They need to talk to this guy
Posted on 04/28/2004 12:43:24 PM PDT by annyokie
Liberal Rage By Keith Burgess-Jackson TechCentralStation.com | April 28, 2004
Why are liberals such as Paul Krugman, Michael Moore, and Howard Dean so angry and aggressive? I like to think that I have insight into this matter, since I was a liberal for a long time. If you haven't been a liberal, you may be puzzled by what you hear and read from them. They may seem -- dare I say it? -- insane, or at least discombobulated.
The first thing you must realize is that liberals have a program. They are visionaries. They envision a world in which everyone controls the same amount of resources. Nobody is born to privilege or disadvantage; or, if anyone is, it is swiftly neutralized by the state. To allow disadvantage, they believe, is to become a participant in it. Society, to the liberal mind, is a massive engineering project. Most of us distinguish misfortune and injustice. Not the liberal. No misfortune goes unaddressed by the social engineers. It is presumed -- conclusively, without evidence or argument -- that disparities in wealth are the result of morally arbitrary factors (accidents of birth or circumstance) rather than individual character, effort, discipline, work, or merit.
As the philosopher John Kekes has pointed out so eloquently (see here), liberals disregard or discount concepts that loom large in the thinking of most of us, such as personal responsibility and desert. Most of us believe that responsibility and desert should play a role in the distribution of benefits and burdens. Liberals disagree. Deep down, liberals deny that anyone is responsible for anything. What we are, in terms of personal character, is a function of circumstances beyond our control. How we behave depends solely on our environment. Our very choices are determined, not free. Liberalism dissolves the person. To the liberal, we are loci of movement rather than initiators of action, patients rather than agents, heteronomous rather than autonomous beings. Liberals will deny this, of course, but look at their beliefs and policy prescriptions.
Liberals, unlike conservatives, are zealous. Like all zealots (true believers), they are eager to implement their program, but when they attempt to do so, they meet resistance. This resistance frustrates them immensely and eventually leads to anger toward and aggression against those who stand in their way (or are perceived as standing in their way). Ideally, liberals would rationally persuade those who resist in the hope of bringing them around. But this doesn't work. Belief in personal responsibility and desert is widespread and entrenched. Time and again, liberals run up against it. Since it seems obvious to them that the belief is baseless, they tell themselves a story about why it's pervasive.
It's a multifaceted story. First, the liberal imagines that the belief in question is rooted in ignorance. Opponents of the liberal program simply don't know the facts about responsibility and desert. But when liberals try to convey these "facts," they get no uptake. Indeed, they get denial. This leads to the stupidity hypothesis. Opponents of the liberal program aren't so much ignorant of facts as incapable of reasoning from and about them. In other words, they're stupid or unintelligent. They're incapable of thinking clearly or carefully, even about important matters such as equality, justice, and fairness. This explains the liberal mantra that conservatives, such as Presidents Reagan and Bush, are stupid. (See here for an explanation of this false liberal belief.) Note that if conservatives are stupid, liberals, by contrast, are intelligent. It's all very self-serving.
Deep down, liberals know that conservatives are no less intelligent than they are. It just makes them feel good to say as much. So they attribute the pervasive belief in responsibility and desert to greed. Opponents of the liberal program are greedy. They won't admit the truth because they don't want to share the wealth. They take the positions they do, on matters such as affirmative action and welfare, to solidify their social position. Greed is bad, of course, so if you reject the liberal program, you're evil. You put self-interest ahead of justice.
Here, in one neat package, we have all the liberal platitudes. Conservatives are ignorant, stupid, and evil, or some combination of the three. Either they don't grasp the obvious truth or they're incapable of thinking clearly or they don't give a damn about anyone but themselves. Liberals, of course, are the opposite of all these. They're knowledgeable, intelligent, and good. Note that if you believe your opponents to be stupid or evil, you don't try to reason with them. Stupid people, like animals and children, need guidance by their superiors. Evil people need suppression. It's often been remarked that liberals are less adept than conservatives at arguing for their views. Now you see why. They don't practice.
That, in a nutshell, is the liberal mentality. It explains why liberals are so angry, hateful, and spiteful and why they resort to courts rather than to legislatures to implement their vision of the just society. They have given up hope of engaging their adversaries on rational ground. They know that they can't muster a majority for their causes. To liberals, only the outcome matters, not the process. Without power, their egalitarianism is mere fantasy. But conservatives should be careful not to dismiss it as such, for liberals have demonstrated that they will do whatever it takes to secure and retain power. We saw it in the case of Robert Bork. We saw it in the case of Bill Clinton. We see it in the case of war in Iraq.
To the liberal, the end justifies the means.
Take it from me, a former liberal.
Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D., is a frequent contributor to Tech Central Station. He is Associate Professor of Philosophy at The University of Texas at Arlington, where he teaches courses in Logic, Ethics, Philosophy of Religion, and Philosophy of Law. He has two stinkers, Sophie and Shelbie, and two hyperactive blogs: AnalPhilosopher and Animal Ethics.
They need to talk to this guy
Main Entry: 1des·ert
Pronunciation: 'de-z&rt
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English, from Old French, from Late
Latin desertum, from Latin, neuter of desertus, past
participle of deserere to desert, from de- + serere to join together -- more at SERIES
1 a : arid land with usually sparse vegetation; especially : such land having a very warm climate and receiving less than 25 centimeters (10 inches) of sporadic rainfall annually b : an area of water apparently devoid of life
2 archaic : a wild uninhabited and uncultivated tract
3 : a desolate or forbidding area
He just kind of looked at it and then looked at me and smiled an uncertain smile, I could see his thought processes were honestly trying to decide if I had hung it there in sarcasm or if I might actually admire them. It was an awkward moment for him.
I broke the silence by saying "Yes, I like Bush and I'm voting for him." He continued to smile an uneasy smile but began a faint shaking of the head from side to side. He began "I mean, he's OK I guess, but you know, as President, you know..." I refused to complete the thought for him and awaited the certain conclusion. "...as President, no." He kept hoping that I really hated Bush and had been pulling his leg.
"Why do you say that?" I replied. "I think he's doing pretty good." Very uneasy smile now, as he carefully considered how to nicely say what he felt.
"You know, like with the economy and all." But wasn't the economy improving and unemployment about the same as Clinton at reelection time? "Well yeah, I guess it's getting better, you know, but it's not like, you know, as good as it was. Before." Tell me more, I implored.
"Well you know Bush, he looks out for the rich folks, the ones got all the money. You know, the ones that have all the money. He don't care about the have nots." He realized that he was sort of placing me into the 'rich folks' category. I reminded him that I am not rich, I have the same job he does and drive a 10-year-old truck.
"No, I know you're not rich," he went on, "I'm talking about folks like Bill Gates and CEOs and stuff. You know they didn't make a penny of that money. They got their money off the sweat of other peoples' backs. Working folks like us." I asked him if he had a problem with a few 'rich folks' having that much money.
"Well yeah, you know, someone got to even out the playing field. You know it's not fair they got so much and others got so little. We just need to even out the playing field." How should we do that, I asked?
"Well first you don't give all these tax breaks to Bill Gates and stuff. They can afford to pay LOTS more than they're paying now. Lots more." He really didn't have a specific plan, just basically that 'rich folks' should 'even out the playing field' and give most of their money to poor folks who 'don't have a chance'. I asked him wasn't that socialism?
"NO, man, not socialism, we just got to even out the playing field, it's not fair. Now Bush, he'd let Bill Gates just keep all that money. You know he didn't earn a penny of it."
I just had to quit.
Maybe that's what pushed them over the edge.
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