House of Eratosthenes

Why Is the Left So Threated By My Poll?
By John Ziegler
Writer/Director/Producer, “Blocking the Path to 9/11″

It has been quite a strange couple of weeks since I decided to commission a Zogby poll of Obama voters. I chose to do this at great personal expense to determine whether interviews I did on Election Day were indeed representative of the larger population…What was most remarkable about the left’s extreme reaction to the original Zogby poll was that it was utterly devoid of even the pretense of addressing the real issues that the nationwide telephone survey exposed. Instead of debating the implications of the results (in my view they clearly revealed a massive amount of media-induced ignorance on the part of the voting public), they chose to focus on the questioners rather than the actual answers from Obama voters — clearly, the responses they gave made them feel remarkably insecure.

I think I know why they felt threatened: Remember, this came at the end of eight years of calling George W. Bush a stupid dumbass. Along with his supporters. Actually, not just his supporters, but whoever was a little slow on the uptake to join along with calling him a war criminal, a constitutional offender, a liar, a knuckle-dragging rube…take your pick.

So they’ve been calling a bunch of other people dumbasses — suddenly, they, or at least the lucky interviewees who represent them in all the ways that matter, are being asked fairly basic questions. How could you not feel threatened if you were them.

There is something else at work here too. I see it in the left-wing commoners who want to argue with me in real life, on the e-mail, on the blog, as well as in the left-wing elitists I see on the idjit box…which must mean something. The latter is the head of an octopus and the former are the tentacles. I think it’s significant when I find some tactics shared throughout the head and the ends. And what I see is this: Stigmatization where one expects reasoned discourse.

Conservative: Idea.
Liberal: That’s the most idiotic thing I’ve ever heard!

Admittedly, it doesn’t mean much if I keep bumping into this. Maybe my ideas are idiotic. Lots of people think so. But then, how do you explain…

Conservative: Rhetorical question.
Liberal: How in the world can you even think of asking such a thing?

Or any one of the following:

Conservative: Fact.
Liberal: That can’t possibly be true!
Conservative: Uh…it’s a fact. Source.
Liberal: How can you ever stoop to reading such dreck?

Conservative: We should do thing-to-do.
Liberal: It’s people like you, saying stuff like that, that invite the anger from all around the world.
Conservative: Suit yourself, but if we don’t…consequence.
Liberal: Like I said, it’s people like you that make the rest of the world mad at us.

Conservative: Whenever I see this, I see that.
Liberal: You’re stereotyping.
Conservative: Call it what you want, it’s true.
Liberal: I’m done. I don’t know you. You’re disgusting. I’m not going to talk to you.

Conservative: I just believe…article of belief.
Liberal: That’s because you’re a dumbass.

I don’t mean to suggest by this that liberals have a monopoly on name-calling. The name-calling is not the target of my criticism here; it is, rather, the general practice of deviating from reasoned discourse. There’s something about being a left-winger that jettisons them from a true exchange of ideas, presuming they ever wandered down that path to begin with, which many of them didn’t.

It’s all whistle-blowing. This is shocking, that’s over the line, this other thing over here is “beyond the pale,” some unnamed anonymous nameless-faceless guy who might not even exist will hate us for doing X, …and then all that other stuff is STUPID.

Left-wingers feel threatened by this poll because it puts the big reveal on their estrangement from truth, common sense, and the intellectual disciplines that tether people to those things. Instead, their doctrine is more about “coloring within the lines.” Some sort of protocol. Manners. Except not really manners, because manners are things you want your kids to do that your grandparents were also supposed to do at the same age. There’s something timeless about manners. Liberal rules, on the other hand, are re-invented for each election cycle.

Example: In 2004 it was unacceptable to vote for someone lacking the proper military credentials. Clearly, in 2008, that rule had been repealed. Furthermore, it was alright to make fun of old people, and we hadn’t seen a relaxation on that standard since 1996.

So our left-wingers pretend to possess a decent command of the cerebral cortex, but in actuality their favored region is the OFC. They’re all about virtual electroshock therapy. Knuckle-rapping. “Hey, don’t go there, because I said so.”

It is the next generation of the folks who drove around with “Question Authority” bumper stickers affixed to their Volkswagons. Yeah. Who’d a-thought it.

So that’s my answer, and I’m stickin’ to it. Had the liberals simply asserted they weren’t stupid, they would not feel threatened by this poll. It could be politely brushed off with the “exceptions to the rule” argument…sure you found some dumbasses amongst us liberals, Mr. Ziegler, but there are bound to be some Republicans who don’t know what they’re doing, either. But that is not the liberal claim. The liberal claim is that they have a monopoly on brains. Not just brains, but curiosity. That readin’ stuff. They’re in Starbucks reading Cicero and Chaucer, while the rest of us are out here in our single-wides, just cleaning our shotguns and spittin’ tobacco.

Meanwhile, once you actually get the typical liberal in front of a TV camera and ask him some stuff that is supposed to be of a distressing concern to him, he doesn’t know squat. That’s because pronouncing this, that, or some other thing to be out-of-bounds, is not a very self-edifying activity. It’s really hard to turn the pages in a book while you’re slapping someone.

They aren’t that well-educated. They’re just bossy.

Cross-posted at Right Wing News.

There is a reason why liberals don’t engage in reasoned discourse. If they did, they wouldn’t be liberals. That sounds like I’m trying to be funny, but it’s true. Simply put, while not all conservatives are rational people, all rational people are conservatives (or at least adhere to the tenets of conservatism as you and I understand them, though they may refer to those tenets by another name).

Another way of defining this would be to say that rationality leads to certain beliefs which you and I recognize as conservative. So yes, people with liberal beliefs are not rational, but it’s because the only way to have liberal beliefs is to be irrational. That’s why it’s also true that irrationality doesn’t lead to liberalism. Irrationality can lead to anything. But rationality can only lead to rational conclusions, which inherently excludes liberalism.

Which may just be a long-winded way of saying “You’re right.”
- JohnJ | 12/05/2008 @ 13:22
The dialogue made me think of salvage over at Rick’s place.
- tim | 12/05/2008 @ 13:47

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