Lee Stranahan again: oh boy,…
…he’s getting deeper and deeper into it. Pretty soon he may realize he’s gone too far and there’s no turning back.
The New Neo
A blog about political change, among other things
…he’s getting deeper and deeper into it. Pretty soon he may realize he’s gone too far and there’s no turning back.
“HERESY!!!” – It ain’t just for the religious anymore.
Oops! – My bad. Left-wing liberalism IS a religion and the penalties for heresy just as unforgiving.
I suspect Mr. Stranahan has figured this out and is on his guard.
–
Lefties are born without the “nah, just can’t be” gene. Take, for example, the idea any presentation created by a certified moron like Al Gore can have any credibility at all. Nah, just can’t be.
d(^_^)b
http://libertyatstake.blogspot.com/
“Because the Only Good Progressive is a Failed Progressive”
I noticed in a sidebar ad on one of his articles that Mr. Stranahan is a homeschooler.
He’s one of us already, he just hasn’t realized it yet.
A commenter with the pen name jcurtis posted the following under the linked article:
“Puh-leez. No liberal actually believes the stuff on these leftist sites. They post the stuff to make stupid Republicans go on the defensive because you can’t destroy the left while you are wrestling the greased pig of trying to straighten out all their lies.
Now you know.”
I’m sure some liberals believe it, but only a few. Nonetheless, he’s right that lefties don’t give a damn about facts, because in their world “facts” are reducible to motives, to the essence of that which creates “facts.” They posit: Conservative motives are worse than Satan’s. They conclude: ANY law, ANY action, ANY speech, even if it were to say, “We hereby establish goodness and niceness, peace on earth, free love, and gaia, as sovereign over all societies,” would be twisted to mean something nefarious. Wanna cut taxes? No, you want to rob poor people to give more to the rich. Wanna promote free enterprise? No, you want to line your own pockets and those of your friends (provided they are already rich – if not, then they too must be robbed). Wanna get the budget in order? No, you want to enact Mr. Swift’s Modest Proposal.
It must always be remembered that leftists believe that reality is constructed by power, and power is split between a Light power and a Dark power. That’s why its good when Obama goes into Libya but bad when Bush goes into Iraq. By nature, the former brings Light; the latter, Darkness.
Stranahan is becoming dimly aware that one simply can’t think through a leftist philosophy without resorting to the crude, fact-and-logic free mythologies they adhere to – rituals, incantations, iconographies, and talismans are its substance. The insight jcurtis has is that noticing that they lie and distort incessantly is well and good, but that’s maybe half the story. The more important half is that to their minds they are not lying or distorting anything. The Dark side acts, and Ahura Mazda aims to break its WILL to act (the actions themselves don’t matter – they’re all evil, which is why accuracy in describing them is irrelevant).
I like trying out new formulations, so here’s one:
To the Left, politics is a Holy War.
Stranahan’s trouble seems to be that he’s a leftist who always thought it was about nugatory things like facts, reason, logic, principles, and the willingness to test belief in the open field of debate.
Kolnai, here’s a good example:
“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, THE TRUTH IS THE GREATEST ENEMY OF THE STATE.”– Joseph Goebbels
Prog radio was spreading the disinformation version of the story last Friday. My reaction was, “Yes, that’s how welfare should work. You get food when you do not have your own money.”
I thought that it sounded harsh, but believable that some State critter might have introduced such a thing to make a point. Nice to learn it wasn’t even that “bad”.
Progressives do believe this stuff. They’re a large subset of “liberals”. I began my habit of listening to lefty radio to challenge/confirm what I thought lefties believed. For a group convinced that motives equal truth, they are not good people.
Things wouldn’t be so dire for liberals if they’d stuck at about ca. 1985 when some ability at rational thinking was still intact. But the hole of lies they’ve dug for themselves to climb out of in 2011 would have the similar shocking effect of finding a letter of their mother’s revealing she wasn’t their mother and never really loved them.
I’m sure some liberals believe it, but only a few.
Ask them who said “I can see Russia from my house”. You might be surprised at the number who say “Sarah Palin” instead of “Tina Fey”.
No, many will believe it because it fits their preconceived notions of Republican behaviour. Republicans are stupidly evil, and this sounds like something that’s both.
Sadly for Mr. Stranahan, the Left knows how to treat heretics. A metaphorical burning at the stake.
Stranahan is obviously a counter-revolutionary revisionist lackey of the imperialist running dogs.
Woof!
re: I R A Darth Aggie –
What I meant, and I take it jcurtis meant, by saying that few if any liberals believe the crap that Stranahan is exposing is that they will happily change their facts so long as they can keep the same moral to the story. That is to say, it isn’t really the “facts” they believe – those are irrelevant except for propaganda and faith-building pruposes – but the Dark Force animating the actions of one side of the political aisle.
Formally, if one can assent serially to a set of facts that are mutually exclusive while drawing the same conclusion from them, one is begging the question and revealing that the preconceived is what is truly believed.
Informally, for the Left every act of the Dark Side is by definition evil, and that is what they believe. So, yes, they “believe” (for now) that the Rethuglicans want to pass a bill pilfering from the destitute, but if they get whacked enough for their distortions they would have no trouble adopting a new set of “facts” to fit their mythos. Anyone who’s argued with a lefty has seen them do it, usually in the course of a single conversation.
There’s a nice question here of the difference between an apparent and a real belief, and whether or not someone reduced to fuming and emoting, or adopting an opposed set of facts while denying their implications, at the slightest push on a “belief” really does believe that belief. To be clear, I’m not saying that a liberal won’t swear up and down that Sarah Palin said what Tina Fey actually said, but if you showed them definitively that that was wrong, they would simply say, “Well, it WAS the spirit of what Palin was saying, and it captures her basic stupidity quite well.” Mutually exclusive facts, same conclusion.
When you say that they “really” believe that stuff, and all the other “facts” on the progressive websites, you are saying that they care about facts, but are simply misled or mistaken, for whatever reason. When I say they don’t really believe it, I am saying that they don’t, despite appearances, care about facts, because they don’t even believe in “facts” in the first place. They believe in the eternal spiritual war between the pure and the impure.
The “factual” question is at best a transitory “belief,” and, if I dare use a Marxist term, often a form of false consciousness. The real belief, once more, is in the great struggle of the Light against the Dark. And just like the old Gnostics would deal with “facts” as though they believed them in day-to-day life, at root the facts were not important because they were ALL evil (since creation was evil). Substitute “conservatism” for “creation” and you get close to the core of contemporary liberalism – not so much a political doctrine as an ancient Christian heresy, a decayed, unselfconscious form of Gnosticism.
I’m open to being convinced to see it another way, however. We’re all on the same side here.
Occam’s,
I bet that if you dig deep enough you might find that am employee of one of the Koch companies bought him a coffee once. Conspiracy!
I bet that if you dig deep enough you might find that am employee of one of the Koch companies bought him a coffee once. Conspiracy!
Aha! So Stranahan is for sale! Follow the money … er … mocha!
kolnai: Interesting thoughts. Would you say the same of the failure of liberal policies in the real world? I.e., the failures are irrelevant because they come from the side of Light, and therefore must be right by definition.
kolnai says,
“… you are saying that they care about facts, but are simply misled or mistaken, for whatever reason. When I say they don’t really believe it, I am saying that they don’t, despite appearances, care about facts, because they don’t even believe in “facts” in the first place.”
I agree. Who needs facts when you have dogma and feelings?
Thanks neo directing my attention to Stranahan. I’ve bookmarked him for regular reading. He’s going to find out what its like to be a pariah and I wish him well.
This story was posted at Big Journalism today. I immediately remembered your previous post about this guy. Neo, you’re truly a visionary.
He’s going to end up sitting between John Stossel and Juan Williams. 🙂
Lee’s site is currently off the air.
If we can make libtards take the place of the Irish, I’m open to considering the idea.