House of Eratosthenes

This has been in my “stack” for about a week now, and I wanted to be sure and bookmark it. Prager has the audacity to come forward with what he has observed…

But one critic opened my eyes to an even deeper reason most liberals do not acknowledge that people are not basically good.

This is what he wrote:

“What a sad world it would be if we all believed as Dennis Prager that mankind is inherently evil.”

And this is what I responded:

“I did not write that man is inherently evil. I wrote that he is not basically good. And, yes, that does make the world sad. So do disease, earthquakes, death and all the unjust suffering in the world. But sad facts remain facts.”

“A distinguishing characteristic of liberals and leftists,” I concluded, “is their aversion to acknowledging sad facts.”

Years ago, a woman writer, whose name I have unfortunately forgotten, first made me aware of this. She wrote about liberals rejecting many facts about male and female natures. She used the French expression “les faits de la vie” — the facts of life.

The left, she wrote, rejects les faits de la vie.

I believe this is so for two reasons.

First, as with my correspondent above, people on the left tend to be unwilling to accept the sadness and pain that recognition of such facts creates. Leftism is often predicated on avoiding pain. That is a major reason why the left dislikes capitalism and free markets. Free markets create winners and losers, and the left does not like the fact that some people lose and some win.

This antipathy to having losers expresses itself on the micro level as well. Many liberals oppose children playing in competitive sports because they can lose — sometimes by a big score. That is why many schools now emphasize “cooperation instead of competition.” They do not want children experiencing the pain of losing, let alone losing by many points. That is also why liberals introduced the absurd idea of giving sports trophies to all kids who play, win or lose. God forbid that only the winners receive trophies; the kids who didn’t win may experience pain.

Second, the left lives by theories and dogmas into which the facts of life must fit. That is why left-wing ideas are usually wishful thinking.

Last month, in one of my rare and shortly-lived fits of not bitching about liberals, I made up a new word to describe a particular flaw I had lately noticed in the thinking processes of thinking persons who were occasionally strident liberals. The flaw I was describing is closely related to the flaw Prager was describing: A sequence of events is described, with causes related to symptoms that in turn become causes of other symptoms. And it is (accurately) argued that the cause-and-effect relationships could happen. They are possible. To be more precise about it, they are plausible. Argumentum ad Plausible, or if you prefer, Argumentum ad It-Could-Happen.

The plausibility of the theory is confused with its proof. The enthused advocate shirks the responsibility of examining likelihood, and with that, the burden of inspecting what factors might make the desired outcome more or less likely. It-could-happen…and…yer done.

The problem that comes up for the rest of us, is that the plans are put in place, they fail, and — absolutely, positively nothing is learned from this. We’re going to have to do it again and again and again because hopey-changey guy has a plausible sequence of events to offer. Stimulus II (really!), cash-for-clunkers, TARP, raise minimum wage, legalize pot, the list goes on and on.

If you challenge them, you get another recitation of that List Of Events. They love reciting it. They love hearing themselves talk about it, they never skip a single step in the list. Just like a computer with a database — absolute integrity every time.

What they’re trying to do is convince themselves.

Reality didn’t do that convincing…and it won’t do it.

How did I put it?

No, see, the county government widens this highway with stimulus funds…and what you’re not taking into account, is they buy all this asphalt that they otherwise wouldn’t have bought, and the asphalt manufacturer, he goes out and buys some new trucks, and then the truck manufacturer hires some new people, and…and…and…

Like that.

It is an inability to recognize…and a hardened resistance against recognizing…les faits de la vie. L’fait, in this case, is that your plan is a Wiley-Coyote plan and it doesn’t work.

This is exactly what Thomas Edison was talking about with his thousands of light bulb designs. You come up with a plan, you implement it and then you find out what does not work in your plan. That last part is not fun but it is the most necessary step. What we’re dealing with, here, are inventors who only want to do the fun part of inventing. They are somewhat analogous to the amateur writer who writes a script or novella that he doesn’t want to see edited. All of the pleasure, none of the pain.

“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”
–Barrack Obama
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- OregonGuy | 11/23/2010 @ 12:52

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Les Faits de la VieTuesday, November 23rd, 2010

Les Faits de la Vie
Tuesday, November 23rd, 2010