Liberals and “it’s not fair!”
Yesterday in the thead about the deficit there appeared this thought-provoking comment by Geoffrey Britain, in which he described the prevailing liberal/left mindset. Here’s an excerpt
We’re not really dealing with Machiavellian malevolence, we’re dealing with immature, arrested emotional development and with narcissism.
ALL points of view which spring from the left are, at base, centered in issues of ”˜fairness’.
Dig deeply enough and all leftist ”˜ism’s’ boil down to the child’s eternal cry of “it’s not fair!” and just as logic and reason are totally ineffective when dealing with a toddler’s temper tantrum, just so with trying to reason with liberals using facts and logic.
There’s some truth there. Yes, much liberalism is based on a sort of childish although natural human desire on the part of many poorer liberal Democrats to be given more stuff. But many liberals are the ones with more stuff. In fact, liberals (and Obama voters) tend to be the ones on the very bottom and the very top of the income ladder; it’s a somewhat U-shaped curve:
In 2008, the Democratic Party blossomed into a successful alliance of the upscale and the downscale—wealthy and needy marching hand in hand…The extent to which Democrats are relying on the far extremes of the income spectrum is striking. Democrats have generally performed well among low-income voters in the past, but now, the phenomenon has become more pronounced…Democratic gains among the rich have been even more dramatic and, given the party’s history, surprising…Obama…carried those making $200,000 or more by 6 points. True, these very affluent voters make up only 6 percent of the electorate, but Obama fared well in other upper-income categories too. Among non-Southern white voters–that is, voters living in states a Democrat must carry or have a shot at carrying to win an election–Obama claimed a majority of those making $80,000 or more…
Obama needed this strong showing at opposite ends of the income spectrum because he was far weaker in the middle.
So it’s not just narcissistic have-nots wanting their share of the pie, and willing to take it—if necessary by government force—from others who have more. It’s also many of the haves themselves shouting, “take mine, please; I’ve got too much!” This latter phenomenon may be a lot of things, but it’s not a “toddler’s temper tantrum.”
One of the things involved for many in this upper portion of the liberal socioeconomic curve is the opposite of wanting a bigger piece of the pie. It’s guilt—for having too much stuff when others lack it. But instead of doing the individual and voluntary thing—giving away their goods and becoming poor (that’s the path of the saint who takes a vow of poverty—or the follower of a leftist cult leader such as Jim Jones who required that members donate their personal property to the church), most well-off liberals who happen to feel the pangs of this sort of guilt take the less extreme route of supporting government taking a certain amount of their money (not enough to be too painful for them) and redistributing it to the poor.
This offers the multiple benefits of relieving them of their guilt and establishing them as good and generous people, all without having to take the initiative themselves as individuals, and without going so far as to make them markedly financially uncomfortable. And just to make sure there’s strength in numbers, the liberal/leftist wants to spread the responsibility around and take away the element of choice (and the individual soul-searching involved) by making such giving compulsory and universal above a certain income level.
In summary, liberalism and/or leftism promise to relieve the liberal have-nots of the twin burdens of envy and initiative, and the liberal haves of the twin burdens of guilt and choice. This latter phenomenon has long been one of the major attractions liberalism and leftism have had for the intelligentsia and/or the wealthy. Anguish over the unfairness of life can deeply affect those on both ends of the spectrum, and the simplistic solutions offered by leftism and/or socialism can appeal greatly to people who have not noticed or cared about the repeated failures of the leftist/socialist methods, their tendency to lower all boats and sink entire economies, and the heavy sacrifices of liberty that they inevitably require.
Neo:
I think the “liberal” mindset is all about jealousy, rather than guilt or altruism. A colleague at work and I were discussing taxes at one point; he was surprised at the figures I quoted detailing that the richest 10% of Americans paid nearly 50% of income taxes. He couldn’t believe it, and insisted that the “rich” didn’t pay enough. After a long discussion, his point of view was finally expressed: “All the guys I went to Harvard with make more than I do. They need to pay more in taxes.” And the notion that they want to pay taxes to assuage their guilt is hogwash…they’ll pay taxes, but they want everybody else to pay more than they do.
stumbley: we must know different liberals. The ones I know are very much about guilt.
But it’s a big tent—there’s room for both.
It’s the kulaks who always get starved.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kulak
Every totalitarian movement features Peasants, armed by the Wealthy, killing the Middle Class….
Liberalism begins with the denial that we are in a fallen world and that heaven on earth can be achieved. “Wouldn’t it be great if we could all share in common and no one suffered need?” And a few million dead later, they’ve decided to nibble around the edges instead (health care).
One of the things involved for many in this upper portion of the liberal socioeconomic curve is the opposite of wanting a bigger piece of the pie. It’s guilt–for having too much stuff when others lack it.
It’s the result of the Maoism the Boomers have been steeped in from their youth:
It used to be that wealthy oldsters would get their big gold Cadillac and golf cart to show off their accumulated wealth.
Now, the wealthy oldsters creep around in a Prius golf cart and collectively own the Cadillac company to show off their virtue.
I cannot express the contempt I have for the rotten, rotten old liberals who wish to assuage their needless, and mistaken guilt by redistributing my salary to the “less fortunate”. I’m angry beyond words.
I wonder how much of Obama’s inroad into the >$250K world might be attributable to bracket creep among the Civil Service class, Fed, state, and city. Even a couple of married GS-14s are knocking on Heaven’s Door.
I attended a portion of the local Tea Party event on Jul 4th at one of the local parks. That evening I saw an interview with some people who were at the park but were not part of the Tea Party. One African American ladys comment was – Im paraphrsaing from memory- “That it was not right that these people (Tea Party) did not want to pay more taxes.”
How dare we resist the government attempts to take more of our income! and I’m actually in the lower class if you looked at my income and realize that in the short term, socialism might benefit me personally- but I don’t want it. I prefer Freedom instead.
Perhaps a great bumper sticker would be- “Better to be poor Free Citizen than a Socialist Peasant!”
I recommend that from now on when some european comes onto this blog pushing socialism we refer to them as a” Euro Socialist Peasant”
Yes, I think liberal guilt is an important piece of the puzzle on why so many professionals — on up to the super wealthy like Bill Gates — voted for Obama.
Plus Geoffrey Britain is bang-on with:
We’re not really dealing with Machiavellian malevolence, we’re dealing with immature, arrested emotional development and with narcissism.
“We’re not really dealing with Machiavellian malevolence, we’re dealing with immature, arrested emotional development and with narcissism.”
I think we’re dealing with a relatively small number of the first making extremely judicious use of a great many of the second.
I had two aquaintences that were both uber liberals. One’s parents were both professors at Berkeley. The other’s mother was a physician. It seemed to me that their political views came partly from guilt, but also from a distorted idea of how hard work leads to success. They didn’t see the generations of their families that struggled; they only saw the generation that succeeded – seemingly effortlessly. They both grew up with no financial issues, no worries about paying for college, with parents who supported them while they got advanced degrees and paid for trips to Europe for graduation, etc. They had the opinion that it should be that easy for everyone else too, and the government needed to make it so.
“But many liberals are the ones with more stuff.”
Many, but most are just upper middle class… and out there is some real rich guy with better medical care, bigger car, house, et cetera… and, in the name of the poor, they want to take it away from them.
I also thought Geoffrey’s piece was excellent.
I have to disagree with Neo a bit here. From my perspective working with all these academic liberals, they truly want a utopian society. And, equal outcomes is a very improtant part of that vision. What amazes me is that then they complain, or even go so far as to do some minor “cheating” in order to pay less taxes; happens everyl April. In their mind, after I asked about this, it’s those other “rich” folks who need to pay more. These poor academics making $100K+ are really at the bottom of the food chain in their minds.
Yes, I have to agree with Geoffrey: toddler temper tantrums fits very nicely.
Neo,
You say that liberals allay their guilt not by personal giving, but by allowing the govt to take more from them and give it to others in turn. I must disagree.
When the liberal “haves” have the opportunity to reduce their wealth, they do not. For example, The state of Massachusetts allows taxpayers to check a box and pay their state income tax at a higher rate; John Kerry, as one example did not do so when he was running for president in 2004.
Warren Buffet and Bill Gates support higher income taxes for ordinary income (wages and salaries), but the bulk of their income comes from unearned income like capital gains, which is taxed at lower rates than ordinary income.
They also support keeping the so-called “death tax” (the estate tax), but their fortune is already positioned in such a way as to avoid the taxes they recommend. How does one think the Kennedy fortune was able to be passed down through two or three generations even with a 55% estate tax? Simple, they engineer the situation so that the taxes they recommend for others do not apply to them.
One aside on Warren Buffet. The left has made a point of noting his support for the estate tax. Buffet’s company, Berkshire Hathaway, owns insurance companies (among other companies). Older wealthy people purchase life insurance to create cash at death to pay their estate taxes; no conflict of interest there (sarc)!
No. It’s the same old liberal game; taxes for thee but not for me!
Furthermore, that liberals are anti-wealth is simply not true. The Democrat party revels in wealth. The Kennedys, John Kerry, George Soros, the Hollywood A-listers—these people are the Dems heros. They revel in the very wealthy and they salve their conscience by reveling in the very poor. The people they are against, are the people on the verge of becoming wealthy, like small business owners and wage earners working multiple jobs.
I think guilt to some degree plays a part, but liberals are offended that there are those that aren’t feeling guilt for making money and not desiring to share it via government. In some sense it is like the child running to the parent and saying “Johnny is being bad, he doesn’t want to share, so make him share.”
Gray, you will probably like a Dilbert which you may or may not have seen —
Panel:
Dogbert stands there in his “king-hat” and with scepter in hand, and pronounces
“The is a test of the Emergency Monarch System.”
Panel:
“This is only a test.”
Panel:
“Had this been an actual Monarchy you would already be wretched”
Sooo true…
> Perhaps a great bumper sticker would be- “Better to be poor Free Citizen than a Socialist Peasant!”
.
I’d rather be poor and free than a collectivized slave
Neo, I think guilt plays a part in it but not for the “professional” liberal. That (professional liberalism) is more an expression of the petty tyrant writ large.
The same asshole who gets into a position of influence in your local neighborhood owner’s association, except larger and more political, going either the elected or the appointed route.
Pretty sure I’ve posted this around here before, but Truman saw it:
“Professional liberals are too arrogant to compromise. In my experience, they were also very unpleasant people on a personal level. Behind their slogans about saving the world and sharing the wealth with the common man lurked a nasty hunger for power. They’d double-cross their own mothers to get it or keep it.”
– Harry S Truman, pp. 55, American Heritage 7/8 1992, from a 1970 interview —
I can see it in my aunt, a Boomer and a self-professed “straight ticket Democrat”. She’s a control freak who hates the fact that other people don’t live as she thinks they should, and, while she doesn’t go out of her way to seek power, she certainly doesn’t mind when the Dems do it for her.
Don’t forget simple anxiety. To be rich and weak. when you are surrounded by people who are poor and angry, is to be afraid. Simple survival dictates an appeasement strategy and suppressing the opinion of anyone who might make the urban poor restless.
Of course, this could all be solved by adding a line to the 1040 form: “I’m including a check for an additional ($_fill in the blank_) because I’m smarter, more sensitive, and–face it–a much better person than most of the rest of my countrymen.”
> It’s also many of the haves themselves
> shouting, “take mine, please; I’ve got too much!”
If only. Again and again, we see the repeated pattern of redistributionist liberals failing to pay their taxes. They want everyone to pay their collective share. Except for themselves. How could they live their NPR lifestyle if they had to pay taxes like the rest of us?
“Its guilt– for having too much stuff when others lack it.”
Classic example is the collection of Hollywood elitists on parade tonight otherwise known as the liberal guilt and mutual masturbation society, or the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
I think these folk consider themselves above it all because their uber fortunes came from the Arts, whereas business types are seen by them as money grubbing materialists.
These types can give up 80% of their incomes, assuage their guilt, and still have it all.
And how about those gowns?
T, jms, and others: I believe there is actually no basic contradiction between what I am attempting to say here about liberals and what you are saying about liberals. For example, the failure to check a certain box and voluntarily give more is very much in line with the point I’m trying to make, which is: the liberal who is suffering from guilt and wants forced government-ordered redistribution often can’t quite bear to part with the money voluntarily. But by supporting the government setting the rules so that everyone over a certain income must give to others, they feel they absolve themselves of guilt as long as they play by those rules. But that includes tax shelters, not checking off a box to give extra, etc., whatever way they can find to get out of paying more while still playing by the rules, even a very liberal (ahem) interpretation of the rules.
I had the fun of handing some pain to the loathsome, blathering Fair Minded Liberal, Alan Grayson, today. And, a less insensitive exchange with Senator Bill Nelson. We had our splendid little Winter Park, Florida, St.Paddy’s Day parade 10 days early. Perfect weather, dogs, kids, coots, pipers, dancers, bands…and…Tee-Hee-Heeeee.. the arrogant Alan riding in a convertible and–to his shock & awe–stopped for 2 minutes right in front of me & Mrs.Neo. It was lively, heated and entirely satisfying for this 30-year refugee from the Dark Side. Tsk-Tsk-Tsk.
Then, as Nelson passed us in a 1940 Buick, I yelled,”NO Health Care Ponzi Scheme, Senator!” Mister Teflon Politician never quit grinning as he replied,”No ponzi schemes!” He’s a smarmy punk and I was darned glad to get back to enjoying kids, bands and codgers.
When higher taxes are attempted to be imposed on the rich, I’m not sure how much more is really collected. If you’re rich, then various ways can be created to shield the effect of any changes in the code. Thomas Sowell’s subtitle to one of his books was, “Self-congratulation as the basis of Social Policy.” Spot on, I’d say. Publicly calling for higher taxes while avoiding them themselves and telling themselves how wonderful they are is the liberal world in a nutshell.
But by supporting the government setting the rules so that everyone over a certain income must give to others, they feel they absolve themselves of guilt as long as they play by those rules. But that includes tax shelters, not checking off a box to give extra, etc., whatever way they can find to get out of paying more while still playing by the rules, even a very liberal (ahem) interpretation of the rules.
Inside the Head of Lefty doing his taxes:
“Hmmmm… I qualify for this, this and that….
This is wrong! I’ll bet those fat-cat corporations totally take advantage of this deduction. They get deductions I don’t even know; with all those lawyers!
I’ll say I qualify for this thing and take some money off that so I can buy some fair-trade coffee…. (I’m not Exploiting the Worker like those greedy corporations.) I’m going to maximize this deduction for some money I won’t spend at Walmart! In this Corporatist America I gotta watch out for myself….
My cat is a dependent. Don’t tell me he’s not! Ugh! Those horrible people with their horrible children at the mall! My cat has less carbon footprint! (Oh, I can write that off under “energy conservation home improvements.) ‘Cuz I live in a nice house, thank-you, NOT A TRAILER LIKE SARAH PALIN!
Yes! I hardly owe any taxes! Take that KKKorporate America! Racists and warmongers won’t get my money!
I’m going to write my congressperson and ask her to sponsor taxes on Wal-Mart, Health Insurance Companies and Oil Companies! I know they are getting away with murder out there!”
Gray,
But you left out the most important qualifier.
“It’s so nice to know that I’m doing this for all the ‘little people’ who don’t have my fortune.”
Wait a minute. Neoneocon, I think I just made your point (see 8:16 above).
But you left out the most important qualifier.
“It’s so nice to know that I’m doing this for all the ‘little people’ who don’t have my fortune.”
No, that’s what your money is for–helping the little people.
The wealthy libs absolutely don’t ever want to see the “less-fortunate”, but they’ll make sure you go to a septic public clinic if you can’t buy your way out of their system….
In my lighter-hearted moments I blame Star Trek.
Liberals seem to think we live in or are on the cusp of living in the Star Trek universe where money has been abolished and everyone naturally pulls together for the greater good.
William Morris, the god of the Arts & Crafts movement, wrote a utopian novel, News from Nowhere, to that effect. After the great revolution against the evil capitalists, everyone becomes noble, healthy, happy and clean-limbed. It’s beautiful.
Actually I’m somewhat serious about my previous post.
neo has touched upon it several times, most notably in her marvelous Kundera circle dancing post.
There is a lovely tribal vision at the heart of leftism, a belief that everything wonderful will happen once we stop focusing on money and throw the moneylenders out of the temple.
Never mind what the bean counters say; we aren’t talkng about beans but human beings. Take care of the people and everything else will work out.
Of course it’s not true, in fact it’s disastrous, but speaking as an ex-leftist I tell you that is what underlies much of what is going on with Obama Democrats, if not Obama himself.
Last weekend I saw Avatar with a friend and it was the same tribal, anti-money vision.
http://www.floppingaces.net/2010/03/07/the-evolution-of-peggy-noonan/#more-35257
Programs geared towards the middle class like Social Security and Medicare are what help the Democrats have more voters.
Democrats need only scare people that Republicans want to cut Medicare and Social Security to win elections in some districts.
Making Health care a “right” will change this equation forever so that Democrats will wield the power forever. We will go the way of Europe… We will decline as a percentage of GDP of the rest of the world. Our superpower status dwindling.
As NASA and DOD and Missile defense get dismantled, we will see more threats to our security and a higher percentage of obese Americans.
I’m 40. My daughters will see a different America unless we can do a better job explaining free market principles to liberals and our young.
Adagny Says:
“I think these folk consider themselves above it all because their uber fortunes came from the Arts”
You also have the fame (re: approval) seeking aspect. This crowd will go with the flow to get fame and approval. In Hollywood, that’s leftist politics.
The abnormal types have other interests. Take Mickey Rouke. The guy pursued personal interests over his acting at times.. he also occasionally has a kind word to say about Bush. Goes hand in hand IMO…
What liberals can’t bring themselves to admit, is that whatever subset of the American culture a person embraces, so goes his chances at a prosperous life.
Of course if those same liberals were hitchhiking on a dark road and given the choice of being picked up by Sarah Palin’s friends or Barak Obama’s friends, you’d see they actually do understand this reality. They simply don’t like the implication that people for the most part choose all the inequality they see.
huxley said:
“In my lighter-hearted moments I blame Star Trek.
Liberals seem to think we live in or are on the cusp of living in the Star Trek universe where money has been abolished and everyone naturally pulls together for the greater good.”
This has been the subject of perennial discussion amongst my circle of friends, ever since an old astronomy professor said almost the same thing back in our college days. Back then we thought he was kidding. But the older we get the more accurate it seems.
His contention was that some powerful, motivating vision had to override what we knew about Marxism, Maoism, et al (poverty and mega edath tolls) And that Star Trek fit just that description.
He was a crazy old coot but we loved him. He also wasn’t your typical leftist academic, which probably had something to do with his field being heavily dependant on solid math.
Why do you say although natural? Defecating is natural. Eating is natural. Best not to do the former at a gathering composed of people doing the latter.
Baklaca,
You note programs geared toweard the middle class, like Social Security. You may be correst in how SS in percieved, but no greater scam was ecer foisted on the middle class than social security,
SS derives its revenue from wages and salaries–earned income. The wealthy get only a small part of their income from wages (if any at all) mostly they live off of unearned income–interest, dicidends and capital gains, whihch are not subject to payroll taxes
Furthermore, when SS was enacted, 65 was chosen as full retirement age. In 1933, few people made it to 65. Thus, SS was a way for ther govt to reach into the pockets of the middle class for tax revenue, most of which would not need to be spent on the program it supported because most people wouldn’t live long enough to claim very much of it.
Maximize income, minimize outlay and allow the middle class to pay for it all. (And Paul Krugman has called Social Security FDR’s most enduring legacy.)
should be Baklava, etc.
sorry for all the typos
Seems like guilt on an ego trip, to me, the way actors, as representative examples of shallow liberalism, get on TV and tell people to give to Haiti or volunteer or take some other moral action ostensibly not yet taken even though it is far more likely that among the millions of people being addressed most have done way way more than the actor/celebrity looking them in the eye!
Neo, for as much as I agree with you, I happen to differ here on the notion that it’s guilt that drives the liberal. In my time, I’ve seen more that it’s a sense of superiority (“I know better” attitudes) combined with the very real desire to assume a sort of socioeconomic version of the “White Man’s Burden”, but focused instead on people within the US (note that I’m not saying “citizens”; yes, that’s a dig at extending services to illegal aliens. As a naturalized citizen, that really bothers me). I think it’s letting people off too lightly by stating that they’re drive by guilt. I see it as far more a hubrstic attitude. Guilt would simply drive them to charities. Superiority is what’s driving them to impose their notions on others.
Equalizing the differences between the upper and lower classes has the same effect on a population as equalizing the systolic and diastolic blood pressures has on an individual… it may be necessary to do so on paper to simplify scientific research, but you can’t do it in real life without stopping the person’s heart, an action that will always permanently weaken them, if not kill them outright.
It may be necessary to do it to perform life-saving surgery, but historically it has only been done to sell snake oil to communities, even entire nations… and it always ends up enriching frauds who leave genocides in their wake.
The whole generation of Russian revolutionaries consisted almost exclusively of nobility and offsprings of upper rank bureaucrats. The theme of “penitent barin” (landowner nobleman) was dominant in Russian literature of the last decades of 19 century. The leading ideologues of this movement – Leo Tolstoy and Petr Kropotkin – made the issue of guilt of the whole upper class the centerpiece of their message. What is going now in USA is a caricature of Russian progressivism of 19 century.
I second ElMondoHummus when he wrote “I’ve seen more that it’s a sense of superiority (”I know better”)”. The lefties use their wacko world view as proof of their abilities to see and understand things mere mortals cannot. It is a means of ego building without effort.
Try arguing someone out of false beliefs whose self-image is based on those beliefs!
Well there is also that weak will thing that Neo alludes to. How many liberals do you know who chatter for higher cafe mileage standards while driving a gas guzzler themselves. They cannot bring themselves to make choices based on something other than their immediate desires so they want government to be the parent and make them (and of course all those REALLY selfish rich republicans) do the right thing.
Teresa,
A whole bunch.
It’s odd.
Personal responsibility? Nope.
T, From 1907 to 2007 the female lifespan went from 49 to 79 and the male went from 45 to 75. It’s an easy statistic to remember. 30 years for both sexes.
The percentages of income confiscated from the workers has changed but the expectation of “pay out” date has not. There are very capable 75 year olds who have put money away and are drawing from social security until they will be 100 or so.
Then … African Americans who pay out MORE into the system than they receive because they have a shorter life span are short changed.
It isn’t in the government’s interest to keep people living longer !
It’s up to us people !
This strive for fairness does not really explain the most striking feature of progressivism: its totalitarian tendencies and the struggle for Big Government as a solution for all social ills. The root of it is their atheism. Social progress, the secular substutute for redemption, needs ascribing to government certain divine attributes: omnipresence, omnicognizance and omnipotence. Communists quite seriously tried to convince the population that the Party actually possessed these qualities: their secret police asserted that they knew everything about everybody, that their political leadership knew everything about past and future history, and their apparatchicks can implement any needed policy. However absurdly this sounds, this was the real message of communist propaganda. Some hard left in USA seem to believe this to certain extent, that is why it is impossible to argue with them rationally.
I agree with the “taxes for thee but not for me” thing. One of the biggest businesses in this area, which is disgustingly supportive of our current president, recently threatened to pull up stakes and move their headquarters of a couple thousand when the municipality they are in raised taxes.
What isn’t fair?
A black teenager unemployment figure of 40% – 50%.
http://mjperry.blogspot.com/2010/03/minimum-wage-maximum-teenage.html
Facts do not penetrate the liberal mind very easily… I know – because I was one.
ElMondoHummus: I don’t disagree with the idea of a sense of superiority operating, but it certainly can coexist with guilt. I never said guilt was the only motivation. In my opinion and my experience with liberals, however, guilt is a huge driver among those who are comfortable (or even wealthy) rather than poor or struggling. It doesn’t mean there aren’t a host of other drivers as well, but I believe guilt is prominent.
I’m beginning to have a new theory, though. Since most of the people I speak to about this (although not all) are women, guilt may be something that motivates liberal women more often than it motivates liberal men. Could be; don’t know.
THe fact that we cant tell that there can be a difference between who drives the horse and the actual horse.
that is,
We’re not really dealing with Machiavellian malevolence, we’re dealing with immature, arrested emotional development and with narcissism.
we ARE dealing with that, and that that kind of intelligence is using the masses of broken, incapable, unlearned, jealous, envious, emotional type thinkers.
to loko at them as a homogeneous group and judge the leaders by the expendible, is to miss the whole point of the concept of BEING USED.
idiots are people who will give their lives to a lie easie than the competent. idiots are the ones who will get upset at some story told them and mobilize on behalf of another, giving them their energy.
napoleon did not fight, the useful idiots did
Lenin did not fight, the latvian rifle corps did
Hitler did not fight, Rohm did that for him
Soldiers didnt destroy jews, the people did that.
the whole of the ideology is about how to get others to serve you, and the fools think that its a homogeneous group of people from top to bottom.
they are nto… sociopaths on top, victims and material to be moved on the bottom.. symbols are to move people, not for leaders. protests are for useful idiots, not the masters that mobilize them.
its a system that is very competent in control and nothing else. as i said read kennan, who pointed out that they put everything in acquiring and taking power, and ahve not worked out governance, as it is antithetical to control…
control is better than ownership.
its the ability to weild and direct without responsiblity
all of you forget that they need soldiers
they need soldiers stupid enough to work for their own enslavement.
that doesnt lend itself to the APPEARANCE of competence, but since its completely unoppposed, idiots win.
Baklava (11:27 above)
I’m not sure if you’re simply elaborating on my post or correcting me. If the latter, it’s not necessary since we both agree on the substance, I just didn’t provide the longevity figures you did.
Furthermore, if, as you correctly state, it’s not in the govt’s interest to keep people alive (vis-a-vis social security), then it is absolutely INSANE to give the govt control over the treatments and procedures which are responsible for our longevity.
Elaborating my friend.
Yes on your last paragraph. insane.
Off topic:
http://sistertoldjah.com/archives/2010/03/04/senator-scott-browns-first-floor-speech/
Scott Brown’s first floor speech
Come to think of it, perhaps health care reform is the Democrats’ solution to the social security funding crisis. Kill two birds with one 2000 page bill.
First, I should give credit to our commenter ‘Oh Bloody Hell’, he, on another blog, first introduced me to the label of “liberal reset button’ I had experienced it but never conceptualized it and find it most useful.
My prior comment was incomplete; guilt and the compensatory psychological mechanism of a superiority complex are most definitely at work in materially successful liberals.
I consider that to be an ‘overlay’ however.
An originating premise always is the foundation for any extension of logic and resultant conclusion. In order to feel guilt one must presume that one is guilty of something.
If your premise is that life is unjustly unfair and you are experiencing a greater level of wealth, status and perhaps fame than is ‘fair’, then you have something to feel guilty about.
But without the premise that life should be fair there’s nothing to feel guilty about.
Likewise, rationalizations, such as a superiority complex proceed from underlying premises, in the case of liberals with a superiority complex, it’s their belief that their acceptance of the presumption that life ‘should’ be fair, which leads them to the assumption that acceptance of that premise, makes them a more evolved, ‘better’ person.
It all comes back to premise, in this case an emotional presumption that life is ‘unjustly’ unfair and should be otherwise… which lies at the very heart of ism’s of the left. It’s the basis of all the ‘logic’ with which liberals approach life and therefore politics and governance.
And, it is a spiritual character flaw, which is why I mentioned Lewis’ observation and what it leads too; liberal acceptance of secular relativism and the spiritual bankruptcy of postmodernism.
Two other points; Yes, betsybounds comment is valid;
“I think we’re dealing with a relatively small number of the first[Machiavellian malevolence] making extremely judicious use of a great many of the second.”[useful idiots]
I would add that Rahm Emanuel is a example of the first, Gibbs is an example of second and, in my opinion, the jury is still out on Obama. But I reject Artflgr’s ‘conspiracy of the left’ manipulating the masses in an organized, coherent plan to overthrow Western civilization.
Not that they wouldn’t if they could but sheer incompetence and a fundamental lack of cultural ‘leverage’ in the US, due to it being ‘rocky ground’ for the planting of bureaucratic socialism, much less communism, prevent that eventuality from being fully accepted.
Art is right: who needs conspiracies when ideology is 1000 times more effective weapon of civilization destruction than any conspiracy? Alinsky is trully an embodyment of Machiavellian malevolence, manipulating normal and even noble human emotions to evil ends. Chomsky and Zinn are hardly better: these ideologues really hate(d) Western civilization and everything it stands for. Dostoevsky was right to describe such persons as “demons”, and those who fell under their influence as devil’s puppets. Sometimes I feel sorry that in modern societies Inquisition can not be re-installed to hunt down and execute these witches. At least, MacCarthy Commitee was a proper response to this subversive activity. Leftism is a medieval phenomenon, an apocaliptic heresy, and can be properly understood and fought against only in medieval terms and by medieval-like institutions.
“I’m beginning to have a new theory, though. Since most of the people I speak to about this (although not all) are women, guilt may be something that motivates liberal women more often than it motivates liberal men. Could be; don’t know.”
Now that’s interesting. Most of the people I speak to on topics like this are males. Huh! I wonder if there is any gender-specific determination in all of this. You might be on to something. I wish there was a way to go about studying this without having to deal with the drudgery of an actual academic study.
Anyway, all I can say is that my own data points don’t show much if anything in the way of guilt coming from the people I’m referring to. Quite the opposite, in fact: There is a most remarkable (and rankling) air of superiority behind their stances. I invoked both the word “hubris” and the “I know better” paraphrase for a reason, and that’s that both descriptions hit me full in the face when I think about what motivates them. It’s a remarkable difference from your aunt’s reaction you wrote about back in ’06. My closest friends of course very much value my opinion, despite what disagreements they may have with me, but the other non-friends I’m specifically thinking about here (not “enemys”; rather, merely aquaintences, or people I’ve met on multiple occasions but have no established relationship with) are hardly guilt driven by any stretch. Again: Hubris. Superiority. It actually makes my teeth ache, the attitude. It leaves mere snobbishness well behind. In two specific people I’m thinking of, it feels like some sort of obscure anger at… well, anything and everything in general, and this is merely one venue through which to vent.
I also wonder if the regional differences has any impact. You’re on the East Coast, I’m in the midwest, and while the differences between our respective areas wouldn’t be anywhere near as pronounced as, say, the different states for what was Yugoslavia, or for differing ethnic groups in, say, the Philippines, they’d still exist. Again, I wish this were determinable by anything less than a rigorous study, but the best I can do is speculate and try to be logical about it.
You are right, of course, about multiple motivations coexisting. I shouldn’t have implied that such attitudes would only be driven by single motivations. It’s definitely the case that attitudes are often formed by complex mixes of experience, belief, education, and whatnot, but I can only speak for my own experience. And I probably should’ve made that point instead: That the people I’ve seen were far less guilt-motivated than the ones you have. It’s interesting that the gulf is there.
> In Hollywood, that’s leftist politics.
Indeed:
How to Get So Dead in This Town
Jim, Huxley.
The thing is, in the ST universe, it’s possible. For the purposes of any typical individual’s needs, Total conversion of mass to energy renders energy needs by the individual to being as nothingness. Replicator technology makes all objects — manufactured goods — virtually free and easy. So for the basic needs of humanity, communism works in that scenario (wait before you get your hackles up, see where I’m going first).
There’s a book by James P. Hogan: Voyage From Yesteryear
He shows how a ST-style communism could actually work, though how it gets set up is trickier (awfully improbable), and it’s rather simplistic in that it doesn’t show how to resolve actual, real conflicts when groups of people seriously disagree over mutually exclusive paths, it does show a working, integrated ST-style communism would work and still have people motivated to function much as our society does, one of the primary issues with communism and all its variants.
The chief problem is that economics is not just about allocation of resources — it’s about allocation of scarce resources in particular. We really don’t care that much about allocating air, and not much about allocating water. We do care about allocating gold and cars.
Hogan’s system and Star Trek’s both ignore this, and it’s always going to exist. For the ST universe, at the very obvious, “specialist knowledge of warp drives” is a “scarce resource”. Why does the Federation Starship Eenterprise get LaForge’s talents and not some other business alliance of traders?
“Dilithium”, so critical to key Enterprise systems, “can’t be replicated”. Oh, really? Then who gets to decide who gets it? Again — why does the Enterprise get it and not some tramp freighter plying the Earth-Vulcan-Andorian route?
And this is one problem at the heart of the communist concept, it assumes (falsely) that there are no scarce resources, “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need”… well who the hell died and made my needs less important than his when it comes to “item x”, for which there’s only enough for one???
It’s the eternal question of government and politics — Who decides?
I do believe there are elements of the ST universe which our grandchildren could live to see — I can see where most basic human needs become easily available, and that means that we will need to have some mechanism ready to take the place of those as a reward mechanism. Some people can be motivated by “more” as a reward. Not everyone wants those things, so there does need to be something in place to cause people to strive to create rather than sitting in the barcalounger with a Fosters in one hand and a 3d video clicker in the other.
That’s where Hogan’s vision offers an answer of sorts. I’ll let you hunt it down and read it.
But neither the ST universe nor Hogan’s is adequate — there will still be scarce resources, and there will still be conflicts over which mutually exclusive direction to proceed which people will need to have mechanisms for the resolution of.
> but no greater scam was ever foisted on the middle class than social security
Actually, the way it works today is even worse — it’s basically a tax on poor black men for the benefit of upper-middle-class white women.
While the poorer classes don’t pay income tax, they do still pay SS taxes. The average poor black male lives something like 15 years less than well-off white women do. Which means that, while they don’t take as much out of the system as they put into it, those women get more than their share of it.
This is probably one of the reasons why it’s so hard to actually reform. Women (despite feminist rhetoric to the contrary) own most of the wealth in this nation (inheriting it from their dead husbands. sometimes more than once). Which means that the law is set up for their benefit, not yours and mine.
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