House of Eratosthenes

I have long admired Dennis Prager — and there’s really no “but” to that, although there is, you might say, “a thing.” Prager writes a lot about liberals, and so do I, but he does not look at liberalism the way I do. Many others see things the way he does, and many others see them the way I do.

The “factional infighting” is over the word itself. Liberals, as I pointed out, are supposed to be champions of liberty. They’re supposed to be lovers of liberty. Supposed to be. That’s the way it should work, and clearly it doesn’t work that way. The “liberals” we see today hate liberty. They actually look at it as a root cause of our social ills, and their cures tend to have something to do with taking liberty away. And by “tend to have something to do” what I mean is “Go ahead and look for exceptions, like, try really hard.”

People in Prager’s camp tell me the enemy has been co-opting the word “liberal,” and I should not willingly cede ground to the enemy. They’re not wrong. What they overlook is that “ceding ground” is the wrong metaphor, this is more like a horse that’s run out of a barn door never to be seen again, and we’re pondering whether or not to close the door. Liberal means leftist. Rush Limbaugh would bitch about liberals, explain to his audience that “liberals don’t want their plans to be evaluated based on results, they want them evaluated based on intentions and feelings”…there’s zero confusion about what he means. You say “Those [expletive] liberals are trying to ban Dr. Suess,” everybody knows what you mean. We use words to convey meaning. There’s no ambiguity here. If that means the bad guys have won something, well then that’s too bad. Admit it and move on to the next thing. Life is full of ambiguity, we don’t need to go pretending there is some where there isn’t any.

You notice observations that involve, or depend on, this process of subversion or co-opting or however you want to think of it — it’s necessary to explain. “Conservatives today are the only ones who care about liberal values” is not wrong. “Liberals today are exactly what conservatives are supposed to be” is not wrong either. These can cause confusion even though they’re not wrong. That is a good thing. It’s good that explaining it all is necessary to continue the point. I like that. It means the conversations that have to happen, are going to happen. I think both sides of this conflict can agree, there needs to be more attention paid to, and inspection into, this “switch.” If we don’t do it, the liberals get to explain all of it and that’s exactly what’s been happening. They call it “the party switch” and they’re going around saying Republicans became democrats somewhere around 1964 and democrats became Republicans. With no one else discussing it, liberals get to write our history…and they don’t deserve to, if the best thing they can say about themselves is “We’re actually the other guys, and the other guys are actually us.” For those who are interested, Dinesh D’Souza has debunked this nonsense very capably. You talk about ceding ground to the enemy? Let’s stop fighting each other, and talk more about why liberals today behave so illiberally.

Yesterday’s rant had to do with the implications of living in a lie, and asking questions that threaten to breach the lie, like the dome of a pretend-world. When someone asks such questions, whoever is sharing the interest of the lie, or pretend world, can

1. Discourage the question by changing the subject
2. Remold the point of breach into something silly (“Darth Vader couldn’t sense Leia because Leia used The Force to block him…”)
3. Discuss the question honestly, admit that this is something the author of the fiction didn’t bother to entertain, that the pretend-world ends here, and real-reality beckons

Those are the three options. There is no other.

What’s important about this, is this: It is is how you distinguish truth from fiction. Fiction makes sense, because it has to, until it can’t. It is the work of mortal men. We can build universes, like God, but it isn’t within our power to build an infinite one. All pretend-domes have a perimeter…and sorry but no, there is no reason for anything in Skyfall to have happened. It’s a visually beautiful, relatable, intriguing movie filled with plot holes and we want to enjoy it so we just go with it.

This is what we’ve been doing with liberalism. A liberal is going to insist “I’m still a liberal who loves liberty because I want transvestites to have the liberty to choose their pronouns.” We know this is fake and phony, because what we’re really arguing about is applying penalties for using the wrong one. Once again, liberty is a problem to the liberal, and his solution to the problem is to encroach on the liberty. But my point here is, the liberal is sincere. He really does think he’s expanding liberty. Your ensuing argument is going to be about that. They’re not bullshitting us. Well, most of them aren’t.

Liberals have not been displaced by someone else. That’s my point. Liberals become leftists because they think like leftists. And leftists live in a cockeyed silly-world full of cognitive dissonance and false equivalences. They never became the opposite of what they claim to be — they were that from the very start. Their play-pretend dome is a penny-dome. You don’t need to cross it in a sailboat over the course of a day to pound on it’s perimeter. One or two simple honest questions would have pierced the periphery. They just never asked them. That’s because their penny domes are echo chambers. Anyone who would ask these most obvious questions, would be escorted outside and then booted out of the place. They’re doing this constantly.

Anyway. Those are my thoughts on it. While I disagree with Prager and his cohorts about the use of these labels, the questions to be asked are good ones. They can help determine how far gone your liberal/leftist kid/grandkid/nephew/grandniece is.

5. Do you agree that all white Americans are racist?
6. If your answer is yes, would you tell the millions of blacks in Africa and the Caribbean who wish to emigrate to America that they would be making a poor decision? If not, why not?
:
16. Has capitalism been a net-plus for America and the world?
:
29. Is the statement, “Men give birth” science-based?

These questions are likely to create “factional infighting” on the other side…which is not my primary intent here, but these are conversations that should be happening. If division must happen as a result, that’s a division that should be happening too. People who really believe America is inherently racist, shouldn’t be uniting with, or recruiting from the ranks of, people who don’t think so.

“Should we call leftists liberals?” is not that important of a question, in my mind. As I pointed out above, if I say “liberal” everyone knows what I mean. When a friend or family member who hasn’t been paying attention and is willing to admit it, approaches you and says “I don’t understand this conservative/liberal stuff, please explain it to me,” there’s no mystery about what he means. You can play the pedant and start with “Actually, liberal is the wrong term” — I can’t stop you. And many would start with that. Just like a lot of people can’t get over the very professional-looking and expensive labeling of “DRIVE THRU” by the fast food restaurants, which should be spelling it “through.”

The fact remains, liberalism is a pox upon us, a modern plague. And when you look into why people become liberals, you find it has to do with sloppy thinking. People who object to the use of the label, are not wrong, but they’re making inquiries that are exceeding the dimensions of the penny-dome, and breaching the perimeter. They’re over-thinking it.

Labels are quite important. They are how we define ourselves.
That’s why I am no longer using the terms Liberal, Progressive, or Democrat – I use the term Leftist, which is a better term, and far more descriptive.
I also do not use the term Conservative, or even the Loyal Opposition, but rather my OWN term – NLD, standing for Non-Leftist Dissident.
That term concretely characterizes my opposition to the Leftist agenda, as well as my unfailing and very vocal opposition to Leftists and all their plans.
- rau | 03/28/2021 @ 06:05

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“Questions to Determine Whether a Friend or Relative Is a Liberal or a Leftist”Tuesday, March 9th, 2021

“Questions to Determine Whether a Friend or Relative Is a Liberal or a Leftist”
Tuesday, March 9th, 2021