House of Eratosthenes

Steven Colbert says “reality has a well-known liberal bias.” It must be nice living in a two-dimensional universe in which reality can be regarded, and measured beyond all meaningful dispute, with a simple glance. I guess that’s the payoff for anyone with the courage to catalogue all disagreement as mythical, plug his ears and go “la la la” anytime an inconvenient truth comes along.

Colbert is right. Our history is written by the left. It isn’t supposed to be that way; but when humans gather together in something institutionalized, there’s something about us that drives that institution toward the left. It’s true of colleges, legislatures, their research arms, publishing houses, certification boards, newspapers, broadcasting corporations and Hollywood. Damn straight it’s true of historians. For proof, I would nudge the conversation a notch or two closer to where I’m really going with this: Election years and what our historians have to say about them.

The second sentence in the movie Braveheart is profound: “Historians from England will say I am a liar, but history is written by those who have hanged heroes.” Our history is indeed written by our liberals. Think back: In 2008 and 2006, along with 1992, and 1974, Republicans got their asses reamed. How does history record these years? As Republican ass-reamings. How do we recall the years in which the democrats got their asses reamed? There was 2004, 2002, 2000, 1994, 1980 and 1968. These are…”periods of civil unrest.” Turmoil. Confusion. Despair. Chaos, weeping, wailing and the gnashing of teeth.

Well, it must be quite the shot in the nuts to have two political assassinations within months of each other. But reading back on it, I doubt like the dickens this is why 1968 is recalled as a tumultuous year. Not that I’m saying it wasn’t one. But color me skeptical on the idea we’d be recalling 1968 as tempestuous, if the liberals won another round. Yes, as things are, it is an accurate assessment to say ’68 was a wild one. But it’s also a masking-out, a lightning-rod move…an effort to keep another point from seeing the light of day. Yes a couple of assassinations did take place in 1968 — but another thing happened too. We got tired of the democrats screwing everything up and we voted ’em out.

And we got tired of them, because everything they touched turned to crap. The “race relations,” the war in Vietnam, the failed prosecutions against violent criminals who were determined to do all the raping and killing they could…and, under left-wing stewardship, were allowed to. We got fed up, and that is the real reason 1968 was filled with such “unrest.”

As I write this, it looks pretty certain 2010 and 2012 are going to be tempestuous, tumultuous, chaos-filled years. As history recalls them.

According to our new James Clyburn rule, simple dissent is tantamount to violence — “terrorism, really” — now that his side is in charge.

It strikes me as a circular conversation:

Conservative: This is not a good idea. Let’s just not do it.

Liberal: You’re bad.

Conservative: My ex-wife would agree. But the fact remains, your idea sucks.

Liberal: You’re just an awful person.

Conservative: Maybe, but your idea sucks.

Liberal: You’re terrible. I’m better than you are.

Conservative: You’re just not getting it, your idea really does suck. It’s hurting us. We should stop.

Liberal: Me good. You bad. Me cool. You not.

I got a good taste of this myself this week, when one of my more vocal blogger pals found out to her distress she was in a clear minority, at her own spot as well as at mine — she was offering a virtual high-five to the students of Ottawa who used mob rule to stop Ann Coulter from speaking at their campus. My position on it was, and is, classically American: If you disagree with something, let that thing out, and define your disagreements. Give it a hearing so you can demonstrate it is as ludicrous as you think it is. Who knows, you just might learn something.

I’m not quite so troubled that the university students chose a different path. What I find troubling is that they chose it, and then, to all appearances, still think of themselves as able scholars within an institution of higher learning. Well in my world, you can’t take the finger-in-ears-la-la-la route, and then claim to be “learning.” That’s just me.

Actually, it’s not just me. This was one of those rare occasions on which I happen to be in the majority.

But my dissenting party refused to see the clear logic of that. Instead, she poured vast reserves of energy, time after time, into a regurgitated theme: She disagreed with Ann Coulter, I did not. Coulter and I were like two peas in a pod. This escaped my comment, although not my notice, because it was so irrelevant. Coulter and Freeberg agree. Well, on what? There was no specific point to be inspected or discussed. Coulter, thanks to the “justice” of mob rule, was not allowed to make any! And she never took this thought anywhere. Just kinda…hung it out there. Over and over again. As if showing off for some third-party.

A few more rides around the merry-go-round of “you and Ann Coulter agree,” and I decided this reflex-action had been repeated enough times, to merit a discussion of its very own:

There’s one little bullet here I’ve been dodging that I’d like to address head on. You keep getting back to the subject of “Mark (not actually my name) and Ann Coulter agree on everything.” I would find this merely obsessive, if it had a question mark at the end; when you continue to return to it as a statement of fact, it gets creepy. What is that? Some subconscious tic? It’s off topic. We can’t really discuss any particular thing Ann Coulter actually said (perhaps, if she was allowed to speak, we could).

You know how I read it? I think, throughout mankind’s existence, we have spent thousands of years being lured back into collectivist living units; evolution has not succeeded in showing us what a failed experiment it is. Food gets scarce, the village needs to make a decision about who is to be ostracized. And so an instinct develops, and is refined to a competent art among those lucky enough to survive the famine. The instinct of “In scarcity, ostracize that guy, over there…not me.” I think this is why leftists in general are never quite finished proving how wonderful they are; why their diatribes keep coming back to that point. Why their wonderfulness is always relative to somebody else. Why every time they tackle a problem, their first step is always to identify a villain that made it happen, even if there isn’t one.

And I think this is why you believe it’s relevant that Freeberg and Coulter agree on this, or that, or something, or everything — and nobody else does. You’re saying “shut Freeberg out of the gates, and not me. He won’t join my crusade to shut up Coulter, so he must agree with her…and if you don’t help me shut up Coulter, we’ll shut you out too.” Classic guilt by association stuff. To an American, the irony is rich. In my country, fifty years ago liberalism was supposed to be the answer to something called “McCarthyism.” I don’t think you’re so indecent to practice the guilt-by-association thing on purpose; you are known to me to argue your points honestly, when they are on the winning side. But it’s an interesting and remarkable lesson to take away from this exchange — liberalism is not a solution to McCarthyism. As I pointed out at my place (actually, echoing a point someone else was making) liberalism is rapidly becoming a synonym for classic authoritarianism.

I think this is worth pointing out, not to psychoanalyze the individual in question, but to point to the larger human tendency. It is not a productive one, but it is perhaps the singular human tendency that modern liberalism most capably succeeds in intensifying, magnifying, glorifying: Earning our stature in the community, at the expense of someone else’s. Perhaps George Orwell said it best in that little rhyme toward the end of 1984:

Under the spreading chestnut tree
I sold you and you sold me.
There lie they, and here lie we
Under the spreading chestnut tree.

That is what it’s all about, I think. One of the big failings of liberalism — and by “big,” I mean this isn’t just a turn-off to dedicated conservatives, I think it creeps out most middle-of-the-road people — is that liberals are very quick to abandon any discussion of whether their programs are effective, ineffective, or possibly damaging. They don’t stick with this analysis very long at all. They’re constantly distracted by something else. And the “something else” is almost always some tantalizing inspection of some ideological opponent’s unworthiness.

Some dissertation on why that fellow should be the next one to be shut out of the village gates, to starve in the savage winter. Him, not me!

Blogger friend Rick has a great run-down on all the shenanigans taking place. All the hubbub about what an awful, angry, violent terrorist-type person you must be if you dare disagree with the democrats and all their schemes. Neal Boortz has a pretty good one as well; he embeds the video you see up top. Rick links to Lori at Wizbang who goes further in-depth. And this stuff fairly well summarizes the week that just rolled by: A whole lot of drivel about those horrible tea-party people. And the tumultuous times in which we live.

A parade of gray-haired pols with their martyr complexes about the sixties…droning on…mmm yes, I’ve seen this stuff before. Reminds me of the sixties! Overturned cars, fist fights at midnight, molotov cocktails. Just like now. Vandals, terrorists, angry violent individuals. But as Lori points out, the “angry” mob is not that angry and not that special:

Even with the help of those in the media, the reality of what is happening is getting to the people. The little people. And now instead of beating up on rich Republican politicians, and fat cat CEOs, they are beating up on the little people who don’t give a crap about party or politics. They just want their voices to be heard. They care about their pocketbooks, their childrens’ futures, their freedoms and the future of their country. They don’t care what letter is behind your name. They want representatives in Washington who will listen to them. Vilifying those people, calling them names (such as teabaggers), questioning their motivations, accusing them of being racists and just generally beating up on those people, just because they disagree with the Democrat/Obama agenda, is just downright ugly. So much so that not even the MSM will be able to spin it as anything but that. When I think about it in those terms, I begin to understand why the Democrats are doing what they are doing. It doesn’t make it any less ugly, but at least it helps me to understand.

My own memory made relevant by current events, is much more recent. It is the election, and subsequent inauguration, of Barack Obama. And then the chasing, er, “finding” of votes so that Al Franken could bring the democrats a supermajority in the Senate and make the Republican failure of 2008 complete. Remember that? All the gloating about oh boy, those Republicans were really, really, super-duper-defeated now!

And then the liberal blogs induldged in a whole bunch of research-and-reportage, about what dirty rotten creepy jerks the conservatives really were. To get the word out…you know…to all the voters, who had already made up their minds that conservatives were dirty rotten creepy jerks.

To make darn good and sure the voters would never forget.

To convince those who were already convinced…or to convince themselves…or something.

Perhaps my thinking is out of fashion. But I do not think we are living in a village. Or if we are, I do not think there is a famine going on that necessitates the organizing and cataloguing of we who live within the village walls…queueing up to figure out who should be locked out of the village walls first, to perish in the awful winter, so the foodstuffs can be rationed among those most worthy. Maybe that whole process is what liberalism is all about — and why I’m not going to make a very good liberal.

In my view, when you’re trying to figure out if an idea is good or not, the thing you need to do is: Figure out if it’s good or not. This game of musical-chairs, to figure out who should be pre-emptively muzzled, who should be allowed to drone on at length even when He has nothing better to say than “For Far Too Long We Have,” “Let Me Be Clear” and “Make No Mistake.” Who’s just wonderful and sort-of-God, and who’s just an awful, terrible person.

Because in my world, wonderful people get things wrong pretty often. So do smart people.

Awful, terrible rotten creepy jerks — and idiots, too — manage to nail the right answer too. It happens.

So this ranking-by-worthiness, from my point of view, is pretty much a waste of time. The folks in charge, though…the ones who, you’d think, would have less time for it than anybody else, as they proceed to solve our various problems…they don’t seem to have anything else to say. Every sentence out of their anointed mouths seems to be some variant of “look at those awful terrible people over there; now, don’t you forget how terrible they are, all you little people.”

But the people in charge are liberals. And I did suggest, up above, that perhaps nowadays this is what liberalism is all about. Figuring out who is to be ostracized next. It doesn’t seem to be about too much else. It’s running unopposed, getting what it wants — which our Vice President says is a big fucking deal. It’s going on months & years with all sorts of wonderful opportunities to get out whatever message it wants to get out. And this is just about the only one it’s managed to communicate: Agree with us, or you are substandard, terrible, whacked-in-the-head and generally bad. Kind of like immature high school girls: Oh, they’ll just HATE us for-EV-er!!

[…] They Need a Powell Doctrine “They’re Socialists!” Memo For File CXI Fidel’s Way A Father’s Promise, a Son’s Sacrifice Genital Liberty Prison for the […]
- House of Eratosthenes | 03/28/2010 @ 12:07
the village needs to make a decision about who is to be ostracized.

This reminds me a bit of Jackson’s “The Lottery”. To be fair, at least the person “responsible” for making the crops grow was chosen at random. But the Democrats determination to find a scapegoat for everything- everything- to be a sign of mental illness at best, or blatant dishonest at worst. At least most mental illnesses can be treated these days. There’s no cure for a dyed in the wool liar.

Think about it: every single thing that has gone wrong is the fault of someone else. How do we fix the problems? By enacting Democrat policies and electing Democrat pols. When the abject failure of their past policies are pointed out, the answer is (a) blame someone else (BOOOOSSSSHHH!), (b) change the subject, or (c) claim that the policies simply didn’t go far enough. Of course, the usual choice is (d), all of the above.

So now the entire US electorate has been chosen by lottery to be sacrificed for the greater good. Except for Nebraska. And union members. And pretty much anyone who voted for Obama. But still, sacrifices WILL be made, the rain will come and the harvest will be robust, i.e. free unicorns and immortality for everyone.
- Physics Geek | 03/29/2010 @ 07:43
Yeah I’ve been very slow to affix any kind of trademark by that, and I probably shouldn’t because it’s kind of like copyrighting the note F-sharp — a “bottle” of people arguing over who should be the next to be cast out for the good of the rest. It’s an old human phobia and the reason for it is probably that deep down, we know this tendency is really in there somewhere. The Thing, The Dark Knight, Lord of the Flies, 1984, Button, Button…that South Park episode where the guy says we’d better start cannibalizing Eric Roberts, because nobody will miss him, and even though nobody’s even hungry yet what’s the point of waiting. Also, any one of a number of shipwreck movies about the life raft taking on water and they’re probably carrying one body more than they can manage. I recall a closing passage from James Michener’s Centennial in which he described in lurid detail how a certain Indian tribe cast the widow of the Chief out into the winter to starve to death, and Michener wrote some afterthought to the chapter (in my edition) effectively apologizing for the gritty realism.

The problem, I think, is that their partisan character is revolutionary in nature; they live for revolutions. Revolutions are borne out of, more than anything else, resentment. And so they have to convert the AIDS crisis into a wave of resentment; ditto for the Hurricane Katrina disaster. To a healthy, responsible and honest mind, there’s just no way such resentments can be relevant to the discussion. But there go those liberals, stirring it up, you can set a clock by ’em.
- mkfreeberg | 03/29/2010 @ 09:32
[…] For Dinner?” They Need a Powell Doctrine “They’re Socialists!” Memo For File CXI Fidel’s Way A Father’s Promise, a Son’s Sacrifice Genital Liberty Prison for the […]
- House of Eratosthenes | 03/30/2010 @ 06:55
[…] For Dinner?” They Need a Powell Doctrine “They’re Socialists!” Memo For File CXI Fidel’s […]
- House of Eratosthenes | 03/31/2010 @ 07:09
[…] speaking here of the Freeberg Village Theory, discussed here and here and here and here and here and here. The process by which, in a season a famine, one or several individuals are […]
- House of Eratosthenes | 09/23/2010 @ 06:52
[…] 13) One of the big failings of liberalism — and by “big,” I mean this isn’t just a turn-off to dedicated conservatives, I think it creeps out most middle-of-the-road people — is that liberals are very quick to abandon any discussion of whether their programs are effective, ineffective, or possibly damaging. They don’t stick with this analysis very long at all. They’re constantly distracted by something else. And the “something else” is almost always some tantalizing inspection of some ideological opponent’s unworthiness. — Morgan Freeberg […]
- John Hawkins’ 40 Best Political Quotes of 2010 « HOME – Other Right Links and Posts – On to 2012! | 12/08/2010 @ 14:47

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Memo For File CXISaturday, March 27th, 2010

Memo For File CXI
Saturday, March 27th, 2010