Posted on 02/18/2008 6:23:55 AM PST by Turret Gunner A20
I copied it and sent email— Subject: Gimme, gimme
If one is going to a new hairdresser to get one’s hair cut, and the hairdresser says he is going to give him/her a big change, wouldn’t most people ask for a little information before agreeing to the haircut? After all, there are some really freaky and bizarre hair styles done today, and one of them could be what the hairdresser has in mind. Yet, without any details whatsoever, millions and millions of zombies in this country are agreeing to having Obama as their president without knowing any of the pertinent details at all. All they know is that he is promising "change". This is insanity!
That would make a great bumper sticker for them. : )
I have often accepted the belief that most people choose security over freedom. That very well may be true, but I'm not sure that's all there is to it in explaining the appeal of socialism. I also try to give lefties the benefit of the doubt. I believe they are, other than their leaders who are by and large control freaks, well meaning and sincerely believe that their ideas will be better for society. Many Democrats claim love of America and defend the freedoms of our Constitution while working to undermine them at every turn. What can explain this phenomenon?
I believe that a large portion of Americans see freedom as important only in the realm of their personal lives, and possible only then when unencumbered by responsibility. They seek freedom to do drugs, have sex, work when and where they want, free from the consequences of mortgages and employers that have for so long "oppressed" the masses. Jobs and spouses and even child raising are seen as anchors that weigh down the expression of one's true inner self.
To them, socialism IS freedom, and opiate that deludes them into thinking the rules of life can be changed to forever make the burdens of civilization melt away. They're wrong, of course. There's no free lunch. But they fight and strive for the day when no one is responsible for themselves except to express the whims of their inner souls, forever children in a world where the government is the only adult.
But what about “the children”. The poor, undocumented, children?
The idea of unlimited personal freedoms within a larger context of unfreedom has been a theme of many conservative books, among them Saul Bellow's Mr. Sammler's Planet (which I consider his masterwork- I cannot commend this book highly enough). The protagonist, Artur Sammler, was a Jewish intellectual who survived a massacre in a Nazi prison camp, and hid out in occupied Poland during World War II. The book finds him in late-60s NYC, at a turning point in his intellectual life. Although he was at one time a Fabian socialist who admired HG Wells, he begins to reject that ideology by seeing its product around him in late-60s New York City. He muses that William Blake's "dark satanic mills" (Blake's metaphor for the factories of the industrial revolution) had been replaced by "light satanic mills" (the modern sybaritic city). He asserts that this is an intentional outcome on the part of a technocratic elite who believed that the majority of people were incapable of handling freedom. In essence, a bargain was made in allowing unlimited personal freedoms but no freedom in questioning this ideological framework.
This was also the theme of Aldous Huxley's dystopian novel, Brave New World.
Culture critics on the left and right have observed that in our post-industrial, service-oriented economy, there has emerged a post-bourgeois, post-literate culture. An entire class of people have no aspirations to seek a traditional bourgeois lifestyle, and they are not willing to subject themselves to the traditional mores that were a marker of upper-middle class membership. This culture is also postliterate in the sense that semiotics matter more than content. A example: If Obama spreaks on race relations, his words carry more credibility than if John McCain does, even if their words are exactly the same.
Many of these themes were first articulated by the left in the 1950s, but a conservative analysis that relied on many of the same cultural observations emerged in the neoconservative right (particularly Commentary Magazine, writers such as Irving Horowitz and Gertrude Himmelfarb) in the 1960s. The neocons were former leftists, and brought this mode of critique with them when they migrated to the right.
Allan Bloom was a close friend of Saul Bellow's, and certainly had an influence on such works as Sammler's Planet.
One can still see this type of analysis in Commentary, City Journal, as well as writers such as Theodore Dalrymple, whose book Our Culture: What's Left of It presents a stunning critique of the decline of moral order and its consequences for our freedom.
Let me know the first candidate that can do this without raising taxes and I'll vote for them.
I should point out that in general, the left celebrates the emergence of a post-bourgeois, postliterate culture, seeing it as an type of “diversity” that we should embrace.
Some techno-utopians (usually Randian libertarians) see it as a hopeful sign. Their
Obviously, the right does not see these developments in a positive light. Many people who identify with the “old left” (as opposed to the new left, which enjoys making political gestures and postures) do not either. These leftists are alarmed by it too, as they believe that their programs can only be made top work if there is a possibility for rational political discourse.
My take is that it is part of the replacement of traditional moral judgement with scientific judgement. For example, it was the presentation of scientific evidence in favor of alcohol Prohibition that helped the 19th Amendment pass through the state legislatures so quickly. As permanent adolescents, we can’t be trusted to make our own decisions about our health. Although many Republicans support such laws, in my experience they are the more liberal Republicans, with a few exceptions. In many cases, they are simply submitting to pressure from well-organized interest groups.
REPUBLICAN
Because everybody can't be on welfare
I want free pizzas and candy
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