MaxedOutMama
Thursday, June 23, 2005
The Best Of The Best, Writing
Carl at No Oil For Pacifists is continuing Ilona at True Grit's conversation over left/right thinking. Ilona quoted Kevin T. Keith:
It lacks the positive goal, and because it does, it ends up advocating petty tyranny. At the heart of all this is confusion and restless, frightened nihilism. The extreme left in the US is locked into a perfectionist mindset that works by focusing upon eliminating only negative results. But assessing only negative results of actions or beliefs is a very twisted way to form a public ethos, because it eliminates profoundly positive elements from our public life and has nothing else to offer in its place. As matters become worse and worse, this leftist school of thinking responds by becoming ever more vigilant in its search for harmful actions or beliefs, never realizing that what is lacking is a positive direction that can inspire people to live meaningful lives. The tyranny the left rebels against is that of positive expectations which are not enforced by law, and to compensate it wants to eliminate petty social negatives by greatly expanding legal and civil coercion.
Here are some of the results. The extreme left, in the US and the UK at least, wants to guard the children by banning soft drinks in schools, eliminating demon tobacco from the midst of the corporately exploited smoking masses, placing higher taxes upon fatty foods, ensuring that everyone of us wears our seatbelts, and barring those demonic military recruiters from high school and college campuses. It blithely ignores the social epidemics of sexually transmitted disease and crime, because those issues are associated with traditional morality which is "repressive" in the left's thinking. It wants to promulgate "self-esteem" in our youth, but it knows no other way to do this than by disallowing all critical feedback to them. It does not know how to motivate young people to get a job or an education, so it sneers at those who do, and denounces them as materialists or capitalists. It does not have an intellectual, psychological, scientific or philosophical leg to stand on, so it denounces those who do operate from such a basis as "insecure" absolutists or fascists.
It cannot teach compassion and kindness, so it teaches supreme dedication to a cause with a corresponding hatred for all those who don't support the cause or who are not willing to be fanatic in the support of it. It can't teach admiration for good and purposefully lived lives, so it teaches that one must not criticize anyone - except, of course, for the enemy, which are those who do live and advocate living self-chosen good and purposeful lives of self-constraint and self-sacrifice. It can't teach a meaningful sexual morality, so it requires with a desperate fanaticism that no one teach such an ethos and substitutes an awed admiration for the sexual practices of the very few. In the end, it can't permit individual liberty and choice, so it advocates desperately for collective freedoms, such as the right to shelter, the right to a well-paying job, etc.
The moonbat left trumpets its dedication to liberty, while in practice making common cause with dictators and mass murders. It might astound the academic leftists if they knew how morally repressive Chinese communism has been, for instance. There is no sexual liberation in China, and a gay-lesbian website or a Chinese woman posting about sleeping around, for example, are sites the Chinese government will block on the internet. The moonbat left is in love with repression and with violence; it sees this as proof of dedication to the cause - because there is no fundamental cause, and so the only proof of dedication to the non-existent cause is fanaticism and absolutism in service of something that is willing to reprove the US.
Anyone who has any common sense does not live his or her life or try to raise his or her children by such principles. And thus the leftists become angrier and angrier at common sense and at the great mass of American society, and come to admire such anger more and more as proof of progressive principles. This is why they are doomed politically.
For more see Pedro at the Quietist (who is in academia, and is rebelling against its intellectual nihilistism):
Utilitarian ethics is just as absolutist as religious ethics or any other kind – which is not to say that it arrives at the same conclusions, but merely that it, just like the others, takes its conclusions to be true.Ilona commented in part:
Why, then, are liberals so much cooler than conservatives? If both hold absolutist moral positions, and both regard it as morally obligatory to adopt and follow the principles of the right moral theory, and both hold it as equally morally significant when correct moral actions are or are not taken, why are liberals so much more welcoming, and make fewer oppressive rules and fewer personal judgments of others?
I thought the philosophical approach to where each is coming from had a certain usefulness to look at, and also pointed out the fact that both sides are working from a fairly stringent code. The Liberal is just cloaked with better invisibility powers. Necessary to maintain the 'Liberal" feel of the platform. Perhaps this definition could have been better supported before the push for political correctness became so widely published and known. I would say this is the definition that Liberals largely hold for themselves, and perpetuate as their own mythos.Ilona is a good woman with traditional liberal instincts but has an addiction to rigorous thought that disqualifies her at this time for membership in the liberal paradise. She is absolutely correct about the leftist mythos, as Carl points out:
Trading the terms of philosophy for the language of faith, Kevin's approach simplifies "sin" -- a concept not necessarily tied to faith (as I use it here, at least) -- to the "golden rule" and nothing more. This doctrine, common to Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and most other beliefs, says it's immoral to cause harm to others. Fine as it goes, but incomplete.And I will come out and say explicitly that these definitions of harm are not just inadequate, but so inadequate as to induce extreme hypocrisy among those who attempt to live by this definition, followed by rage and resulting in the need to oppress. The fundamental problem with the philosophy that Kevin describes is that it is focused solely upon avoiding negative consequences, and this is fatal. Fatal to humanity, fatal to many individuals who adopt it, and fatal to countries who attempt to guide their mutual life upon these principles.
Kevin's approach necessarily excludes four related concepts central to the morality of many. First, he equates harm with objection. Action not provoking "stop" or "ouch" is ok, thus erasing "embryos or vegetative patients" (and most animals) from moral consideration. Second, even were there objections, Kevin validates only certain sorts of harm. Because (I assume) he sees homosexuality as strictly "personal," Kevin would not credit, say, parents concerned that gay teachers might harm their child.
Third, and related to the first point, Kevin's morality authorizes actions without identifiable individual victims, barring contemplation of broader or longer-term deterioration of civilization. Finally, he ignores any self-directed harm.
It lacks the positive goal, and because it does, it ends up advocating petty tyranny. At the heart of all this is confusion and restless, frightened nihilism. The extreme left in the US is locked into a perfectionist mindset that works by focusing upon eliminating only negative results. But assessing only negative results of actions or beliefs is a very twisted way to form a public ethos, because it eliminates profoundly positive elements from our public life and has nothing else to offer in its place. As matters become worse and worse, this leftist school of thinking responds by becoming ever more vigilant in its search for harmful actions or beliefs, never realizing that what is lacking is a positive direction that can inspire people to live meaningful lives. The tyranny the left rebels against is that of positive expectations which are not enforced by law, and to compensate it wants to eliminate petty social negatives by greatly expanding legal and civil coercion.
Here are some of the results. The extreme left, in the US and the UK at least, wants to guard the children by banning soft drinks in schools, eliminating demon tobacco from the midst of the corporately exploited smoking masses, placing higher taxes upon fatty foods, ensuring that everyone of us wears our seatbelts, and barring those demonic military recruiters from high school and college campuses. It blithely ignores the social epidemics of sexually transmitted disease and crime, because those issues are associated with traditional morality which is "repressive" in the left's thinking. It wants to promulgate "self-esteem" in our youth, but it knows no other way to do this than by disallowing all critical feedback to them. It does not know how to motivate young people to get a job or an education, so it sneers at those who do, and denounces them as materialists or capitalists. It does not have an intellectual, psychological, scientific or philosophical leg to stand on, so it denounces those who do operate from such a basis as "insecure" absolutists or fascists.
It cannot teach compassion and kindness, so it teaches supreme dedication to a cause with a corresponding hatred for all those who don't support the cause or who are not willing to be fanatic in the support of it. It can't teach admiration for good and purposefully lived lives, so it teaches that one must not criticize anyone - except, of course, for the enemy, which are those who do live and advocate living self-chosen good and purposeful lives of self-constraint and self-sacrifice. It can't teach a meaningful sexual morality, so it requires with a desperate fanaticism that no one teach such an ethos and substitutes an awed admiration for the sexual practices of the very few. In the end, it can't permit individual liberty and choice, so it advocates desperately for collective freedoms, such as the right to shelter, the right to a well-paying job, etc.
The moonbat left trumpets its dedication to liberty, while in practice making common cause with dictators and mass murders. It might astound the academic leftists if they knew how morally repressive Chinese communism has been, for instance. There is no sexual liberation in China, and a gay-lesbian website or a Chinese woman posting about sleeping around, for example, are sites the Chinese government will block on the internet. The moonbat left is in love with repression and with violence; it sees this as proof of dedication to the cause - because there is no fundamental cause, and so the only proof of dedication to the non-existent cause is fanaticism and absolutism in service of something that is willing to reprove the US.
Anyone who has any common sense does not live his or her life or try to raise his or her children by such principles. And thus the leftists become angrier and angrier at common sense and at the great mass of American society, and come to admire such anger more and more as proof of progressive principles. This is why they are doomed politically.
For more see Pedro at the Quietist (who is in academia, and is rebelling against its intellectual nihilistism):
In the months following 9/11, an academic journal (I'm sorry I can't remember which it was) on postmodern theory and criticism published an article on whether or not 9/11 made postmodernism "impossible." Like Carl notes, any moment of moral clarity, when our pampered, sheltered society is made to witness the true brutality and amorality that the world can produce, is a threat to their entire moral existence.Minh-Duc at State Of Flux writes about Amnesty International's behavior and its implications:
Much inks, or megabytes have been devoted to the “gulag of our time” comment by Amnesty International. Most of the writing have been focus on the unfairness of the comment toward the US. Sure it was unfair to the US and particularly unfair to the men and women in uniform. But I am not that concerned about the US. It is after all a superpower and superpower is often targeted unfairly. And the negative impact on the US image is minimal; those already hate us will continue to hate us; and most reasonable persons will see that “gulag of our time” is an overblown comment.Exactly. There are such things as evil regimes and ideas in the world. I think the US is doing some things that are morally wrong, but it just doesn't ascend to the rooted and studied desire to exterminate, exploit and repress people that is going on in other parts of the world. The extreme left's inability to recognize evil and mass murder where it exists has left them helpless in the face of today's realities.
But I am deeply concerned about the impact of this incident on the future of human right world wide - in particular to grave injustice suffered by true dissidents, prisoners of conscience, and victims of murderous regimes. To be blunt, Amnesty International have betrayed the very same people (for whom) it claims to advocate.
Comments:
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Yes, you are correct. There are religious, socially totalitarian extremists out there. They are a very small minority, however.
However, that was not really Kevin's point - he was saying that the distinction between the right and the left (en masse) was that the left was more freedom oriented and the right was more invasive, and on the whole, that is not what I see.
On the other hand, this is the US. You have terrorist environmentalists, terrorist wackoid Aryan Nation types, strange people waiting around to do whatever the mothership tells them they should, etc. We are diverse.
Myself, I don't see this country correlating very well to a right/left split at all.
Also, let's be honest, Boomr. The left I am describing holds a lot of sway in our society. It seems to be the majority in the universities and the legal profession, for example.
One of the nastiest things about modern-day America is that there an arise a coalition of these types that will agree to get rid of individual civil liberties. There is a substantial minority in this country that really doesn't believe in free speech, etc. I was just reading about the proposal to get rid of the Fourth Amendment for those in public housing under Clinton.
A pox upon them, I say. I think it is the centrists that still believe in individual freedoms, but the libertarians (if they are finding a home anywhere) are leaving the left and cautiously supporting the Republicans because of the left's increasing lack of respect for traditional liberal principles.
Boomr, at least historically, there has been a high correlation of homosexual activity playing out as older man/boy. China, Japan, Greece, etc. I suspect that's not really homosexual behavior in our society's sense, and I also suspect that's not what Carl was thinking about, but you would have to ask him.
Did you happen to read about the female teacher in Atlanta that had a kid lick her toes in exchange for candy? What killed me is that she seemed to have a lot of support in the community. Unbelievable!
However, that was not really Kevin's point - he was saying that the distinction between the right and the left (en masse) was that the left was more freedom oriented and the right was more invasive, and on the whole, that is not what I see.
On the other hand, this is the US. You have terrorist environmentalists, terrorist wackoid Aryan Nation types, strange people waiting around to do whatever the mothership tells them they should, etc. We are diverse.
Myself, I don't see this country correlating very well to a right/left split at all.
Also, let's be honest, Boomr. The left I am describing holds a lot of sway in our society. It seems to be the majority in the universities and the legal profession, for example.
One of the nastiest things about modern-day America is that there an arise a coalition of these types that will agree to get rid of individual civil liberties. There is a substantial minority in this country that really doesn't believe in free speech, etc. I was just reading about the proposal to get rid of the Fourth Amendment for those in public housing under Clinton.
A pox upon them, I say. I think it is the centrists that still believe in individual freedoms, but the libertarians (if they are finding a home anywhere) are leaving the left and cautiously supporting the Republicans because of the left's increasing lack of respect for traditional liberal principles.
Boomr, at least historically, there has been a high correlation of homosexual activity playing out as older man/boy. China, Japan, Greece, etc. I suspect that's not really homosexual behavior in our society's sense, and I also suspect that's not what Carl was thinking about, but you would have to ask him.
Did you happen to read about the female teacher in Atlanta that had a kid lick her toes in exchange for candy? What killed me is that she seemed to have a lot of support in the community. Unbelievable!
boomr:
You're falling back on your previous fallacious claim that secularism is neutral. And the proof is in your comments. Though you surely know that many Americans do not want a homosexual teaching their children, you dismiss that view as "irrational" "paranoia." Thus, as described on my post, you've self-identified with leftists who "dismiss and belittle views and conclusions of the faithful."
Rather than accept my hypothetical parent's view, you claim superior knowledge and logic--by what right? In a pluralistic society, what Constitutional clause or statutory section allows you to suppress the positions of another? And should you imagine such a right, what further authority can you proffer preventing the parent from reciprocally abolishing your contrary view?
My hypothetical parent has a right to his opinion -- though I too think it overblown. You've got the same right -- though I think it elitist and authoritarian. The difference between us is that you claim god-like prerogatives to ignore him, and thus use the power of the state to compel him to endure the consequences of your opinion. I too might force one of you to yield--but by holding a local election.
boomr, the upshot of your variety of liberalism is result-oriented snobocracy tailored to your prejudices. If you don't discern despotic illogic in your own prose, I suspect narcissism's plugged-up your politics.
You're falling back on your previous fallacious claim that secularism is neutral. And the proof is in your comments. Though you surely know that many Americans do not want a homosexual teaching their children, you dismiss that view as "irrational" "paranoia." Thus, as described on my post, you've self-identified with leftists who "dismiss and belittle views and conclusions of the faithful."
Rather than accept my hypothetical parent's view, you claim superior knowledge and logic--by what right? In a pluralistic society, what Constitutional clause or statutory section allows you to suppress the positions of another? And should you imagine such a right, what further authority can you proffer preventing the parent from reciprocally abolishing your contrary view?
My hypothetical parent has a right to his opinion -- though I too think it overblown. You've got the same right -- though I think it elitist and authoritarian. The difference between us is that you claim god-like prerogatives to ignore him, and thus use the power of the state to compel him to endure the consequences of your opinion. I too might force one of you to yield--but by holding a local election.
boomr, the upshot of your variety of liberalism is result-oriented snobocracy tailored to your prejudices. If you don't discern despotic illogic in your own prose, I suspect narcissism's plugged-up your politics.
Boomr - I have met a lot of people who do buy some of it, and I have met a lot of people who have simply gained a very onesided view of events in their college courses.
I am serious about this, btw. I think it is less prevalent among the more technical courses by far, but it does occur. I have met people who have very little idea of American history who have gone to extremely prestigious colleges. The propaganda/slantedness sticks largely because they have knowledge base to check it against and have never been exposed to different points of view.
Unlike many people, I think those who are interested in events of the day can usually get enough information to make up their minds on these matters. But education should give people an overall grounding on matters such as law, civics, the basics of history and economics. And I am constantly surprised at how lacking many younger people are in these areas.
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I am serious about this, btw. I think it is less prevalent among the more technical courses by far, but it does occur. I have met people who have very little idea of American history who have gone to extremely prestigious colleges. The propaganda/slantedness sticks largely because they have knowledge base to check it against and have never been exposed to different points of view.
Unlike many people, I think those who are interested in events of the day can usually get enough information to make up their minds on these matters. But education should give people an overall grounding on matters such as law, civics, the basics of history and economics. And I am constantly surprised at how lacking many younger people are in these areas.
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