House of Eratosthenes

Liberalism under siege is an ugly sight indeed. Just yesterday it was all hope and change and returning power to the people. But the people have proved so disappointing. Their recalcitrance has, in only 19 months, turned the predicted 40-year liberal ascendancy (James Carville) into a full retreat. Ah, the people, the little people, the small-town people, the “bitter” people, as Barack Obama in an unguarded moment once memorably called them, clinging “to guns or religion or” — this part is less remembered — “antipathy toward people who aren’t like them.”

That’s a polite way of saying: clinging to bigotry. And promiscuous charges of bigotry are precisely how our current rulers and their vast media auxiliary react to an obstreperous citizenry that insists on incorrect thinking.

— Resistance to the vast expansion of government power, intrusiveness and debt, as represented by the Tea Party movement? Why, racist resentment toward a black president.

— Disgust and alarm with the federal government’s unwillingness to curb illegal immigration, as crystallized in the Arizona law? Nativism.

— Opposition to the most radical redefinition of marriage in human history, as expressed in Proposition 8 in California? Homophobia.

— Opposition to a 15-story Islamic center and mosque near Ground Zero? Islamophobia.

Now we know why the country has become “ungovernable,” last year’s excuse for the Democrats’ failure of governance: Who can possibly govern a nation of racist, nativist, homophobic Islamophobes?

Note what connects these issues. In every one, liberals have lost the argument in the court of public opinion. Majorities — often lopsided majorities — oppose President Obama’s social-democratic agenda (e.g., the stimulus, Obamacare), support the Arizona law, oppose gay marriage and reject a mosque near Ground Zero.

What’s a liberal to do? Pull out the bigotry charge, the trump that preempts debate and gives no credit to the seriousness and substance of the contrary argument.
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The Democrats are going to get beaten badly in November. Not just because the economy is ailing. And not just because Obama over-read his mandate in governing too far left. But because a comeuppance is due the arrogant elites whose undisguised contempt for the great unwashed prevents them from conceding a modicum of serious thought to those who dare oppose them.

I’ve been thinking this for awhile. It is the tactics by which their ideas are being sold, not necessarily the ideas themselves, that are particularly due for a beatdown and are perhaps achieving the lion’s share of the work in bringing it on.

Well alright, the ideas suck too.

But did you notice the other thing all these issues in Krauthammer’s list have in common? Someone needs to be told to go stick it where the sun don’t shine. Someone’s just-plain-bad. The Islamophobes need to learn to live with the Victory Mosque, which they really hate, but that’s a good thing because once it’s there they won’t be able to do anything about it, and they deserve it. They need to suffer because they’re bad people. Ditto for those xenophobes in Arizona, dang it, they deserve to have all those brown people who “aren’t like them” streaming through their fences. I hope they choke on their chewing tobacco over it!

This is an important point. What’s being opposed? All those things liberals say they support: Making a world in which everyone can achieve happiness and prosperity, or at the very least some measure of comfort. Seeing the good in everybody. Dealing with life’s various issues and challenges with an open mind. Finding solutions. Avoiding the blame game.

Liberals are often heard to theorize that conservatives are repressed homosexuals. I’ve had a theory for awhile that is somewhat the mirror flip-side of this: Today’s liberalism is retrograde but natural machismo, repressed through artificial disciplinary techniques and then exploding elsewhere in an uncontrolled and unhealthy way. Go through the list of things liberals do that embarrass them once the wrong people find out about them, but that they can be counted on to do once they’re among friends in a “JournoList” type of setting. It is the same list of things boys do when their hormonal rushes are driving them into that Venturi manifold toward manhood — and when they’re under-supervised.

Lots of pontificating about what should happen, without so much as a courtesy nod to reality. Coarse language for its own sake, without regard to whether it adds any effect in the context, as if someone’s keeping count and the effort is to drive up some kind of score. Lots of verbal bullying directed toward third parties who aren’t there to defend themselves. A group-feeling of natural competition sets in, which is never directly acknowledged, but the most vocal of the participants are clearly engaged in one, clearly measuring some “performance” in relative terms against each other, trying to out-do each other.

It’s as if they missed out on the coming-of-age when they were thirteen or so, and are trying to make up for it.

It’s not really a set of ideas. After all, if you can find me twenty liberals who think the Victory Mosque needs to be built, I’ll show you nineteen or more who are convinced the planet is in trouble if we don’t get a carbon cap scheme working right-now-no-maybe-yesterday — and the global warming scam has very little to do with the Victory Mosque. It’s a way of looking at the world.

It is hostility toward the choices made by others, once those others have been identified and selected as targets. It is engaging in groupthink to figure out who those targets are going to be, and then engaging individuality to compete with each other, see who does the best job of deriding the targets, humiliating them, isolating them from sympathy. Who can come up with the best insults.

It is bullying.

I don’t pretend to know how they got that way. Maybe they became bullies back in the day, and have never learned how to interact with the world in any other way. Maybe were bullied, and see it as only fair that they should pay it forward now that they can.

Maybe their ranks are made up of both of these characterizations, and maybe there are more that I don’t understand.

But their ambition is not to bring us together, or usher in some new age of harmony and mutual understanding. If that was what they were about, they’d be doing more things to make this happen, and we would have seen some agreeable results by now.

Over and over and over again, we see that when they are put in charge of things, strife and factional infighting ensue. That’s because their goals have to do with awarding every benefit possible to one class, and directing every burden conceivable onto another class. These roles will never be rotated in any way, because they’re trying to impress each other and won’t ever allow such a rotation to be considered. The groupthink would have to bless it first, and aircraft carriers can change direction much more nimbly than groupthink can.

Thanks to Melissa for her entry at the Hello Kitty of Blogging.

Damn fine analysis, Morgan.

I just happened to submit Krauthammer’s article at Rick’s place about an hour ago coincidently.

One complaint though, please don’t do this again –

“I’ve been thinking this for awhile. It is the tactics by which their ideas are being sold…

Well alright, the ideas suck too.”

I ended up reading and rereading the first part three times because I just couldn’t believe
you wrote that.
- tim | 08/27/2010 @ 09:46
small-tee,

America deserves enormous credit for being the last spot on the earth still holding out culturally against the twentieth-century worldwide socialist push. But the credit deserved is only so enormous; it is finite. Two thirds of a century separates us from the Holocaust, and yet you don’t go wearing a Nazi uniform to a Halloween party. People know how to remember an idea is bad, if all the ingredients line up just so. They’ll willingly rip it out by the roots and sow salt into the earth where it was once planted.

But every sixteen years, we keep electing these dipshits. It’ll happen again in 2024, mark my words. Yet another pretty-boy in a nice suit, the youngest out of everyone running, representing a whole new generation…I guess that means born about 1980. Protestant, with some kind of distinguishing accent or lilt to the voice, hardcore liberal democrat, talking a mile a minute but not saying a single word about what he’ll do when he gets in. The ladies will just love ‘im and it’ll be abundantly clear he’s our future President long before he actually wins the election.

Between now and then, we’re going to relapse into Keynesian economics, and high progressive taxes, a whole bunch of times. There’ll be huge deficits and the liberals will tell us “hey, the money’s gotta come from somewhere!” and the lightweights will fall for it.

I’m very proud we do seem to have a national cultural resistance against some of the agenda. It’s plenty deep enough, it just doesn’t cover enough acreage.

But Americans do NOT like to be told what to think — at least, when they are, and when they fall for it, they don’t like to be cornered into admitting that’s what has happened. They do want that personal responsibility, or at least, they want to want it.
- mkfreeberg | 08/27/2010 @ 12:22
If I’m a repressed homosexual, does that mean confidence in my heterosexuality is a simple mistake? So, I would I need to confidently repress my homosexuality? I think I’ve done that. I have, and remain, a confident heterosexual. There’s a certain circularity to the premise of repression v. expression that might be missing, if we are born with “both” traits.

The expression of a trait would necessarily have a connection to the repression of its opposite. I have successfully repressed my left-handedism by remaining right-handed. As much as I’ve tried. I am, I’m afraid, a tenor, even though I’ve tried very hard to become a bass…at least a baritone. I’ve tried both repression and expression, can’t seem to budge. Not that it’s bad, being a tenor. Until you argue. Then, it’s a little screechy.

I’d like to find out what appeals to the thinker that one’s stated sexuality is an indicator of the opposite. While I’m not afraid of expressing the absurd, I do try to repress my perversions. That is, what is absurd may seem perverse, but I’m not sure the perverse is necessarily absurd.
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- OregonGuy | 08/27/2010 @ 13:00
Last refuge?

I think, if given the chance, liberals will sink even below their own standards.
- Kini | 08/27/2010 @ 16:58
….. this part is less remembered — “antipathy toward people who aren’t like them.”

What’s wrong with this, really? We AREN’T like them. We don’t believe government is the be-all, end all. We don’t walk around trying to blame all our shortcomings and disappointments on racism. We think crime is caused by evil people, not guns. We believe economies are salvaged via tax cuts and smaller government, not stimulus packages. We believe the healthcare system needs less regulation, not more. We don’t admire and wish to emulate failed socialist states. We worship God, not man.

We AREN’T like the people Chairman Zero was addressing. Not one bit.
- cylarz | 08/28/2010 @ 21:27
– Disgust and alarm with the federal government’s unwillingness to curb illegal immigration, as crystallized in the Arizona law? Nativism.

This particular “charge” has always flummoxed me. Let’s play devil’s advocate for a moment and say that’s true – that my desire to see the border secured and the illegals thrown out, is really rooted in “nativism.”

If by “nativism” you mean I put the interests of the people born here over those of the ones trying to enter, then yes, I’m guilty of nativism. If I believe the people who are already living here have the absolute & final word on whether or not someone else may enter the country, then again guilty as charged. If I think the US should care more about what its needs are and less about those of people seeking “asylum” or employment or anything else….then once more, I’m guilty of nativism.

For that matter, even if I plead guilty to their ugliest charge – that I just plain don’t like brown people – what would even be wrong with that? (Again, simply playing devil’s advocate here.) Let’s say I really were an ugly, vile raaaaaacist. I would then answer, “Uh…that’s why I live HERE, you nitwit, and why I’m trying to keep brown people out, because I want to live in a country that isn’t up to its armpits in them! For that matter, if you really think that about me, why on God’s green earth are you trying so hard to break into a country filled with nasty, fascist, imperialist, racist scum like me? Why in the hell do you want to live among such people?”

The argument, as always, does not stand up to scrutiny.
- cylarz | 08/28/2010 @ 21:35

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Last Refuge of a LiberalFriday, August 27th, 2010

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Friday, August 27th, 2010