Posted on 06/04/2016 7:20:52 AM PDT by Kaslin
Conservatives care about logic. Liberals care about emotion. Conservatives care about whether a program works or not. Liberals care about how supporting a program makes them feel. Conservatives take the positions they do because they believe they’re best for society. Liberals take the positions they do because they make them feel and look compassionate or superior to hold those positions.
Once you understand those basics, it’s very easy to see why both sides hold the positions they do on most issues and to comprehend why there’s so little middle ground. Once you get the mentalities, you can predict where each side will come down on issues.
An extremely expensive program designed to help disadvantaged minority children read better that has been proven not to work? Liberals will support it and conservatives will oppose.
A program that cuts the deficit by cutting people off the welfare and disability rolls who don’t belong there in the first place? Conservatives will support it and liberals will oppose.
A program called “Puppies for Orphans” that hands out “therapy dogs” to poor children at $100,000 per year in cost? Liberals will support it and conservatives will oppose.
The problem with all of this is that most of what passes for “compassion” with liberals isn’t real compassion. There’s a cost to real compassion and thus, a limit to it.
For example, let’s say Bill Gates makes $10 billion this year and gives away $500 million. Meanwhile, a middle class accountant makes $50,000 and gives away $5,000. We could argue about who’s more compassionate. After all Bill Gates gives away more, but the accountant gives away a bigger percentage of his income. Furthermore, there are limits to what both men can and should do. If Gates gives away so much money that Microsoft goes out of business and the accountant gives away so much money he loses his home, we’d consider them to be fools. Compassionate fools, but fools. This creates limits on what truly compassionate people can do. Many people talk about compassion, but only a few are going to go work overseas like Mother Teresa, consistently give 10% of their income to charity, or adopt orphaned boys.
On the other hand, 99 times out of 100, liberals’ “compassion” is nothing more than “virtue signaling.” They’re offering to take your money and give it to someone else. They’re offering to take rights away from other people that they don’t care about. They’re saying people are racist, bigoted, sexist or homophobic for disagreeing with them.
It’s cost-free for someone to talk about how much he hates racism because racism is almost universally despised in America. There is no price to be paid for attacking a zoo that made the difficult decision to shoot a gorilla because a boy had fallen into his pen. If you’re not a Christian and have no moral qualms about gay marriage, it’s easy to call for the law to crack down on bakers or wedding photographers who refuse to participate because they find it morally repulsive.
The problem with all this pointless virtue signaling is that because there is no real cost to it, there are no limits to it. As long as liberals lose nothing by advocating a position, but get credit for being compassionate for taking it, why not go for it?
This creates a situation where people have to keep on upping the ante to stand out. If racism is almost universally despised, how do you get credit for being more sensitive about race than other people? You find new things to call racist. Eventually, when liberals moved beyond parody when it came to race issues, they showed they were compassionate by obsessing over the 3% of the American population that’s gay. Then from there, they became maniacally focused on the .3% of the population (if that) that claims to be transgender.
If every single thing on the liberal wish list for minorities, gays and transgenders were to happen tomorrow, a new list of demands or some new series of pet groups that need to be protected would spring up almost instantaneously. That’s because it’s not about the specifics; it’s about an arms race between liberals trying to signal their virtue by being willing to go further than other people in being conspicuously compassionate while getting in some cheap shots on their political opponents at the same time.
The problem with this is that compassion, real or fake, has little to do with what makes a society successful. Capitalism is not warm and fuzzy. Contrary to what some people seem to believe, diversity and sensitivity to women’s issues are not what makes a military successful. In fact, the most effective policies are often not very forgiving or compassionate. So, when you have a large block of the country that completely abandons what works for whatever makes liberals feel good and look more “compassionate,” it creates enormous amounts of dysfunction. It’s like picking which car you’re going to drive in a race because of the paint job. A paint job isn’t irrelevant, but it’s also not going to win the race for you. Unfortunately, people with this mindset are only able to figure out that they’re doing something wrong after the car crashes and the whole country is along for the ride.
“The world is a comedy to those that think; a tragedy to those that feel.”
Horace Walpole, An old English guy.
This explains perfectly what a professor told me yesterday about her students - they are great about volunteer work or projects that make them FEEEEL good, but complete weenies when it comes to rigor in the classroom and of course they all think they deserve an “A” no matter what.
So these are the people who will be making policy in a generation, great.
The author leaves out another reason some people are liberals. They have been brainwashed by academia and the press.
The only error I spotted in the whole article. Experience says:
Unfortunately, people with this mindset are only able to figure utterly incapable of figuring out that they’re doing something wrong even after the car crashes and the whole country is along for the ride.
I would say that what the left has done to the western world is no comedy.
There are plenty of very intelligent liberals. Most pure scientists are liberals for example. Conversely, lots of conservatives are emotional in the sense that sometimes our only response to an issue is that our guts tell us it is just plain wrong.
There are instances where liberals were not very compassionate such as when they were all in love with eugenics. There are cases where conservatives are compassionate such as when we fought communism in Vietnam even though it wasn't a direct threat to the US at that time.
Lots of thought goes into liberals' planned economies, zoning laws, UN initiatives, etc. It is flawed thinking, but thinking nevertheless.
To assume that our political enemies are a bunch of mindless emotional nutcases is underestimating them.
Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Ho Chi Minh, Pol Pot, etc. were not delicate snowflakes who imprisoned and slaughtered millions in order to create safe zones for themselves. They did not succeed merely through emotional appeals to lovers of mixed-race, transgendered puppies.
Liberal arguments appeal to females.
Conservative arguments appeal to males.
Since liberals have rejected value in males, they have nothing but female arguments left.
Since conservatives acknowledge the value of both, they see value in each as appropriate.
Since liberals are inherently imbalanced by denying the value and inclusion of half of human life, they are always taking about healing and feeling wounded. Everything had to be made equal because they have butchered themselves into inequality.
Since conservatives haven’t butchered themselves, they do not see or experience the pain and suffering of the wounded liberals, not accept the arguments based on an assumption of inherent weakness.
All liberalism is the result of feminism.
Kaslin: Your headline doesn’t match the content. You’re pointing to the wrong article. The article you’re pointing to is about transgenderism not how the west succeeded economically.
Making false dichotomies like this has gotten “conservatives” going down roads of plenty of feelings — feelings of badwill.
The solution is found in leaning upon, and reverence renewed towards, God, who is not Himself some unfeeling celestial monster.
Yet. Another. Oversimplification.
If they win in November, IT’S OVER OVER HERE!!!
“and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”
The Declaration of Independence
Mr. Jefferson laid out the reasons for Trump’s rise: The hundreds of present day “evils” are no longer sufferable!
One of the most insufferable to thinking American citizens is the current illegal, intentional flooding of this nation with those of an alien culture and ersatz “religion” called islam.
If you’re STILL unclear as to the intentions of the “leaders” of islam or don’t understand the EXISTENTIAL threat we face, this 3 1/2 minute video should remove all uncertainty.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0JJeVLTGYX8
Unlike the citizens of Europe (who have probably waited too long to resist) if you pass this along, we might perhaps halt this invasion before we are forced into the streets in potentially violent protests. American media is not covering it, but civil wars are brewing in Europe as you read this!
If they fail, the Europe America aided in 2 world wars is gone!
Intelligence does not equate to wisdom. That is the quality that all liberals lack. At least in my experience.
Very bad sign.
Bookmark.
Thanks
Liberals are people who never took the last step into independent adulthood. They are perpetual adolescents. And thusly their entire universe revolves around their genitals.
Actually, your "critique" is the very definition of oversimplification.
Because, of course, an actual critique would prove my points by being shown as inevitably derived from them.
But that's okay, bumper stickers have their place, too.
So are tag team shills too afraid to ping their subjects and relying solely on insulting, slanderous innuendo instead of open, forthright argument. There's nothing more cowardly than a paid foul-mouthed whisperer, don't you think? I certainly do.
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