Posted on 05/24/2017 7:31:42 AM PDT by Kaslin
Intolerance, at times exploding into violence, is spreading throughout our society. And it's coming from the political left.
It's happening on college campuses. Most recently, students walked out on Vice President Mike Pence's commencement address at Notre Dame University.
Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos was interrupted by boos and jeers at her commencement address at historically black Bethune-Cookman University.
Conservative scholar Charles Murray was met with violent protests and physically assaulted at Middlebury College. Another conservative scholar, Heather MacDonald, was violently shut down in a presentation she was giving at Claremont McKenna College. These are just a couple examples.
Now it's spreading off college campuses with reports of violence and threats toward Republican members of congress, and their families, as they hold town halls in their districts.
A column in The Hill newspaper bears the headline, "Republicans fearing for their safety as anger, threats mount."
What is happening?
A recent commentary in Forbes Magazine from a London School of Business professor calls this "The Post-Truth World."
He describes a prevailing feeling of helplessness as individuals inhabit a world in which knowledge is, in general, exploding but each individual knows, relatively, less and less. And he points to a world in which business and politics are becoming increasingly interdependent.
New York University psychologist Jonathan Haidt attributes what's happening to a culture in which young people are not forced to deal with opposing viewpoints. This, says Haidt, is amplified by social media, which serves to reinforce existing biases.
But all this doesn't explain why the intolerance and violence is coming mainly from the political left.
A new survey from the Pew Research Center sheds light on this. Sixty-six percent of Republicans compared to 29 percent of Democrats say that a person is rich "because they worked harder than most people" rather than because of having personal advantages in life. This 37 percent difference in attitudes of Republicans and Democrats about why some people are rich is 12 points larger today than where it stood just three years ago in 2014.
Seventy-one percent of Democrats compared to 32 percent of Republicans say someone is poor because of "circumstances beyond a person's control," rather than because of "lack of effort." This 37 percent difference between Republicans and Democrats in attitudes regarding why someone is poor is 19 points larger than where it stood three years ago in 2014.
The nation is becoming increasingly polarized on the very fundamental question regarding the extent to which individuals have control over their own life.
Across the nation's whole population, 53 percent feel poverty is the result of circumstances beyond an individual's control compared to 34 percent who see poverty as the result of lack of effort.
What is the meaning of freedom in a country where more than half its citizens feel fate rather than choice governs their life?
Not surprisingly, for the first time in 8 years, according to Pew, more Americans (48 percent) say they want bigger government than say they want smaller government (45 percent).
Conservatives are exposed to the same cultural and technological forces as liberals. But it's not what comes from outside that determines human behavior. It's what comes from inside -- the individual's attitudes and approach to life.
Liberal mentality, increasingly dominated by moral relativism, produces a culture of victimhood. The victim sees life exclusively in political terms, seeing political power and government as the means to a better life, rather than freedom and personal responsibility.
With Republicans now in power, trying to restore economic vitality and fiscal balance by limiting government and expanding personal freedom, the left sees this as a threat, not an opportunity.
We all should be deeply troubled that, in the "land of the free and home of the brave," some are turning to violence to battle the prospect of becoming freer.
True Liberals or “Progressives” are no more... they’ve gone the way of the Passenger Pigeon...they’ve been destroyed by the new Brownshirts.
(Alan Dershowitz, the last surviving Liberal will soon be put in a museum)
There's this thing I'm fond of that's called "reality testing". When you test this concept in reality, you find a poor kid living in a slum or trailer whose parents are drug addicts and whose school is a joke is going to fail almost every time. And the scions of powerful families will succeed almost every time. And that although there are exceptions to both these rules, those exceptions become more and more rare every day.
We see the lefties as people who need to be defeated politically but not personally. The lefties just want to flat out destroy us to the point of nothingness. That’s the difference. Our side is showing extraordinary restraint towards them. If we were as psychotic as they are there would be a lot of puddles from all the snowflakes we destroyed.
You know the Democrat Party is gone when even the most leftist of traditional liberals like Dershowitz is not considered radical enough!
And the difference between the two?
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He describes a prevailing feeling of helplessness as individuals inhabit a world in which knowledge is, in general, exploding but each individual knows, relatively, less and less. And he points to a world in which business and politics are becoming increasingly interdependent.
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Last point first: The bigger that government gets, the more widely it intrudes into the arena of private economic and social interactions. Another way of saying this is the more those interactions are socialized. Every time government interacts with us, of necessity it must interact with private business and thus there are temptations for it to collude with business. This is a breach of the obligations of government office, it is destructive of the special role of government and it it invites graft and corruption.
This is yet one more reason why we must seek to have a government that is as small as possible, so that we all can thus enjoy the blessings of liberty.
Economist F.H. Hayek was awarded a Nobel prize in part for his work on the limits of knowledge. One of his most powerful papers had the title, The Use of Knowledge in Society. His Nobel lecture was titled, The Pretence of Knowledge. In short he showed that large institutions cannot sufficiently convey knowledge and thus the leadership could not know enough to make correct decisions.
As to the society being Post-Truth, one factor not mentioned int the article was that of ideology. The Frankfort School of Post-Modernist Marxism is based on the Hegelian idea that the only sure knowledge is that of the emotions, for the simple reason that humanity cannot know the full truth about any subject or situation.
Thus, for Progressives, who are the most broad class of people who support socialism, reality is by preference malleable and plastic. Indeed, reality is whatever they choose it to be, and thus the only “truth” is that which is ideologically and emotionally acceptable at any given moment.
We are in a “post-truth” world, but I don’t think the person who came up with that term has a full understanding of what he has claimed.
Never have figured out why leftists are called “progressive” when they absolutely don’t represent any progress.
And any rational, thinking person can see this as the coming of the winds of war.
/// And any rational, thinking person can see this as the coming of the winds of war. ///
At this time, I consider Civil War II or social collapse inevitable. It is just a matter of when, like the Roman Empire.
I suspect things will happen within the 15-20 year time frame, sooner if the there is a Black Swan event, such as a Carrington Event, an EMP or nuclear attack by a rogue state or terrorists.
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The word that should be used for these types, as you surely know, is Regressive!
Concur. Though I have often mused about what exactly would be the catalyst, and would it be recognized as such. A dirty nuke would certainly be a valid sign but what about the patriot who is defending his property? When the Bundy’s stood up for their rights in Nevada, thousands backed them physically. When they did so in Oregon, crickets. And look at how diametrically opposed the two turned out...
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