Choices liberals face
People don’t like to change their minds, and they particularly don’t like to have to reorder a belief system they’ve held for years or a lifetime. With increasing attacks of the Paris and San Bernardino type, liberals are faced with a dilemma: hold onto their beliefs about terrorism and how to fight it, or descend into what they see as a pit of despair, chaos, and retaliatory violence or tyranny. Which would you choose? To hold onto your beliefs, of course, if you could.
For people looking at the world and events like the Paris and San Bernardino attacks, these are some of the choices
(1) There is either something about Islam that is leading to this, or it has nothing to do with Islam.
(2) Terrorists are either forces of evil and chaos, or they are people with a grievance.
(3) We can solve this either by being nicer to them and more self-abasing, and then they’ll stop hating us, or we can solve it by warring with them in a host of ways that are violent, nasty, brutal, distasteful, and/or tragic, and that don’t always work.
(4) We can be tolerant and loving or start hating those who hate us and want to murder us.
Leftist thought offers a way out. Answering “nothing to do with Islam” to number 1 allows a person to feel tolerant and loving—which would lead to a solution for number 4 as well. Tolerance and the avoidance of even the appearance or hint of anything remotely resembling bigotry is one of the biggest goals of young people today, who have been taught that those things are the worst of sins and make a person into a moral pariah. Answering “people with grievances” for number 2 allows a person to be much less afraid, and to establish the world as a rational orderly place, filled with dangerous people who sometimes seem evil but really aren’t. Answering “nicer and more self-abasing” to number 3 allows us to sit tight and enjoy our lives as is, and not have to make any hard sacrifices.
It’s really a no-brainer. I’m not sure what it would take at this point to change minds, either. Even a much greater and more dangerous conflagration might not do it for that many people.
Our country has now come to a political place that, right after 9/11, I did not dream would be our destination in such a short time. And yet—both initially in the reactions of the left to 9/11 and Iraq, and then more definitively with the election of Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012, and now the widely-supported 2016 candidacy of Hillary Clinton—I have become more and more convinced over those fourteen years that the majority of people cling to their previous beliefs in order to maintain a rosier picture.
I always knew that, in general. In fact, I began this blog in late 2004 with the premise that changing one’s mind on a large political subject is both difficult and rare. And yet I’ve come to believe it’s even more difficult and more rare than I thought it was back then.
Very good post! The problem with Islam is that it is, fundamentally, a totalizing faith (as was Judaism until a few centuries ago, and as are almost all varieties of leftist politics). Systems that purport to explain all phenomena and to regulate all existence under one theological or ideological principle are very difficult to break away from without significant cost to the former believers.
Terrorists aside, I have reached a certain theoretical exasperation with leftists. When compared to the national progressive message (unfettered immigration, unrestricted abortion on demand, tolerance for Sharia, restriction of freedom of speech, government interference in the most minute parts of one’s life, higher taxes, etc.) I am confounded by the fact that most of the leftists I know lead relatively traditional (aka conservative) lives. They have single spouses and are generally not polyamorous. They own their own homes, pay their bills on time and their children attend traditional (sometimes religiously affiliated) schools. These leftists are oftentimes traditionally religious (if not actively religious), they employ accountants and tax advisors to keep their taxes as low as possible and pretty much lead the lives of so-called normal people. In other words their lifestyle pretty much disavows the political positions they purport to favor, and the wealthier they are (think Warren Buffet and John Kerry) the more pronounced those contradictions are.
As for the “Choices Liberals Face”, this prompts the question: Are Progressives too cowardly to lead the life they preach or are they too cowardly to preach the life they lead?
Notice the common theme in either of these questions which, IMO, reverts back to Neo’s post regarding Islam and terrorism.
Judaism wasn’t totalizing in any sense of evangelism or recruitment — as both Christianity and Islam explicitly are, though by differing means. Judaism addresses the universality of God to the people of the faith, but in no way seeks to make itself the sole piety or adopted faith of the whole world, actually by definition prescribing birth to the faith. It’s a chosen people from among others, so to speak, so how totalizing in that sense? It’s not.
The kind of pacifism that you’re trying to apply to their ideas of things is really all part of this persona that is adopted and worn like clothing; if the source of the fashion changed the clothing would change. Just as they did in the mid-thirties.
It is a kind of pacifism that is parasitical, and requires an outside agency with power and ability to create this extended tribal inner world in which the people that live can pretend the world is like that, and avoid the reality by not going outside the boundary of the forbidden land.
The terrorists are a problem because they are willing to traverse this boundary and come into this artificial pacifist egalitarian civilized tribe and act out. How do you deal with such? Well, more aware people want a real response that works in the outside world (traditionally the men’s sphere), the less aware inner world wants it to just go away and not in a way that violates the atmosphere of that artificial inner world (traditionally the woman’s sphere).
This inner world used to really be familial bubbles, but the ideologies have tried to turn the tiny bubbles into one large bubble, the tiny family eaten up and part of the larger with the idea that society is one large family. So criminals are just good boys in bad circumstances, just as a family would want to treat a problem son or daughter. The whole of society is to act like this to be pc, so that the evil patriarchal formulation that causes all that nasty violence goes away
And here come mass shooters, and terrorists, and so on. and to the pacifists, they have no real explanation as the mass shooters go beyond what one could apply to a lost youth, and the terrorists are out of the pale when compared to their watered down rebels that allow them to pretend they feel edgy by association. They dislike anything that reminds them that their inner social world of an artificial construct is inside a hostile real world. so they dislike police, military, war, economics, competition, disasters, etc. All these are beyond their control and all are beyond the silly rules an inner world makes to solve such things — as those all work under a tacit cooperation that we voluntarily follow them or get punished within the same framework.
The rules of the inner society are not capable of actually handling the unlimited outside world. The rules of the house do not function when the residents of the home ignore them and act like they are out in the jungle of the real world. the left through its army of pc sjw women and others, has created a domesticated civil society that is de-clawed and not prepared for the whole world, but just their world.
This is why trump is not liked or his, to them, bombastic remarks and ideas. It reminds them and everyone that the idea of a modern society is but a view overlaid the ugly reality. They side with whichever group feeds their delusion of this world, and its perfection. The other side keeps reminding them that the reality is hostile at best and is not perfectible, nor are the people.
[the people on top play them with these fashions]
sdferr:
I’ve noticed that people often imagine things about Judaism, and in particular they imagine that it resembles Christianity or Islam much more than it actually does. It is actually quite different, and has never tried to spread or take over the world. Judaism welcomes converts but does not seek them.
Yep. The restrictions result in nasty after-effects too, I think we can see. (Oh, we’re excluded! They must hate us!) Judaism grows (when it grows) in the vast main by birth, surely not by conversion. So, to the enemies the possibility to kill Judaism as such is obvious: kill Jews. A thing not so obvious to the enemies regarding either Christianity or Islam.
Art,
Excellent analysis. +1
The Koran contains over 100 verses calling for violence against unbelievers. It really does have something to do with Islam if you just look.
“The hardest thing to explain is the glaringly evident which everybody had decided not to see.” Ayn Rand
Guy Milliere, Gatestone Institute, Dec. 2, 2015: The New French “Résistance”
Great post. I like the way you wrote the choices, which is the way most liberals I know seem to think they must be: stark either-or. So to then number one can’t be “it has something to do with Islam” — which could be many different things — but is taken to men “ISLAM IS EVIL AND CRAZED AND ITS FOLLOWERS ALL WANT TO KILL EVERYONE.” If you know even one nice Muslim, then that thesis is disproved. But that, of course, is NOT the only way terrorirsm could have “something to do with Islam.”
I think the *totality* of Judaism the poster is referring to is the former European style Judaism, where they were living their lives in their own villages or sections of a village. They were operating under their own leaders & their own customs and laws, when you belonged to a group like that you were a total member, a 24 hr 360 commitment, you typically even married within this same group. I realize there was some interaction with the larger culture & even abuse from the larger culture…. but basically they operated autonomously & were permitted to & indeed they had no interest in taking over the larger culture because they saw themselves as Yahweh’s People who were compelled to live their
lives as their holy men dictated. As a Christian that is my way of seeing it (perhaps I’m inaccurate (???)
Hasidic Jews today represent this same lifestyle, as do Amish & similar groups .
Islam is another ball of wax entirely. Mohammed took elements of other faiths claiming Islamists as exclusive chosen people (like Jews they avoid pork & circumsize) & blending the prostilithizing (spelling?) he saw with Christianity, it spread that faith & continued to expand that Faith with the *chosen People* belief of the Jews!
So Mohammed thought HE had the Perfect Religion!
What I find amusing about the liberal attempt to accommodate Islam is that for 99 44/100% of Americans, Fundamentalist Christians are more tolerant than Muslims to those not of their faith, and are more tolerant of a secular society than Muslims, yet liberals are much more hostile to Fundamentalist Christians than they are to Muslims.
Moreover, liberals would be much more comfortable living in a state full of Christian Fundamentalists- say Georgia or Texas- than they would in Saudi Arabia or Iran.
Disclaimer: not a churchgoer, but with a Fundamentalist Christian grandmother who maintained loving relations with her brood even though her brood had left the church. Compare that with the Muslim stance on apostasy.
Art: I second physicsguy’s comment; I think you’re on to some there (but don’t get cocky, kid!*).
* [Apologies to Han Solo and to Art, but given the premiere this week and this occasion, I couldn’t help it)
ArtfldgrsGhost, whom I suspect is related to Artfldgr, I am reminded of another Dickens character, the Ghost of Christmas Past. 🙂
“on to something there”
sheesh, sorry
Living as a modern is so satisfying. After all, we moderns can adopt Nietzsche’s “lifestyle”, or Kant’s “Kulture”, and are privileged to slap our shiny categorical labels on anyone and everyone.
Part of the problem is that the left painted itself into a corner as a result of its pathological hatred for George W. Bush. While Hillary voted for the Iraq War, she quickly realized that the radicals in her party (now the vast majority) opposed the war–primarily because they opposed George Bush. The Code Pink interruptions and Cindy Sheehan interviews stopped immediately upon the inauguration of Barack Obama, and the opposition to war went away. However, to correctly identify the problems of terrorism would be to cause them to agree with Republicans and oppose Obama’s feckless foreign policy, which they could not stomach.
Another point i that its easy to advocate something that you think will not reach you. so if you dont own guns, or want any, its easy to demand none have them.
well, at some point, their ideas will come home, and the people who sided with this, often thinking they would not be a focus, wake up
Sweden: Muslim Migrants Batter Gay Man to Death, Wrap Snake Around His Neck
http://www.infowars.com/sweden-muslim-migrants-batter-gay-man-to-death-wrap-snake-around-his-neck/
Paris synagogue daubed with poisonous substance
14 members of Jewish committee mildly injured in suspected anti-Semitic attack
http://www.timesofisrael.com/paris-synagogue-daubed-with-poisonous-substance/
I’m sure Neo’s description of liberals is correct as to their own flattering self image. They rely heavily on projection in which they project their own soul sickness onto other people especially onto conservative Christians. Muslims also project their own failings onto other people especially onto Jews. That is one reason the left feel such a kinship with Muslims.
The Left seeks to convince liberals that,
“looking at the world and events like the Paris and San Bernardino attacks, these are some of the choices:
If we, for a moment, play devils advocate, we accept;
1) it has nothing to do with Islam.
(2) Terrorists are people with a grievance.
(3) We can solve this by being nicer to them and more self-abasing, and then they’ll stop hating us.
(4) We can be tolerant and loving
The ‘fly’ in that ‘ointment’ is that is we are ‘nice’ to them and abase ourselves, their hate will turn to utter contempt and they will look down upon our abasement as confirmation that Islam is rightfully superior. And that, brutality is justified…
Here’s the dirty little secret that ‘liberal appeasers’ fear will be exposed, their inner motivation is pure cowardice. All the intellectualizing is cover. For in their heart of hearts, they know that extending ‘tolerance and appeasement’ to murderous fanatics results in slavery. They simply would rather live as a slave than die fighting to be free.
Such as they have made themselves TWANLOC.
“War is an ugly thing but not the ugliest of things; the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feelings, which thinks that nothing is worth war, is much worse. A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing that is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.” – John Stuart Mill
“If ye love… the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.” ― Samuel Adams
Thanks for the kind words… nice xmas present
Ray Says: The Koran contains over 100 verses calling for violence against unbelievers. It really does have something to do with Islam if you just look.
Ah, but to the liberal left, so does the bible. they excoriate passive Christians for Leviticus, as if the whole bible is one text in time and its followed cover to cover, and not a document of what is a history that leads to a new faith (old testament to new), and that the sacrifices and killing sinners and such was put aside by the Christ.
So to them they see Exodus 22:18 Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.
and they totally forget that the part of the bible that is happening to is before the Christ, and was the time of Moses and the enslavement and freedom of the Jews as a population. Thats just messy detail that is more valuable if they ignore it.
so while they focus on exodus, liviticus, etc.
they then ignore:
4 They say unto him, Master, this woman was taken in adultery, in the very act.
5 Now Moses in the law commanded us, that such should be stoned: but what sayest thou?
6 This they said, tempting him, that they might have to accuse him. But Jesus stooped down, and with his finger wrote on the ground, as though he heard them not.
7 So when they continued asking him, he lifted up himself, and said unto them, He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.
Its a direct showing of the change in covenants brings change in behavior with this showing the change to the covenant of Christ in which was about Grace and that gods law would be in the heart. This change was seen during his life because he became the mediator of the new covenant, and that when he died, it sealed the deal of the new covenant negating the prior ones. [there are five]
the first three covenants were for the jewish people, the fourth was with a line of jewish descent which would herald the coming of the christ, and then gods last covenant which would be for everyone, not just jews.
again its more convenient to just forget that, not understand the bible, and its use and abuse by men (and women), as the point is to contort and distort to negate.
Noah taken the way it is now, its quite inane. but if you think world is more local, not world as we who live post man in space… and think that the animals that count are the domesticated ones… then things start falling into place in terms of saving a farm of animals who are key to the idea that man need no longer roam to live, but can live in one place and not wander.
thanks again for the kind words!!
All that remains is formal surrender.
After a nuclear attack, surrender will be offered, and it will be painted as virtue. Sharia will be welcomed, and those who oppose it will be called bigoted and intolerant.
From his mosque in Hawaii, Barack Obama will publicly pray for mass conversions.
Triumph of the left.
Neo:
“In fact, I began this blog in late 2004 with the premise that changing one’s mind on a large political subject is both difficult and rare. And yet I’ve come to believe it’s even more difficult and more rare than I thought it was back then.”
That’s a people trait, not just a liberal or leftist trait.
In terms of counter-terrorism, we already have a field-developed model to compete effectively against the terrorists: the OIF COIN “Surge” specifically and Bush-era counter-terrorism generally.
Bush’s approach wasn’t perfect, of course, but perfection is not the normal standard for war-and-peace competition, anyway. Rather, Bush’s approach was mindful, on the right track, and working until Obama switched us onto the wrong track and squandered the hard-earned gains under Bush.
However, instead of retracing our steps from Obama to Bush in order to get back on the right track to make up lost ground, some conservatives, such as Bookworm and David Goldman (Spengler), prefer to retire “neocon” American leadership of the free world, which they ascribe to ‘establishment’ conservatives like Rubio and Bush. Instead, they’re constructing their own false narrative in order to reject the “neocon” paradigm of OIF and set up an alternative policy space for Cruz and maybe Trump.
Bookworm just wrote a post, based on a Breitbart article, that constructs a ‘Jacksonian vs Wilsonian’ false dichotomy that elides the actual law-and-policy basis of OIF and OEF under Bush, misrepresents post-war exigency as an ideological choice, and most cynically in order to devalue “neocons”, ascribes Obama’s failures to Bush policy, despite that Obama made fundamental changes from Bush’s approach.
How committed are they to their anti-neocon narrative?
Goldman overtly waves away the critical flaw to the anti-neocon narrative with, “No-one wants to hear your claim that we really won in Iraq in 2008 and lost it all because Obama wouldn’t leave a few divisions there”, despite that Obama’s premature disengagement of peace operations from Iraq was a fundamental – and catastrophic – change and turning point.
So, it’s not just liberal or leftist trait, Neo. If you would uphold American leadership of the free world, you’ll need to compete in the Narrative contest versus people you may have long held to be on your side.
Once again, re-laying the foundation by setting the record straight on OIF is a key piece.
My meager two cents… ‘progressives’ must believe in their intellectual and bleeding heart superiority. Otherwise, they would realize they are walking the wrong path. To maintain this charade they have to deny that human nature is and will always contain angels and demons, with demons having their way if the angels lack superior fire and will power. That is why they invent excuses for the behavior of those engaged in evil acts.
I agree with GB, when the going gets tough the ‘progressives’ are in their inner core, cowards, and cowards surrender even when the evidence before them strongly indicates surrender will result in their eventual murder. That is why they loathe the military or anyone who seeks the tools of self defense.
Neo,
I love the post and as a fellow convert who used to brag about a conversion i made in 1999 (an african american man who after a 9 hour political conversation came up to me later and said he registered Republican and he owes it to me for that), I found later when he friended me on facebook this year (2015) that he likes and shares very liberal things.
I knew it would happen.
How? Because of the sources of information he reads.
He discussed something in or around 2002 with me. He discussed the so-called Jenin massacre and I was pointing out that again you are viewing false information as before. He started repeating… well I can’t ever justify the taking of people’s houses.
It’s a laziness.
It’s a sickness.
If you never reach for a balanced set of facts and make sound and reasoned judgements you’ll always be doomed to repeat history.
Me?
I could NEVER revert back to liberalism (classic liberalism only). As I’m a compassionate person but people must exhibit PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY.
That IS what it all boils down to for me. On every issue. Individual freedom and personal responsibility.
And this is why many rich tech people don’t get it… like Zuckerberg etc. It takes a self made hard working man and woman to understand what economics 101 is about.
I think I disagree with the premise of this article, and more specifically with Gail Finke’s comment about “the choices, which is the way most liberals I know seem to think they must be: stark either-or”. My bet is, most liberals would write off these choices as simplistic and unsophisticated. They probably have clear preferences on each choice, but would never set it up in such a way as to examine each position and its implications. The act of choosing between clear alternatives is, in itself, a process of narrowing, and the modern liberal would rather believe a hundred contradictory things than scratch one thing off a list.
Pingback:oren-sila.ru
As I said Nick. It’s laziness
Nick,
You’re correct, liberals will dispute the either/or propositions. They love to tout ‘nuance’ and ‘shades of grey’. It’s all obfuscation and self-deception to remain in denial of what logic, reason, common sense and objective observation dictate. Truth is simple but on the ideological left avoided at all cost.
Eric,
Bush’s instinct to defend by fighting was correct. His acceptance of the proposition that democracy could be successfully grafted onto antithetical Islamic cultures was profoundly mistaken.
Eric,
Continuing; it is that erroneous proposition that makes inadequate your assertion that establishing the narrative as to the OIF’s legality will return America to the right path.
The invasion of Iraq was legal, well intentioned and morally correct but its strategic rationale was fatally flawed.
Ataturk’s failed attempt to turn Turkey into a secular democracy is proof positive that Islamic societies are hostile ground for the implantation of democracy.
At a family reunion of an upper middle class family, we had one who helped people out of one of the towers on 9/11 tell another family member, who had served in the Peace Corps in Malaysia, commiserate about how Islam was so misunderstood in the US. None so blind as a leftist confronted with reality.
T, up at 3:50pm tells us that many left/libs live ordered lives which might be considered conservative. Practically white picket fence, while talking up a good game of how to make major changes in society. What they don’t grok is that the changes will destroy their way of life.
It is possible that some will figure they’ll be like the French nobility who rode out the rev on their country estates–presuming there were such.
I think the key is that left/libs want to impose this crap on other people–to make themselves feel morally superior plus they love to screw others with impunity while feeling morally superior–and thinking it will not come nie them. If they understood how things work–what happens when the Cloward-Piven types turn off the EBT refill computers for a week?–they might think differently.
I know of a group in a small-midsize town who most diligently look after the homeless. They want to build/remodel a building in a downtown business area for the folks instead of hauling them from one church to another. They insist that nothing will go wrong. Nbbody’s going to be puking in the doorway of the tire store….. Nope, it will all be okay. Thing is, if it isn’t, it’s not their problem and anybody who claims that having drunks puking in the doorway of their tire store is bad for business will be seen as uncharitable.
I’m trying to figure out how to suggest a kind of performance bond assessing the bank accounts of all supporters. If there’s no possibility anything could go wrong, then there’d be no problem. Right? Right, guys? Guys?
“I’m trying to figure out how to suggest a kind of performance bond assessing the bank accounts of all supporters. If there’s no possibility anything could go wrong, then there’d be no problem. Right? Right, guys? Guys?”[Richard Aubrey]
How about considering an escrow account (by definition controlled by a neutral third party) requiring deposits of all supporters of the project and a strict set of rules as to the payout of funds for damage repair or a strict timeline only after which said funds could be returned to the supporters (assuming no problems). In other words, a “no puking zone.” Make such an escow account a requirement for the implementation of the project and make them put their monies where their mouths are.
Richard Aubrey
I know of a group in a small-midsize town who most diligently look after the homeless. They want to build/remodel a building in a downtown business area for the folks instead of hauling them from one church to another.
There used to be an institution which housed neer-do-wells or those with low income: the single room occupancy hotel which had one kitchen for a group of people in single rooms. Fifteen rooms plus a kitchen for 10 rooms, say. Ditto boardinghouses. They aren’t around much anymore.
I suspect that some of the current homeless would have ended up in SOH or boardinghouses back in the day. Unfortunately, a number – perhaps most- of the currently homeless would have been housed in state mental hospitals in yearb gone by..
Neo, you’re spot on.
My niece, who was enraged about the Paris massacre because she’d lived there and people she knew had to “report in as safe” on Faceplant, has already snapped back to her previous indoctrination (that didn’t take long, did it?).
I sent her a Daily Mail article about the “Rotherham mass-rapes of English girls by moslem ‘men'” trial, and she sent this idiotic email back to me:
And of course it’s the Reds and Pinkos at NPR who are pumping out this… bilge. I hate them. They’re going to destroy us all, from within.
Not to mention that the 1,400 girls (the ones they KNEW of, that is!) were as young as TWELVE, therefore NOT ‘WOMEN.’
So even the mass rape, over years, of little girls is Okay with the Leftoids. They really are DEMONIC.
Baklava: Yep.
Socialism/communism/totalitarianism is for people who don’t have the guts to live as free men and women.
People who long for the security of the plantation, where Massah would tell them what to do, issue their clothing, provide them shelter and food. Not a great lifestyle, but it allows them to retreat — especially from the risks and decisions of history-making.
Here’s an average, misunderstood teenager who was just arrested in Harrisburg, Pa.:
http://www.pennlive.com/news/2015/12/harrisburg_terrorist_suspect_h.html
Nothing to see here, just move along….
Zombies have choices? Not sure I can believe that.
They really are DEMONIC.
Demoncrats, party for and by demons. No wonder people didn’t realize what it meant, when they rejected the divine truth.
Demoncrats, party for and by demons. No wonder people didn’t realize what it meant, when they rejected the divine truth.
Demonic: How the Liberal Mob Is Endangering America
Ann Coulter documented.
Some things are unacceptable.
Some compromises are impossible.
Yield, neutralize, push back.
We yielded and yielded and yielded.
We never neutralized… what now?
Omission, commission, there are consequences …
Womyn have better watch it for when it blows up they will become chattel….
Great post…great comments. I have long lived by a couple maxims, “I choose not to conflate what I wish was true, with what is true” (something progressives do as a matter of foundation) and M. Scott Peck’s quote, “mental health is an ongoing dedication to reality at all costs”. As to Judaism and Christianity, Paul Johnson’s book The History of Christianity, 1st chapter is a masterpiece of description of how Judaism opened up into a dominating world-wide religion. I was just in Paris for a week and once again visited the Mémorial des Martyrs de la Déportation (memorial for the 200,000 Jews that were handed over to the Nazi concentration camps by the Vichy government). It is across the street from Notre Dame. This time you could only walk into one section. When looking at the pictures with my husband, I commented on the possibility of that kind of action being used against us in the future.
The funny thing is, I’ve only recently heard about Coulter’s book, since she wrote that one in 2012 and I was figuring out the Left’s evil in 2007-2008.
Same thing for Horo’s book about the Left being allied with Islam.
We can’t say we didn’t know we had it coming:
The demon is a mob, and the mob is demonic. The Democratic Party activates mobs, depends on mobs, coddles mobs, publicizes and celebrates mobs–it is the mob. Sweeping in its scope and relentless in its argument, Demonic explains the peculiarities of liberals as standard groupthink behavior. To understand mobs is to understand liberals.
Then there was Jonah’s ‘Liberal Fascism’ and Whittaker Chambers’s ‘Witness’ and many more …
Y’all continue hanging out with Libtards!
Here: Néo
In ♩♩addition, yesterday afternoon I had spoken to a liberal but relatively apolitical friend of mine, and she mentioned ♩♩♩♩casually that she would be busy that night, having volunteered to♫♫ do phoning for the Hillary Clinton campaign. This shocked me, although♫♫ ♩ it shouldn’t have. The reason it did, though, was that this particular friend has (unlike some) always been respectful ♪♪♪♪♪ of my point of view, sometimes asks me ♫ questions ♫ about it, listens with interest and without condemnation, and sometimes even agrees with me. I know she’s been disturbed by many things that have happened under Obama, particularly in the field of foreign policy. And yet ♩♩ here she is,♩♩♩ phone-banking for Hiltlery.♪♪♪♪♪
I ♪ was so taken aback ♬ that I couldn’t ♩♩♩come up with a thing to say. …♫♫♫
I put it to music!
You’re vely welcome!
Side note: Rotherham is still going on. They’re just covering up more. Abusers “untouchable.”
http://www.pomonews.com/2014/09/sex-abuse-in-rotherham-result-of.html
G6loq:
What makes you think the right isn’t—or can’t be, or won’t be—the same kind of mob? The goals are somewhat different, but there’s nothing especially noble about many people on the right who would ascribe to ends justify means in a heartbeat. I see it every day.
And I’ve explained over and over what makes people “hang out” with their liberal friends and relatives. If you don’t understand that, you are very far gone.
Putting it to music—how very very clever of you.
I’ve already caused enough annoyance with my views so I’ll try and make this as dispassionate as possible.
I don’t think the minds of many on the left would change, even were they to be strapped down and put to the knife themselves.
An allegiance to a worldview that unshakeable is a well-known phenomenon; and though somewhat apart from the question you have broached, is relevant to it. But cognitive dissonance is not the major element.
The other aspect, which I have been harping on, is the radical divergence in the views of human reality and “morals” held by conservatives on the one hand, and liberals on the other.
In the liberal psychic universe, which per definition has no intrinsic right and wrong built into it but only material processes, some of which are labeled behavior, there is no objective right or wrong to align or misalign one’s self with. A “mind changing” revelation then, reduces to nothing more than a temporary alteration in behavior in order to acquire or to avoid; not a fundamental change of worldview or mind.
As a therapist, you and to the contrary, probably have some intellectual commitment to the notion that you are engaged in an activity which goes deeper than “adjusting” the organism to the social situation that surrounds it by freeing it up from inhibitions and habitual prejudices. You probably believe that given the intrinsic nature of the being you are addressing, some things are objectively good for it and those who associate with it, and some are inferior and bad.
You would probably say, I guess, that reconciling someone to being a “good” Nazi or an effective and guilt free child molester, is not a “good” thing. Your moral vocabulary probably extends beyond the term “socially (in)appropriate” .
It is probably that disposition that prepared the way for your “mind change”.
But, the fact is, that most people in history have been rank hypocrites (or even less) in this regard; and nowadays, as in certain prior times, they have commonly even shucked off the bother of erecting a hypocritical facade.
They have no mind, in the sense of a critical conscience, to change. They are engaged in, and content to engage in, just as the left posits, mere behavior, and coping with the environment. Emotional satisfactions gained or lost tell them all they need to know.
How many times must we read the same progressive anthropological critiques, decades old, of the western moral framework and values, to realize that the principles of ir-reason have been fully internalized as a kind of ideological justification system by a large number of people who were already pretty much predisposed to take that view anyway.
Why wonder why someone cannot be reasoned with, or why they are impervious to argument, or even experience, when their own admitted worldview when explicated as “realizing the the dream we dream”, tells you exactly why.
The left doesn’t believe in argument. Just in rhetoric, and social engineering through politics. They have themselves told us so again and again and again.
They don’t believe (despite calling themselves the “reality based community) that there is a “human nature”, or a teleological justification for morals, or that moral action is the process of aligning one’s self with an objective right.
They believe that reality is created: by acting upon the “dreams we dream”; that most of our motives are unconscious; that reason is the slave (and not properly the master ) of appetite; that to reason with an opponent is to tacitly lend legitimacy to his position; that ridicule, not syllogisms are the effective way to influence other people’s behavior; and that behavior is its own justification; and (in the US) that those on the right whom you revile, will always be there to pull you out of a jam, because their own internalized values have trained them to do so.
Why adjust? There is no problem. You eat, you screw, you twitter, and you die and then become one with the universe. Why worry?
The problem with the right, is that our own commitments prevent us from seeing what is clearly before our faces: what other human organisms really value.
We keep puzzling and becoming outraged over what is really no puzzle, and what should be no cause of outrage.
One day, science will show just how radically different people really are in their “reward systems”.
When I was a little boy, I remember getting into my father’s law books and reading excerpts from cases; and thinking how great it would to be to be a judge and make everything fair.
I even thought that maybe it would be a good idea to take everything good up into a kind of pile and give equal shares to everyone.
When I would look at other people, I just kind of assumed that they were a fixed part of an environment which I had an entitlement to access.
And although I experienced a number of surprises as I grew up, including the outrage over what they did to my first paycheck, I don’t think reality fully dawned on me until I got out of college, and really entered the adult “workplace”.
Yes, I had studied economics and philosophy and history and even Marxism in college, and had had actual jobs for some years, but it was not until I personally, not theoretically, witnessed production first hand, that it really hit me, and with a force surpassing any mere intellectual conviction: there is no “workplace”, no “economy”, no “society”.
There are people doing and making things, and you don’t have that metaphysically entitled draw on them which children and childish adults imagine.
A few dozen men, basically, propelled the industrial revolution; automotive stamping dies and molds were cut in a couple hundred machine shops. And the German immigrant owner of a die shop was not there in order to employ workers or throw charity to salesmen, but to ply his trade with interested others. Almost everyone in the goddamned world – including conservative economists and politicians through force of a conceptual abstraction habit, had it perfectly backwards – even if in the case of conservatives they kind of knew it.
The liberal illusion, though they imagine that they have abandoned all teleological superstition, is that others exist “for” you.
They don’t.
THis Omnibus bill is killing me.
Neo’s questions perfectly encapsulate how liberals like to look at things in general – they can be used in exactly the same way to explain the other classic liberal conundrum:
1) Liberals take the side of lawbreakers (particularly those of certain demographics)
2) Liberals get terribly upset at the idea of ordinary citizens arming themselves to defend themselves against lawbreakers
3) Liberals demonize police for attempting to do the job they are paid to do – stop lawbreakers – and get completely rabid if police have the gall to defend themselves against lawbreakers who decide to attack cops trying to stop them from breaking the law
The unfortunate fact is, a large percentage of liberals actually, individually, aren’t demons. They’re stupid and immature, incapable of accepting or living in the real world, and would simply rather believe that if they are sufficiently nice to everyone, they will be safe. They try to ignore any evidence to the contrary by telling themselves, THAT person was the victim of a crime because he/she deserved it (by not being nice enough, or by having too much undistributed wealth, etc). It just that they cannot handle the idea of people who actually are evil, willing to commit crimes against others for no other reason than greed or sociopathy, who can only be stopped by the opposite of niceness.
DNW:
I think perhaps you forget one thing: I was a liberal for most of my adult life. And I have undergone NO fundamental change as a person. My main change was two things (a) I got more interested in politics, and (b) I started reading sources that were not liberal/left (I had previously not realized how bias my sources were).
It’s almost as simple as that.
And since most of my friends are both (a) and (b), I cannot possibly see them as basically different from me. The big difference is that I got more interested.
neo-neocon Says:
December 18th, 2015 at 1:22 pm
G6loq:
What makes you think the right isn’t–or can’t be, or won’t be–the same kind of mob?
Moral equivalence Néo? Whoo hoo!
– Your spots are showing! –
Is it not typical of Libtards? Accusing others of that they’ve been doing all along?
Can’t wait to see your videos and pictures of rampaging TEA party hordes ….
And I’ve explained over and over what makes people “hang out” with their liberal friends and relatives.
If you don’t understand that, you are very far gone.
Hmmm, the snide, the sneer, the smug [S.S.S.] all in a short sentence! Well done!
Yeah, I have no place sitting along with Libtards on the staggering heights of their moral superiority.
Sad but true!
And I’ve explained over and over
Again that’s the S.S.S!
Now, let me explain.
Libtards will tolerate you around if they view you as a beta type. A pet in other words.
I know, I was a pet till I learned the language well enough to generally and politely disprove about some of their stuff. It got testy real fast.
Not showing sufficient enthusiasm for the cause is considered objection.
I last spent any social time with such a crowd in Oakland, march of 2005, they were passing a butt plug in the shape of GWB’s head around the table. The women were giggling loudly.
Not my civilization.
Massive breakdown of standards and boundaries which are the province of womyn. Biology dictates it.
Note: The women were giggling loudly and that’s how we got where we are.
Ann Coulter and phyllis schlafly are right in their assessment.
We are going going down a cultural drain like at the times of the Weimar Republic and, there is no much we can do given the enormous number of collaborating enablers…
Probably nothing to do at this point. We yielded and yielded, didn’t neutralize and now we can’t push back anymore.
As this point, retreat to the mountains, maintain physical and mental integrity and, wait to pick up the piece. If old, prepare to die well for it not a matter of if but of when and then of how.
It’s happened before. href=”http://tinyurl.com/nenl4xg” title=””>Seneca’s boss was NERO.
End explaining.
Bonus: Trump as you would like him
Putting it to music–how very very clever of you.
S.S.S! But yeah, soon we’ll be reduced to cracking jokes, just like the denizen of the former Soviet Republic.
Geez!
*It’s happened before. href=”http://tinyurl.com/nenl4xg” title=””>Seneca’s boss was NERO.
Anni Ultimi: A Roman Stoic Guide to Retirement, Old Age and Death
Poor guy. I feeeel for him ….
Choices we face:
during the debate, the Ladies watching with me commented that Cruz’s smile is creepy. Debate before it was: “ short with a squeacky” voice.
Rubio is deemed to be very smart and well spoken.
They didn’t like it when I sneered at Fiorina going all vagina: slippery subject in our times …..
“If you want something talked about, ask a man. If you want something done, ask a woman.”
Hmmm: Hiltlery, Sibelius, Rice, Boxer, Pelosi … etc, running the show!
Here: Fiorina in all her self perceived splendor!
Geez!
I have very much enjoyed today’s seminar.
Neo, thanks for setting it up.
Lots of things to mull over.
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There must be Trump supporters down-under:
https://www.youtube.com/embed/yZZlo0WZ_iU?rel=0