For the Fourth: On liberty, the great dividing line
The Fourth isn’t just about barbeque, although I defer to no one in my regard for barbecue.
It’s about liberty. As the years go by, I appreciate that fact more and more, and sense that our liberty is more and more threatened from within as well as without—and by “within” I mean not just those among us who would destroy it for others, but something in the human heart and mind that means not everyone cares very much about it until they have lost it.
In fact, there’s something in many human hearts and minds that leads some people not to care about liberty even after they’ve lost it, unless they’re the ones in the Gulag.
For whatever reason, I’ve always been very sensitive to liberty, very touchy about it. For example, even when I was quite young, I would pay extra for a health insurance policy that gave me total freedom to choose my doctor. This may seem like a small thing, and at the time I didn’t connect it with any abstract principle such as “liberty.” But I had a horror of being boxed in by a government or a business or an agency telling what I could or could not do and where I could and could not go.
That’s not to say that I was some trailblazing, independent, courageous spirit, cutting an adventurous swath through the world. I lived a pretty ordinary life, I thought. I had a husband and a child. And even later, when I went through my political change, I had no idea where it would lead, either socially (estrangement from quite a few people, mostly mild but sometimes severe) or in terms of what I do with a great deal of my time (reading about politics/history, and writing this blog). One doesn’t always have any idea where it will lead when you take a step, and then another step, and then another, and pretty soon you’re somewhere you never, never ever, thought you’d be.
When I was young I also used to assume that a lot of people, the majority of people, felt the same way I did. Not just about liberty, but about a lot of things. For example, I thought just about everyone loved poetry—what’s not to like? I was in my thirties before I became aware that love of poetry was a relatively rare thing. Another thing I assumed, when managed care started taking over the health insurance world, was that more people would hate it and complain bitterly about it—and, if they could do it, would pay extra to get away from it. But I was surprised when so many people I knew didn’t seem all that offended by it, and even those who could have paid more in order to have choice often decided against it. They couldn’t be bothered, and were happy to save the money.
Then, when I was going through my slow political change between the fall of 2001 (post-9/11) and 2003, I was living a rather isolated life in a place when I hardly knew anyone, newly separated from a husband I’d been with for 30 years. I was also recovering from a very painful arm injury and surgery. So the change experience was a solitary one, and I didn’t start mentioning it to people until after it was pretty much complete, some time in 2003.
I had somehow assumed that other people had been going through something similar to my political journey, although perhaps milder. This now seems to me a rather humorous thought, not to mention profoundly naive (you might even call it stupid), but that’s the way it was for me. I was truly shocked to be on the receiving end of a significant amount of hostility from a lot of people when I mentioned my positions on various issues of the day, and this involved friends and acquaintances I’d known for decades and with whom I’d never even discussed politics before or had a single disagreement of any substance.
Talk about an eye-opener.
Now I have a different way of looking at all of this. I have come to believe that, although there are many elements that go into the reasons people differ on these issues, the most essential difference is the comparative importance people give to liberty.
Since this is the Fourth of July, a holiday on which we celebrate the birth of our nation that was (as Lincoln said) “conceived in liberty,” I though I’d re-publish a slightly-edited version of an essay on liberty that I first wrote in January of 2014 (I also suggest you read the exchange I had today with commenter “Ymarsakar” that began here, about liberals and liberty).
Here’s the post from 2014:
Commenter “DNW” has a question:
How in the world could these [liberal and leftist] others not value liberty and voluntary association as the very premisses that made human life worth living? But they obviously don’t…
We now have a situation wherein the classic justifying predicate of this polity and our civil association ”“ the preservation and enhancement of personal liberty ”“ has been officially abandoned by one major party and a large portion of the electorate, in favor of a fascist scheme of state enforced social solidarity and life-energy redistribution.
I can’t speak for all liberals, “progressives,” or leftists. Nor do they even speak for each other, because there’s a great deal of variety among them in how far they want to go to stifle liberty, and how much they value liberty.
In my own family of origin, for example, there was quite a variety of points of view on that score, especially if you included distant relatives. My own father and mother were garden-variety liberals (“liberals” as defined back then, which was not as leftist as now). But the very-extended family included leftists various and sundry, including those who were Sovietphiles and even a few later on who were Maoists.
Talk about fun! Family gatherings involving this larger group (which occurred quite infrequently) usually featured—after a few hours of conviviality—a degeneration into shouting matches over politics. I wish now I had paid more attention to the details of the content. But even as a child I heard enough to be both vaguely entertained by these arguments and repelled by them. The latter emotion won out, in part because of the arguments’ repetitive nature (nobody ever convinced anyone of anything) and in part because what the leftist branch was saying seemed so dogmatic, unreasonable, and manifestly wrong to me.
Those of you who lump together leftists and liberals may be surprised to hear that the arguments between the two wings of my family were so bitter (there were one or two conservatives, too, who had married in). But the liberals and the leftists were at loggerheads, the liberals believing in liberty, capitalism, and that the USSR was a totalitarian slagheap of a police state up to no good in the world, and the leftists believing that the true liberty lay in defeating capitalism, and that the Soviets were the greatest thing since sliced bread.
That was in the 50s and 60s, of course, and a little bit in the 70s as well. The mainstream of the Democratic Party, which my parents then represented, has moved to the left over the ensuing years. Some of the liberals I know have moved to the left with it, but some have not. And in the last couple of years, as the assaults on liberty have cascaded, I have noticed that the liberals I know seem to divide naturally into two camps: those who love liberty and to whom it is important, and those who do not and to whom it is not.
I don’t know the relative size of the two groups, because I don’t seek out political discussions with my friends and family; I don’t want get-togethers to degenerate into the useless, repetitive, unproductive arguments I witnessed in my youth, which they easily could, with me now as the sole conservative. But I know that those two groups exist, and I think that what differentiates them are (a) the person’s need to control others and/or society; and (b) the degree that the person thinks he/she can do so effectively and get the desired results.
Among most of my friends their motives are “good”—that is, they want people to be happier, healthier, and in general just better. Some leftists I know have the same motivation (I would add that most of the people who think they are doing good are also motivated by the need to feel that they are good people for wanting that). But many leftists—we’re talking about quite a few of the leaders of the movement, and certainly people such as Stalin—have a different motivation: they are motivated almost purely by the desire for power and control.
There is an unholy alliance between the two groups. The first is the much-larger pack of would-be do-gooders who believe that liberalism is the way to go about it, whose minds are formed by a combination of their families growing up, present-day peers, the MSM, eduction, politicians, literature, the entertainment business, and in some cases their “progressive” churches and synagogues. The second is the smaller but extremely influential group of leftist activists, some proudly out as unrepentant “progressives,” and some just quietly going about their business, some motivated by the desire for power/control plus the idea that they’re doing “good,” and the rest just wanting the power/control part.
Back when Mayor Bloomberg of New York was heavily engaged in banning Big Gulps, I had some discussions with a couple of liberal friends about it. Some were offended by what Bloomberg had done, although others were in favor. That was one of the strongest demonstrations I’ve seen of what I have come to consider a very important and somewhat invisible dividing line between those liberals who love and value liberty and those who do not. You might call them the non-statists (or perhaps the less-statists) and the statists. Don’t forget, too, that there are statists on the right, too, although in my experience there are far far fewer.
But it was the Sarah Conly book that really crystallized things for me. Remember Conly, author of Against Autonomy? I can think of no better demonstration of the statist impulse plus the supposedly do-goody one combining to create a vile synergy. And who better to explain it all but Ms. Conly herself:
I argue that autonomy, or the freedom to act in accordance with your own decisions, is overrated””that the common high evaluation of the importance of autonomy is based on a belief that we are much more rational than we actually are. We now have lots of evidence from psychology and behavioral economics that we are often very bad at choosing effective means to our ends. In such cases, we need the help of others””and in particular, of government regulation””to keep us from going wrong.
If you want to know how a person can justify such tyranny to themselves, that’s how. How they can be so stupid as to believe it a good idea (assuming that Conly does believe it rather than merely mouthing it in order to get a lot of publicity and maybe even power one day) is another, more mysterious question. It’s a question I have yet to answer to my satisfaction, actually, but let’s just say that I’m beginning to think the desire for liberty versus the desire to control others might just be something innate.
The sad thing is that even those liberals who love liberty are for the most part voting for people dedicated to ending it.
[NOTE: It occurs to me that a lot of liberals I know would say to me, “Hhm—if you say you love liberty so much, why are you so bent of out shape at the Obergefell decision on same-sex marriage? Don’t you think same-sex marriage represents the expansion of liberty?”
Glad you asked that question, folks, because this is my answer: no, it doesn’t, although it may appear to.
I’m fine with gay people being able to get married. The problem is the process by which this has come about, which was to stretch the Constitution and find a right there that does not exist, as well as to undermine the principle of federalism on which our country is based. If the very same end had been accomplished by either a state-by-state vote (legislative and/or referendum) or a constitutional amendment, that would have been fine with me.
I also recognize that same-sex marriage might end up having unforeseen negative consequences on the institution of marriage. This sort of thing is a valid fear with any large and sudden societal change (although I happen to think same-sex marriage would not have that particular effect). Nevertheless, if it had been accomplished in a constitutional manner I personally would support it. However, the method by which it was actually done opens up a Pandora’s box of tyrannical possibilities, a way for the courts to find all sorts of rights where none exist and to bypass the people and the legislatures. Unbridled power in the hands of judges (particularly those appointed for life) does not strike a blow for liberty, it sounds a very ominous and dangerous note. Unbridled power in the hands of one branch of government is what our Founders very rightly warned us against and tried their best to protect us from.
Lastly (and very importantly in terms of liberty), Obergefell will almost certainly result in the persecution and/or prosecution of religious people who object to providing services for same-sex marriage ceremonies if it runs counter to their religion. This would not have been nearly as true in the case of state-by-state legalization, because many states provided an opt-out clause of some sort in their legislation. Now, with Obergefell stating that same-sex marriage is a right embodied in the Constitution, a more powerful conflict is set up between the right to exercise one’s religion and the right to gay marriage. Those who say that of course it will be resolved in favor of freedom of religion are sadly mistaken, I believe. It may not happen right away that religious freedom (or the right of religious people to that particular livelihood) is taken away in regard to being involved in same-sex marriage ceremonies, but I predict it will happen in time. That would be very much a loss of liberty.
See also this.]
“Commenter ‘DNW’ has a question:How in the world could these [liberal and leftist] others not value liberty and voluntary association as the very premisses that made human life worth living? But they obviously don’t…”
Ah! Along with Conly, the “Guardians” of the Myers-Briggs type indicator…. A libertarian-anarchist friend pointed me to this category of personality.
Perhaps you can post your followup thoughts about this, neo?
Hours before I posted here on the Court Packing plan to remedy the High Court’s lawessness and the collectivism of Obamunism idea here, Glenn Reynolds did the same in his trademark tweet-like rebuff to Ron Bailey at Reason mag, who was bent on chastizing Senator Ted Cruz.
http://pjmedia.com/instapundit/209932/#respond
Glenn wrote, the Supremes are already a political branch – and added, then next post-election Congress should reject filibuster rules and pass legislation to make the Court 15 members in all. (I believe that number has to do with by-passing any Robert’s obstructionism.)
People, THIS PIG WILL FLY! It would re-write all the Kennedy legacy bovi excrement and be a direct rebuke to Robert’s slavish Washington (Com)Post “reading,: (to credit Rush Limbaugh).
This is a debate this coming election and our nation desperately needs – do you want a real Constitution? Or arbitrary Rule by Men?
http://www.cato.org/multimedia/cato-video/people-rebuilding-liberty-without-permission
Amen to your observations about liberty. And most of all, about freedom from any form of tyranny.
Happy 4th!
How they can be so stupid as to believe it a good idea (assuming that Conly does believe it rather than merely mouthing it in order to get a lot of publicity and maybe even power one day) is another, more mysterious question.
They know themselves for the weakling trash humans that they are, and are searching for a master to tell them what to do, as dogs are without a pack.
The fame and fortune that comes with it is a bonus and salves their conscience, makes their decision more palatable.
When I was young I also used to assume that a lot of people, the majority of people, felt the same way I did. Not just about liberty, but about a lot of things.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
Conversely, highly skilled individuals tend to underestimate their relative competence, erroneously assuming that tasks that are easy for them are also easy for others
It’s an error about human nature or rather how humans work, since most abstract knowledge concerns math, physics, engineering, and other more concrete issues. It takes longer for people to learn to properly judge humans since there are no real teachers, experts, on this matter that sells their services expressly for that. There are mathematicians and career ones at that, but are there human interrogators who can spot deception and weakness training people? Perhaps, but how many are there in civilian life such that people can access them?
As one of those not in favor of same-sex marriage…
I’m in general agreement with your point about it. I live in California. Political disappointment is what I’m used to. If the voters had voluntarily agreed to allow same-sex marriage, then I would have been disappointed. But no more than that. What angers me is the rather blatant lawlessness (and that’s what it is) that the judges here engaged in to bring it about.
First was the highest court in California quite literally declaring in a majority opinion that the existance of Civil Unions (recently voted into being) meant that same sex marriage violated the state constitution (with the obvious corrolary being that if civil unions did not exist, then same sex marriage wouldn’t have violated the state constitution). That such an absurd opinion could be seriously put to paper beggered belief. And yet, that’s what a majority of the state’s highest court informed we citizens of the state.
Second, after Prop 8 resolved the state constitutional problem (because it amended the state constitution), those against Prop 8 pushed an argument that essentially amounted to the idea that the mere gathering of signatures for the ballot measure had been a violation of the state’s constitution.
Third, when the case came up before the Federal court, the people who had been elected to defend it (and other ballot measures that passed, of course), all completely abdicated their responsibility.
Fourth, when the Federal judge who was overseeing the case, and was widely believed to be an in the closet gay man (he came out almost immediately after the case, iirc), and thus not exactly an unbiased party, continued to issue biased instruction after biased instruction. Things got so bad that the US Supreme Court had to step in on at least two occasions (iirc) to tell him to stop issuing various instructions.
And lastly, when after dealing with the abuses in points three and four, the US Supreme Court essentially said, “Too bad, so sad,” and refused to hear the case due to lack of standing.
I should note that I understand the court’s point with that last item. But at the same time, if the elected officers of the state refuse to do their job, what recourse do the supporters of a controversial measure have? If state term limits came up before a Federal Court, and the state’s elected officials (hardly disinterested parties, after all) declined to defend them, would the Supreme Court also decline to hear an appeal due to lack of standing by those who would defend the law?
Needless to say, the experience left me somewhat bitter and angry – emotions that I likely wouldn’t have felt had the proponents of same sex marriage not engaged in the rather blatant shenanigans that they performed.
Neo- from what I read and hear about same sex marriage, we are very certainly going to see persecution of religious and religious institutions, probably in the near future.
The ardent promoters of this are the least tolerant among us, they hate religion, and are now set to use this law to go after big game, I.e., Orthodox Jews, Catholics and Evangelicals, the last bulwarks of basic moral teaching and philosophy.
I also think the whole thing is demonically inspired, and that the table is being set(is now set?)to take these institutions down.
Lastly, I don’t exclusively fault the homosexual community. The heterosexual community has done everything to bring this about, through our own lack of living morally rigorous lives. I was one of them for many years, so am just as responsible as anybody else. I think it’s going to get ugly, and soon.
More shocking than the bad court decisions to me has been the censorship blitzkrieg regarding the rebel flag. No person vetting video games at Apple or cheesy paraphernalia at Walmart gave it a thought a week ago. Then, faster than Bo Duke could slide across the hood of a Dodge Charger, it was a racist effrontery. It has even been removed from Civil War sites. It didn’t even take a demagogic smear campaign; people buried it without being asked. Free speech seems not to have even passed their minds.
I don’t find it difficult to make distinctions between flying the rebel flag on top of a state capital, in a confederate memorial on capital grounds, on the roof of a toy car, and in front of a burning cross in the yard of a black family that just moved into the neighborhood. Where are the shades of gray people when the nuances are not hard to see?
In 1977, the ACLU and the Supreme Court weren’t satisfied simply with allowing neo-Nazis to march through Skokie–they were emphatic that free speech meant the Nazis must also be allowed to display swastikas. It was the principle of the thing.
Which is more offensive, Nazis with swastikas in a Jewish neighborhood full of holocaust survivors* or yahoos displaying the Stars and Bars as some sort of nostalgia for ‘The Lost Cause’ or a nonconformist spirit?
Fundamental principles most certainly have not changed in 28 years. That some people’s understanding of things as basic as free speech seems to have changed that much is surprising and alarming. It has me wondering who among us would be okay marching people out of cities é la Khmer Rouge.
*the march eventually took place elsewhere but the the legal decisions were clear.
It didn’t even take a demagogic smear campaign; people buried it without being asked.
They were ordered to do so. The SJWs in control of those companies ensures that the Left’s commands are passed through the hierarchy. Such events do not transpire without coordination, not at this speed.
Democracy(aka Equality): “Two wolves and a lamb sit down for supper.”
Liberty: “The lamb comes fully armed and ready to contest the meal.”
Questions?
_______________________________________
My Beautiful Sicilian Firecracker’s Birthday is today. The whole country throws a Big Fuss.
This was the worst Fourth of July I can ever remember. I am just sick over the demise of what was once my country. It is unrecognizable now.
@rickl
As am I. There really isn’t much to celebrate. Pessimism is unavoidable. While I’m convinced Republicans have a better than 50% chance of defeating Hillary, I am equally convinced it really is of minimal significance. A victory in 2016 will only slow the steady decline, not reverse it.
The Republican Party as presently constituted is worse than useless.
There is only one party now: The Government Party.
Tyranny Just Keeps Coming…
America is at the mall and obese …
Thank you for this July 4th piece Néo. Chewing on it I wondered about associations.
I am now very careful about whom I have around. To live free you need be amongst freedom lovers.
Human interactions are input into your brain-computer where garbage in is garbage out ….
Discriminate, ruthlessly.
Sorry: link for above:
Tyranny Just Keeps Coming.
We know who’s doing it.
Why are you referring to the persecution of religious people in the future tense?
http://dailysignal.com/2015/07/02/state-silences-bakers-who-refused-to-make-cake-for-lesbian-couple-fines-them-135k/?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=thftwitter
jon baker:
Oh, I’m aware it’s been going on for some time, in test cases. I’m talking about something more universal, perhaps a definitive ruling by the Supreme Court, for example.
“. . . the common high evaluation of the importance of autonomy is based on a belief that we are much more rational than we actually are. We now have lots of evidence from psychology and behavioral economics that we are often very bad at choosing effective means to our ends. In such cases, we need the help of others–and in particular, of government regulation–to keep us from going wrong.”
I know I should be used to this sort of thing by now. But I’m still staggered by the utter absence of logic and self-awareness. If each individual person is too irrational to know the most effective means to an end, how does a selected group of the very same flawed individuals suddenly become more rational and wise, solely because, by whatever means, they acquired power? The equation in these people’s minds is revealed so clearly, though not to themselves — those with power, by definition, are wise and rational because they hold power, while those who do not hold power are too irrational to know what’s good for them, solely because they are powerless. Rationality=power. Fundamentally, power is all that matters.
There is a great deal of chatter, much of it badly flawed by ignorance, about THE LEFT and THE RIGHT. Chatter about Hillary being pushed to the Center by Sanders, being pulled to the Left by Warren, while Hillary in fact says damn near nothing other than “The Sky is Blue, and have you hugged your ovaries today?”
It is time to Write an outline of what Leftism and Rightism are, detailing the features that are definitional. The Center is easy–milling sheep in a pen, sometimes NE, sometimes SW. But why is an authoritarian Rightist better/worse (take your pick) than an authoritarian Leftist, if one is? What are the logical extremes of each?
Whoops, not Sanders; meant Webb.
Push/Pull are interchangeable in effect.
I was proud to have been an American.
“Lastly (and very importantly in terms of liberty), Obergefell will almost certainly result in the persecution and/or prosecution of religious people who object to providing services for same-sex marriage ceremonies if it runs counter to their religion.”
I believe that churches and other religious organizations can have an easy out for this. They can merely refuse to conduct “legal” marriages. They can conduct religious marriages within the bounds of their religion (as they have been doing for thousands of years). They can refuse to require marriage licenses for their ceremony and refuse to sign marriage certificates. They can remove the government from their marriage process entirely. Of course, those so married will not have the legal benefits and strictures imposed by a legal marriage. If they desire such benefits, they can always go to the government, ask for permission to marry, pay their fees, and participate in a 60 second ceremony.
The progression of tyranny in America appears to simply go something like this….Create an incompetent population through touchy feely emotion based “education”. Even go so far as to import the highly incompetent for added benefit. Walllaaaa! The masses need govt assistance and guidance.
Neo,
I hope this essay becomes widely read.
Tiny typo in paragraph 9.
“Take about an eye-opener.”
Change “take” to “talk.”
Or I’m just being more dull than usual.
“I have come to believe that, although there are many elements that go into the reasons people differ on these issues, the most essential difference is the comparative importance people give to liberty.”
You make it sound so mild; so understandable; so “civil”. Almost like a biological distinction – like eye color. Some people are this way; some people are not. Oh well!
It’s more like the difference between someone being a committed German Nazi or not. It is closest to Tolkein’s allegory of some being Orcs from Mordor and others not.
Let’s put your words in Gandolf’s mouth: “I have come to believe that, although there are many elements that go into the reasons some people fight for our side and some people become Orcs from Mordor, the most essential difference is the comparative importance they give to liberty”.
Duh!
I can’t blame you for being afraid to go all the way down your courses of logical inference, but in a way I can. In the end, if we lose, won’t there be weeping and gnashing of teeth from our side for all the times we failed to tell the truth about the other side.
Truth: They aren’t evil because they are wrong. They are wrong because they are evil.
That’s a fact. Krauthhammer can go to Hades for his pithy meme that says otherwise.
It’s a battle for everything. The entire world and civilization are at stake. We are fighting the ultimate enemy – the Liar and the Father of Lies. God d&mn us if we fail from lack of nerve to tell the truth.
Years ago, people thought the Democrat part or the Left were merely some political factions and parties, something to do with economics or above their pay grade issues.
They didn’t hate the Democrats enough. They didn’t hate the Left enough to understand. Some things can only be seen with enough emotion. Logic does not allow people to comprehend human nature.
In most of American history, fear and hate has been used by the Democrats to waste Southern lives fighting in CW I, killing blacks and whites with Jim Crow and KKK during Reconstruction, and maintaining the totalitarian control of the South using Democrat politics, culture, and religious doctrines. When the Demoncrats lost the South, their power was set back, so they had to gather more allies, i.e. the Leftist alliance, for a comeback. This time the comeback wasn’t merely some isolated geographic region called the South, but the entirety of America and perhaps even the world.
The same totalitarian mind control forces that kept the Southerns hating and fearing Sherman and Lincoln, are the same keeping the black slaves on the Democrat plantation now. They will expand that plantation system to whites, to Mexicans, to Islamos, even if it fails.
The Truth, rather than being like the sun, is more like the stars in the night sky.
The sun merely has the most powerful of truths, meant only for those who wish to acquire it at the cost of going blind or losing some other sensory faculty.
Most people do not value seeing all the truths enough to sacrifice anything important. The stars are enough for most humans. Conformity is enough for most humans.
But the people who push the boundaries and carry civilization forward, they aren’t satisfied. They were never satisfied, which means society don’t like them.
http://amasci.com/weird/vindac.html#j8
Society considers the individuals closer to the truth to be blocking their view of the stars and sun.
My Dad’s cousins, farmers in a small Alsatian village, big families, everybody knew each other and grew up together.
They came, gave them two hours to pack what they could carry in two luggage a person.
Marched them off to the train station. Lucky the train went south and not north.
No one interfered in this tightly knit community …
Néo Libtard friends are not pets, they’re dangerous ….
There is a huge disconnect between how the founders conceived “freedom” and how it is viewed today by progressives. The founders sought to protect and ensure freedom on an individual basis, the pitting of individual freedoms as against the governmental efforts to restrict them. Freedom of speech, freedom of religion, right to bear arms, and the rest of the Bill of Rights. Not only does the left care nothing about any of that today, they are in fact are hostile to it. They care about grievance groups and amassing political power through them.
“Political tags — such as royalist, communist, democrat, populist, fascist, liberal, conservative, and so forth — are never basic criteria.
The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire.” – Robert A. Heinlein
Obviously, the reason WHY those who want people to be controlled varies; maintenance of the status quo, attainment of power, ideology, etc. But whatever the reason, control of others is diametrically opposed to liberty.
Liberty has always been the pole star for me since I became interested in politics during the Goldwater campaign. It’s centrality was reinforced by the war on Communism America fought for most of my adult life.
Unfortunately the totalitarian impulse has always been alive and well in rather large numbers of people. The lust for power defines the left.
The cold war was won by Reagan, Thatcher and the Pope but I don’t see any equivalent figures on the scene right now.
Neo,
You have to address the appeal of hatred and the appeal of feeling superior for looking down one’s nose at the unwashed, icky folks in flyover country.
Bernie Sanders gets a standing ovation for telling people that Republicans’ use of the term “family values” is code for denying women contraception. This so stupid and so contrary to fact that it is worthwhile to spend a moment to consider why liberals want so desperately to believe it that they suspend whatever limited intellect they possess. Answer — they really want to hate conservatives and Republicans.
They delight in slandering their opponents. They relish the hating. And they really relish hating while feeling good about themselves for their hatred.
Neo,
one more thing. Good people, morally decent peope, do not embrace lies and slander. All Democrats, liberals and leftists, embrace lies and slander. It’s not possible to support Obama, the Clintons, Algore, Pelosi, Reid and the rest without embracing lies and slander.
Lies, slanders, and the appeal of hatred are what define today’s Democrats. As another commenter noted, they are evil.
G6loq:
Some do, some don’t (and some did and some did not, even in WWII). The question, as I wrote earlier, is how many would and how many would not.
Whatever happened to your father’s relatives, in some cases and under some circumstances some liberals did intervene, or tried to; I wrote about the issue here. In some countries a great many intervened, actually, such as in Denmark—which certainly contained a lot of people you might call “liberals.” The government of Denmark was controlled by social democrats (see this) and that was the majority party in the country.
stan:
But many, perhaps even most, don’t know it’s lies and slander. Have you not read my “a mind is a difficult thing to change” at all?
Mike:
I disagree profoundly with you, and have discussed this in depth many times, so I’ll not go through that again here.
I will add, however, that you are wrong that I am afraid to agree with you. I don’t run away from harsh truths if I see them. I am speaking from my own experience, my own observations, of liberals. And a large part of that experience is my own experience as a liberal. I was not evil then and changed to being not-evil now. That’s not even remotely what happened. And I know quite a few other liberals who have changed positions, as well (many are comments on this blog, or bloggers themselves).
You want to make it far more black and white than it is. Human folly is far more complex than you make it. People are given propaganda, and propaganda works. It works on the non-evil, too—which is most liberals.
If anyone is fearful, I believe it is you, and that you are afraid to confront the fact that so many people who are not evil can be so easily made to serve an evil cause.
cornflour:
Thanks—will fix.
Hangtown Bob:
But I wasn’t referring to churches conducting marriage services. That wasn’t what I meant by “services” at all. I believe that will continue to be protected the longest, actually.
What I meant was “services” by Christians, such as flowers and cakes and photographs for weddings. As for the church, the way they will attack that is to cut off tax-exempt status for church-run colleges. That will be the first line of attack.
Neo,
Sure they do. They know that no Republican is trying to deny any woman contraception. Just as they know that no woman has been denied. They choose to believe it because it gives them permission to hate.
They know that Voter ID is not racist. They know that there isn’t anyone who has failed to get a voter ID. They want to believe it because it lets them hate.
They know that they were lied to about Trayvon, Ferguson, Obamacare, Benghazi, and the stimulus. They know the gender pay gap and sex assault on campus is BS. They know that the Clintons lie all the time about everything. They KNOW these things. They just don’t care. Because hating is more important to them. They enjoy the hating and feeling good about themselves for doing it!
I repeat. They know they are being lied to. They know. The lies are too numerous and too obvious. And they know that the right is being slandered. They don’t care. They believe in a greater truth that comes from embracing the Left and hating the right.
I will offer a supposition. Embracing the lie is part of the religious ritual of being a left/liberal. It’s part of who they are and how they define themselves.
They aren’t the innocent rubes you want to believe them to be. They start at the beginning with the self-definition of being left/liberal. All else flows from that start. Including the embrace of whatever lies and slanders that entails. What they “think” flows from and is a product of being left/liberal. And if their leaders tell them to change what to think, they will. [Just as they did after the Soviet/Nazi pact and then again after Hitler invaded.]
“the leftists believing that the true liberty lay in defeating capitalism”
I always find it funny when people say they want to destroy capitalism. What is the definition of capital? It’s just the means to produce goods and services, in other words tools. Capitalism is just the use of tools to produce goods and services so defeating capitalism is defeating people who use tools. That’s what the Luddites wanted.
I’ve been watching the media on the Greek vote today.
The Leftist AP (we do agree the AP’s Leftist, as Leftism is understood, don’t we?) used “Left-wing” to characterize Syriza and Tsipras 4 times in its article.
What’s up with that?
Neo said to Mike:
“If anyone is fearful, I believe it is you, and that you are afraid to confront the fact that so many people who are not evil can be so easily made to serve an evil cause.”
Neo also said in her post:
” I was truly shocked to be on the receiving end of a significant amount of hostility from a lot of people when I mentioned my positions on various issues of the day, and this involved friends and acquaintances I’d known for decades…”
In my opinion, people who are supposed to be your friends become hostile because you hold a political position different from theirs don’t deserve the benefit of the doubt. Their reaction itself is evil – especially when they know you and have been “friends” and “acquaintances” for years. If you were trying to force your opinions on them then perhaps they would have a fig leaf to cover their nakedness but Neo does not come across as the type of person who tries to force others.
Example — the claim is made that America’s cops are roaming the streets gunning down innocent black teens.
Anyone living in the real America knows this is just stupid. Our real world experience is enough to demonstrate that this is plainly false. Even people who live and work in isolation from the real world and who are insulated from the normal daily activity of cops and black teens can understand that the claim is very likely false. If for no other reason, they should know that such a shooting is the quickest way for a cop to ruin his life. So normal, rational people not overwhelmed with a desire to hate will hear such a claim and find it very unlikely.
Not the left/liberals. They want to believe it. So they do. Because they want to hate. They want to accuse and convict, even without adequate cause. They want to, and did, rush to judgment precisely because they were so eager to hate. Hating is what they do.
The desire to judge, and to hate, is fundamental to the left/liberal in America in 2015. We see it in every issue, every cause, and every political campaign. We’ve seen it non-stop throughout the Obama years. We saw it in the insane Bush hatred.
I don’t see how anyone can look at what liberals support and who they vote for and try to claim that liberals aren’t embracing hatred, lies and slander.
stan:
You are coming to incorrect conclusions about what people WANT.
Read my series on my political development.
By the way, not all liberals buy all parts of the liberal agenda. I know plenty of liberals who vote Democrat but don’t buy parts of it. The main reason they tend to vote Democrat is that they think Democrats are kind and mean well, and Republicans are mean and don’t mean well. That’s what’s been drummed into their heads by the media and by most of the liberal people they know, and certainly by leftist activists, who pull a lot of the strings.
Dennis:
The people who are still my friends are NOT the ones who showed so much hostility.
My friends were far more puzzled than hostile. The hostility I faced was mainly from these groups:
(1) people who had just met me, or were mild acquaintances (this was by far the most numerous group)
(2) a couple of relatives, who got over it
(3) a few friends or relatives who severed relations with me
So the vast majority of the hostility was in the group “acquaintances” and/or “strangers.” A few close friends and relatives were also involved (and one or two stopped speaking to me), but nowhere near the majority. My remaining friends have not been hostile. There are many in that group. As I said, they’re more puzzled than hostile. They don’t agree, but are not hostile. Some even listen to me now and then.
Yes, I was amazed at the amount of hostility I faced and the depth and intensity of it, but rest assured that for the most part it was not from friends.
stan:
You write, “They know that no Republican is trying to deny any woman contraception. Just as they know that no woman has been denied.”
Wrong, wrong, wrong. Most of them don’t follow things closely at all and don’t know anything of the sort. Hate does not motivate most of the people I know, fear motivates them, stirred up by propaganda that they read and believe is true (NPR, CNN, Boston Globe, their Democratic leaders). Fear is a very potent motivator.
You give people far too much credit for knowledge and independent thinking. And you discount the influence of fear, which operates greatly in many people’s lives, particularly women IMHO.
There’s insufficient information to tell whether any individual is evil or not. There is sufficient information to determine that the Leftist alliance is evil, that anyone who chooses to join them or stay with them to support their goals, also are responsible partly for that evil.
Thus I judge people based on their behavior, what they do, rather than what they say they want.
This probably ties back to a lot of what Neo and I were debating, concerning the power and extent of Jim Jones’ propaganda, mind control, etc. People who joined the death cult, got trapped inside later on, when the hammer came down and they were forced around a lot. The Left took a lot of the direct force techniques used in control from those decades and refined them with Stazi methods and Gestapo secret police techniques, in order to avoid having to use direct force or torture. Instead of a person being controlled by a lot of external apparatus that had to be maintained, they were controlled by something else, invisible in nature.
“….so many people who are not evil can be so easily made to serve an evil cause.”
That’s an outrageous indictment of your fellow man. I merely say they are evil (by which I am supported by every shred of human history and anthropology). You say they are stupid animals.
I at least give them the proper dignity of being human beings.
Even so, I would like you to regale us with the tales of when you told these beings how dumb and sheep-like they were. Do you have the courage even there to tell them what you think about them?
I have zero problem telling any human being anywhere that they are evil – since each and every one is. It’s not a problem. Telling them they are stupid animals, what you think of them? I wouldn’t dream of it. It is both untrue, and impolite.
My guess is you don’t tell them that either. But you think it. That is established.
Mike:
I think you’ve jumped the shark.
People can be lied to and they believe it. It’s happened all around the world. Do you not believe that propaganda exists, and that it works? Have you not observed how many people can be propagandized into serving an evil cause? I wouldn’t think it would be something I need to prove at this point.
It doesn’t mean they are stupid (although of course some people are stupid). It doesn’t mean they are not human. Smart people can be the worst, because the intellect isn’t necessarily a guide to telling right from wrong, or to figure out which sources of information to trust and which are lying or mistaken.
I was a liberal. I believed that (for example) the NY Times and the Boston Globe (my most-read newspapers until the advent of the internet) were telling—get this—the truth. I was very smart, and had the degrees to prove it. I also am a person who cares deeply about right and wrong and morality. I wasn’t a political activist, so for the most part all I did politically was to vote, but I certainly voted for (and therefore facilitated) things that I now consider to have had very bad consequences.
I wrote about this process (both for myself and others) at great, great length in my “A mind is a difficult thing to change” series. I certainly don’t need to wade through all of that again.
And oh, I’m sure your going around yelling “Evildoers! Evildoers!” at random liberals really has a great net effect and causes them to change their wicked ways. That’s sarcasm, in case you don’t recognize it.
I actually try use reason and logic when I talk to people, and to respect them, and I’ve had a modest amount of success. I don’t waste my time talking about politics to leftist activists, though. I’m well aware I won’t be changing their minds, either with name-calling or with logic.
Please keep remarking that people think liberals are kind and conservatives are cruel. It is what I thought, and it’s what the majority of liberals I know think. That is, I agree, THE number one thing your garden-variety liberal belivees. I know from experience how long it can take to begin to notice that this might not be true, much less how long it takes to believe it.
“. . . the common high evaluation of the importance of autonomy is based on a belief that we are much more rational than we actually are. We now have lots of evidence from psychology and behavioral economics that we are often very bad at choosing effective means to our ends. In such cases, we need the help of others–and in particular, of government regulation–to keep us from going wrong.”
What is most interesting to me is that this is one function of religion (I mean practical function, not talking truth claims). If you don’t have a religion to help you be good, and strengthen you against human weakness, it may very well be true that most people will want and need something else. For government to fulfill that role is very, very frightening to me.
neo –
I remember way back the Bush days – the era of my change-of-mind, as of yours – one of my very best friends underwent the extremely rare conversion in the other direction, right to left.
So we had this bizarre situation where I had always been the radical lefty in the friendship and he the right-winger, flipped around in a mere year or so to me being the righty and he the lefty.
In any case, one incident from that era still sticks sourly to my guts to this day. We were on a long drive from somewhere to somewhere, engaged in one of our by-then standard fiery arguments about Iraq. In the middle of the argument, I stopped him and said, “What I don’t get is not why you disagree with me – believe me, I get it – but why you talk to me like you hate me, like I’m arguing for the ascendency of Satan.”
I swear to God, his response, only half-in-jest (it was clear from his tone), was this: “Well, basically you are.”
I said nothing. I sighed and shook my head.
At least when I was a radical (anarchist, not communist, so not really a traditional “left” radical) I never spoke to or thought of him like that. In fact, I listened to him more than respectfully; I respected his intelligence (in raw IQ he’s always been smarter than me), and above all I knew that I might be wrong.
Weird thought: it may have been the case that we had so much respect for each other that I played a large role in converting him to the left while he played a large role in knocking me loose from it. As we moved crosswise, we may have seen reflections of past selves in each other, which led us to project some hostility really aimed at ourselves. Although, it must be said, I never felt more than disappointment with him, it seems he felt something much stronger and more negative about me.
Others responded similarly, at which point I simply stopped talking politics around them (unless they started it – I had a rule to never let casual lefty banter fly around unchallenged in my presence). The one thing I’ve noticed as a theme is that lefties like to gang up on people. One on one I can usually fight them to a stand-still and still preserve fellow-feeling (I’m talking about people you’re already on good terms with, not the Occupy doofus hollering outside of his yurt). But at a meal, when it’s five or ten of them against one of you, they pile on and on and on and resort to snorting and guffawing and sarcasm, until you basically feel like smacking everyone in the room.
Reminds me of that “circle dance around the fire” point. We’re all prone to it but I’m pretty sure that if I ever found myself in a situation with a roomful of conservatives and one lefty who was not being obstreperous, I wouldn’t stand for ganging up on him like that. I suppose more conservatives feel that way than liberals.
Anyhow, the “satan” thing and the ganging up, fire dance phenomenon add up to a social elixir for squashing liberty wherever it shows its head.
For government to fulfill that role is very, very frightening to me.
The reason why some men get hit by the prostitute when they try to help her by beating on the pimp, is because the prostitute needs her pimp to protect her on the streets against bigger, better predators. Thus attacking her pimp, to the point of getting him disabled, weakened, or in jail, also endangers her life, and like any organism they will fight to preserve their own life usually.
What makes Leftists evil is not their politics or economics, putting a benevolent dictator in charge may work for awhile in anything from political life to economic prosperity. No, what makes the Leftist evil is that what they do is not out of necessity or survival. If you gave them the choice to choose having 8 and everyone else having 10, they would always take the choice of having 4 over everyone else being a 1 and a zero. They want to stand above others. That is their choice, one and final.
They didn’t choose evil because they wanted to survive. They choose evil because they are evil.
When presented with a test of their loyalty, humans must decide what is true and false, whose side they are on. And in that sense, people have affirmed once again that they are against patriotism and American prosperity. Unlike people who had few if any choices, the modern day Americans did have a choice. They inherited freedom and they voted for totalitarian tyranny. They knew conservatives in life, and still hated or feared them. They didn’t understand, but they didn’t want to understand either, they chose to continue their self deception. Even if they were unable to change, they are still guilty because they still had the choice, up until they volunteered to lose their choice to be under the Authorities.
I respected his intelligence (in raw IQ he’s always been smarter than me), and above all I knew that I might be wrong.
The people with raw memory and IQs above my own, were usually either the lazy ones that aced tests by doing no work, or they were the ones I later found out to be pot smokers that finally had enough stress with being a genius and came down to below my level. Due to the pot, of course. People with perfect photographic or eidetic memories scanning textbooks, can barely reproduce middle range operational plans that I give to them, explaining step by step what they should do from now on. Not only do they fail to reproduce my wisdom, planning, and human perception, but their speed of processing and ability to carry out commands is limited by marijuana fueled emotional stasis. Their emotional control has not progressed very much since their pot days. In the meantime, I was increasing my mental and physical discipline, sharpening my tools, and creating meta level parallel processing abilities.
Many of the so called geniuses granted their abilities by nature, are inferior to the ones produced by nurture and environmental mutation changes. Only a few of them ever develop the genius capacity to do the work needed to break past social limitations and prejudices. The others are just burned trash from the human detritus.
But at a meal, when it’s five or ten of them against one of you, they pile on and on and on and resort to snorting and guffawing and sarcasm, until you basically feel like smacking everyone in the room.
It is very difficult for weaklings to gather up and do that to people that can kill everyone in the room when they feel like it. Weaklings band together because they are weaklings. They need social support and attack you using social pressure because they think you’re like them, that you fear being exiled and cut off from resources, ending up in your death. Society does not have any control over people who have mastered their own mortality or who have mastered the ability to slaughter humans as easily as humans step on ants. 10 weaklings added together is not stronger, one merely has to cut off the head.
At least when I was a radical (anarchist, not communist, so not really a traditional “left” radical) I never spoke to or thought of him like that.
You did not act like a religious zealot. I would know, after all.
He merely converted from the conservative church of dogma to the Leftist dogma, since he saw how powerful the Left were in enforcing their doctrine.
People like you that were searching for things, being anarchist, or walking your own path, was not positioned as his opposite due to politics.
For him, he is arguing the Faith, and consigning your soul to hell, while making himself self righteous and pure in the process. He speaks in the tones of a fanatic because he is a fanatic, and perhaps always was. People tend to be very strict when they first convert to a new faith, always attempting to prove themselves more worthy and more loyal to the Dogma than anybody else.
I also am just shocked and deeply disturbed by how many friends will basically become hostile or distant when they realize that one is no longer in the same political camp. I mean, of course, leftists of various stripes… Not all, but many do this. I may have lost another friend recently, though I can’t be sure. They keep falling like dominoes. It is very stressful.
I do think liberty is a demarcation. Certainly my love of freedom and of liberty has been what helped me to think beyond the left. I also would have thought that was a given but it is, sadly, not.
I also am just shocked and deeply disturbed by how many friends will basically become hostile or distant when they realize that one is no longer in the same political camp.
You’re not in a popularity contest.
Better alone than badly accompanied. However this requires that you can handle yourself when by yourself.
Prepare, train everyday, blame the voters ….
Neo,
Two things —
1) it isn’t fear that causes liberals to act with smug superiority. And since they do hate and hate deeply, your theory needs to have some explanation for why they hate. I say they want to hate, they want to feel superior, they need to impute evil to their opponents in order to feel good about themselves. Given your past and your family, I can understand why you don’t want to go there. But your theory is incomplete without some explanation for the feelings of superiority and hatred.
2) As for their knowledge about the lies they embrace, let’s look at the Dan Rather example. Remember when Rather was being interviewed and insisted that Bill Clinton was an honest man? It provided a great insight into the liberal mind, one that we are seeing all the time right now. Rather knew that Bill was dishonest, but he also knew that it would be heresy to say so. He choose loyalty over honesty.
We see this same thing constantly today. Liberals know about the Benghazi and Obamacare lies. They know about Hillary’s corruption and lies. Yes, they may deliberately choose to be ignorant of as much of the bad news as possible, but the biggest of the lies have made it through their filters. And they choose loyalty over integrity. Every time.
They may talk about the lies and corruption among themselves provided their conversation cannot be used to help the evil ones. They may express frustration that they don’t have a better candidate or better leader. But in public, around non-believers in the liberal faith, they will be loyal.
They know they support lies, slander and corruption. They just don’t care because their liberal faith trumps facts. They are believers in their ‘greater truth’.
One example of a loyalty test would be people’s reaction to Bush’s war in Afghanistan, for those that were ordered by the Left to support women’s rights in Afghanistan.
Those that really wanted to free and help women in Afghanistan, found themselves for the war. Those that were only told to agitate for Afghanistan women, they did a 180 and preferred to support the Taliban and sabotage Bush.
So that’s one example of a loyalty test, but there are probably much smaller ones Democrats and Leftists participate in their life. It’s congruent to the NKV talking about the fascists being their allies against the capitalist pigs, to going 180 and saying the capitalist allies are now against those fascist pigs.
Stan,
Dan Rather has always been dishonest. He interviewed Clinton on 60 Minutes prior to the election, tossed him some puff ball questions then declared that all those stories about Clinton were just lies spread by the Republicans.
stan:
Even your first sentence is wrong.
I was a liberal. I don’t think I ever acted with smug superiority.
I know plenty of liberals who don’t fit your description in that way, and in other ways. Some, of course, do. I believe you are describing an actual phenomenon among some liberals. But your generalizations just are not on the mark as generalizations.
Liberty Wolf:
Well, your name says it, doesn’t it? Liberty.
Also, my sense is that, the more radical and intensely political the circles in which a person travels, the more that person’s friends will have an extreme reaction of hostility to a political change towards the right. I was fortunate in that I don’t run in especially political circles. And yet I still had a lot of hostility to deal with from some, but nowhere near as much as if my friends had been hyper-political. As I said in another comment, expect for a few friends and relatives, most of the more intense hostility I’ve encountered has been from casual acquaintances and people I’ve just met.
kolnai:
Indeed, the group-gangup thing does seem to be a part of the territory, doesn’t it?
As for your friend—I wonder. If he was college-age, I wonder if at least part of the reason for his change was that he was breaking loose from the politics of his parents—that is, was he raised by parents on the right and was now trending left to differentiate himself from them? That sometimes happens at that age. Also, if I had to guess, I wonder whether personal antipathy to George Bush and his style might have had something to do with it for him? I noticed a lot of people were personally repelled by Bush in a way I never was, even in my liberal days. Also, it might have had to do with a gut revulsion for war on the part of your friend, and was the Iraq War the first one he’d encountered in his adult life?
In addition, I think Ymasakar has some theories about it that make sense, here.
Yes, I agree that my circles, close friends and otherwise, are more hyper-political than the average person’s or even the circle of a (then) Democrat voting therapist in Boston! I have a few friends who are just devoted to being counter-culture and some of those run a little bit libertarian, but even so…
It is interesting, on a positive note, how some people will come out of the woodwork and want to know more about my political leanings and even when they disagree, admit to admiring what they see as courage and a search for truth. That is very rare, but it has happened.
Other people are simply puzzled and for the life of them, it doesn’t make sense. They really believe I am voting against my own best interest. I understand some of their qualms on the surface, but I think they have not dived deeper into what my “interests” might be. I think liberty is in everyone’s best interests and ultimately, markets work better than government aid. And, yes we have real enemies in the world, we need a military that is strong and we need rule of law. Simple things…
The far left, which has been my life’s playground (G_d help me) — is a strange place. There you will find the people who hate America, but I think they often don’t have the right info. And yes, many are in fear and are taken in by the media’s recent garbage about so many things we discuss here. Many are really good people but they lack discernment or more importantly, they have a hard time going outside the tribe. The pressure to conform is enormous as you know.
Neo Neo, a poet by the name of Helen Losse sometimes came around to condescend to us mortals at Bookworm Room.
She was a self proclaimed “changer”, from the right to the left. She stated she was born under some Catholic school teaching or nun based system, and learned to obey the rules without thinking. Then she “changed” to the Leftist ideology, where she now thinks she is superior.
I at the time flat out said that she merely converted to a religion with more benefits, that her core identity as being a blind fanatic still remained. Of course there are others like Arlen Specter that is more pragmatic about their change.
From what I can see, Mike is suffering from a condition where he refuses to let go his ideal view of humanity, thus in order to distance himself from the sub human wretches that are evil Leftlings, he wants to treat them with human dignity.
Do you really think Leftlings are equals to you Mike? Neo Neo is superior to them. You are superior to them. What’s the point of providing them a human dignity they never earned and in fact have sold their souls for a bargain much like Faust?
If humanity was as noble as those of us initially thought, we would not have come to this state so soon.
Neo,
Bernie Sanders, in a prepared statement “The right-wing in this country is waging a war against women and, let me be very clear, it is not a war that we are going to allow them to win.”
The only way to believe that is to have a heart filled with hatred. The only way to support someone who spreads that kind of vicious hatred is to have a heart filled with hatred.
Hatred is a critical aspect of being on the left in America today.
The Left does not truly comprehend the true meaning of hate. Their Leftist operatives like Jim Jones or the ones who kidnapped and brainwashed Patricia Hearst, the black ops members understand the meaning of hate.
But the normal Leftist thugs like Sanders, speak of hate as an inheritance they were given, for being rich or American. It is second hand to them.
When their violence begets true hate in reply, that is when they will understand that their “hate” was as mild as a person choosing chocolate over vanilla.
It took me days to read this post. Like rickl, this was the least joyous of all Independence Days, formerly my favorite holiday.
As a devout Catholic, I saw myself in this:
“We now have lots of evidence from psychology and behavioral economics that we are often very bad at choosing effective means to our ends. In such cases, we need the help of others–and in particular, of government regulation–to keep us from going wrong. ”
I too believe that we need the help of others, namely God and religion. But, even in the Bible we see that a choice is presented to people, and they can choose to ignore that which is given. I only wish the Left would allow people that same choice.
stan:
You call that vicious hatred? I don’t see that at all. It is a way to frighten people into thinking that someone is taking something away from them, for policy reasons.
Plus, what makes you think Bernie Sanders is appealing to the people I’m talking about? They are mostly Hillary supporters, or some other Democrat—not Sanders. Plus, they don’t pay much attention to politics, and probably could quote very little of what each candidate has actually said. They believe the Democratic Party in general is the nice party. They would interpret that statement of Sanders, if they heard it at all (which they almost certainly have not), as motivated by a benevolent impulse to protect women from those who—because they are not generous with money, and because they don’t believe in things like abortion—would like to limit women’s reproductive rights. They are thus responding to propaganda, but how you can characterize that propaganda as “vicious hatred” is beyond me.
Slandering people as racist isn’t hateful? Slandering people as sexist and homophobic isn’t hateful?
Perhaps I’m confused in thinking that since being a racist or sexist was the worst possible thing a person could be or do, then slandering them as such would be pretty horrible, too. Even a particularly vicious kind of ugly.
stan:
It’s not hateful if you think the person is homophobic, sexist, or racist. Then it’s just a statement of fact, in your mind. It’s the other person—the homophobic, sexist, and/or racist—who is the hateful one.
And, as I’ve said quite a few times—the people I know, the ones I’m talking about, aren’t motivated by hate. If they use those terms at all (“racist,” “sexist,” “homophobic”)—and most of them actually don’t talk that way—it’s calmly, more in sorrow than anger. As I said, most of the people I know are not leftists, and they don’t talk that way. What they do pick up on much more is the fear-mongering talk from leftist activists, such as “Such-and-such candidate is against abortion and will take away women’s rights to abortion, maybe even to contraception if they have their way.” That’s fear they are feeling when they swallow that.
I’ve seen leftists; I know the difference, believe me.
Very interesting. You may have hit the nail right on the head here, Neo.
I’ve thought about this kind of things a lot too. We have several ways that we talk and think about how we self-identify, such as left vs. right, conservative vs. liberal, D vs. R, etc. I decided several years ago that these are all fatally flawed in some way.
And what I settled on instead, because these two groups have competing interests across the board, where more for you means less for me, was something like (a) government and everybody connected to it (lobbyists, contractors, crony capitalists, etc. plus the dependent underclass) on one side, and (b) people who work for a living and require a functioning economy in order to advance in life, on the other. These two groups’ interests and needs do not mesh well at all, and almost always conflict.
It might be that using liberty as the dividing line is very close to the same thing and states the core issue better. Those connected to government are either already OK with, or become desensitized to, confiscatory tax policies and the regulatory state that together grow government power exponentially and kill or slow economic growth.
Anti-liberty by definition. Rich people and poor people do not really need to care about cost of living or the burden of the regulatory state, or the unemployment rate, or the costs of Obamacare or literally any of that economic burden, while the middle class does because slower or negative economic growth impacts us in concrete ways.
FYI – longtime reader, possibly my first comment here ever. Discovered you via American Digest.
Jeff Brokaw:
Welcome to the comments.
It took me days to read this post. Like rickl, this was the least joyous of all Independence Days, formerly my favorite holiday.
Every year like this has been the same for me since 2007 at least. I make that distinction because 2008 was the election and was actually ahead of when I first discovered the Left’s structural truths and weaknesses.
So to me, this is merely a repetition of every year since then, and it’s nothing new. What’s new is that other people are jumping on the band wagon and openly talking about it, even though they know the Gestapo lights and the IRS are watching.
and most of them actually don’t talk that way–it’s calmly, more in sorrow than anger.
For people the Left controls with a very light social pressure, that would follow logically speaking. For people the Left controls using mind control and Jim Jones level techniques, they will be closer to fanatics in how they behave and how they react to foreign “outside circle” elements. People in academia or even in jobs that depend upon Leftist power, will naturally feel their lives endangered, not merely their political identities, when dealing with the dreaded evil conservatives.
“It’s not hateful if you think the person is homophobic, sexist, or racist. Then it’s just a statement of fact, in your mind.”
BINGO! We’re getting there.
Why do they think that? HOW can they think that? Given the actual evidence of life in America, how can any honest, rational, reasonably observant adult of any maturity believe that tens of millions of Republicans are racist, etc.?
They have to want to believe it. They have to already have the hateful mindset to believe it. Because the evidence doesn’t support the charge. Not even close. So what is it about their mindset that makes them amenable to such beliefs? Why do they embrace the slanders?
Would you argue that a member of the KKK didn’t have a hateful mindset if he really did believe that blacks were inferior? Or that a German wasn’t hateful if she really did believe that Jews were vermin? I sure hope not.
Here’s the rub — they believe hateful, slanderous things about Republicans. You can’t excuse them because they really believe them. They’re close-minded bigots with hatred in their hearts.
stan:
You don’t have to hate someone to believe that person is a racist. You just have to watch the MSM, and when they point out some random Republican who actually does say something racist (there actually are such people, you know), and you are told that’s typical, you figure that person stands for a lot of others. Also, you hear the MSM and Democrats harping on things like the “Southern strategy,” and the Atwater interview (which they present as indicating Republicans are purposely appealing to racism), and this drives the message home.
Remember, also, that most of these people aren’t paying tons of attention to the news. They often read headlines and a few paragraphs, watch a little news, maybe listen to a bit of NPR, and go about their business. Normal people, not news junkies like people who follow blogs (or write them, for that matter).
Nor do they believe every Republican is a racist, homophobe, etc.. Just that many of them are, and many of the leaders. Some liberals don’t even think that, they just think more Republicans are more racist, homophobic, etc. than Democrats are.
The other thing you are discounting is that there are many liberals who actually know some people on the right who are (or were) very vocal in private life and really ARE bigots, ranting about it. The vast vast majority of people on the right who are neither bigots nor homophobes tend to be rather quiet; they don’t walk around yellng “I’m not a racist! I’m not a homophobe!” A good example of a liberal like this is a friend of mine whose own father was on the right and was also quite bigoted against black people and quite vocal about it. And not in a lovable, Archie Bunker way; in quite a harsh and off-putting way. His son (my friend) grew up with that as an example (one of the few examples he knew) of a person on the right, and grew up reacting against it and determined not to be that way. In the process, he rejected the political right, and is only recently coming to take a look at it and trying to cast off that formative early personal experience that had become part of him.
I do not think you understand liberals and what motivates them very well.
Neo,
I went to college with Tony Snow. He was pretty much a marxist back then. One of my college roommates was a paid campaign staffer for Carter and has twice run for Congress as a Democrat. Another college roommate is a loyal Democrat lawyer in Colorado who once shared his office with the majority leader of the State Senate (D). As a lawyer, I’ve spent my adult life around liberals. I have a relative who was an Democrat politician and used to work very closely with the Clintons. He’s no longer a Democrat, but his insights about Bill and Hillary and their aides have been enlightening.
I think I know a little about liberals and how they think.
stan:
You know a little about liberals.
I would wager that I know more about them, and certainly know more of them. I was a liberal for most of my life, for starters, and have also lived my entire life among them. All relatives, all friends—virtually everyone I have known for my entire life is a liberal. Almost the only non-liberals I’ve ever known have been through this blog, and most of those people I have not met in person.
What’s more, let me just say that someone described as “a marxist” at that time was NOT a liberal. A marxist is a leftist, although obviously Snow had a later political change. In addition, lawyers tend to be much more activist politically than most people, and a Carter campaign staffer who has also run for office is an activist as well. And surely you can’t be saying that the Clintons are not leftists and that they are not activists? Bill used to masquerade as a moderate Democrat (and Hillary, too, but not as successfully), but surely that charade was seen through a long time ago.
I have made it very clear that I’m talking about run-of-the-mill, garden-variety, LIV liberal voters—who are the majority of liberal voters, by the way. I am not talking about leftists (or people who profess to be marxists), nor am I for the most part talking about activists. I have made that distinction almost every time I have written about the topic.
I suppose you know that David Horowitz does not accept your distinction. [If you haven’t written on why he is wrong, you might have a topic for a column.]
BTW — are Doris and Chuck lefties or liberals? Because the smug, arrogant disdain (even hatred) just drips off this exchange. Not for Trump. For us.
http://althouse.blogspot.com/2015/07/chuck-todd-and-doris-kearns-goodwin.html
stan:
I’m getting tired of repeating myself. But here we go–as I already said in a previous comment:
So just to repeat: I am talking about garden-variety, relatively low-information, low interest-in-politics voters. These are people I know. They are not activists. Nor are they well-connected, political biography-writing, Ph.Ds from Harvard in government and professors of government there, former White House fellows under Lyndon Johnson and later members of his staff, commentators on Meet the Press, married to advisors and speechwriters in the JFK and LBJ administrations. Those things, by the way, constitute Doris Kearns Goodwin’s bio, in case you didn’t recognize it.
Why on earth are you asking me about her? Do you think it’s someone like that I’m talking about when I say low information, not politically activist or politically involved people? Whether Goodwin calls herself a liberal or a leftist I really don’t know, and whatever she calls herself she may or may not be telling the truth about what she thinks in the political sphere—in other words, how far to the left she is. At any rate, she is an activist, a political mover and shaker, and obviously is not the sort of person I’m referring to, and I think I’ve made that abundantly clear.
Same for Chuck Todd, who has been immersed in activist politics and politically oriented news for most of his adult life.
There are many people, mostly activists and politicians, who call themselves liberals but are lying and are actually leftists. As far as I know, those are the people David Horowitz is referring to when he says we shouldn’t play their game and call them liberals when they’re not. I agree with Horowitz. But that is a far cry from the people I’m calling liberals, who are basically those who have only a small interest in politics, follow just the headlines (if that), and vote Democratic every four years (they probably don’t even vote in off-years) because they think Democrats mean well.