House of Eratosthenes

That part sums it up nicely. It isn’t the first time someone’s noticed, liberals depend on the conservative way of life being practiced by someone else, somewhere, whom they can then proceed to regulate and tax. Conservatives, on the other hand, could do quite well without liberals.

Except for the Internet! Those conservatives put their ideas out there on the Internet, which we wouldn’t have if it were not for those wonderful liberals and their wonderful Big Government solutions. Right? It must be true, President Obama said so. Erm, there’s another side to all that…

According to a book about Xerox PARC, “Dealers of Lightning” (by Michael Hiltzik), its top researchers realized they couldn’t wait for the government to connect different networks, so would have to do it themselves. “We have a more immediate problem than they do,” Robert Metcalfe told his colleague John Shoch in 1973. “We have more networks than they do.”

Before returning to the video clip above, permit me a quick bunny-trail on this whole Internet thing. I do not understand this zeal, be it bona-fide, cloaked and saturated in oily deception, anywhere in between, to give the credit for apparently all significant human achievement to this shapeless, functionally anonymous leviathan which is the government. What would be the point? That in order to accomplish really meaningful things, we must leave the matters up to politicians? Politicians are just representatives of the rest of us. At BEST.

The zeal does not look like a drive or determination to make things better. It looks like a manic phobia against success, or at least, success credited to identifiable individuals. That’s the only perception of it that makes it understandable, to me: Success can be acknowledged, achievement can be acknowledged, as long as there isn’t an actual name attached. Unless it’s a really big name, a huge name, like Oprah Winfrey, Bill Clinton or Barack Obama. Someone safe, someone whom ordinary people won’t know on a first-name basis.

Someone not likely to say “If I can do it, you can too.” Or…”What’s your excuse?”

With the attitude toward risk: Everything Gutfeld says there is true, too, but in four minutes the video can’t delve into all the applicable nuances. Liberals are more welcoming of risk in this context over here; conservatives are more welcoming in that context over there. There certainly is a measurable difference in personal reckoning with the risk; Barack Obama doesn’t really plan to grapple in any personal way with the consequences of the Iran deal, and I don’t see His followers welcoming refuges into their own homes. Liberals are forever tinkering with the framework of policies, statues and rules, in an endless pursuit of the perfect law-cocktail, to be applied to someone else. These classes of someone-else people are sometimes revered by the liberal, sometimes loathed. Think of: Minority beneficiaries of racial preferences, and gun owners, respectively.

Kinda like the girl you dated in high school who finally figured out she was out of your league, and giving you The Speech: “Someday, you’re going to make a wonderful husband for somebody…(else).” Except the snobby girl at least had the guts to try a bit before moving on to greener pastures. When it comes to assessing risk, our friends the liberals are aware of and maintain the difference between the “us” and the “them” all the way, stem to stern, epidermis to marrow of bone, beginning to end. The odd thing about it is that their rhetoric is all about everybody living together, all things being equal for everyone. They don’t mean it.

They do seem sincere with their ballyhoo about climate change; is there not something going on there, with liberals being risk-averse, and conservatives avoiding the issue? Again, no. It’s another front in the propaganda war in which liberals have won without firing a shot; the common understanding meshes with the statements in liberal talking points, word for word, but it doesn’t match with reality. Supposedly, the conservative viewpoint denies there is any such thing as — any of it, right down to the greenhouse gas effect. It doesn’t work because conservatives are actually the ones who get out and do things, and when you get out and do things you often have the greenhouse gas effect looking you right in the eye. Some conservatives work in real greenhouses, believe it or not!

“Risk averse” means, to assess the risk. This requires definition. The closest liberals come to actually assessing the risk involved in climate change, is something like “If nothing is done then by the year 2100 the mean global climate will rise by [insert number here] degrees — Celcius!” In assessing risk, conservatives don’t stop at rhetoric that might come in handy for agitating the masses. They want to actually see what the risk is. I know, crazy talk right?

Quoting me again:

What exactly does conservatism seek to conserve? Civilization, the blessings that come from having it, and the definitions that make civilization possible. From what does liberalism seek to liberate us? Those things — starting with the definitions.

It bears a casual relationship to that earlier observation about identifiable individuals, as opposed to super-individuals the average person will never meet, or “government,” achieving noteworthy things. Liberals are not merely opposed to defining things; with regard to the definitions that have been established already, they have an enduring passion against allowing those to stand. And it has not escaped my notice that this passion becomes particularly inflamed in the case of definitions that have weathered earlier storms, that have visibly made other human accomplishments possible.

Other definitions have yet to be made, and if they were made, would help the liberal cause. Starting with: How, exactly, does it make things better for our society, or humanity as a whole, to move all this money around the way liberals want us to move it, out of concern for this “climate change” problem? The whole issue has become uncomfortable now because the question is being asked more and more frequently, centrists want to know the answer to it too, and liberals still balk at it. They continue to escape into their protective-bubble comfort zones, repeating homilies about how conservatives “deny” there is any such thing as carbon, or something. After a few minutes of thumb-sucking, they re-emerge to wonder aloud why those outside the bubble haven’t moved the money around the way they want, and they bleat some more. Make some speeches, fund some studies with other peoples’ money…fly around in some jets. Then the cycle is repeated again.

It would take many more paragraphs to fully explore the difference in attitudes toward risk. I haven’t done it. The clip doesn’t do it. But Gutfeld is definitely on to something there.

“Someday, you’re going to make a wonderful husband for somebody…(else).”

Ah yes. That speech. I got it a lot back in the day. Odd how things have flipped around with the attitude of a lot of those same women when they meet me later in life. I wasn’t “fun” enough back then. Apparently I’m a lot funner now. Since I took the delayed gratification route in life.

Too late. My wife figured it out.
- philmon | 09/30/2015 @ 07:30
Hate to burst your bubble, but I think that’s got to do with money. At least in my case if not yours…you might actually be the fun one.
- mkfreeberg | 09/30/2015 @ 08:29
The Internet isn’t the only example. I’ve just read David McCullough’s latest, about the Wright Brothers, and it was no different at the turn of the 20th century either.

The Wrights were self-educated on the topic of aviation, self-financed all their work and experiments via their self-owned business, and got their results not just from endless theorizing but through an astonishing capacity for hard work and attention to details. They were pooh-pooh’d by the press and “official” authorities for a year or two after their achievement, until public demonstrations in Europe finally won over even the most skeptical of their rivals. Meanwhile, the big governmentally-funded quest to put man into the air was a spectacular and expensive failure, nearly fatal to the pilot. Yet years later the Smithsonian still tried to claim it as a success and lied about the role their own designer had in powered human flight.

Excellent book, by the way, and not an overpowering read. It’s a heck of a cast of characters.
- nightfly | 09/30/2015 @ 08:45
It bears a casual relationship to that earlier observation about identifiable individuals… And it has not escaped my notice that this passion becomes particularly inflamed in the case of definitions that have weathered earlier storms, that have visibly made other human accomplishments possible.

I’m really starting to think this is biological. There seems to be a certain type of human — and how this comes about in an evolutionary framework escapes me — who longs for stasis above all things.

Sometimes it’s easier to see than others. Medieval philosophers, for instance, had a beef with motion. “Motion” entails “moving towards” or “moving away, which means that a moving thing lacks some perfection — if it were perfect, it wouldn’t need what it was moving towards, or need to avoid that from which it was moving away. The ideal was an utterly static universe.

Our modern liberals, as you say, are always redefining things. They seem to be defined by frantic motion; they even call themselves “Progressives.” But: what are they progressing towards? Their ideal world, too, is completely static. They trend autistic, so they can’t read social cues very well — thus, the idea that someone can be one way today, and through his own effort be something different tomorrow, stresses them out. They’re not very bright, so they need everything precisely defined. Because of this, they can’t handle nuance — witness their zeal for coming up with ever more elaborate micro-identities.

Follow that “logic” out, and you see that their ideal world is a giant cubicle farm — everyone in his box, doing (being) one thing and one thing only, forever, world without end amen. Government is simply the most efficient way to achieve this objective. If you load the ambitious up with enough red tape, they’ll stop innovating. Laws can silence the cantankerous, and as soon as we get those census forms juuuuuuust right, we’ll have a check box for every concievable race/gender/orientation.

And then we can freeze the whole thing in carbonite and hang it on the wall, forever. And then we shall have utopia.
- Severian | 09/30/2015 @ 09:46
“It’s a more practical, generous and compassionate way to live.”

Mic drop.
- tim | 10/01/2015 @ 08:06
[…] Severian, over at Freeberg’s place, on the contradiction inherent in the word “progressi… […]
- dustbury.com » Quote of the week | 10/05/2015 @ 15:03
Gutfeld confuses common characteristics with defining characteristics. He also conflates the right with conservatism.

Gutfeld: The Right tends to be risk averse, more concerned about external threats like tyranny and terror.

Conservatism typically avoids excessive risk, while the right is often concerned about external threats.

Gutfeld: Liberals, the research tells us, are generally more outgoing, more likely to try new stuff.

Liberalism balances liberty and egalitarianism, so it entails openness to other cultures, as well as the advocacy of social change.

Gutfeld: Conservatism makes what liberalism takes.

Here Gutfeld goes off the rails. Many positive social changes are due to liberal efforts. If anything, each side benefits from the other. Liberals envision a better future, while conservatives rein in unrealistic ideals.
- Zachriel | 10/06/2015 @ 15:08
Perhaps Gutfeld possesses a perspective y’all are lacking, namely, the passage of time and the effect it has upon the definitions.

In the Zachriel universe, “liberal” is a timeless definition, has always meant the same thing, correct?
- mkfreeberg | 10/06/2015 @ 17:53
mkfreeberg: In the Zachriel universe, “liberal” is a timeless definition, has always meant the same thing, correct?

Gutfeld supports the standard usage.

Gutfeld argues that liberalism is always wrong, when it’s clear that advocacy for greater equality is sometimes warranted. Conversely, sometimes conservatism is the best course. Indeed, in democratic societies, they can work together to lead to measured change, adapting existing institutions rather than overthrowing them.
- Zachriel | 10/07/2015 @ 06:28
Gutfeld supports the standard usage.

Has the standard usage changed over time?

Your options are “yes” or “no.”
- Severian | 10/07/2015 @ 07:16
[…] Sanity Every Sports Press Conference Memo For File CXCIX Feminism Wants Your Soul Twiddlers “Why the Right is Right” Quid Est Veritas? The Static and the Dynamic If We’re All Treated Equally, Graft is Harder […]
- House of Eratosthenes | 11/15/2015 @ 09:55

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