That speck in your brother's eye (Interesting essay on liberal arrogance)

Triangle.com ^ | May 15, 2005 | J. PEDER ZANE

[libertarianben]

How does giving more of my own money to the government help me?

By the way, while you're at it, toss the liberals out of the Republican Party too. You know, the ones who call themselves moderates or compassionate Conservatives.

[JCEccles]

"Strip today's Kansans of their job security, and they head out to become registered Republicans," Frank writes. "Push them off their land, and next thing you know they're protesting in front of abortion clinics. Squander their life savings on manicures for CEOs, and there's a good chance they'll join the John Birch Society."

An interesting choice of examples. In each case the person is criticized for giving up security in exchange for radical freedom and self-expression.

There likely were antebellum plantation owners who were perplexed when slaves ran away from three sqaures a day and a roof, albeit humble, over their heads, too.

[Psycho_Bunny]

Accordingly I went to one who had the reputation of
wisdom, and observed him--his name I need not mention; he was a politician
whom I selected for examination--and the result was as follows: When I
began to talk with him, I could not help thinking that he was not really
wise, although he was thought wise by many, and still wiser by himself; and
thereupon I tried to explain to him that he thought himself wise, but was
not really wise; and the consequence was that he hated me, and his enmity
was shared by several who were present and heard me. So I left him, saying
to myself, as I went away: Well, although I do not suppose that either of
us knows anything really beautiful and good, I am better off than he is,--
for he knows nothing, and thinks that he knows; I neither know nor think
that I know. In this latter particular, then, I seem to have slightly the
advantage of him.

-Plato, Apology

[jalisco555]

Very appropriate.

[Dilbert56]

The answer to the question "Why do those people vote against their self-interest?" is "They don't.".

We have a winner.

The book is a perfect example of begging the question. The author just assumes Democrat policies would be better for the people of red states. That he doesn't see a need to demonstrate this is telling. From Hillary to Kerry to Dean to Reid to Pelosi we see the same approach. They never move beyond citing a list of problems: "xx million Americans don't have health insurance", "gasoline is over $2/gallon", "Soldiers are dying in Iraq", etc.

They never offer a solution. They work from a fundamental assumption that the federal government can and should solve all problems. They've never been challenged by the media so they think they're right. They don't believe it's even arguable.

"Kansas" knows otherwise. Not all problems can be solved. Sometimes solving one problem causes other,larger ones (e.g. farm & dairy subsidies, gasoline price controls, "low-cost" housing regulations). The federal government is not the most effective problem solver in a lot of areas. It is often less than efficient when it tries to.

So "Kansas" rejects the fundamental axiom of Democrat politics.

[No.6]

"Liberals have lost their ability to debate well. Their thought-leaders live in a world surrounded by people who agree with them. Any challenge to their world-view quickly reduces them to spluttering indignation. Intellectually bankrupt, they can do no more than throw pies and call their opponents idiots."

Yea, but they've been like this since at least the 30s, and only now are people fed up with it. Or rather, perhaps people are only now fed up with it because they GAVE the liberals the chance to enact their utopia and don't like the result.

The article author is right: liberals don't see this as a rejection of their method, but as a sign that they didn't get to enact *enough* of their agenda. Why, if X of something makes something worse, 2X of it would magically make it all better, is a mystery understood only by the self-anointed liberal elite, and not by anyone who lives in the real world. :)

[sauropod]

"What's the Matter With Kansas?" is a lazy, self-satisfied work. It is also an important one. It shows how deep an intellectual hole liberals have dug for themselves. Its success suggests how hard it will be for them to crawl out from it.

Y'know, I've recently read two other books that do this: "Lone Patriot" by Jane Kramer and "the cheating culture" by David Callahan.

Mizz Kramer purposely mischaracterizes some in the land rights movement (in particular Chuck Cushman, whom I've met). She links him (and I believe even identifies him) as a militiaman. This is dishonest on her part. She also makes no bones about being a liberal and refuses to analyze objectively her subject matter (the "Patriot" movement).

Mr. Callahan starts out with an interesting premise but soils himself when he complains about David Brock and the Paula Jones story, but refuses to say anything about how Brock went over to the dark side (now head of Media Matters) and is in the business of smearing people (like Jeff Gannon and others). Mr. Callahan's book was published in 2004, so him not knowing what Brock now has become is no excuse.

Both of these books give the 'Rats and the Liberals a free pass. Both of these books are intellectually lazy, self-satisfied screeds that totally gut any chance of convincing a reader not of their ideological ilk of their position.

Reading them was kind of like watching a car wreck. Awful to watch but you can't turn away from the horror.

[Frumious Bandersnatch]

Even worse, though, is the fact that they don't know that they don't debate well.

[Night Hides Not]

I would love to discuss Atlas Shrugged with a liberal. Alas, I've never met a liberal who's read it.

I'd try to bring up the topic at DU, but I've already been banned.

[x]

"Strip today's Kansans of their job security, and they head out to become registered Republicans," Frank writes. "Push them off their land, and next thing you know they're protesting in front of abortion clinics. Squander their life savings on manicures for CEOs, and there's a good chance they'll join the John Birch Society."

Unfortunately for Frank's argument, the big turn away from the Democrats started in the 1970s and 1980s when unions were still riding high in the US. Liberals and Democrats turned to a radical social and cultural agenda that alienated plenty of working people. The Democratic Party came increasingly to be seen as the mouthpiece of a small part of the population, and the majority turned against it.

America is a free country, and people aren't locked into a "working class" identity. They're more apt to move up, move on, or think for themselves. Where people are less mobile, where there aren't alternatives, and where one is defined as working class before all else, the Democrats are stronger. In many of those mill towns the factories have moved out, so the people have become more and more dependent on the government for support.

Liberals tell people that the past is gone. It's time to move on and leave traditional values behind. But Frank plays on longings for an old world that's also vanished: the agrarian prairie filled with self-reliant small farmers, the old main street with its small, independent, shopkeepers, or the midcentury industrial America with strong unions and feelings of class solidarity.

If liberals were honest about wanting to retain that world Frank might have a good argument. But when Democrats have been in power they've done little to preserve those old ways and much to destroy them. They want that old world even less than large corporations do. It's not about that older America, but about who has power in the here and now, not about keeping an older decentralized and self-reliant America but about who officiates at the funeral.

What people are doing in voting Republican is trying to bring some of those older beliefs and moral values into the present. What they rightly fear, is that liberals would take even that away from them.

[To Hell With Poverty]

I saw a really confused person today who was driving a car with a bunch of bumper stickers....among them a Dean sticker and a "who is John Galt?" I wished I could've pulled them over and asked how the heck they could have those two together.

[Night Hides Not]

I certainly hope that you steered a wide berth around that driver!

[Marauder]

How does giving more of my own money to the government help me?

It doesn't. Why do you ask?

toss the liberals out of the Republican Party too

If the population of the USA could reclaim the dim party by moving it back to a rational position on the political spectrum, the Republicans would have to shape up as well.

What it would take is working within the dim party and see that conservative candidates get nominated and elected to local offices - county and district judges, mayors, city council and county commissioners, etc., with the logical expectation that some will eventually work their way up to state capitols and D.C.

But it would have to happen in every state. For example, in Arizona it would be a very good thing to get a conservative governor elected there, and what matters is the conservatism, not the party. The dim party needs many more like Zell Miller, and fewer like Hillary, Teddy, Diane Feinstein, or Barbara (bow-wow) Boxer.

[jonno]

bump