House of Eratosthenes

The quote that is so often mis-attributed to Robert Francis Kennedy is something like: “There are those that look at things the way they are, and ask why? I dream of things that never were, and ask why not?”

It is quite the scathing indictment against modern-day liberalism, nevermind who did or did not intend for it to be. Our friends the libs get in quite a bit of trouble, and rather regularly, dreaming of things that never were & asking why not. A few of these things could someday be. A lot of them cannot, and in their zeal to make decisions on behalf of the rest of us that are supposed to do good things for us, our progressive friends very often lose sight of obvious contradictions and other things that make these practical impossibilities. But among the ones that really could happen, it would take something remarkable to make them happen. Liberals lose track of this even more often than they lose track of the impossible. They forget the default state, acting as if merely asking “Why Not?” should be enough to flip the polarity. I guess the universe hasn’t been listening.

Hillary winning the presidency is a great example of this, because it certainly was possible. But in order for that to happen, people would have to vote for her in numbers large enough to net her 270 electoral votes or more. Obviously, America needed more reasons and these were not forthcoming. “Because she’s a woman,” “because it’s her turn”…the list pretty much ends there. Her famous book “What Happened,” therefore, misses the point. And entirely, not just a little bit. What happened? More like what didn’t happen. Liberals lose sight of the default state, which is that a politician running for office, loses. Even when politicians run against each other, this is the natural situation for both of them. They both labor under the onerous task of flipping the situation to their favor, which is, as they first confront it & until they present something to get it flipped, “You’re going to lose.” That’s the default. What happened is simply this: Hillary never did anything to change the situation from the default. Her opponent did.

Trump Happened Liberals are wrong, and this way, with pretty much every issue that captures their passions, stem to stern. They have a lot of “solutions to poverty,” but they don’t understand poverty. Poverty is the default state. We’re all born without any money, and also without any investment capital or skills we could use to get some money. Thus, we don’t have any need for an exceptional circumstance to stay impoverished. We require an exceptional circumstance before we can make money. If that should come to pass, there is another default state within the non-default, which is: Inequality. Inequality of income, and inequality of wealth. These are more things liberals don’t understand, because they think of them as exceptional evils. This is wrong. If you and I are languishing in the default state of poverty, and you say to yourself “I am tired of this, I wish to do something exceptional so I can live in a non-impoverished state,” good for you. Maybe I’ll emulate your superior example, and instantly…but the default is, I’m going to keep doing what you and I both have been doing, therefore, staying impoverished myself. Bam. Inequality.

Climate change is the default. This is science. Liberals are silly about climate change because they think on it with an underlying premise that there’s something exceptional about it, that the default is for the climate to remain static with the passage of time, and something nefarious & artificial must have happened in order to make it change. If that were the case, there would be no climate for anyone to study. But there has always been climate, and the climate has always changed. If it didn’t change, that would be exceptional.

Here’s another quote, this one genuine: Ronald Reagan said “The trouble with our liberal friends is not that they’re ignorant, it’s just that they know so much that isn’t so.”

If you are charged with a crime, you are guaranteed certain rights, not the least of which is the benefit of the doubt. The prosecution has to prove its case, and in the absence of either side being able to prove anything, you are presumed innocent. This is not because the Founding Fathers wanted to make the country a cushy comfortable place for people to commit crimes and get away with them. It’s because this simply makes sense. Innocence is the default state.

Liberals forget that when we give new powers to a government agency, and start worrying about the authorities abusing these powers, what we’re worrying about is the default, not an exception. For new powers to be invested in the elected & appointed, who then proceed to use them without abusing them, would be exceptional. In fact, it really hasn’t happened very often in our history. People are corruptible. Abuse is the default premise. In fact, if after some amount of time it doesn’t happen, the default premise that arises to replace the earlier one, is that the abuse will happen a little bit later.

Beer Wench When we make it more expensive to do something, the default condition is going to be that fewer people will do it. If we make it less expensive, or less onerous, or speedier, or make the product taste better, the default condition will be that more people will partake. If we qualify people for something and we lower the standards, the default scenario is going to be that more people will meet this new, lower standard. And, they will be a lower caliber than before because they won’t have had to prove as much, or try as hard. For standards to be maintained in outcome while relaxed in code, would be truly exceptional. That’s not to say it is impossible. It is to say responsible people — not liberals — should expect the default, not that.

When people are given things and don’t have to work for them anymore, it would be truly exceptional for them to value the things as highly as they did back when they still had to work for them. Liberals think that isn’t exceptional, it is the default, and they should be able to count on it. They’re wrong about that. The scenario that unfolds by default, when people are given things that don’t require work, is that they don’t cherish those things and if the things have to be maintained by their owners, it isn’t going to happen and the things will degrade after just a little bit of time.

Perhaps the biggest misconception liberals have about defaults, has to do with the aftermath of the imposition of new rules. People, by default, don’t like rules. They may like to see the rules imposed on others, but when new rules are imposed on them, they balk at it. The default situation to be expected when new rules are imposed on a geographic locality, is that people will flee. And if yet another rule is imposed to keep people from fleeing, the default scenario one can expect to see unfold, is that people will try to escape.

The people we today call “liberals” have a tough time with this. They envision all sorts of bizarre things that they accept as default-scenarios, that aren’t, in fact are wildly exceptional, even risible. Something having to do with “paying higher taxes out of a sense of patriotism” or some such.

This failure to grasp the true meaning of the default, and the true implications of the default, is the shortest path between modern liberalism and pure & predictable wrongness. Which is saying something, since there are many such paths, and they’re all short. But this one problem they have, above all others, does the most to ensure they do not, and cannot, live in reality. Sane sensible people don’t want liberals running anything that impacts anybody else. And when they hear “research says,” they don’t put stock in it until they confirm no liberals were involved in the research. They don’t have confidence in “experts say” until they confirm none of the experts were liberals.

Because liberals don’t really ask “Why Not?” Their minds are not open to hearing the answer; and most of the time, there is one, a solid, inescapable answer why things are not that way, and cannot be that way. You can’t count on the liberals to stick around and find out what that is.

I would point out that these two items, in successive paragraphs, appear to be contradictory:

1. If you are charged with a crime, you are guaranteed certain rights, not the least of which is the benefit of the doubt….Innocence is the default state.
2. Liberals forget that when we give new powers to a government agency, and start worrying about the authorities abusing these powers, what we’re worrying about is the default, not an exception….Abuse is the default premise.

I say appears, because this is the tension within a (classically) liberal society: Men are inherently good; social arrangements make them bad. This is the kernel of the modern liberal worldview — the SJW worldview — and when you look at it that way, the random slop of outrage that is their “ideology” makes a little more sense. Instead of accepting that Fallen Man is inherently corruptible, and that a little bit of corruption will always accompany power, they wishcast that social arrangements can be rejiggered such that corruption disappears completely.

The thing is, “presumed innocent” isn’t some grand metaphysical claim (though the Founders probably thought it was). It’s a practical arrangement — the State can’t count on the loyalty of its subjects when it presumes those subjects’ default guilt. The commies tried it that way — when the commissar showed up, he knew you were guilty of something; the only questions were, what was it? and how much was it going to cost you? E.g. North Korea, where everything not forbidden is compulsory. A stable society requires both presumption of innocence (on the citizens’ part) and presumption of corruption (on officials’). Lose either, and you’re in a police state. Lose both, and you’re in North Korea… or on a modern college campus.
- Severian | 11/28/2017 @ 03:35
Right. Well, the thing that resolves the contradiction is the corruptibility, and therefore the potential incompetence, of the constable. Of course if there is a dead body on the floor and the cause of death was not natural cause or suicide, someone must be guilty. But did the law seek out & bring the right guy?

This distinction between “We are all corruptible” vs. “The people in government are corruptible” is another one of those very short paths between modern liberalism and pure-wrongness. It is said they disagree with the dictum of Christianity that says we’re all flawed and cannot be perfected; I’ve found they don’t disagree about that part in particular, they disagree about what savior we need. Government is perfect and never makes any mistakes, they seem to profess…unless, that is, a Republican is in charge.

I’ve tentatively concluded they don’t see government as having people working in it. They won’t buy off on my syllogism that says, since human activity is trashing the planet, we must reduce government activity since that is human activity. And I don’t see them recommending to people who know they’re flawed, “You should totally get a job working in government so you can become perfect and incorruptible.” So they must think government is filled with angels.
- mkfreeberg | 11/28/2017 @ 07:07
So they must think government is filled with angels.

They sure seem to, don’t they? I remember having a long drunken conversation with a colleague about this back in grad school. I seriously wanted to know, “what is it about getting elected to something that makes a normal human being into a faultless demigod?” He laughed at me, of course, but yet, Elizabeth Warren-like, I persisted. “You know the hell-on-Earth of the DMV. You know how shitty school administrators are. And you know that the VA is one big fuckup, stem to stern. I know you know this, because you were just now ranting about all three of them. And yet, you have endless faith in government. If only some elected bureaucrat would come along and fix this, instead of all the unelected bureaucrats who work in all those places!”

He had no answer, of course, but the fact that he didn’t makes me think you’re right — since he didn’t know any Congressmen, he still believed they’re angels, not glad-handing hucksters with room-temperature IQs (which is what anyone, liberal or conservative, who has actually met a politician thinks). He’d met the fine upstanding Diversity at the DMV, though, so he knew what they were like… but, being a liberal, lacked the imagination to see Quantisha and her five-hour lunch breaks deciding what to do with your Obamacare chemo treatment.
- Severian | 11/28/2017 @ 08:14
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- House of Eratosthenes | 02/19/2018 @ 07:29

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Check Your DefaultsMonday, November 27th, 2017

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Monday, November 27th, 2017