Political change: the liberals
In the “long slow march of leftism” thread there was a discussion about the distinction between leftists and liberals. Commenter “R.C.” and I initially disagreed on whether the friends I often talk about and call “liberals” are really liberals at all rather than leftists masquerading as liberals. I state my case here:
I know some leftists, and I know a great many liberals—and what’s more, I know the difference.
Most of the liberals I know are not all that politically oriented. They read and watch some of the news, but they don’t explore things in depth, and they know what the Times, NPR, and their friends tell them.
I’m not even knocking them for that. I never used to be especially interested in politics, and that description in the last paragraph could have described me through the end of the 20th century. I was busy with other things, and my politics had been formed years earlier and I thought they were pretty set. I wasn’t poorly informed but I wasn’t well informed either, and a great deal of what I thought I knew wasn’t true.
I was never never a leftist or even close to it.
That is the description of most of my friends.
In this day-and-age, it takes a bit of effort for me to overcome the suspicion that, for every open leftist ready to drive dissenters off campuses or out of tech companies, there are a half-dozen “liberals” who’re too well-salaried and middle-aged to bother mobbing and milkshaking the opposition, but who’re perfectly comfortable cheering on the ones who do.
I’m happy to hear that the folks you describe as liberal really are. I guess that means that if they could only learn about how their side of the aisle is really behaving, and how many of the news stories about right-wing misbehavior are blatant hoaxes, they’d start speaking up in opposition to it. I gather that, in your view, the problem is epistemological: They just don’t know.
How, then, can one “raise their awareness?”…
What do you think it would take for a standard liberal to conclude that their world-picture is incomplete in important ways, and start looking seriously at what they could learn from the other side of the aisle?
I know that 9/11 got the change rolling for you, Neo. (But, reading your old “A mind is a difficult thing to change” series, it seems to me you’d had a tickle or two of cognitive dissonance, as far back as the late 80’s, which 9/11 triggered into fuller activity.)
I hope that the liberals you know are similarly aware that there are gaps in their worldview, and merely underestimate their importance. Perhaps some future events, or even current ones, might stimulate a cascade of mind-changing?
(I just hope it won’t always take an act of war and thousands of tragic deaths.)
Here’s my response to those thoughtful observations and questions.
Some liberals are not the least bit interested in getting more information, especially from sources on the right. In fact, this is a large group, I believe. One big reason for this is that, by a certain age, people’s views generally are rather set and become so entrenched that they see no particular need to revisit them, and they have other more pleasant things to do with their time.
Also, one of the ways the left trades on and relies on that is the practice of continually discrediting sources on the right, even relatively mainstream ones like Fox News (excuse me: Faux News), as being a bunch of lying, racist, hatemongerers. So why waste one’s time listening to such pig swill?
So there is little interest in hearing or reading anything that isn’t the usual MSM or even further left fodder. And a corollary of that is that a source such as CNN, for example, which the right finds to be unreliable at best and purposely deceiving at worst, the usual liberal finds relatively trustworthy. These are very hard beliefs to break, particularly if they are so strong the person will not even give another news source a try.
People on the right have a different experience. Because so much of the MSM is leftist, a person on the right may find it nearly impossible to block exposure to what the left is saying. The right is far more familiar with leftist thought than liberals are with actual bona fide opinions on the right. For liberals it is far easier to have zero exposure to the viewpoints of the right unless it is something filtered through the prism of the left by distorted MSM reporting on it. This all favors the leftist or liberal message being solidly incessant for liberals, and limits their exposure greatly to the actual views of the right.
How many liberals have actually read items in even the more moderate press on the right, such as for example National Review? I would wager the percentage is extremely small. But who on the right hasn’t read the NY Times, for example?
That has to do with the consuming of information, which helps to form opinions. How can an opinion change without new information, or a new way to see old information? Political conversation between those who are on opposite sides doesn’t usually convince anyone of anything, in part because it generally gets too heated and emotional too quickly. Still another reason conversation doesn’t tend to work is because a political belief system is an edifice built brick by brick over time, made of thousands and thousands of perceptions, stories, lived experiences, attitudes, and facts we think we know. It is a difficult and sometimes lengthy process to dismantle that edifice.
Sometimes it happens. But that’s rather rare. And I believe that first in order for that to happen, a person also has to have a mind that is open to change. I’m not sure what goes into the making of such a mind or such a person, but I suppose I must have had that characteristic to begin with or I never would have undergone my political change. One thing I know is that I had always had the habit of countering my own arguments, of challenging them by reading opposing material if I could find it—a sort of natural skepticism, even about myself.
Maybe that can’t be taught. But if it’s an already-existing characteristic of a person, then new information has a chance of getting through and changing things—if that new information is viewed by the person as reliable and relevant. A new building gets constructed, brick by brick. In much of my “A mind is a difficult thing to change” series, I deal with how that happened to me.
[NOTE: There’s more to add—including the idea of political identity and membership in a political group, and the question of emotions vs. thought as being predominant in the person making political decisions. Maybe good for another post some time; this one’s long enough for now. But feel free to discuss it all in the comments.]
The right is far more familiar with leftist thought than liberal are with actual bona fide opinions on the right.
Key sentence. Also:
Capitalism, Gramsci suggested, maintained control not just through violence and political and economic coercion, but also through ideology. The bourgeoisie developed a hegemonic culture, which propagated its own values and norms so that they became the “common sense” values of all. People in the working-class (and other classes) identified their own good with the good of the bourgeoisie, and helped to maintain the status quo rather than revolting.
Another key and why the left is controlling education
If the word “liberal” is being used properly, it refers to what is, in the context of American politics, “conservative”.
But, “liberal” isn’t used properly in America, not since the “progressives” (i.e. American leftists) of 70+ years ago hi-jacked the word and re-branded themselves as “liberals” (*).
In the context of American politics, “liberals” — all of them — are “soft” leftists (**): they accept, generally uncritically, the premises of leftism, therefore, they are leftists. They are “soft” leftists because they are not *yet* willing to all the places those premises logically demand. Yet, no sooner do the consciously hard leftists demand that they move to next logical entailment of the leftist premises, but that they do.
(*) And of late, now that they have run “liberal” into the ground, they’re beginning to call themselves “progressives” again.
(**) and most people who consider themselves “conservative” are simply “softer” leftists, and for the same reason.
Very well-stated indeed! One might add that no-one who has read widely in history, literature, philosophy, and science, and is thereby fully acquainted with certain truths about the world and the human condition, can ever accept the nonsense subscribed to by most leftists, who are capable of believing in more than six impossible things before breakfast.
I strongly suspect that RC is right when he speculates that, “for every open leftist ready to drive dissenters off campuses or out of tech companies, there are a half-dozen “liberals” who’re too well-salaried and middle-aged to bother mobbing and milkshaking the opposition, but who’re perfectly comfortable cheering on the ones who do.”
I also think the neo is correct in her assessment of why liberals think as they do.
To change a mind that is made up requires exposure to something that has a highly corrosive effect upon accepted premises. It may be sudden or gradual but it must be something that cannot in the listener’s mind be dismissed or even discounted. I suspect that the democrat party’s radical extremism is beginning to have that affect upon millions of Americans. That extremism has to be having a corrosive affect upon previously held attitudes, ala the #WalkAway Campaign and more and more black conservatives staring to speak out.
For neo it started with 9/11. For me it started with daily exposure on the radio to Rush Limbaugh and Dennis Prager. Initially, I strongly rejected what Rush was saying. Prager’s logic and reason I increasingly found harder and harder to discount. Their criticisms of Bill Clinton’s presidency gradually had a deeper and deeper impact. By 9/11 I was well into my change from an independent to a conservative.
I see that same affect beginning to happen in today’s political climate. AOC wants to do away with the DHS. Warren wants to ‘forgive’ trillions in college debt by having taxpayers pay for it.
And, climate change fanatics in Canada are now claiming that toilet paper causes man-made climate change…
The word “liberal” has been hijacked by the left. Read this:
https://mises.org/library/what-classical-liberalism
When I think of what “liberal” meant to me when I was younger, I think of of someone educated and with critical thinking skills. I think of someone who rejects superstitious belief in favor of the scientific method.
Ive undergone a substantial change on my understanding of change stories ?
I used to assume everyone was open to changing their mind based on new facts that conflicted with their understanding of the world. After all, I do that … why wouldn’t everyone do that?! Duh.
I now know that is just not true. Many many people are so invested emotionally in their beliefs that to question any of that is far too threatening and dangerous to their self-image.
Which, okay, I get it … but then you need to own it. Take that next step and be brave. Let your freak flag fly: you proudly use emotion, avoidance of cognitive dissonance, and vanity/virtue signaling to guide your belief system. You avoid new information on purpose. No room for intellectual advancement or growth here!
You be you.
Sorry that ? after first sentence was a smiley on my phone 🙂
Jeff Brokaw:
I actually had a friend (who is not young) tell me that she is extremely attached to her point of view and has too much invested in it, and is afraid of information to challenge it.
That seemed very very honest to me.
Sorry if the above sounds excessively harsh.
But too many of those kind of people in a society *is* dangerous because it makes that society too susceptible to propaganda. From a complicit news media, for instance. Which is exactly what we are watching unfold, right now.
I’m not a fan.
Neo: agreed, that is exceptionally honest and transparent. Sadly that is the exception rather than the rule, by a wide, WIDE margin.
Some people actually block themselves off from other sources of information. I know someone who only listens to NPR to make sure she gets the “right” information.
2, is the methodological answer to 1.
3b, is the reason the reason that 2, methodological introspection, isn’t actually used that often.
The remaining question then, is: Why are such discussions so quick to produce resentment and heated emotion, so that even an (honest) introspective dialog becomes virtually unthinkable?
And the answer to that, is the missing quality in the person …
.. the name of which can be found in the parentheses
This is Lucifer’s preferred and original name.
Heyl-El
https://www.cepher.net/blog.aspx?post=3667&title=There+is+no+Lucifer
Yesha’yahu (Isaiah) 14:12
How are you fallen from heaven, O Heylel, son of the howling morning! how are you cut down to the ground, which did weaken the nations!
Well of course, an arch angel, even if a fallen would, have a suffix of “El” to connote with Elohim: an elohim being a god like or spiritual entity. Lucifer was always a Latin construct, probably because a Bishop at the time was named Lucifer and the human “editor” liked to tweak that Bishop a bit. Human antics, predictable, very very predictable.
So don’t feel bad about classical liberals vs Leftists. Humans have been corrupting language since day 1. Or at least Day 7+.
Just coincidentally, happened to browse thorough one of the increasingly rare, very large, well-stocked book stores around, and after 20-30 minutes of scanning their extensive stock on a whole host of subjects, I couldn’t remember seeing even one book that I would classify as offering conservative/right ideas or viewpoints.
How do you even stumble across so called Conservative or “right wing” ideas if they aren’t available?
Similar situation, of course, in public libraries I’ve used.
During one of the recent Presidential elections I noticed that, if you visited the local big box book store, the tables you immediately encountered were stacked with piles of books written by the Democrat candidates, worshipful biographies about them and their proposals, etc., but hardly ever anything about their Republican opponents and their proposals–or anything positive about them– especially anything as prominently displayed.
Actually this just brought to mind something I had read several years ago, about this same time, and on a website where workers at the old Borders, or Crown Books, it could even have been Barnes & Noble—I forget which, were griping about various job issues.
One of these bookstore employees was bragging about how he made sure that books featuring or favoring conservative/Republican candidates or ideas were hard or impossible to find.
He made sure that such books were not prominently displayed, were put in obscure or hard to see locations in the store, stacked other books on or in front of them so they couldn’t be seen, and he seemed particularly proud of damaging such books, or listing them as “damaged” when they weren’t, and so removing them from the floor or never putting them on the floor in the first place, and dumping them in the discard/return bin back in the stockroom.
I am presently reading “The Library Book,” a surprisingly interesting book about the Los Angeles Central Library. I’m enjoying it, but it’s obvious that the L.A. library, at least, is politically monolithic. At one point a supervisor warns a librarian not to be too liberal, and the librarian laughs and responds something like, “Oh my God, do you think there are any conservative librarians?” The librarian then laughs so hard that the author thinks he might cry. Apparently in Library-land, the very idea that a librarian might be anything but liberal is inconceivable. These are the people choosing our books and spending public money to buy them.
How many liberals have actually read items in even the more moderate press on the right, such as for example National Review? I would wager the percentage is extremely small.
When I was in college I occasionally read magazines from the “enemy’s” side of the aisle, such as National Review. I read more from the “good” side, such as Ramparts and The Nation. I was surprised to read a letter to the editor of National Review whose author was the brother of a high school classmate. He wrote that while he was a conservative, his Columbia classmates treated him respectfully. As his Jewish parents had fled Austria after Hitler annexed it in 1938, I was surprised that he was a conservative. Turns out his parents were also conservative. It took me years to figure that out- or years to actually try thinking about it. (Quick explanation: Hitler said he was going to change everything- and he did. Changing everything doesn’t sound very conservative.)
At the same time, though ostensibly a liberal in blue blue lib-land, I had previously shown some independence by being the only student in my high school to vote for Harold Stassen- as in none of the above- in the school’s 1968 presidential straw poll. While I didn’t like LBJ, I had a gut realization that neither RFK nor Eugene McCarthy nor Nixon were satisfactory alternatives. As my favorite non-Math high school class had been Intro to Politics, I was neither uninterested in nor ignorant of politics.
As to the American Left and its tag-along, get along to go along Liberals, I think it is way past time to read (or read again) Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago. Especially the chapter titled “Our Muzzled Freedoms”, which I have just reread.
We are closer than you think.
Neo’s link picked up one of Snow on Pine’s comments.
Try this one for R. C.’s.
https://www.thenewneo.com/2019/07/20/the-long-slow-march-of-leftism/#comment-2445181
The discussion on both these posts is highly enlightening.
Nations have a national interest in producing good citizens and in the past all of education, news and popular media, and government worked to do that. Once the left took over education in the 60s then it was natural that the news and popular media, and the government would soon fall to them as well. Until we take back public education there is no chance that a new generation of patriots will arise. I’m afraid that it’ll take some real calamity for that to happen and I don’t see one on the horizon yet. As usual, I hope I’m wrong but I’m afraid I’m not.
Neo wrote, “”not the least bit interested in getting more information, especially from sources on the right.”
Bingo.
And how can you fault someone like this. They aren’t even hearing about the waxing balls situation. They just here racist Trump over and over.
The left is lazy when it comes to politics but may not be lazy in life. They may prioritize life and freedom and truly be for free markets and live a conservative lifestyle and that is why BIG events shift politics so dramatically for a short period of time (like 9/11).
I changed in 1991 after the Reginald Denny situation, the LA riots and then visiting the library 3 times a week to learn after I heard Rush after those riots. When somebody hears an alternative view point after a big event and then goes down a rabbit hole – they are changed forever. That year I learned a lot about taxes, the budget, the environment. Since then I have learned quite a bit about so many more topics….
I have been accused of Oversymphplfying things. Probably some truth there.
Today’s Leftist and Liberal is a distinction without a difference.
Jeff Brokaw said:
“Many many people are so invested emotionally in their beliefs that to question any of that is far too threatening and dangerous to their self-image.”
Self-image shouldn’t be underestimated as a reason to close one’s mind to facts. I remember, in my change process, how frightening it was to begin acknowledging myself as conservative, one of those awful people. My initial step away from the liberal viewpoint was during the Clarence Thomas-Anita Hill hearings, but it wasn’t enough to make me depart the liberal camp entirely. The process was painful, as I saw friends drop away and as my concept of myself changed. Liberals, I had thought, were the caring folk, morally superior, and who wouldn’t want to be cozily wrapped up in that image?
Finally, facts mattered more, but it can be tough wrenching oneself away from the regard and cameraderie of friends and a philosophy that seemed so true and pure.
I get that self identified liberals are different than ‘progressives’ who are actually totalitarians. However, as Mao would say, liberals are the running dog lackeys of the totalitarians. Liberals are the last ones to visit the guillotines once the totalitarians cease power. What comfort they may find in their final hours will be transitory. Fools they are, who do not know history or how totalitarian overlords come to power.
“Well of course, an arch angel, even if a fallen would, have a suffix of “El” to connote with Elohim: an elohim being a god like or spiritual entity.”
The meaning of ‘elohim‘ is broader than “a god like or spiritual entity” — it means “one who is lifted-up/exalted”.
Magistrates were called “elohim”, and they were not “god like or spiritual entities”.
When Saul went to the Witch of Endor, after she had done her hocus-pocus, he asked her what she saw, and she said (seemingly in surprise) that she saw “elohim rising up out of the ground“. I suppose ghosts count as “spiritual entities” … but, the key point is that what she said she saw were beings being raised-up (from, apparently, Sheol).
Curiosity and looking for a new and unknown is the driver of any change, but for majority of people being in comfort zone is more important. This is so obvious for university students demanding “safe spaces” where they would never be challenged by the views they do not hold. Innovators and explorers are always a tiny fraction of the general population, for the latter conformism is reflexive and saves them from necessity to think for themselves. Which is, in itself, a rather hard labor they seek to avoid.
How do you even stumble across so called Conservative or “right wing” ideas if they aren’t available?
Start with the corporate charter: Declaration of Independence, add the corporate bylaws: The Constitution, moderate with moral principles, then reconcile with Nature (e.g. our Posterity), until you realize something internally, externally, and mutually consistent.
How do you even stumble across so called Conservative or “right wing” ideas if they aren’t available?
Center, in an American context. The “right wing” is libertarian. The extreme right, or left-right nexus, is totalitarian/anarchist.
None of those liberals will ever wake up at this point except when they wake up inside a fire.
“you
told him:i told
him;we told him
(he didn’t believe it,no
sir)it took
a nipponized bit of
the old sixth
avenue
el;in the top of his head:to tell
him”
Tim Pool’s take is that the left is fractured, and that the exhausted moderate-left majority are afraid of the radical left and don’t speak out because they’re afraid for their jobs:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93jeokbOJRU
The difference in left/right ideology between men and women is striking and not commented on (much?) in these threads. I recall reading that purportedly Republican women in the suburbs voted 60-40 for the Dems in 2018. Similarly, I have read that no Democrat president in recent times has won a majority of the men’s vote.
Leftism is basically a female ideology. Even men leftists are feminized–witness pajama boy and the man-bun, skinny pants wearing left wing hipsters. Not to go too MCP but women, our esteemed hostess a notable exception OF COURSE, notoriously arrive at their beliefs through emotion rather than reason. This helps to explain how the two sides talk past each other. Their beliefs are based on different bases.
Bob:
I never got the impression that the leftism known as Communism was predominantly female in the USSR. I’ve never seen statistics on it, though. And of course women were involved. But as far as I know they did not predominate.
In addition, although there are plenty of female leftists it is actually liberalism (of the modern, not the classical, variety) that is more female than male in America today.
There’s a difference between leftism and liberalism. I’ve written about it before.
In polls that ask a person if he or she is conservative, moderate, or liberal, in 2018 for women it was 30, 35, and 30. Quite evenly split. For men it was 40, 35, 21. So according to those self-reports, women are equally split and men are more conservative, but women are not predominantly liberal.
What I was looking for, though, was a poll of people who self-identify as “leftists” or “progressives” or “very liberal.” I couldn’t find one, but my guess is that men and women are similar in terms of percentage, or even that men might have a higher percentage of self-reported leftists than women do. I can’t find a poll that asks that question, or even that asks people if they are “very liberal”, which sometimes is a way of asking that question.
Many people believe what their friends and families believe. That’s why there are inter-connected regions that are largely left, and others that are largely right. The non-thinking followers cause that phenomenon which is clearly caused by people being influenced by the people nearest to them.
Within those regions are people who make their own opinions, so the left leaning places always have 30% support for the right, and vice-versa.
Rarely do regions go 90% one way or the other, although if you have enough of the following type in one place this can happen, like in urban centers. So this means that 2/3 of the population are capable of making their own minds and 1/3 follows the majority of the people around them. Of the 2/3 that believe what they wanna believe, many of them are very close-minded, maybe half, they will see information but once they go one way, they will remain locked into a single-minded way of thinking and will almost never waver no matter what they see. These people are the communist-revolutionary types, for them logic is absent while religious fervour holds sway.
So I think 1/3 are just followers, 1/3 are close-minded believers, and the remaining 1/3 are open-minded people that are capable of objectively seeking out information and evaluating it, and even changing their minds about it.