Posted on 08/30/2009 3:51:45 PM PDT by ForGod'sSake
What do Harvard president Larry Summers, Taliban John Walker, Delta Airlines officials and the editors of the New York Times have in common with Yanomamo tribeswomen in the Amazon jungle?
To answer this question is to understand the root cause of liberal "white guilt." Lakes of ink have been splashed on newspaper, magazine and journal pages ruminating and anguishing over the bottomless guilt that pervades the liberal soul.
(Excerpt) Read more at archive.newsmax.com ...
Enlightening, but it does raise the obvious question, and that is, where does the need to deflect envy spring from? There was a time in this country when success was tolerated, if not celebrated to a large degree. What went wrong?
Once again, anyone not wanting to be pinged to these off-topic articles, please speak up.
“What went wrong?”
Who came up with that business about “Now eat all the food on your plate because there are children starving all over the world”
Kind of a dumb statement to make (probably originated out of some Hollywood movie) but what a way to lay on a guilt complex.
Bump for exposure.
for later
I think the article explains it quite well in terms of “atavism”: a tendency or predisposition toward behavioral recurrence occasioned by a deep-seated need. In the case of modern liberals, it is a need to create a sense of self-worth (validation) in the absence of a culture in which the individual is valued. Western culture used to supply such a support system, but liberals have labored mightily to destroy it in favor of a collectivist ethos. What results is a felt need to assuage the sense of guilt that follows from one’s achievement, or, alternatively, to find a external demon to excuse one’s failures.
I got that treatment as a small child from my stepmother. She was, unsurprisingly, a Lefty.
At the time, I remember being utterly puzzled what one aspect of that statement had to do with the other. How 'bout if I just eat enough to last me, without complaint, to the next meal?
Hmmmm...
Thanks.
Here is how I've been thinking about it. Way back when I was in school the late 1970’s they were only then starting to take God out of the schools. By the time I graduated He was pretty well permanently suspended from the psyche of most highschool graduates.
Your linked article points out Envy. Envy is considered one of the 7 Deadly sins. Lump in a few of the other deadlies like greed, slothfullness, anger, lust and pride you suddenly see the liberal standing in front of you.
They exhibit all of these sins as part of their lifestyle. Why? Because they have no God. They have no Guiding morality. The lack of this God factor causes them unknowingly to place others in the role of God.
The government to redistribute wealth because they themselves cannot overcome their own sin of greed and they assume we are all like them with no God.
The government to sanction their promiscuous ways. Gay marriage, abortion.
Do we really need to chat about liberal anger?
Gluttony, again they seek to regulate that which they won't control themselves and it stems from a lack of God in their lives.
Sloth, there was a time people were ashamed to be on welfare...because it was a sin. “was a sin” now generations live there.
The “entitlement mentality” or “envy” deal is really nothing more than a lack of God and His teaching. Or in many cases the outright rejection of Him and turning to a new god, the government for approval of their sins. The reading of, The 5,000 Year Leap, was instrumental in my coming to these conclusions. The founders knew we could not have a free nation with an immoral people.
Brilliant observation.
When you fight natural law, you lose.
Interesting points. I would add, or maybe it's just IOW, the liberals of academia and journalism have labored mightily to destroy the recognition of actual achievement to be replaced by their fields of endeavor - talking or writing about it. It seems to me they believe, or want us to believe dialogue is the highest and best achievement to to strive for. All the while upbraiding those that actually get things done.
>>Who came up with that business about “Now eat all the food on your plate because there are children starving all over the world”
Actually the origin was Herbert Hoover, who was responsible for food aid to Europe in the aftermath of WWI. The original saying referred to “starving children in Europe”. Hoover generated a lot of publicity for the aid effort. For good or ill, the propaganda stuck in the American consciousness.
http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?_r=1&res=9507E5D8103FE432A25751C2A9679C946095D6CF
It was employed again, though perhaps to less melodrmatic effect, after WWII. Western Europe was more or less destroyed. Industry, agriculture, and transport all had been obliterated. There were starving people in Europe, the ancestral home of most Americans, and so there was great concern among Americans, and unprecedented action on the part of the US government, such as the Marshall Plan.
For the Mambwe in Zambia, for example, "successful men are regarded as sinister, supernatural and dangerous." In Mexican villages, "fear of other people's envy determines every detail of life, every proposed action."
Members of a Hispanic "ghetto" in a community in Colorado "equate success with betrayal of the group; whoever works his way up socially and economically is regarded as a 'man who has sold himself to the Anglos,' someone 'who climbs on the backs of his own people.' "
It is an ultimate irony of modern times that left-wing Marxist-type intellectuals consider themselves to be in the progressive vanguard of sophisticated contemporary thought -- when in reality their thinking is nothing but an atavism, a regression to a primitive tribal mentality. What the Left calls "exploitation" is what anthropologists call "black magic."
Who could have predicted the extent that Obama Inc. played on these myths in such a devastating way 6 years later? He took tribal community organizing to the national level, and guilty white people swallowed the bait with abandon.
The lack of an ability to conceive of God feeds mightily into that mindset.
Actually, intelellectual Liberals do have a god of sorts. They believe that Humanity is God and that intellectual Liberals, especially those in the Academy, are God's brain.
If you really want to know, read "Spirit of the Rainforest" by Mark A. Ritchie, who exposes how elite anthropoligists have been pimping the Yanomamo for generations.
Great post. Lots to think about here. Jack Wheeler is a good guy.
That IS interesting.
Obama is taking us down-—he plans to reduce the US to a primitive culture.
The concept of the US as a superpower is abhorrent to him.
There has been a systematic and purposeful effort to undermine any form of morality based on Christian beliefs.
Is it mere coincidence that this tactic coincides with communist tactics and beliefs?
I subscribe to the view that the people that advocate immoral and amoral lifestyles as acceptable and even protected behavior do so out of self loathing and guilt. They actively seek to recruit others into their lifestyles to make themselves feel better about hating themselves.
These were once classified as mental illnesses until the mentally ill forced the psychiatrists to reclassify them as “life choices”.
That's right: being an adult means accepting responsibility for one's own actions and ownership of one's own life. In a word: independence. Liberalism denies these things are necessary - or even possible - and preach dependency as a means of permanently arresting their adolescence.
I noticed the article that generated this thread is in your list of links. As far as I could tell it has never been posted on FR. Now if we could just apply one of Alinsky's tactics of using ridicule to shame the libtards it would be a real coup. Problem is, they are without shame!
The founders knew we could not have a free nation with an immoral people.
Just so. Our would-be masters know it as well.
“Men must be governed by God or they will be ruled by tyrants”. William Penn
Nam Vet
Indeed, plowing organizing the fertile field of uncle josef's useful idiots.
O-M-G! Another one for the reading list. I'm about 5 years behind...
Oddly enough, or not, I don't recall ever seeing any of his work before.
Not saying you are wrong, just my opinion.
A human being's proper sense of self-regard comes from both the will and ability to live one's own life according to God's commandments, including respect for the rights and property of others, the responsibility to live a productive life, and a moral duty to help those upon whom one places a value.
When the State takes the form of a dictator, king, czar, or tyrannical body, it does so without the consent of the governed or as a consequence of voluntary dependency, or both. In a constitutional Republic, the individual is supreme, and the government serves all who agree to be bound by its laws.
The worth of each person in such a Republic must be assumed not only by its government but by its citizens, for they are bound by responsibilities voluntarily undertaken, without which order and civilization would fail.
Other forms of government, such as Socialist "democracies" subsume the individual to the collective, and give the State an a priori right to govern over all in exchange for protection, not merely from foreign enemies or domestic criminals, but from the necessity of providing for one's own self. In order to serve this end, one's life, labor, and property are held to be at the service and use of others, whenever the State deems it necessary for the common good, or simply because the head of state or his functionaries will it.
Under such a regime, "self-worth" is denied as a value, contrary to the nature we were created to possess.
I remember my mom, and other moms, using that in the late 1940s after the war. Eat everything on your plate, children in Europe are starving! So, mom, send this stuff to em and they won’t be hungry any longer, got me punishment more than once but also caused her to stop using it:)
Collectivism denies the very concept of value, replacing it with relativistic and fluid standards of infinitely malleable meaning, in the service of a higher "cause" or "purpose". All of which militates against the rights of the individual and in favor of whatever is seen to benefit a group (or groups) on the basis of their perceived need.
People who actually produce, create and achieve are hated, feared or envied by those who wish to evade the responsibility of doing the same. Perhaps that's why they talk so much and do so little...
Certainly true of the average working stiff. The author however points out the anomaly where either by inheritance or the ability to make gazillions playing make-believe in Hollywood, singing for your supper or any number of other pursuits requiring little effort, creates a large class of "liberals" who feel they didn't really "earn" their daily bread. They themselves are products, marketed to the masses by their industries and slick ad campaigns. Hence, the guilt trip.
Interestingly enough, it's also a way to lay on the pounds. And teaching kids to overeat leads to grown-ups who consume more than they should. While all that excessive food isn't really being taken from "starving children all over the world"; if it were, it would only lead to more starving children.
I fought the law, and the law won.
I think John Stuart Mill sang that one. ;-) Well, he ought to have. I'd like to hear Obama say it, but I'm not holding my breath...
Indeed! And in a culture that has been taught to believe that words speak louder than actions the libtards, in charge of the PC bullhorn, have a distinct advantage.
I'm thinking an unambiguous lesson in action is the only thing that will break through the damnable nonsense and put us back on the right path leading to a cure for what ails the nation.
Bobby Fuller Four. One of my favorites - back in the day...
That’s great- thanks! Wow: go-go dancers and everything. I loved playing that guitar lick as a kid and I still do today. It always sounded a great deal like a Buddy Holly song to me. ;-)
What you outline is the reason I find Whittaker Chamber’s book “Witness” so compelling.
When I read it for the first time, it was a completely political book.
When I listened to it recently, it occurred to me that it was even more of a religious book than a political one.
It is a story for a man’s search for God, and what happened to him when he realized he was worshiping the wrong God. As a Soviet, he was worshiping Man.
Communism is where Man replaces God.
New tagline sort of unrelated to here.
The State as God is true of Communism as well.
...I would always retort with, Well, your the one that fixed my plate, let me do it next time!!!
...Bing! Bang! Boom!!!(-;)
Then we disagree. God was removed from communist Russia too.
By removing God, the government or culture creates a vacume. This vacume allows all sorts of things(some might say demons) to take up residence in society. A need is created for a new god. One who sanctions or doesn’t sanction the new behaviors.
Why 0bama, why the messiah effect? Because the culture is hungry for a god. I noted throughout his campaign the use of “christian doctrines” twisted to meet his needs. The doctrines were twisted. I neglect to recall what he said in one speech, but I recall my reaction. And the first phrase that came to mind at the time...Render unto Ceaser what belongs to Ceaser, render unto God what belongs to God. Perhaps it had to do with the service corp thing. Many Christians, churches, and good moral people were deceived by him in this manner. I blame the lack of God’s teaching in society.
They hate society, themselves, the country because they have no personal moral fortitude. They see the timbers in everyone elses eye and hate what they see. They scream for peace, yet cannot be at peace for their envy, greed, pride etc. cannot let them be at peace.
The role of Religion in our country was that it set the moral code of the people. Once religion was removed a new overseer was needed. That overseer is the government.
No. Listen to them. That is how they describe it, the ones who actually write it and speak it. Humanity is God. It is just that most of Humanity is dumb body parts. The government is the construction and effective tool of the Brain which is the Academicians and theoriticians. Government is the hands of their god, operated by the Brain.
Liberals are liberals because they are too stupid to see the second order effects.
In an environment in which capital is allowed to seek it’s most rewarding use (without government mucking up the works) if I go out and buy a boat that means that somebody got a job building the boat, selling the boat, servicing the boat, mooring the boat etc. Liberals are too stupid to see that - they just see my boat.
Similarly, if government gives someone a handout that helps that person temporarily. Possibly. But you’ve now trained that person to come looking for a handout the next time, like a fed bear. Liberals are too stupid to see that, as well. They just see that someone got a bag of groceries.
All this is, of course, aided and abetted by the willing media who can fuel the idiocy with soundbites and knowing nods and raised eyebrows.
Which, I guess, is why we call them “libtards”.
This desire for relevance is God given.
That relevance is to be attained in your relationship with God.
Leftists reject this natural means of relevance and seek other, earthly, means of relevance - social activism & radical environmentalism are two of these outlets.
The communists really aren't "the enemy" - Satan is the enemy. He is using whatever means possible to undermine Christianity and destroy humans. Homosexuality, environmentalism & evolution (earth worship & materialism), and collectivism are but a few of his weapons.
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