yasir Arafat’s snipe at Prime Minister Begin as “spoiled baby.”) Perhaps there is a competition at the New York Times to see who can include condemnation of Mr. Netanyahu in an editorial at some remove from a direct discussion of Israel. I look forward to the editorial denouncing Prime Minister Netanyahu for the impact of his policies as encouragement to climate change deniers.
Yes, the New York Times has a long and ignoble history of betraying the Jewish people and allying with their oppressors. I refuse to give them a nickel.
Well, unfortunately, there are many more who like what they do to the Jews and they manage save them from going under. Were it not so, they would have failed a long time ago.
ARAB RACISM, CULTURAL IMPERIALISM, RELIGIOUS INTOLERANCE AND LIBERALISM
Ask any liberal if he/she believes that racism is injustice, cultural imperialism is injustice, religious intolerance is injustice and they will agree that it is. But when you point out that it is these very injustices that furiously drive the deadly Arab/Moslem jihad against Israel they will deny it. Why? Because it doesn’t fit into their emotional world view that Moslems in general, and Palestinians in particular, are the world’s greatest victims, and as such need compassion, understanding, and lots of appeasement to right the injustices done to them. But when appeasement is tried and fails the reason for the liberal is the degree: it wasn’t enough; more concessions are needed. Give, give, give until you appease yourself to death and give victory to evil.
“Why Won’t Liberals Listen to Reason?” Because they don’t know how to. All they’ve been taught is indoctrination and self reliance, respect or responsibility aren’t in their collective vocabulary. Period.
no we don’t want israel to die, we just want it to make clear that it is recognizes the need to share the Land of Israel. They have no right to all of the land.
Who is “we”? Abbas speaks of a 63-year occupation, which means that the State of Israel is an “occupation,” not a sharer of the land. And he refuses to accept the existence of a Jewish state.
Hey, Marco,
Check out this:
http://blog.camera.org/archives/2011/09/post_76.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+kramerlinks+%28Linkage+by+Martin+Kramer%29
And you say, what?
Actually Marco, they do. The land of “Palestine” actually belongs(ed) to the British by virtue of conquest in 1917, and also by birthright because the British people are descendants of Ephraim, the younger son of Joseph, and the recipients of Abraham’s birthright blessing. (Jerusalem and environs were promised to them BY GOD Himself!!!)
Great Britain (Ephraim), as they were entitled to do, officially and deliberately deeded the property to the Jews (descendants of the tribes of Judah, Benjamin, and Levi) as part of the UN resolution. The area now OFFICIALLY belongs to the Jews on religious, historical, traditional, cultural, and COMPLETELY AND THOROUGHLY LEGAL grounds. The Palestinians have NO claim to the territory whatsoever, either historically or legally. And, this is true regardless of whether you are talking about man’s law, or God’s.
Mr. Carlson,
That is a colorful point of view, but I would not suggest running for a seat in th Knesset on this platform.
David, I have no political aspirations. It would be, however, useful for the Jews to truly understand the historical background of their territorial claim. At this point, they do not fully comprehend it.
Aw, c’mon, Marco, on what planet have you been living?
When the partition was proposed in 1948, who agreed to share and still does and who didn’t agree and still doesn’t?
After fighting 3 genocidal wars and losing the Arabs now want to get even more of what they lost, including Israel that they could not eliminate by war.
Typical of Arabs. And you’re cluelessly supporting them.
oao
The PostWest
http://www.fallofknowledgeandreason.blogspot.com
There’s no need whatsoever for the Israelis to share the land with Muslim imperialists and colonialists who have repeatedly resorted to violence to try and retain political control over lands (like Israel) that Muslims have no legitimate claim to.
It’s our land, not theirs.
David,
You wrote above:
Truepeers,
Very well said! Liberalism well might appear somewhere in DSM-IV (near narcissistic personality disorder) as a psychiatric issue, if only the psychiatrists weren’t a pack of liberals.
[end quoted remark]
Alas, psychiatry, at least its academic branch, which I left in 1980 as a Robert Wood Johnson scholar when I got tired of such people, is “a pack of liberals.”
But a few of us are conservative.
Jamie Irons
That’s representative of social scientists in general. And I would not use the term “scientist” for them.
The truth shall set us free.
http://www.amazon.com/Legal-Foundation-Borders-Israel-International/dp/9657344522/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1316731617&sr=8-1
This is truly where the answer is, if you want the legalities. Most else is political desire and hatred masquerading as fact and logic.
The explanation for every Left position can be traced back to opposition to Western Civilization and the Judeo-Christian ethic that created it. Israel represents the West, regardless of it’s physical location, so it must be hated. Islam is seen as counter to the West: mostly non-white, non-European and, most importantly, not seen as a product of the Judeo-Christian ethic. So it must be supported under all circumstances. (The Palestinians kill children? It’s because of the Israeli occupation! Easy, peasy.) Try this analysis on any of the incomprehensible and often contradictory positions which the Left holds as religious doctrine and it immediately becomes understandable.
Video of aftermath from car bomb explosion in Turkey on Tuesday:
http://www.youtube.com/user/RussiaToday?blend=1&ob=4#p/u/1/aOqYvI2mBns
Exactly. The Jews are viewed by the left as the Western archetype. Founders of the ethics that formed the Judeo-Christian world, and hence they are viewed as responsible for the racism, exploitation, and colonialization of the world by the white, Judeo-Christain West.
They even believe that Israel is a white colonial power.
Even a weekend long stay in Israel would show them that Israel is far from what their perception of ‘white’ is, and is in fact the most successful, integrated multiracial society on earth.
Also, they refuse to believe the paradigm that the Jews are in fact the natives returning to their land.
So, what is it that allows them to hold these unreasonable views, when the truth is so plain to see?
It is because the Jews are viewed by the left as the Western archetype. Founders of the ethics that formed the Judeo-Christian world, and hence they are viewed as responsible for the racism, exploitation, and colonialization of the world by the white, Judeo-Christain West. . .
. . . and so it goes, in a circular argument that they never can or want to break out of.
I remember reading a piece by Spengler where he posited hatred of Israel/Jews was, among other things, the hatred of the dying for the vibrantly living.
So many forces, both concious and subconcious, seem to be at work creating Jew hatred.
One of which is the Jews’ ability to withstand all those forces. The gall.
I don’t approve of women having lots of babies and being overly deflected from promising careers by having to care for them. Otherwise, I hope Spengler is right that mainstream Islam is imploding. Though, where I am in Australia, I see a lot of Muslim women with headscarves and lots and lots of babies. The world looks so different depending on from which point in space-time-gender-culture you’re looking at it.
I also think that Kant has been misunderstood and underestimated here. But then, I’m a mere woman … and no one will pay attention to my making this or any other point.
It’s a good question who will implode first, Islam or the West. Besides, Muslims are much more resistent to hardship than Westerners. They’re used to it.
Surrender Israel to Islamic Imperialism, and the “restoration” of Al-Andalus — that is, “Islamic” Spain (excluding the Basque lands), Portugal, and Languedoc in southwestern France — will follow…
“People with liberal views tended to have increased grey matter in the anterior cingulated cortex, a region of the brain linked to decision-making … Previous research showed that electrical potentials recorded from this region … were bigger in people who were more liberal or left wing than people who were more conservative.
Conservatives, meanwhile, found increased grey matter in the amygdala, an area of the brain associated with processing emotion. This difference is consistent with studies which show that people who consider themselves to be conservative respond to threatening situations with more aggression than do liberals and are more sensitive to threatening facial expressions.”
That’s right! Anyone who makes faces at me on this board had better watch out.
As an ex Ivy League MRI subspecialized radiologist, I can tell you that this study, if based on MRI images, would be so fraught with uncontrollable variables as to be meaningless.
Sounds like it was written by someone who considers himself a ‘big cingulate’!
Isn’t the wording a bit misleading? Having a more active cingular cortex could mean you’re BAD at making decisions – that you process and process and process information without actually DOING anything. And saying an active amygdala indicates aggression is BS. If you believe Wikipedia, a large, active amygdala correlates with its owner having a larger and more complex social network – something liberals should love.
You don’t need that kind of background to be highly suspicious of those claims.
The increasing tendency to look at animation in the brain and draw this sort of conclusions is highly questionable. Give people data and they force themselves to interpret it.
LOL
Liberal’s want a Utopia, It will never happen. They are also full of excuses.
Will, it’s not a utopia, unless utopia is defined as making everyone pay their fair share in taxes…
-but
i guess your correct in your assessment,”It will never happen”.
A leftist is not a leftist because he listens to reason, but inflicts it. The only suitable purpose of reason is to examine our experience–most of it bad–in order that we may incrementally improve it.
“The only suitable purpose of reason is to examine our experience–most of it bad–in order that we may *survive* it.
Fixed that for you.
Anne,
I’m not going to tell individual what to do, but if the average woman has fewer than two children, we’ll become extinct.
That’s only true if the birthrate continues like that indefinitely. It would be a good idea for the earth’s human population to recede somewhat, by at least half in my view. That’s how China sees it for their parcel of the plot and it’s gonna take them a loooong time to go extinct as a nation. Of course, policy will change once a decent population decline and/or stability has been achieved. And so will my own view on the matter.
What is dangerous – politically, socially and ultimately existentially – is the imbalance in fertility and Israel is the nation more likely to implode sooner than later given the huge discrepancy between secular and ultra-orthodox fertility and the fact that ultra-orthodox jews don’t work, don’t pay taxes, and don’t serve in the army. One day they’ll be running the place and opening their defenceless arms for the Arab mobs to enter in and destroy what’s left.
Fertility analysis tells more than one story.
I see that danger too.
I would not rely either on WB settlers or the ultra-orthodox to defend Israel. So we are left with the Zionist religious–those who work, pay taxes and serve in the army. Does any one have statistics on their fertility rates–are they in line with what the religious hypothesis on fertility predicts and, more importantly, are they enough to offset the settlers and the UOs? My guess is no.
A majority of the “WB settlers” (excluding greater Jerusalem) are Religious-Zionist, and are over-represented in the army’s combat units.
Regarding the “Ultra-Orthodox,” if something can’t go on, it won’t. The situation was never black and white, and an ever-increasing proportion of them are and will serve in the army and participate in the workforce.
Anna aka OzArizona – You say: “It would be a good idea for the earth’s human population to recede somewhat, by at least half in my view.” Exactly who are you to say that? The 6 billion or so earthlings are the ones to make that choice for themselves, not you for them; and the China experiment is achieved in part with ‘late term abortions’ by which I mean, after the fetus is out of the womb (aka infantacide). There is no want of food or resources on this planet (and if there is, it is a Milton Friedman once said, a consequence of the myths that make people hungry). It is the human brain that is the scarce resource.
You also say: “I don’t approve of women having lots of babies and being overly deflected from promising careers by having to care for them.” I have three daughters, all of whom are working moms. Two have four children each, while the third (an attorney in a high-priced law firm) has one only because she has begun. So, they have not been overly deflected from promising careers, and whether you approve or not, is of no relevance.
Jack, I have merely stated my opinion and introduced my own view into the mix. If you want to dismiss it, fine, there is no law against that either.
“Radical Liberalism” is what we have functioning in our Congress. These Communist/Socialist/Liberal/Progressive/Fascists are committing “jihad” against the Constitution of The United States of America, and they know full well what they are doing. Their destruction has, and will have, more disastrous effects on America than multiple suicide attacks on our largest cities and government facilities.
They are enriching themselves at an enormous pace, at the complete expense of the electorate. No different than any other parasitic dictatorship. They’d love to have America become a third world country during their reign. That is their ultimate goal.
Mr. Goldman,
Great article, as usual, great analysis of the liberal worldview; however, I have a slightly different take on your main premise, which I expressed in an article for American Thinker (http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/04/the_scientific_socialism_of_to.html) (and don’t blame me for the lousy title; the editor changed my original). However much liberals outwardly may seem to be oblivious to reality, I believe, in their heart of hearts, perhaps not explicitly stated, even to themselves, they understand very well that reality does not conform to their expectations. But they believe that reality can be made to conform to their utopian fantasies if – and here’s the point I think you missed – all other alternatives are closed off. Think of the final scene in The Day the Earth Stood Still, when a scientist (of course!) gathers other scientists from around the world to be read the Riot Act by Klaatu, who tells them that all the nations of the world (including, I assume, Israel and the Arabs of Judea, Samaria and Gaza) must learn to play nicely together or the earth will be “burned to a cinder.” (And, of course, Klaatu’s civilization had turned over all peacekeeping functions to robots.)
In my article, I used Edison’s invention of the first practical incandescent light bulb to make my point, asking the reader to imagine if liberals had been running the country at the time. If they had been, liberals would have supported the light bulb as the “green energy” solution of the day – much cleaner and safer than candles and kerosene lamps. But rather than allow people to continue using the current technology during the years and thousands of failed experiments it took Edison to produce a practical light bulb, they would immediately outlawed candles and kerosene lamps and left the public with no alternatives except to buy Edison’s early expensive, impractical failures – and probably given Edison a tax break, too! And a loan guarantee.
Similarly, looking at the Middle East believe that it is possible to create a world in which all international and inter-ethnic disputes are settled through negotiation if all the alternatives are closed off. Thus, liberals, absent the higher priority of keeping a liberal president in office, will do everything they can to prevent the U.S. from fighting a war. And, even worse, if we do get into a war, they will do everything they can to prevent us from winning it, even to the point of helping our enemies defeat us (and Israel, which they view as a “mini-U.S.” or should I say, “Little Satan”).
And finally, there’s Obamacare. Though I agree with your apparent belief that, despite the overwhelming evidence, soon to be incontrovertible proof that the program is a failure, many liberals think the program is actually working, I also am sure that many liberals know very well that the program doesn’t work. But they believe that if all the alternatives are closed off, future social engineers, 10, 20, 100 years from now, will make the program work.
And in the meantime? I wonder if you’ve heard the story of the farmer and the pig. A city man goes for a Sunday drive in the country and passes a farmer struggling under the weight of a 300 lb. pig that he is trying to lift up. Curious, the man stops the car, approaches the farmer and asks him what he’s doing.
“See that tree?” says the farmer. “It’s a nut tree and I’m trying to lift the pig up so that he can eat the nuts.”
“You know,” says the city dweller, “if you put the pig down, pick the nuts from the tree and feed the nuts to the pig, you’ll be able to feed it much faster.”
To which the farmer replies, “What’s time to a pig?”
What are facts, consequences and human nature to a liberal?
Not everything liberals do is wrong. The CCC was a good idea in the 1930s, for example. I could see an argument for a National Infrastructure Corps (especially if it helps bring down wages for public-sector projects) today. And the civil rights movement was a liberal endeavor, not a conservative one (shamefully). There are some things that big government can help. There just aren’ ttoo many of them. To a hammer, everything looks like nail, and it’s hard to have a reasoned dialogue with a hammer.
I take your point, but let the record show (http://www.lib.niu.edu/1996/iht319648.html) that “From the beginning, before the [Civil Rights Act of 1964] was even introduced in the House, Kennedy, and then Johnson, realized the success or failure of the bill rested upon the shoulders of one man, [Republican Senator] Everett McKinley Dirksen.”
It is also fair to note that (and perhaps you might want to write about this, someday), for all the liberal civil rights speechifying, it was Strom Thurmond, who filibustered the Civil Rights Bill, who was the first Senator actually to put a black person on his staff.
I’m pretty much with you on the need for government to support infrastructure projects (if not the government, then who?), but have a big problem with infrastructure projects as jobs programs. Such projects need to be built where they are most needed, which would be the parts of the country, such as South Dakota or Texas, where the economy is booming and unemployment is low; my concern is that politicians would steer the funds to places such as Detroit, to provide jobs where the unemployment rate is high, but the population is declining and with it, the need for infrastructure. Indeed, the mayor is trying to get the population to consolidate into a smaller area and let the outlying land – and the infrastructure beneath it – return to nature.
Your statement about the CCC also reminded me of a passage in Amity Shlaes’s book, The Forgotten Man. Someone mapped the geographical distribution of federal public works funds during the Great Depression and discovered that the distribution was highly skewed toward those parts of the country most important to FDR’s reelection. Which would seem to confirm my concern about public works funds being used for political rather than practical purposes. I’ve often though that a wise president would call on the American Society of Civil Engineers to form a rotating committee of volunteers to vet proposed infrastructure projects the same way as the ABA evaluates Supreme Court candidates.
Here’s the deal; it’s real simple:
Adults form their worldview based on fact.
Liberals/Progs and children base their ACCEPTANCE of facts based on their worldview: If the fact doesn’t comport, it can’t be a fact.
Progressivism also – and I do NOT understand why more pundits do not bring this up – is based on, as in its foundation is, that the people are not smart enough to govern themselves and so must be ruled by a self-appointed elite.
1. There is NOTHING more anti-American than this ideology and people need to be told that.
2. If someone votes for a Prog, he or she is voting for someone who thinks that voter is too dumb to be entrusted with a vote. Their vote, logically, then, should be cancelled: they arae VOTING for someone who says they are too dumb to vote, so if they are too dumb to vote, he or she should NOT accept their votes. Pure logic.
Liberals are amoral and frightened by life.
Well, it looks like the whole West is frightened, not just the liberals. I don’t see, for example, that Cameron and Sarkozy are not. And, to be honest, neither were Sharon and Olmert, not Netanyahu either–just read Caroline Glick’s columns. People are fooled by their strong talk.
Well, I’m conservative and I’m scared out of my wits most of the time.
Liberalism is about feeling good and self-identity. It feels good to take liberal positions and it feels good to know that you’re part of the right-thinking crowd.
The problem is sooner or later you run across two things, human nature and spiritual evil, that mess up the pretty thoughts. Since spiritual evil can’t exist, it must be explained away, denied, blamed on someone or something, or otherwise displaced. Human nature — well, you can make up lots of pretty lies about that.
David,
U get the Rube Goldberg award on this one! U know, the guy famous for making those complicated Wiley Coyote machines for the most simple task. You just don’t get liberals and you give them way too much credit. Plain and simple David. They r just lazy entitled slackers. Acknowledging palestinian accountability for their own suffering would mean they would have to acknowledge their own responsibility for the fact that they are being left behind because of their own incompetence and laziness. Their concern for the downtrodden is nonsense. By and large these people r the most selfish and narcissistic money grubbers. They r just looking out for their own slacker interests. All their pontificating is just that….nonsense.
PS. Just finishing my vacation in the land of old antisemitism, Ukraine. And future antisemitism, Turkey. I went to Turkey wanting to hate those people, but it’s just not possible! They r really some of the kindest and finest people u will ever meet! I way prefer them to Israelis. I couldn’t help noticing that Istanbul reall estate construction is booming. Is there any way to short this market? I also hope that Israel will remember the kindness of the Turks and offer asylum to those secular Turks escaping the jihad.