Illiberal liberals
To someone such as me, who’s experienced a certain amount of liberal shunning and/or anger because of my political “change,” this report comes as no surprise whatsoever:
[The Pew Research Center] found that instead of engaging in civil discourse or debate, fully 16% of liberals admitted to blocking, unfriending or overtly hiding someone on a social networking site because that person expressed views they disagreed with. That’s double the percentage of conservatives and more than twice the percentage of political moderates who behaved like that.
Note that it’s still a small minority who do this. But still, it’s a much bigger minority than the percentage of conservatives who act that way.
But if you were to ask liberals who’s more tolerant—liberals or conservatives—I have little doubt their answer would be “liberals.” And if confronted with the evidence otherwise from this poll, my guess is that a not insignificant number of liberals would justify it by saying some version of, “Well, it’s not intolerant when liberals block conservatives, because conservatives are evil/racist/intolerant people. Q.E.D.”
yes, liberals are extraordinarily narrow minded, and quite adolescent in their discourse. i don’t even bother engaging with them, as a former liberal, I know what they’re about. The thing that is galling is how they think they’re so tolerant. That’s the worst part about them.
You first have to decide whether you are refering to classical liberals, or [fascist/communist neo]Liberals…
using the term liberals is what amounts to helping a certain group use the cache of enlightenment classical liberalism as a sheeps clothing to wear as they act.
what your actually referring to are Hegelian liberals… (neo liberals, progressives, fabians in liberal clothing, stalinists, etc… )
my rewrite…
So WHICH liberals are we referring to?
the one providing the skinned fleece for the wolves, or the wolves?
Having ‘evil’, ‘racist’, ‘sexist’, ‘zenophobe’, and ‘intolerant’ as benchmarks to which all political opponents are referenced has the advantage of elevating one’s own politics to righteousness. From so great a height nothing can touch them – not reason, or evidence, nature’s imperatives, or history’s lessons. I wonder if this sort should be considered least likely to see the light — distressed by and avoiding, much like Dracula, all natural light; or most likely to eventually see the light — as just a little of it can overwhelm the deepest darkness.
Hegel’s Critique of Liberalism and Social Contract
Theories in the Jena Lectures
http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/txt/mansour.htm
kind of funny, but almost everything you want to know about their side, comes from the literature they plagiarize and repackage..
they are cargo cult, and so have no real self depth, any more than a sociopath does… why should they if they can fake it and faking it is their whole being? a parasite that doesn’t do that, is not a parasite…
an incomplete something that needs the production of something else to survive.
and parasite because they do this at the expense of the other, not mutually beneficent..
But if you were to ask liberals who’s more tolerant–liberals or conservatives–I have little doubt their answer would be “liberals.”
and they would be RIGHT.. .
classical liberals would be that way and they believe that if they wear the cache of such, they are such…
so they call themselves what they arent as theyc ant face waht they are… they wont call themselves communists… because they dislike communsits and what they stand for (openly).. they wont say they are progressives, as they dont like what they have seen of them… they might claim to be social democrats, but thats the same thing as communist (they just dont know that)…
so all this is, as Hegel puts it, in regard to the selfish, vain self…
Liberals ARE the most tolerant
NeoLiberals are Hegelian, so they are the least tolerant…
how do they imagine themselves to be the most? easy, they invert it… so in their minds they are the most tolerant, and the classical liberals they call the “right” today are the least tolerant.. as the label right is for fascist communist dichotomy and they have no other bucket to put them in..
the last part you put is justified as the same ‘religious’ false justification that is classical in history…
its what the blues brothers make fun of in the begining of the movie…
It’s a hundred and six miles to Chicago, we’ve got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, it’s dark, and we’re wearing sunglasses.
They’re on a mission from God!!!
what God? the Uber Mensch
Caligula, Tiberius, Caesar, Hitler, Stalin, napoleon, etc.. the new soviet man, the man as god, etc..
VERY old concept…
and confirmed if you look at the photography to show such… funny how they see to have the same holy halo that Jesus and the disciples had…
The éœbermensch (German for “Overman, Overhuman, Above-Human, Superman”…
ergo the movie.. “waiting for superman”
ie… waiting for Godot?
the “in” crowd know all this… the outsiders (you) dont…
the in are the collective, the outsiders that dont know are the victims who believe otherwise.
the only way to know is to READ…
Zarathustra ties the éœbermensch to the death of God…
in THEIR cargo cult minds…
they see the conditions, the environment, etc… as making things… if you build it they will come…
so if they make hell on earth, the messiah will appear… (not that the messiah will appear on a date of gods choosing, whether or not you make hell)
read the paragraph above…
they see themselves and the leader as these ubermensch… but they are not.. but believing so, they are only doing what THEIR morals says is ok..
if god is dead, and god gave us rights, then who gives us rights now god is dead? the ubermensche in state..
who decides who lives and dies? god? no the ubermenschen.. (And uberhunden)
so they are all above the law, and the only thing preventing them from acting and changing everything is that there are a lot more idiots than they, and they have to USE them, and keep them mollified and so on…
they want to stop the counter revolutoin when the people find out – and rationing food, meds, and all that will do that just fine… ask the survivors of holodomor…
[edited for length by n-n]
ok… just cut it…
there is no way to do this…
i give up..
the capacity has been stunted till it no longer can contain what it needs to contain and or discuss in order to be free, and exist apart from the state.
you only need a shot glass of knowledge, because the ubermensch are thinking for you..
“Ideas are more powerful than guns. We would not let our enemies have guns, why should we let them have ideas.”
— Quote by Joseph Stalin, former dictator of the Soviet Union
the inability to take or discuss more than a shot glass prevents us from being armed with ideas… we cant even hold THEIR ideas in the shot glass… which is why we make so much stuff up…
we have to fill the empty thimbles from the shot glasses… and slowly starve as our minds get stunted…
“To all those who have suffered as a consequence of our troubled past I extend my sincere thoughts and deep sympathy. With the benefit of historical hindsight we can all see things which we would wish had been done differently or not at all.”
— Quote by Queen Elizabeth II
we have no such benefit…
we were hatched yesterday, and history is irrelevant… as it wont fit into a shot glass…
I must give up… no?
this
“I do not think that there is any other quality so essential to success of any kind as the quality of perseverance. It overcomes almost everything, even nature.”
— Quote by John D. Rockefeller, oil tycoon
or this?
“A man is not finished when he is defeated. He is finished when he quits.”
— Quote by former U.S. President Richard Nixon
“It is humiliating to remain with our hands folded while others write history. It matters little who wins. To make a people great it is necessary to send them to battle even if you have to kick them in the pants. That is what I shall do.”
— Quote by Italian dictator Benito Mussolini
“While the State exists, there can be no freedom. When there is freedom there will be no State.”
— Quote by V.I. Lenin, Russian revolutionary
“I’m not a dictator. It’s just that I have a grumpy face.”
— Quote by Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet
A man who views the world the same at fifty as he did at twenty has wasted thirty years of his life.
— Quote by Muhammad Ali
“I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.”
— Quote by Elie Wiesel, Holocaust survivor
Artfldgr: by the way, I already know about classical liberals (a term I’ve used for myself)—and “liberals” who’ve co-opted the term “liberal,” as well as to what purpose.
Note, for example, the sarcastic last two paragraphs of this post of mine from way back in 2005.
And my cutting the length of your comments actually makes it possible for what you’re writing to be read by more people, not fewer. Your points are often made earlier than you may think.
Only 16% of ‘progressives’ admit to being closed minded; I suspect another 66% are too embarrassed to admit they engage in this behavior.
“The thing that is galling is how they think they’re so tolerant. That’s the worst part about them.”
I second that motion, all in favor say aye.
BTW, global warming has come to Iowa and I spent 6 hours earlier today prepping garden beds and planting lettuce, spinach, and arugula directly into the ground, and starting leeks in the cold frame. A warm, moist, happy spring to all.
aye!
I admit to unfriending a progressive friend on FaceBook recently, and asking another to stop sending me political emails. It seems that liberals are “in your face” about their political beliefs, while the conservatives I know just go about their lives.
It wasn’t that they were voicing opinions different from my own that I couldn’t tolerate. It was that they were throwing out that day’s talking point, then smugly saying, “There! What do have to say to that?”
I suspect the conservatives who have blocked liberal friends are much like me in that they tired of being goaded and baited. I could either respond (but I try to leave my political beliefs out of my day-to-day social interactions), or stew about it. It wasn’t a pleasant way to start every morning.
Due to two aspects of lib behavior I have observed, this comes as no surprise. 1) It is not difficult to observe a smug,self-righteous streak in libs. 2) While many libs, as LisaM points out, like to shout the talking points of the week to the rooftops, they are not so pleased at their talking points being hurled back at them, and tend to stop the discussion when that occurs. They like dishing it out, but can’t take it.
That would easily translate into “unfriending” someone on a social network site.
@LisaM,
I dropped a FB friend after she descended from vague conservatism into liberal insanity, largely via Glenn Beck hate. So odd, and she was just a chore, largely because she was argumentative and arrogant. Different views lobbed out there is just part of FB and other social media, but aggressive stupidity gets old.
As such, it’s not that I don’t tolerate modern lefty nonsense, because I literally can’t get away from it, it’s that I see no reason to put up with those who want to force me to accept it.
And, to be honest, I think that’s a very different mindset and reason for “unfriending” or blocking someone. I suspect that more liberals simply want to dodge reality when they do the blocking.
…which is why I don’t put a lot of stock in the study as-is. It doesn’t seem to be asking quite the right questions, or the right follow-up questions.
The 16% are goners. But be assured Barak Obama has placed a world of doubt in the more typical liberal mind.
Only 16% of ‘progressives’ admit to being closed minded;
The other 84% refused to answer and denounced the question as another example of how racist, sexist, and homophobic conservatives are.
One thing I’ve noticed is that liberals are far more likely to spout off on their political views, and do so in a fairly offensive way, in company where views are known to be mixed or unknown. I’ve seen this several times and it always amazes me.
On the other side, I and most conservatives I know don’t discuss politics, or do so only gently, when around people we know to be liberals, or if we don’t know what their views are.
I guess this is a bit tangential to your post about liberal intolerance, but it’s in the same ballfield. Liberals either assume that everyone agrees with them or that no one will dare contradict them.
I recently blocked an extremely “progressive” e-friend after she broadcast something or other about deleting Rush Limbaugh from the radio airwaves.
Let me get this out of the way: Rush Limbaugh, like most of us, is a mixture of good and not-terribly-good. One aspect of not-terribly-good is he can be a pompous blowhard. I will add, since Rush did not know Ms. Fluke personally, to term her a slut was inadvisable, to say the least.
I blocked this e-friend because it’s not just about using boycott techniques to object to something someone said. It’s entirely about utterly stifling any and all opposition to the “progressive” world view of pee cee socialism/collectivism. I won’t have that rubbish staring me in the face.
On a more general note, I’m willing to read points of view that are opposed to mine, provided they are expressed calmly and intelligently, and provided they do not insult my very integrity.
That last condition rules out a very large percentage of all such writings (based on long experience, before I gave up), since in them I very likely find myself treated as dinosauric, racist, sexist, you all here know the routine. For example, I once subscribed to The New Republic because I was willing to hear the other side out, but I finally had to cancel. I will ^not^ be regularly and routinely insulted like that.
Okay, end of rant.
Julia NYC Says:
March 13th, 2012 at 1:34 pm
Same here. I just don’t have time for their impenetrable ignorance. The few liberal friends I still associate with know that I’ll rip their heads off if they start to talk politics. So there’s a certain wariness in our present interactions.
I wonder how many “changers”, i.e., former liberals, have cut off their liberal friends; as opposed to people who were conservative all along.
To put it another way, maybe ex-liberals are more likely to cut off their liberal friends than people who were never liberals in the first place.
Maybe that behavior is a holdover from their former liberalism.
rickl,
You may be onto something… I’ve never been tempted by ‘progressive’ ideology but I am willing to engage in political exchanges with my ‘progressive’ acquaintances. Mostly, it is futile as no minds are changed, but at least we are able to remain friends/neighbors on gentile terms. But then, I live in Iowa, not the east or west coasts. Flyover country has many benefits, one of which is we don’t hold grudges over political differences. We know that everyone is human on the inside.
Ah, dgr, dgr…. you just don’t appreciate what a snip from the neo does for your points…. after all, you don’t believe in getting to the point, you believe in the share all of communism.
Nevertheless, as we learn in the sacred Text of Tom Petty:
“So let’s get to the point, let’s roll another joint
Let’s head on down the road
There’s somewhere I gotta go ”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TsH4CrwExCQ
A word to the Wise
Guy.
Ah, yes, liberalism. The product of enlightenment. The recognition of individual dignity. It should come as no surprise that they would usurp this noble title. It should now be clear that their principal tactic for gaining followers is through appeals to emotion and the basest human nature. Their principal recruitment device is offering promises of physical, material, and ego instant gratification, principally through redistributive and retributive change, but also through fraudulent and opportunistic exploitation, without consequence. However, they fail to disclose that their policy is a principal sponsor for corruption of individuals and society. In their pursuit to consolidate wealth and power through the establishment of virtual monopolies and monopolistic enterprises (e.g. government) they denigrate individual dignity, devalue human life, and must necessarily threaten liberty.
As Artfldgr noticed, it’s ironic that left-wing ideologues are predisposed to atheism, while rejecting the alternative as only suitable for weak minds. The paradox exists in that religious individuals who adhere to a Judeo-Christian faith or similar defer to God for their post-mortem judgment, while atheists, faux agnostics, and apostates defer their judgment and dignity to alphas (or mortal gods) during their mortal existence. This is certainly not universal, bu there is a predisposition which directly correlates to an individual’s ideology.
Another irony which arises from their need and desire for instant gratification is, perhaps paradoxically, that they perceive a selective reality which is progressively incompatible with both the natural and enlightened (i.e. conscious, from which individual dignity is acknowledged as axiomatic or accepted on faith) orders.
That said, I was liberal, by definition; but, I was not liberal by the contemporary standard. I was also progressive, by the original (or classical) standard; but, I was not progressive by the contemporary standard. Both of the latter standards are moving targets. So there are generational liberals and progressives who do not maintain any standards to speak of other than a blind rebellion against their “conservative” predecessors. There is a reason why today’s progressive is tomorrow’s conservative. Most people mature to reason that there is no value in pursuing progress for its own sake. In each succeeding generation the human condition does not materially change, and rebellion for its own sake is immature and even counterproductive.
Yeah, and the other 50% don’t block you, they just insult you, attack you, and try to get at your children. The minority that block you… are the decent ones.