Friends with (gasp!) a Republican
Here’s a piece I really enjoyed reading.
The writer seesaws between being intolerant and respectful of her lone Republican friend. But the latter sentiment squeaks out a win. The liberal author wants to stretch herself, and she thinks her Republican friend is both smart and well-informed, although somewhat inscrutable. This creates a bit of cognitive dissonance.
I know it well, at least from observation. A number of people have said to me, “I don’t get it. You’re intelligent, and yet you’re conservative—how can it be?”
My favorite parts of the essay:
We lose something critical when we surround ourselves with people who agree with us all the time. We lose out on the wisdom of seeing the other side…
Janet’s willingness to associate with so many liberal friends — though I know she seeks refuge in chat rooms and magazines that share her beliefs — makes her a better and more interesting person. She has her beliefs challenged constantly. She is more well-read and educated in her politics than most of the liberals I know. Too many liberals I know are lazy, they have a belief system that consists of making fun of Glenn Beck and watching “The Daily Show.” Shouldn’t their beliefs be challenged, too?
This is a democracy, after all. Isn’t it worth understanding a bit more about why approximately half the country votes differently than we do? Isn’t it important that we understand why people — good and legitimate Americans, whose votes count as much as ours — like Sarah Palin?
Unfortunately, a great many people would answer, “no.”
“Unfortunately, a great many people would answer, ‘no.'”
Including many of the commenters on that post.
Sample:
So dump the soulless hag. You’re friends with this person? Why? Political beliefs go to the soul, and conservatives have none. On top of that, they are unable to grasp — or care to grasp — the evidence of history or the very fabric of truth and reality.
Dump. The. Hag.
I’ve left off the more offensive parts. There are pages and pages of like-minded commenters, though.
I read that article too … but the comments were a horror.
At least the author is struggling to free herself from group-think.
The socially left media (Salon?) always have their ears to the ground/finger in the breeze. Is publishing an article like this recognizing that they will have to live in a majority center right country for a long time?
The extreme shift to the left in most big city newspapers has hurt them. Ditto for the network news. Survival in a down economy will take getting more than die hard leftists to read your stuff.
And yet the author never makes the leap to question her and her fellow Dems
intolerance and hatred of ideas different from their own.
Sgt. Mom: yes, she’s an apostate-by-proxy. Burn the witch!
gogo: she might be more inclined to do so once she reads the comments to her essay. You never know.
@kcom
So dump the soulless hag. You’re friends with this person? Why? Political beliefs go to the soul, and conservatives have none.And yet Republicans are accused of being the party of religion.
What are the odds the original commenter describes themselves as an atheist?
Really the amount of DoubleThink and untruth you have to engage in to be a Leftist is amazing.
Ah yes, Republicans become the “New Negroes” for progressives to have as “friends.”
Political beliefs go to the soul, and conservatives have none. On top of that, they are unable to grasp – or care to grasp – the evidence of history or the very fabric of truth and reality.
So the evidence of history and the very fabric of truth and reality are right there, grasped by the Salon commentariat?
Maybe a capacity for…humility?…is a precondition for the kind of friendship the article’s writer describes.
I am friends with a blue dog Democrat. We have beers together most Fridays. I have no problem with his disagreeing with me, perhaps because I can counter most of his talking points. He gave me a baited introduction to a friend of his last week, in describing me as pro-Pinochet. Insofar that I am more pro-Pinochet than pro-Allende, that is an accurate description of my position, though it would be more accurate to say that I saw Pinochet as the lesser of two evils.
As I was being introduced to a Ph.D. Adjunct Professor in Spanish, this was like waving the proverbial red flag in front of the bull. I am very well read on the Allende-Pinochet controversy, well enough that in some blog threads I have been mistaken for being a Chilean citizen.
After several minutes of debate, the Spanish Professor no longer wished to discuss the issue. I was quite willing to continue. I wonder if the Spanish Professor had ever heard someone who disagreed with her take on the Allende-Pinochet controversy, with someone who knew more about the issue than the “democratically elected” mantra.
You’ve got to be kidding. Somewhere, somebody is still fighting over Allende vs. Pinochet? Talk about being caught in a time warp.
The world of the arts is worse than academia. It is just assumed in the arts that you are a far leftist. When people find out that I’m not, they feel betrayed.
And, it’s not that I’m even particularly interested in politics. I usually vote Republican without much enthusiasm. My real view on politics is embodied in the old saw: “Opinions are like assholes. Everybody’s got one.”
In other words, I don’t even take my own political opinions that seriously.
I’ve been tossed out of bands for not adhering to the rest of the band’s enthusiasm for far left politics. I used to enter my films in film festivals, but it quickly became apparent that the first criteria for being noticed was whether your work adhered to leftist dogma.
The far leftists drive each other to a frenzy of competitive outrage. This is one of the reasons that the arts veer into leftist hysteria. It’s a competition for job, awards and recognition. People become ever more radical in an attempt to get recognition for their work.
I know a couple that are good friends for 35 years and both big time liberals. I may in fact be their token conservative friend. Trust me, i’ve met most of their other friends and not a single one could get a racoon out of a trash can.
I think we find each other mutually interesting. And after a few glasses of wine you’d swear they’re the conservatives and i’m the liberal. Because i think they can tell me things they don’t dare say to their lib friends. Things like how they despise the new mosque built close by. How they don’t want mexicans to freely walk in our country.
If i didn’t know better, i’d swear they envy my ability to own and express my discriminating thoughts. And on some level, they know they’ve worked themselves into a box.
My favorite is my earnest liberal buddy (yes, I do have one!) whose zeal for fiscal responsibility is matched only by his hatred for the Tea Party.
Someday I will figure that one out.
Pound your head against a wall, repeatedly, OB – sometimes that works when trying to figure things out.
“Someday I will figure that one out.”
I think a strawman will figure indispensably in the solution when you find it. Just pray that he finally has a Stranahan moment.
“”Someday I will figure that one out.””
OB
I’d say he hates the tea party for the same reason you won’t wear a Members Only jacket out to dinner tonight. It’s been declared unfashionable.
Friends with a Republican? She probably wanted to add that it made her feet dirty inside and she loved it.
“Too many liberals I know are lazy, they have a belief system that consists of making fun of Glenn Beck and watching “The Daily Show.” ”
Concise & accurate.
vanderleun says, “Ah yes, Republicans become the “New Negroes” for progressives to have as “friends.” ”
Okay, but I’m not posing as a lawn ornament.
Occam says, “My favorite is my earnest liberal buddy (yes, I do have one!) whose zeal for fiscal responsibility is matched only by his hatred for the Tea Party. Someday I will figure that one out.”
Bipolar?
But seriously folks… I do know many liberals and they come in all shades of ideology, they are not all easily pigeon holed. To varying degrees, they can be reasonable and rational in many ways, but they all desperately cling to the concept of perfection.
They believe in “if only”. If only this or that comes to pass then all would be the age of aquarius…. peace, love, harmony, and understanding. And I’ll give them one thing: they are stubborn. They defy reality when its right in their face. Chose any topic, whether it be human nature, economics, aggression, etc.; they cling to a belief that utopia is just around the corner as soon as all the conservatives are converted, ostracized, or murdered.
Yes, I guess that’s a pretty concise summary of the Left. They all want the same thing, it’s just a matter of how far they’re willing to go to get it – some would like to convert, some are willing to ostracize and the hard core don’t stop even if takes murder. That’s a summary of the 20th century right there.
I suspect that it’s because he considers the Tea Party racist because, as he puts it, “They don’t support the President.”
Of course, that presents me with the intellectual equivalent of a matryoshka doll by moving the paradox to a new venue. His statement invites the conclusion that he is asserting that one should always support the President, yet he himself bitterly opposed Bush.
So he apparently doesn’t mean that one should invariably support the President (at least a logically consistent position), but rather, it would seem, that one should support the President if he’s black.
The only other possibility is he means one should support the President if one agrees with his policies – which of course is essentially a tautology. But in this context that makes no sense either, because he supports the President and yet strongly opposes profligate spending, which is exactly what this President has done.
As the conundra multiply like the dancing brooms in Fantasia, I sometimes feel as though I’ve chased the White Rabbit down a logical rabbit hole, and desist from further analysis for fear of suffering irreversible brain damage.
The Pinochet-Allende history is, IMO, an excellent object lesson of what can happen when a leftist tries to turn a country into a socialist paradise. The fact that Pinochet had to use some muscle to keep the Marxist thugs in line while privatising things does not surprise me. Chile has done pretty well due to Pinochet’s reforms, though there is still a strong element of socialism in the country. However, I often refer my liberal friends to what happened in Chile under Allende to expose them to the horrors of socialism.
The story of Argentina’s economic difficulties under a series of socialist “reformers” makes a good lesson as well.
That is because support of Obama and hatred of the tea party is an emotional response.
One of my favorite statements is that you can not reason someone out of an idea they didn’t use reason to come up with.
I bet if you approach it from a social group pressure point of view that things suddenly make internal sense. I know of more than one person who approaches conservatism only to violently disengage when they realize it, politics become a taboo discuss until they can safely build the walls back up.
What I like even more than a liberal friend deciding she likes me even though I’m conservative is when I’ve been friends with someone for a while and then I find out she’s conservative too.
strcpy: Greetings! Glad you’re feeling well enough to post.
kcom says, “… the hard core don’t stop even if takes murder. That’s a summary of the 20th century right there.”
Marx, Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin, Mussolini, Hitler, Mao, Ho Chi Minh, Pol Pot, Fidel, Che, Chavez, Plevin, Ayers, and other lesser known leftists; its all the same old same old. Buy one t-shirt and you’ve bought them all. Blood flows and repression grows. Its the progressive way.
Occam says, “I sometimes feel as though I’ve chased the White Rabbit down a logical rabbit hole, and desist from further analysis for fear of suffering irreversible brain damage.”
“And if you go chasing rabbits and you know you’re going to fall, tell them a hookah smoking caterpillar
has given you the call. Call Alice when she was just small. When the men on the chessboard get up and tell you where to go and you’ve just had some kind of mushroom and your mind is moving low, go ask Alice, I think she’ll know. When logic and proportion
have fallen sloppy dead and the White Knight is talking backwards and the Red Queen’s off with her head; remember what the dormouse said: feed your head.” — Grace Slick
What a long strange trip its been. 😉
Try being a black conservative, in NYC, and working as a contractor; and your hobby is military history. Conversation gets pretty thin.
What I think is going on among the less intellectually-open liberals is that they think they know what conservatives and Tea Partiers are, but all they ‘really’ know is this horrible cariacature, of a dumb and racist and generally awful person – and they feel all warm and hopy-changy in hating that cariacature, with the approval – of course – of all their wonderfully sensitive, intelligent and progressive friends. So focused on the cariacature, and not the real person: it’s sad, really – I’ve tried to disabuse certain bloggers on Open Salon about this, but they are so wedded to the cariacature that it’s very difficult. Of course, the awful thing is that in the process, they are insulting and alienating people like me, and digging the trenches between us just that much deeper. I wonder now, how many former fans that someone like Garrison Kiellor has alienated in the last two or three years.
Anyway with this article it’s nice to see that some people can pull free of the group-think.
In one of my own books (set during the Civil War) I wrote:
“Ah, Juanito,” Porfirio sighed with infinite melancholy, “They were both good men, men of honor and honesty and the highest ideals — which led them onto different roads. That is the thing, you see. We are not as like to each, indistinguishable as ants in a nest. Men of honor may yet take different roads for good and honest reasons.”
We may come to different conclusions – but I’d just appreciate, now and again — as this writer did with her friend — to give credit for good and honest reasons for getting there, instead of falling into the easy cliche of the soulless, heartless conservative.
There’s a really strong tribal identity/status component to liberalism, more so that I see in conservatism. My theory is that having abandoned religion and patriotism, liberals still hunger for something to belong to, so they cling to belief in the “correct” opinions to provide that sense of being part of a group. (What Neo calls “dancing in a ring.”)
Add to that the strong incentive of status. Liberals have done an unmatched job of making liberalism a marker of high status. Even as they rail about Republican policies favoring “the rich” they love to deride TEA Party members as ignorant white trash from the trailer park.
Conservatives who reject that are threatening a liberal’s sense of identity and social position. They’ll fight tooth and nail to preserve it.
Its simple to understand, between zinn, media, lying that people aren’t called out on, remolding educations emphasis and defocusing to erasing the key things. but a HUGE part of it is the conscious raising of feminism..
Pew Poll: Obama Struggling With White Voters
hotlineoncall.nationaljournal.com/archives/2011/04/pew-poll-obama.php
the comments as reaction to some of the demographic information in the article is telling, and none of them are as foaming at the mouth whacked as salon regulars.
African Americans AA’s in poster land, are at 90%… the largest group supporting Obama, or rather the largest herd is:
Obama’s best group in the white electorate remains well-educated women, who tend toward more liberal positions on social issues as well as greater receptivity to government activism. In the new poll, 56 percent of college-educated white women said they approved of Obama’s performance. That’s a slight improvement from the 52 percent of such women who voted for him in 2008, according to the Edison Research exit poll. It’s also a big improvement from the 43 percent of college-plus white women who backed Democratic House candidates in 2010.
meanwhile, almost everyone else, including the commenters, are pretty clear on why and what fors…
and so, here is a clear way to understand about how a reality is constructed for the class that ultimately can push others but cant be pushed back.
from magazines, movies, other media like news and pseudonews, the view, endless causes, always in a bubble, lacking of time to check and lacking interest as the point tends to grease their egoes and checking would just show them the lie, etc…
they are in a kind of bubble in which the main core of it relies on what amounts to a lot of lies and spin from women’s studies courses that were required for them to get their degrees.
AS IN GERMANY, the same group was responsible for the same change there…
the article of these two women show how almost monolithic this group is, and so, how almost ALL women that take up higher positions are of this group, full of piss and vinegar, ready to twist the thumbscrews and demean the men under them (like in my office), and really really really believe the whole left socialist communist zeitgeist without knowing where the key ideas and things are from.
this core with the education initiatives is a very large growing segment. the smartest and most likely to be barren… they know that everything in the world that is wrong, is because of men and male energy, and what men do, etc…
dont believe, then what impetus would cause this?
Dear Woman
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_uRIMUBnvw
arent you glad they are speaking for you?
anyway, this part of the article was key for me was this one:
the trained horse is upset that the free mustang thought, while she was taught.
she never thought about any issues, like a trained seal she adopted the issues and such blindly, and NO ONE, could tell her otherwise.
her friend and desire to be friends forced her to hear, and now there is all these real reasons she was never told, never came to mind, and none of her friends could spit out “despite all of them having the same education”.
she never quite realizes that her positions were given to her and endlessly reinforced till they seem to be a part of her. we look to those old pictures of Germany or the soviet union and we wonder how people could live under all that glaring propaganda and signage.
if you could see what you live under you would be AMAZED… and if you could see some of the stuff they are steeped in and oh so sure and ready to retaliate for, its amazing. (including a nursing manual that basically showed that all violence came from adult males and went to everyone else, and never the other way without a reason that was the fault of the adult male).
just go to the view and see how they handle issues. behare and whoppi are aweful..
they dictate the right position, and the women know what is right…
and like the woman in the article MOST never really think beyond how they are constantly told they are better (despite they are also told we are equal in ability), that they are in the protected class (with a few others. and if thats the case, who is the unprotected class?), and obama has bought them off with his signing statement to get around the issue that sotomeyers case was overturned by the supreme court. [as far as i know, i know of no procedure in which a signing statement can be adjudicated by the justices… ]
as in Rome we are almost stripped bare, and while you cant put a genie back into a bottle, what happens is that what was wrought causes loss, and what wins, returns the systems back.
that is, either the culture behaves right, regardless of what they believe, or it fails, and when it fails, the reset norm is not egalitarian living. in fact the romantic periods desire to end the enlightenment and taking its place as doppelganger, had always the desire to return to the past.
if the new way of living given to these women who have the power and act monolithic for someone else, doesn’t function, they will disappear from existence. in demographic outcome and in conflict arrizing from the weakness that such changes make in societies health. look around, think we are as socially healthy as some of the recent past?
the group dominates and thinks its powerless, so it lets someone else drive. like one big harem that self supports rather than require such as a condition of participation.
the waking up stories of the 30s and people like wittiker chambers is more interesting. even freda utley is more interesting.
reading these people is like watching the Matrix, but in this version, neo gets sick and throws up before the reality he was sleeping in is peeled back… and the movie ends as a comic short.
comment from the pew poll:
Women do not have the temperament for voting. What a disaster. Their minds work differently: they are all about empathy and nurturing. But they can’t fix anything. All they can do is talk about their weight problems, their personal issues, blah blah blah times 50. With many of them you can actually see the whites around their entire eyes. They are, basically, nuts. I’m sorry but it’s true. You ever see what they’re watching on daytime TV? Nuts I tell you, nuts.
Janet and I would likely have never met, save for the thing that unites so many women across divides of income and age: fat.
We met in a weight-loss group. There were six or seven of us in that group, but Janet and I were drawn toward each other. I liked her refusal to lie about what she’d eaten or rationalize it.
JimG3 says, “Try being a black conservative, in NYC, and working as a contractor; and your hobby is military history. Conversation gets pretty thin.”
You desire an award for steadfastness.
Of course, you probably meant “deserve”, right, Parker?
First: strcpy – good to see you! And you hit on just what I wanted to say.
Occam noted that he has a friend who is gung ho about fiscal responsibility and also about hating the Tea Party. If I might elaborate on strcpy’s point about “group taboos” I’d put it like this:
The left does not really have any principles – their moral philosophy is mostly nihilistic and relativist, and their economic philosophy is purely negative (anti-capitalist). But, being humans, they need self-definition and boundaries – “lines in the sand” – and these, in most cases for most people, are filled in either with principles or taboos (or shibboleths). Since the left lacks principles, its self-definition is entirely a function of the taboos and shibboleths it uses to beat back threats to the tribe.
Hence, one might have a rational thought about fiscal prudence, and the end of that thought clearly points to the Tea Party. You don’t have to be 100% on board with everything they desire to see that. But a scarecrow is placed in front of the Tea Party, warning, “Yonder lie racists!” This is a pretty good image of the thought process, in my experience.
Likewise, if a conservative friend of a liberal is discovered to be intelligent and good-hearted, the scarecrow pops up: “Yonder lies a secretly black-souled demon!”
And so on.
As said, this reliance on bugaboos is a natural consequence of having an amorphous, unprincipled foundation to their worldview. Strictly speaking, they don’t even have a worldview, because leftism suffers from the paradox of working as an attitude but, as is seen as soon as one tried to render it intellectually consistent, failing as a philosophy and falling inevitably into self-vitiation.
Marx’s system never worked, nor has any leftist attempt to theorize leftism since Marx. Mostly they just try to argue that “reasonableness” is a progressive value, and then attempt to make “reasonable deliberation” the foundation of their system (cf. Dewey, Rawls, Ronald Dworkin). Problem is, this always translates into an inanity: “Sincerity of belief is what matters, so long as the sincerity is born from a leftist attitude.” It reduces back to the attitude. There is no philosophy, nor principles.
On the flip-side, conservatism has benefited immensely from having to fight the political battle as outgunned underdogs in the media and academia – no educated conservative will be able to simply renounce practically every person he’s ever met, nor will he be able to agree with them. The conclusion has to be that there is something wrong with the leftist belief system at the level of principle, and this forces conservatives to think through their own principles thoroughly. Which is, of course, why it is easier for a conservative to be friends with a leftist than vice versa.
Leftists, however, tend to live in cocoons and echo-chambers, and so can safely work within their system of attitudes and taboos. The downside is that they become ferociously intolerant, just like the “bigoted fundamentalists” they claim to oppose.
The price of a basic lack of self-awareness – which can only come from prolonged self-examination – is what Hegel called the cunning of reason. One becomes what one despises, and the result is a savage irony.
Conservatives were taught humility in the face of reality by both their teachers (Burke, Smith, Hayek, etc.) and their need to argue cogently against overwhelming odds in academia and elsewhere. That attitude conduces to a prudent search for workable principles. Leftist attitudes are hubristic, perpetually Icarus-like, and a little humility added in would go a very long way toward, at least, making them more tolerant people.
Oh, and OB @ 6:58 –
That was beautifully put.
Educational attainment is a very critical factor in accounting for lifetime fertility differentials. Women with 1 or more years of college have sharply lower lifetime fertility than less educated women, regardless of race or Hispanic origin. Women with college degrees can be expected to complete their childbearing with 1.6-2.0 children each; 1.7 for non-Hispanic white, 1.6 for non-Hispanic black, and 2.0 for Hispanic women. For women with less education the total expected number of children are: 3.2 children for those with 0-8 years of education; 2.3 children for those with 9-11 years of education and 2.7 for high school graduates.
just in case anyone was going to question the most barren group… if you wanted to make the population dumber, you sure cant find a better way than to lead the best and brightest into the infertility bucket, lighting their way with burned bras, and chanting the future is ours (how so without children i dont know).
library.adoption.com/articles/mothers-educational-level-influences-birth-rate.html
Birth rates for Hispanic women are higher than rates for either non-Hispanic black women or non-Hispanic white women in every educational attainment category. The disparity is particularly evident for birth rates for women with less than a high school education.
between planned parenthood to the blacks, illegal immigration to cook the stat numbers so that the educated women in college dont know, and delay for the sisterhood, etc…
guess who is being slowly exterminated, and is too liberated and superior to realize it?
oh.. and what about the children that they do produce? after all, these really smart women, put off till later, so what are the demographics of what they are leaving the world?
The pregnancy risk over 35 is higher as well as evidenced an increase in the miscarriage rate and the incidence of genetic abnormality in pregnancy. At 35, the miscarriage rate is 25% and the risk of Down syndrome becomes about 1/350. 35 is the age at which genetic testing in pregnancy is first recommended since the chance of picking up an abnormality is greater than the risk of the procedure used to find it.
Estimates from embryo biopsy reveal that at least 90% of a woman’s eggs are genetically abnormal when a woman is over 40. This is explains the increased pregnancy risk over 40. The miscarriage rate is 33% at age 40. Genetically abnormal pregnancies are more common as well with an incidence of 1/38 at age 40. http://www.socalfertility.com/age-and-fertility.html
of course this is a male plot and if you point it out and put things on the table truthfully, your a pariah and to be run out as your just spoiling the plans they have (given to them by who?)
Pregnancy over 45 is a very difficult proposition. Women over 45 have less than a 1% chance of getting pregnant using their own eggs. This is because virtually all of their remaining eggs are genetically abnormal.
-=-=-=-=-
The pregnancy risk over 45 is also increased. In the unlikely event that a woman over 45 becomes pregnant with her own eggs, the pregnancy risk over 45 results in a miscarriage rate of at least 50% and the incidence of a genetically abnormal pregnancy of 1 in 12. There is also a significantly higher risk of maternal and fetal mortality with pregnancy over 45 compared to younger women. It is especially important to make sure that a woman’s body is able to tolerate the stresses that pregnancy places on it prior to becoming pregnant. This means that a woman should be checked for problems like high blood pressure, heart disease and diabetes before trying to become pregnant.
and what is the crowd telling the young women?
Someone I know worked as a physician delivering babies for a Native American community at their reservation hospital. She said that they had numerous women between ages 45 to early 50’s coming in to have babies, and that no one even raised an eyebrow because it wasn’t like they were unusual (except in terms of some additional health problems, but not in terms of fertility).
I can assure you that this population is not doing egg donation! And they really didn’t offer reproductive endocrinology services either. If a woman could afford to go outside the system for that, then she probably wouldn’t be living on a reservation.
and this one…
[you know how much women will shop around until someone tells them what they want to hear!]
Don’t Panic! Women Can Conceive Over 30
blogs.discovermagazine.com/intersection/2010/02/02/dont-panic-women-can-conceive-over-30/
so basically does some (feminist?) math, and says dont worry…
even huffington post.. a left liberal feminist place of warm friendliness.
Getting Pregnant After 50: Risks, Rewards
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/07/17/getting-pregnant-after-50_n_238704.html
Should you get pregnant if you’re 50 or older?
http://www.cnn.com/2009/LIVING/07/17/older.women.pregnancy/index.html?eref=rss_topstories
if you look at this through the eyes of world demographics, it gets more interesting..
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/feb/28/education-jobs-middle-class-decline
kcom (& JimG3),
yes… my bad typo.
kolnai says, “The left does not really have any principles – their moral philosophy is mostly nihilistic and relativist,… ”
I agree the hard left (progressives, commie pinkos, choose you own favorite term) have no principles. There are no means they will not use to achieve an end. Their agenda is to hold sway over the peasants at all costs. IMO, the ‘soft’ left is a different critter.
The sof’ left has no principles because they only have dogma. They are blind believers in something they do not understand. The hardcore are not believers, they are sociopathic, bloodthirsty megalomaniacs.
I think there is a difference between Jim Jones and the people who helped mix the kool-aid (hardcore) and the mesmerized who stood in line to drink it (the soft, dogma bound fools).
Liberals believe the best way (only-way to some) to “do good” is via government programs. To many liberals the failure of so many of these programs is simply due underfunding. They can’t, or won’t try to, understand pro-choice economics. To most liberals pro-choice means issue, only, not schools, health-care, or, (this applies primarily to the socialist-liberal fringe): free-markets. I made the transition from liberal to conservative, some 30+ years ago and there’s been no going back — economic freedom and political freedom go hand-in-hand, it’s the “only” way to “do good”.
The Salon article reminded me of the New York Sun Mr. X op-ed from 2004.
http://www.nysun.com/opinion/living-in-a-closet/1403/
Thanks all, not only am I up to posting some, I even ate solid food this week! In a couple of weeks (next round of chemo is the 18’th, sometime after that – chemo knocks me out for at least a week) I get the check on the primary tumor. The secondary ones/spread has halted and the ability to eat solid food is good sign (stomach cancer).
I’ve made it past the original three months or so they gave me, the oncologist is actually optimistic 🙂
BTW: if Army Mom is reading did you get my reply?
Way to go, strcpy!
Heck, all oncologists should be optimistic when therapy starts. Otherwise they are effectively indicating, “We’ll do it but it ain’t gonna be much.” My view, personal and public, was always “It’s gonna be tough, but it can happen.” Curing a few incurable folks will do that to you, but of course one does not see that accomplishment overnight.
One should feel defeat only when defeated, not before.
Just heard the news on the radio and then read about it on line: Government shut down averted, Obama & congress critters agree to 40 billion in cuts.
I’ll sleep soundly tonight, safe and secure in the knowledge that DC has the debt/deficit crisis solved.
Isn’t it worth understanding a bit more about why approximately half the country votes differently than we do?
It was this sentiment right here that led me to start seriously re-evaluating my own then-liberal beliefs in the wake of the 2004 election.
If only more people shared it.
Parker said, “I’ll sleep soundly tonight, safe and secure in the knowledge that DC has the debt/deficit crisis solved.” Good one, ROFL! Have to get our laughs, otherwise we’d be sobbing, heh?
Trimegistus said, “There’s a really strong tribal identity/status component to liberalism, more so that I see in conservatism.” Yep, tribalism is all about the urge to make the collective more important than the individual. Our ancestors lived successfully with tribal systems for hundred of thousands of years. Those genetic instincts are still quite strong, and I attribute much of the drive toward strong central government and egalitarianism to those instincts. Every advance from tribalism to freedom and individuality has required much effort and bloodshed. We’re presently engaged in a bloody war with the most extreme modern example – Islam. The struggle with liberals is less violent (except when the unions are involved), but still difficult and very serious.
Conservatives tend to try to think for themselves and be more individualistic. As proof, note the array of ideas and opinions offered here at neo’s. We’d be considered a real pain-in-the-ass by any well organized tribe.
strcpy,
Thanks for the good news about your treatment and your unflagging spirit. May the Force be with you!
Well done, strcpy. Keep fighting! We’re all pulling for you. But you know that!
Ah yes, Republicans become the “New Negroes” for progressives to have as “friends.”
Thanks for the spit-take, Vanderleun! that’s PERFECT.
My “I have a high IQ and I like to say so”, George Bush hating, Govt run healthcare loving, “Fox News lies!!” father in law has tried to persuade his conservative son that conservatives are evil and want to keep people financially enslaved. When my husband rebutted his arguments with thought out reason his father was stunned. My FIL actually told his own son that while he thought that my husband was a good person he did not understand how my husband could be conservative and not for the collective. His exact words were, “I don’t think you are evil son but I don’t understand how you can think as you seem to!” My husband was deeply saddened by this. Needless to say for family peace we do not talk politics anymore.
strcpy – I did get your reply and am still here with the offer should you decide to take me up on it. May God Bless you during your fight.
The fact that he even feels the need to bring up the word evil is telling. I am sure people in the two political parties have had their differences over the years but when did this whole concept that one huge chunk of their fellow Americans are (or might very well be) evil plant itself in the consciousness of the left? How crazy is that? As has been pointed out many times, conservatives don’t tend to believe that their political opponents, however illogical and deluded, are evil. Evil is a very strong word. I guess it is true that too many lefties seem to be apologists for evil, including Islamist evil, but that’s not exactly the same thing. His father thought hard enough about things he ought to draw a larger lesson from the example of his son, surprisingly, not being evil but he probably won’t.
Art:
I haven’t read this whole thread yet, but I liked your misspelling of “behare and whoppi”. I may start using it when I discuss them; but alas, I rarely do.
kcom – True. My FIL is the type that has learned to bomb throw to get what he wants. I think he unconsiously went there despite that the person he is dealing with is his own son. It is very childish of him to do this. And, my husband is not the only person in the family who has gotten this treatment. We keep telling my FIL to do some more research into the issues and walk away. We have noticed that lately he has gotten pretty quiet about politics. The quiet family joke is that my FIL does have a high IQ and is really smart but he lacks a bit when it comes to common sense.
Army Mom
The common sense thing is interesting. Generally, it results from experience. We can have our own experience, we can see somebody else’s experience directly, or we can learn from history. In addition, we can apply certain principles–people generally go for their best bet, what benefits them the most and avoid what damages them–to various, new, liberal-promoted schemes.
Liberals can’t. Not that they are congenitally incapable, but that doing so would take them where they don’t want to go. Where they want to be and where they don’t want to be trump what happens right in front of them on a daily basis.
See the feminists when the Duke lax case was falling apart, the AGW folks when some of their set-in-stone facts collapsed. Moynihan and others predicted what would happen to the poor black community with the War on Poverty, and was damned as a racist. It happened…have liberals noticed? Nope. Moynihan is still a racist.
Nuts. Trying again.
So, to give a liberal facts which contradict his position on an issue is not merely giving him facts which contradict his position on an issue. In addition, it requires him to move considerably more than his view on an issue. It threatens his very personality.
Hence the venom of the response(s).
Effess
The New York Sun. I sure do miss it.
On the same line as having a Republican friend, I strongly recommend “I Can’t Believe I’m Sitting Next to a Republican” by Harry Stein. It is a very, very good book.
I seem to be surrounded by liberals (how’d that happen, I mean, I live in NYC). In September I was having dinner with some people when Sarah Palin came up (as a topic, not the actual woman). I told one woman that the only reason she had ever heard of Hilary Clinton is because of her husband and the only reason she had ever heard of Sarah Palin is because of Sarah Palin. She replied that I was out of my mind and–this is almost a direct quote–she would have indeed heard of Hilary because that’s what they do, win elections.
No, I have no idea what she meant either.
She then leaped to guns finally asking, after I told her that I was fine with hunting and that deer herds needed to be culled, if I supported shooting New Yorkers to counter the overcrowding. The conversation ended when I asked her by what definition New York is overcrowded.
I’m only the millionth person to note this but liberals argue ONLY with their misdirected emotions and not an ounce of their brains.
Awesome – a crack in the armor to exploit.
I live in the Union of New England Socialist Republics and the only Republicans I know are of the Olympia Snowe variety. The people who are brave enough to make friends with me think it is their job to “civilize” me. Like, “Now, now, we recycle around here, let’s do our part. Be a good girl, don’t be a crazy hick.” Bah.
Bandmeeting, tell your friend people don’t need to shoot NYCers. They are doing a good enough job culling themselves via abortion.
The Left demand that we accept the “preferences of our betters,” and nowhere is this more evident than in this condescending nonsense. Where did our Peace Corps values of teaching poor to fish, rather that giving them a fish? The Left cannot maintain a guaranteed constituency by by allowing the poor to become “un-poor.” Liberals care, don’t you know?
“”The Left cannot maintain a guaranteed constituency by by allowing the poor to become “un-poor.” Liberals care, don’t you know?””
Thalpy
I think they just confuse compassion with sympathy. Conservatives know too much sympathy gets in the way of real compassion.
Another curious thing about liberals and conservatives — which should be familiar to anyone who reads the rantings of comment trolls on this and other blogs — is that libs have a very odd caricature inside their heads of what a conservative does and believes. Apparently we’re all fundamentalist Christians, bigots, literally worship Ronald Reagan, wish to kill poor people, like war, wish to destroy the environment, and are probably closeted gays.
Confronted with evidence that this isn’t so — that conservatives are reasonable people who simply disagree with liberal ideas — they get extremely angry. They accuse us of hypocrisy because we don’t conform to their little strawman. Again, I think it’s a question of identity: they’ve built up a picture of this hateful “other” to highlight their own virtue and status within the right-thinking tribe. Evidence to the contrary threatens that belonging and sense of virtue, so it must be a LIE!
Bandmeeting,
Just bought Harry Stein’s “I Can’t Believe I’m Sitting Next to a Republican”. Thanks for the recommending.
Back in the fall of 2004 I bought a “new” Washington Nationals baseball cap with the same swirly W the old Senators used. While wearing the cap around the Manhattan, this fellow walks by, sees it, and says, “Hey, Washington Senators, right!?” I said, “Right, except this is a political cap!” He walked off in a huff. (Or, as Groucho Marx said, “In a minute-and-a-huff.”)
In the end Leftism is an erroneous beliefsystem that gets traction because it is a mix of true and false parts. The true part appeals to the noble part of the soul, the false part appeals to the base part. And the two are interwoven.
Erroneous beliefsystems like this become popular because most people have good and bad in them. Pure truth will not become popular, pure falsehood also will not.
True in leftism: all people are equal in dignity. False in leftism: government programs can and will ensure this.
The first appeals to the noble side, but in full only if it is followed by: ‘and thus I personally have to try to be good, caring, honest and truthful to other people and recognize my shortcomings in virtue’. Clearly: followed by this last part it would not be popular. But when it is followed by ‘and the government should enforce it’, then the base, lazy, selfindulgent part of the soul can agree.
Only now the two parts together can become popular, satisfying both the good and base parts of the soul.
This is the basic dynamics of of all powerful worldview-errors.
The wisest of our ancestors called exactly this dynamics: ‘heresy’. And when heresy is understood as this, it is indeed, as they saw it, the most dangerous thing there is.
In the late 19th century intellectuals laughed at the very concept of heresy. They saw it wrongly as just stupid addiction to arbitrary dogma.
The 20th century, blackened into the darkest of all by the heresies of communism and national-socialism, proofed these intellectuals wrong and our oldfashioned ‘orthodox’ ancestors right.
And our time, rampant as it is with heresies as radical environmentalism, leftism, feminism and islam, proofs them right again.
Good, bright conservatives like Dennis Prager are constantly fighting heresy in this sense, in fact they do little else.
When I was young, I too laughed at the concept of heresy. But now, looking back on my life, I realise that the bulk of my suspicion, fear, sadness and anger, was all due to this old insideous snake. That snake that was, is now and will be, as long as there are human beings.
I’m 0 for 7 on your list, Trimegistus. But I definitely don’t consider myself a liberal. I’m a foreign policy conservative, a fiscal conservative, a personal responsibility conservative, and a limited government conservative. That’s what defines me – not a religion, not hatred, not worship of any politician, not a desire to destroy the environment.
Effess–The thing about “I can’t Believe I’m Sitting Next To A Republican” is that it is so readable, entertaining and meaningful. I’m as (fiscally) conservative as anyone here but I don’t really read a lot of the conservative books. Steyn’s “America Alone”, sure, but I didn’t even make it all the through “Liberal Fascism” and I Loooove Jonah Goldberg, love. I gave Stein’s book to a friend and there was a pretty good ripple through the closeted greater NYC conservative community in which I live. It’s just that good.
kcom: I’m not talking about what real conservatives do and think, I’m talking about the weird little strawman view of us liberals have. They’ve defined all our beliefs as code phrases. So if you favor fiscal responsibility, that’s just your code phrase for “I WANT POOR BLACK PEOPLE TO STARVE TO DEATH!” and if you’re a foreign policy conservative that really means “I WANT TO START A NUCLEAR WAR TO MAKE JESUS COME BACK!”
trimegistus
I have an idea that libs only partly believe in the strawman caricature.
They may not. It may be a tactic. By forcing conservatives to address the straw man, they avoid discussing real issues.
“By forcing conservatives to address the straw man, they avoid discussing real issues.”
That is their game plan. The republicans fall for it time after time. The real issue is we are Greece on a LARGE (historical) scale. All this chitter-chatter in DC & the MSM is as relevant as a squirrel trying to eat from my bird feeders.
We have a limited time frame to get serious in this country. If we don’t get serious, if we don’t tell the people in simple and concrete terms what is at stake we will all fall down. I say again, its broken arrow time. $38 billion in cuts does not cut butter. So, forget about ‘too big to fail’ and start thinking about ‘too big to save’.
Wandriaan: Excellent insight, the twinning of the noble and the base! Exactly, exactly so. And of course there’s the old human habit of hiding a bad motive under a good one.
I just have to say a word for the fundamentalist Christians. My mother’s family were of this tribe. Most of them are salt of the earth, regular folk who will be the first to come over and cook for you when someone dies, spot you a twenty when you’re broke and never ask for it back, and have a baby shower for the poor gal at work who’s having a baby and doesn’t have the money for as much as a layette. They take their religion seriously, and scoff at the “nuancy set” as not being able or stout-hearted enough to take it straight.
And they can be more open-minded than a lot of the snobs, too. I’ve certainly never heard the venomous scorn directed at the haute bourgeoisie from the fundamentalists that was aimed the other way.
As Grandma used to say, re heaven and hell and all that, “I don’t know what all the fighting’s about. Most of us are just trying to get to the same place anyway.”
I just have to say a word for the fundamentalist Christians.
My heart dropped there… and I’m Catholic. Head drooped, “oh, no… not someone taking a chance to rant at ‘fundies,’ they even did the ‘my mom’s family is fundamentalist’ thing….”
Thank you for disappointing the usual pattern!
You are quite right– the average Bible Christian I’ve met will disapprove of some differences, but they don’t lecture unless asked or begged, they don’t snub unless you REALLY cross the line (and even then, they’ll forgive at the drop of a hat).
As opposed to the Forces of Tolerance who tolerate all who share their beliefs.
“Isn’t it worth understanding a bit more about why approximately half the country votes differently than we do?”
It is this sentiment that keeps me reading this blog. I think this lady personifies what a liberal is supposed to be like, as in open-minded. It is a shame so many of the commenters lack the imagination/empathy to understand what she is saying.
Au contraire, Simon. We understand quite well.
I am sooo glad you are awash with imagination and empathy, unlike so many of us here, as you observe.
So you have draped the mantle of imagination and empathy over your own shoulders. Remind you of anyone? POTUS?
Simon.
In libspeak, “Understanding” equals approval.
Not actually the case in the real world.
“…She does not pretend she is just … a Republican for Israel, as so many in our Jewish community are.”
Please pardon my ignorance here, but what the *** does this mean? Unfortunately the majority of liberal left wing Jews in the US are the first ones to defend Palestinians. I realize it’s a lot more complicated. Any thoughts on this would be appreciated.
Look at the larger statement, JLK:
“Janet is a lifelong, passionate Republican. She does not pretend she is just a fiscal Republican, or just a Republican for Israel, as so many in our Jewish community are. She is a real, live, voting Republican. She likes Fox News and Rush Limbaugh. She admires Sarah Palin. She is for the defunding of NPR and Planned Parenthood. She is against “Obamacare,” and she is for parental notification of abortions. Right now on my Facebook page, I have linked to a New York Times article on how women’s rights are being violated by South Dakota’s new abortion laws. Janet has just posted on hers — I’m not kidding — video footage of her and her husband at target practice.”
I guess that being “just a Republican” on one or two things, like Israel or money, means the rest of your thinking is not screwed up.
That’s understanding and empathy for you. These people live on another planet, where they do not engage in “kidding” about target practice. I don’t kid about it either; I just do it. “Bang!” says the gun, “Eeek!” says the liberal.
You misunderstand me Tom, I am referring to the commenters on Salon, not you. Though given your rather knee-jerk and biting response, perhaps you could be counted amongst them.
A beaten dog snaps even at a friendly hand, Simon.
It took one or two readings for me to be sure you weren’t the standard troll we get, and I even recognized your name. (they can be stolen, after all)
Standard troll: unlinked name, short quote, attack on commenters, generally on a post that will get some random Google traffic.
He should’ve read a bit more carefully, but please don’t get angry!
keep plugging strcpy!
Not to keep whacking at this cooling horse carcass, but I think it’s important to point out how much influence fiction has, and has had, on how liberals view conservatives.
Most of what they “know” about us comes from fiction. They admit themselves that they don’t know any conservatives. So how do they know what we’re like?
Why, from watching The West Wing and The Colbert Report and movies like American Beauty or Deliverance, of course! They watch those hateful caricatures — as hateful as anything in The Eternal Jew — and they believe them.
The cleverer ones may know, intellectually, that those are caricatures, but below the level of conscious thought that hateful propaganda becomes truth. Everybody “just knows” that Republicans are racists. Never mind that the party was founded specifically to fight slavery in America. Everybody “just knows” that Republicans are the party of the bloated rich. Never mind that the Democrats get enormous financial support from billionaires and carry the most affluent counties in every election.
Blogs like this help, a little, but I honestly don’t know how to crack the shell of invincible ignorance and comfortable misinformation that liberals encase themselves in.
Trimegistus.
Cracking the shell is a, if you’ll excuse me, poor metaphor.
It’s not a shell. It goes all the way down/in.
They need to believe as they do. The need trumps facts.
Example: conservatives are racists. One of the cheapest ways of feeling good about yourself is to insist you’re not a racist. But if everybody’s not a racist, what’s the point? You have to be in a small, therefore noble, minority. To do that, you have to believe in larger and larger numbers of racists. The smaller the group of non-racists, the nobler the members. The larger the group of racists, therefore, the fewer are left over to be non-racists.
And it’s important to have some reason to believe oneself not a racist, since, as the conservative writer John Derbyshire once remarked, except for a few bohemians, most of us [including liberal self-anointed non-racists] will bankrupt ourselves to live away from African-American neighborhoods. Which is racist in a simplistic sense. Which can’t be allowed, so you have to think of some other way to be non-racist and noble.
Green…. Don’t get me started.
Sorry, Simon. You meant the commenters there, not here. My mistake. But perhaps you can now understand my bristly reaction.