Acknowledging that human fallibility is inevitable
Since the collapse of the IT marketplace in the US has made it impossible for me to find work in my field, I have been working as a retail clerk. Anybody who thinks that running a cash register is an easy job has never tried it. It has been a humbling experience in that it is so easy to make mistakes – entering or scanning codes incorrectly, misreading the display, forgetting to apply a discount that the customer is entitled to have, neglecting to ask for the customer’s loyalty account number, errors in counting change, dropping something on the floor, tearing a plastic bag, or just plain hitting the wrong key.
One time I happened to mention human fallibility in that regard, and the customer replied, “If it weren’t for human fallibility, I’d be out of business.” Well, there’s certainly no chance of that happening!
Of course, it turned out that the customer was a Protestant minister. Even though human fallibility will never go away, and human individuals and organizations will always err, it is always possible to move toward good. It is the pastor’s job to lead people to do so.
Perhaps the most valuable lesson that I learned while growing up in a society rooted in the Judaeo-Christian tradition is that we live in a fallen world. Human error, failure, and outright evil are part of the human condition, and we must deal with that. I am not suggesting that anyone has to like or condone evil in the world – only that we all must acknowledge that evil in the world is a fact. No person and no institution can ever be perfect. Expecting otherwise leads to bitterness and delusion, and eventually to disaster. Moreover, condemning and abandoning the good simply because it can never be perfect is just plain wrong.
This is the very lesson that liberals reject.
Regurgitating the Apple: How Modern Liberals “Think”
(h/t: Philip_Daniel)
…I assume that just about everybody in this room agrees that the Democrats are wrong on just about every issue. Well, I’m here to propose to you that it’s not “just about” every issue; it’s quite literally every issue. And it’s not just wrong; it’s as wrong as wrong can be; it’s 180 degrees from right; it is diametrically opposed to that which is good, right, and successful.
What I discovered is that this is not an accident. This is part of a philosophy that now dominates the whole of Western Europe and the Democratic Party today. I, like some others, call it Modern Liberalism. The Modern Liberal will invariably side with evil over good, wrong over right, and the behaviors that lead to failure over those that lead to success. Give the Modern Liberal the choice between Saddam Hussein and the United States, and he will not only side with Saddam Hussein; he will slander America and Americans in order to do so. Give him the choice between the vicious mass murderer corrupt terrorist dictator Yasser Arafat and the tiny and wonderful democracy of Israel, and he will plagiarize maps, forge documents, engage in blood libels – as did our former President Jimmy Carter – to side with the terrorist organizations and to attack the tiny democracy of Israel.
It’s not just foreign policy; it’s every policy. Given the choice between promoting teenage abstinence and teenage promiscuity–and believe me, I know this from my hometown of Hollywood–they will use their movies, their TV shows, their songs, even the schools to promote teenage promiscuity as if it’s cool: like the movie American Pie, in which you are a loser unless you’ve had sex with your best friend’s mother while you’re still a child. Conversely, NARAL, a pro-abortion group masquerading as a pro-choice group, will hold a fund-raiser called “‘F’ Abstinence.” (And it’s not just “F.” It’s the entire word, because promoting vulgarity is part of their agenda.)
So the question becomes: Why? How do they think they’re making a better world? The first thing that comes into your mind when trying to understand, as I’ve so desperately tried to understand, is that if they side always with evil, then they must be evil. But we have a problem with that, don’t we? We all know too many people who fit this category but who aren’t evil: many of my lifelong friends, the people I grew up with, relatives, close relatives.
If they’re not evil, then the next place your mind goes is that they must just be incredibly stupid. They don’t mean to always side with evil, the failed and wrong; they just don’t know what they’re doing. But we have a problem with this as well. You can’t say Bill Maher (my old boss) is a stupid man. You can’t say Ward Churchill is a stupid man. You can’t say all these academics are stupid people. Frankly, if it were just stupidity, they’d be right more often. What’s the expression? “Even a broken clock is right twice a day,” or “Even a blind squirrel finds an acorn now and again.”
[…]
What I discovered is that the Modern Liberal looks back on 50,000 years, 100,000 years of human civilization, and knows only one thing for sure: that none of the ideas that mankind has come up with–none of the religions, none of the philosophies, none of the ideologies, none of the forms of government–have succeeded in creating a world devoid of war, poverty, crime, and injustice. So they’re convinced that since all of these ideas of man have proved to be wrong, the real cause of war, poverty, crime, and injustice must be found–can only be found–in the attempt to be right.If nobody ever thought they were right, what would we disagree about? If we didn’t disagree, surely we wouldn’t fight. If we didn’t fight, of course we wouldn’t go to war. Without war, there would be no poverty; without poverty, there would be no crime; without crime, there would be no injustice. It’s a utopian vision, and all that’s required to usher in this utopia is the rejection of all fact, reason, evidence, logic, truth, morality, and decency–all the tools that you and I use in our attempts to be better people, to make the world more right by trying to be right, by siding with right, by recognizing what is right and moving toward it.
[…]
What you have is people who think that the best way to eliminate rational thought, the best way to eliminate the attempt to be right, is to work always to prove that right isn’t right and to prove that wrong isn’t wrong. You see this in John Lennon’s song “Imagine”: “Imagine there’s no countries.” Not imagine great countries, not imagine defeat the Nazis, but imagine no religions, and the key line is imagine a time when anything and everything that mankind values is devalued to the point where there’s nothing left to kill or die for…
I always despised that song, and wondered why anybody would pay to listen to such tripe. I would go so far as to say that the mad utopian delusion that John Lennon espoused in that song led to his death. Because Lennon denied the inevitability of human evil, he saw no need to take the security precautions appropriate to a world-famous public figure.
Indoctrination against discernment
The reason people listen to pernicious nonsense such as “Imagine” is that, even back in the 1960s and 1970s, America’s youth had already absorbed a great deal of leftist indoctrination. Otherwise, they would have voted with their wallets by not buying that recording. Sayet explains how this indoctrination works:
What happens is, they [i.e., youth] are indoctrinated into what I call a “cult of indiscriminateness.” The way the elite does this is by teaching our children, starting with the very young, that rational and moral thought is an act of bigotry; that no matter how sincerely you may seek to gather the facts, no matter how earnestly you may look at the evidence, no matter how disciplined you may try to be in your reasoning, your conclusion is going to be so tainted by your personal bigotries, by your upbringing, by your religion, by the color of your skin, by the nation of your great-great-great-great-great grandfather’s birth; that no matter what your conclusion, it is useless. It is nothing other than the reflection of your bigotries, and the only way to eliminate bigotry is to eliminate rational thought.
There’s a brilliant book out there called The Closing of the American Mind by Professor Allan Bloom. Professor Bloom was trying to figure out in the 1980s why his students were suddenly so stupid, and what he came to was the realization, the recognition, that they’d been raised to believe that indiscriminateness is a moral imperative because its opposite is the evil of having discriminated. I paraphrase this in my own works: “In order to eliminate discrimination, the Modern Liberal has opted to become utterly indiscriminate.”
I’ll give you an example. At the airports, in order not to discriminate, we have to intentionally make ourselves stupid. We have to pretend we don’t know things we do know, and we have to pretend that the next person who is likely to blow up an airplane is as much the 87-year-old Swedish great-great-grandmother as those four 27-year-old imams newly arrived from Syria screaming “Allahu Akbar!” just before they board the plane. In order to eliminate discrimination, the Modern Liberal has opted to become utterly indiscriminate.
The problem is, of course, that the ability to discriminate, to thoughtfully choose the better of the available options–as in “she’s a discriminating shopper”–is the essence of rational thought; thus, the whole of Western Europe and today’s Democratic Party, dominated as it is by this philosophy, rejects rational thought as a hate crime.
How the “cult of indiscriminateness” promotes evil over good
Later in the article, Sayet explains how this ideological corruption translates into real life. Modern liberals, and the many institutions that they control, indoctrinate and bully the public into supporting policies that reward failure and punish success.
Indiscriminateness of thought invariably leads the Modern Liberal to side with evil over good, wrong over right, and the behaviors that lead to failure over those that lead to success. Why? Because in a world where you are indiscriminate, where no behavior is to be deemed better or worse than any other, your expectation is that all behavior should lead to equally good outcomes. When, in the real world, different behaviors lead to different outcomes, you and I know why–because we think. We know why communities that promote teenage promiscuity tend to fail at a greater rate than communities that promote teenage abstinence: Teenage promiscuity and teenage abstinence are not the same behaviors. Teenage abstinence is a better behavior.
…But to the Modern Liberal who cannot make that judgment–must not make that judgment–that would be discriminating. They have no explanation. Therefore, the only explanation for success has to be that somehow success has cheated. Success, simply by its existence, is proof positive to the Modern Liberal of some kind of chicanery and likely bigotry. Failure, simply by its existence–no other evidence needed, just the fact that it has failed–is enough proof to them that failure has been victimized.
So the mindless foot soldier, which is what I call the non-elite, will support the elite’s blueprint for utopia, will side with evil over good, wrong over right, and the behaviors that lead to failure over those that lead to success, out of a sense of justice… [emphasis mine]
Why modern liberals mindlessly support the jihadis
Siding with evil against good inevitably leads to siding with the jihadis. Hence the tranzi-progressive/jihadi convergence:
Take an issue in the news and think like a Modern Liberal, and you will see how, once you’ve been indoctrinated into this mindset, there is no other choice. Remember, I said it was inevitable. Once you belong to this cult of indiscriminateness, there is no other conclusion you can come to than that good is evil and that evil is the victim of good.
We all know it’s official policy at the Leftist media outlets to never call Islamic Jihad, al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, Hamas, Harakat ul-Mujahidin, or any of the other Islamic fascist terrorist groups around the world “terrorists,” and you know why. In fact, it’s even in official memos to reporters ordering them not to use the appropriate word. That reason is that “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter. Who are we to employ critical, rational judgment?”
But, as a very minimum standard, can’t we at least agree that in order to be called a “freedom fighter,” you have to be fighting for freedom? We know what Osama bin Laden is fighting for; he’s told us. It’s not freedom; it’s an oppressive theocracy in which women are covered from head to toe and beaten if their ankles become exposed, and unless we all change to his religion, we are considered the offspring of pigs and monkeys to be decapitated. People like Cindy Sheehan and Michael Moore will call Osama bin Laden a freedom fighter because being indiscriminate quite literally leaves them unable to tell the difference between freedom and having your head hacked off. That’s how sick this mentality is.
Understanding How Modern Liberals Think
Uploaded by wyzguys on Jan 15, 2011
Date: March 5, 2007
Speaker: Evan Sayet
Writer, Lecturer and Pundit
Host: Becky Norton DunlopVice President,
External Relations,
The Heritage FoundationLocation: The Heritage Foundation’s Lehrman Auditorium
Evan Sayet has been a top Hollywood writer and producer for more than 20 years. His credits range from The Arsenio Hall Show to Politically Incorrect. After the Sept. 11 attacks, Sayet decided to step from behind the camera and speak out in his own voice that of one of the nations top political satirists. At Heritage, his entertaining yet quite serious lecture will examine the modern liberal mindset and how it can lead to siding with evil over good and behaviors that produce failure rather than success.
Also see:
- PJM: Dissecting Baby Boomer liberalism like a frog in science class
- Our Mortal Enemies: Environmentalists and the New Class Elite
- The modern liberal world view makes monkeys out of us all
- VDH: Liberal Illiberalism
- Sultan Knish: Everyone Booze Up and Riot
- Selwyn Duke: Why Liberals Kill
- Socon or Bust: The Four Cardinal Virtues of Secularism
- Socon or Bust: The Dictatorship of Relativism
- Washington Times: Compromise is good, right?
- NIHILISM by Eugene Rose
- ESR: Gramscian damage
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{ 39 comments… read them below or add one }
What a superb post and in-depth discussion of where we are, where we are heading and the reasons why. It’s such a mult-faceted predicament and the solutions are no less so. Thanks so much for directing me here, and I will visit again.
Dale, you’re very welcome!
Just finished reading this over @ The Blogmocracy. 1389, this is an exceptional bit of analysis. Few people take the time to identify the significant dots of our time. Fewer still connect them in any meaningful manner and present to others what they have found.
Perhaps your current underemployment situation is a blessing in disguise? Posit, if you were still employed in an IT field, would you have had the time, acumen, or personal perspective to write this piece?
Keep up the good work, and our prayers for your future success.
Another point. Not only do they not believe in Evil(they do believe in ‘bad’ = anything not Lib), I don’t think they believe in good either.
If you’re successful it’s because someone else isn’t. I’m not referring to just the Lib economic theory of the ‘fixed-size pie’, but that it goes from ‘You can’t succeed except at the expense of others’ to ‘People cannot improve themselves’ because anything to improve your condition worsens someone else’s.
So a young man in a broken family with a sick mother is working himself thru college to get a good job to pay the medical bills(Do Good) isn’t ‘good’ because the base origin of all that isn’t family Loyalty(it’s ‘Tribalism’), it isn’t personal Morality(All ‘personal morality’ is based on selfishness or discrimination) or any sense of Duty(an artificial social construct of fascist societies). It’s based on selfishness and greed. It’s HIS mother, HIS family, after all.
Also, the young man didn’t improve himself by himself. That isn’t possible and I’m not referring to the more traditional meaning of ‘It takes a village to raise a child’. Since it isn’t possible to Do Good yourself because it’s rooted in selfishness and greed, nothing you can do in and of yourself is good -so you need to be told-. You have no innate capacity to ‘Do The Right Thing’ by yourself. The village has to tell you. It also made sure you didn’t improve yourself by yourself, because all the ‘social’ programs. Without those you’d still be either poor and ignorant or an evil slave trader profiting from the blood of others.
Social programs such as church and family aren’t acceptable. That ‘Tribalism’ thing.
You’re not ‘good’ enough to give to the ‘right’ charities. You only give money to selfish causes your bigotry supports. So society (government) has to tax you to force you to ‘Do Good’, for your own good of course.
We’d all indiscriminately trash the planet if we weren’t told to ‘Do Good’ and not murder every squirrel we see.
All men are rapists. They only ‘Do Good’ because of the possibility of arrest(Socially imposed morality).
Religion cannot ‘make you a better person’, it’s only fear of censure and punishment that makes you ‘Do Good’. (‘Social’ programs on the other hand can because it’s free of all that religious intolerance and bigotry.)
The list goes on.
I actually think Libs hate the human race. I know for a fact some do, written and spoken in their own words. So maybe they do believe in Evil and it’s all of us.
Great post. So very true.
You might add that people who believe themselves qualified to perfect society by reordering it are, ipso facto, capable of anything. And I mean anything.
After all is said and done human beings are not very intelligent. And perhaps the reason for that is that we have never figured out how we might transcend what Nature has gifted us with; a fallible intelligence. By nature we have transcribed into our genes a dire suspicion of one another. We must urgently survive as our primary goal and other humans threaten our survival by their similar needs; territorial aggression seen by all animals on this Earth ensures perhaps the survival of the fittest; not only through evolutionary changes but also by benefiting the most ferociously determined-to-survive. How the Liberals have managed to survive as they have, under these circumstances, which has them bowing and scraping to the threats that civilization and free societies are constantly under is another one of nature’s little mysteries.
Good point about Lennon. He never saw that coming, I guess. He really believed that “Imagine” stuff.
Theoretically, Conservatism is about holding onto what has worked best in the past (universal truths), while Liberalism is about having the faith that there’s always a better way (adaptation to ever increasing population and technology).
But “modern conservatives” and “modern liberals” in America have become so tribalistic, they’re often oblivious to the acts of ideological heresy which their leadership routinely commits.
flunky,
These days, genuine conservatism is more about restoring belief in universal truths, rather than preserving and reinforcing the status quo, as “modern conservatives” and “neocons” mistakenly try to do.
>> condemning and abandoning the good simply because it can never be perfect <<
Quite so. A perfect society is a quite rational goal for liberals and the desire for it is never moderated by an understanding of how things went in the past.
Pol Pot dreamed of building a "perfect democracy" and did not lack for power to order every aspect of Cambodian society in order to achieve it (or any other goal that drifted into his mind. The Soviets wanted to create a New Soviet Man. They and their fellows created tidal waves of misery and killing in the process of pursuing their goals, but the libs simply ignore that. Utterly and completely.
All they remember is that their goals were, in the abstract, beautiful and noble to contemplate. The goal mattered above all.
If traditional approaches based on custom, common sense, and a slow accretion of useful law exhibit the least flaw however, then the whole enterprise is flawed.
The signature of liberals is that the good of the traditional order is ignored, its flaws are endlessly celebrated, and no competing system's flaws are acknowledged.
How can you have so much hatred for an entire group of people? I’m not a liberal, I’m actually more conservative than liberal (although I do consider myself independent). But I would never generalize an entire group of people whom I don’t even know. I’m sorry, but until you have personally met every single liberal and determined that they meet your silly criteria, your point is invalid and ignorant.
Explaining why someone is incorrect or mistaken, or why a certain mode of thinking, ideology, or world view leads inevitably to incorrect results, has nothing to do with “hatred”. I don’t have to meet every single liberal, or even a majority of them, to conclude that the ideas inherent in liberalism lead to faulty results. You attempt to deny me (or anyone) the right to use any form of inductive reasoning, simply because it is impossible to go and collect every possible bit of evidence to prove the result to your satisfaction. I don’t care what you think, except to say that I’m not about to let you waste any more of my time.
You may think that you are “more conservative than liberal” but you are clearly not. The faulty argument that you are using, not to mention your nasty and insulting tone, is typical of liberal “thinking”. Liberals constantly use the word “hate” or “hatred’ to smear anybody who is using arguments that they cannot answer.
Hey, I already know that everyone who believes that 2 + 2 = 5 is mistaken, and I also know that their innumeracy will cause them many other problems in dealing with reality. I don’t need to interview everybody who can’t add and subtract in order to reach that conclusion. Same with liberals. They can’t cope with life as it is, so they make up a lot of baloney, and this leads them to create endless disasters for themselves and everyone else.
Sayet’s speech is on YouTube for liberals who are unable to concentrate long enough to read the entire article. It’s a great video and thank you for getting this essential distinction between those of us who can think and feel and those who can only feel, explained. Most left wingers I’ve met are unwilling to hear an expose’ of their ‘religion’, and summarily dismiss Mr. Sayet’s observations as ‘hatred’ and a rationalization to dismiss coherent thought. Or maybe they just FEEL uncomfortable when faced with reality.
I too am a staunch conservative, and a theist, with some libertarian tendencies. I’ve noticed as soon as I say “Pro-Choice” and make arguments based on facts like frontal lobes, brain function, etc, that many so-called freedom-loving conservatives start up with the same kind of emotional vitriol that is usually associated with the left.
In many ways, being liberal means being willing to see/listen to another person’s point of view. It can also mean ‘not being afraid.’ You imply that John Lennon was foolish for not protecting himself, whereas others might say that he simply didn’t want to carry around the burden of being afraid all the time. Choosing ont to be afraid doesn’t make him a champion of evil, although I respect your right to characterize it that way. But IMO, peace is always the best way.
You also imply here that there are liberals who feel that without war there would be no poverty. I don’t know if that’s true or not; in fact, it may be that there would be MORE poverty if not for war, I don’t know. But justifying war as a means of keeping poverty down, or as Ebeneezer Scrooge said, to ‘reduce the surface population,’ is inhumane. Perhaps even evil.
I, like you, am sick to death of the BS that takes place at airport and building security checkpoints. You’re right, the 87-year old grandma or the 4-year old tyke is not going to be carrying a bomb onto the plane or into the building lobby. My own 3-year old had to take his shoes off at an airport in February 2002, in the wake of 9/11. That kind of behavior signifyies paranoia to me, not stupidity or ‘indsicriminateness’ as you put it. Yes, we’ve created a paranoid and fearful world for ourselves, and I decided years ago that I’m going to stop buying the fear that the world is trying to sell to me. I don’t necessarily agree ith everything John Lennon stood for, but I agree with him on the ‘no fear’ concept. Fact is, you’re still 100x more likely to be killed in a soldier uniform than you are walking down Central Park West on a late Fall evening.
Here’s my summation: There is both good AND evil in both the liberal AND the conservative segments of society. And everywhere in between. Evil is indiscriminate. So let’s not polarize things by drawing a line in the sand. Respect your fellow man for whatever he or she chooses to be.
I think the conservative arguments against liberalism add up to: Liberals don’t think or act like us, therefore they must be wrong. In fact, I found this article by entering in Google “Why liberals are wrong,” so I certainly do question my assumptions.
I looked for other reasoned liberal responses and I found the one I liked best was TJ’s (although TJ also expresses views not necessarily identified with liberalism that I also agree with.) I have seen conservatives attribute several undesirable character traits to liberals: They are naive, they don’t believe in evil, they are self-hating. I don’t see any of those traits in myself. I believe in evil. I believe corporations buying congressmen are evil. I believe Republicans trying to win by stalling the economy are evil. I believe Karl Rove’s lying political ads are evil. Far from hating myself I love myself for seeing the true path to progress. Am I naive? Who would classify himself that way? There is a lot of naivete on the right of the political spectrum.
Wow! I’m not sure I have yet read a more blatant example of compartmentalized thinking, cherry-picked examples of both liberal and conservative anecdotes he believes are then true of the whole group, historical myths mashed into Jedeo-Christian theology, ….achhh! It goes on!
Young man…(because surely your nit a mature adult) are you not aware that Osama Bin Laden is representative of a highly conservative interpratation of Islam? That Hitker too was a classic conservatuve? A fascist too, yes!. But his vision of restoring Germany to priot greatness, his rejection of modern art, film, acting, dress….morals!!…the hatred of homosexuality, of liberal pleadings for the poor to be fed, that “winners” shoukd not have to subsidize what they have to keep losers fed and asking for ever more….all these things are classic conservative ideological sign-posts. and no historian without an agenda to protect will ever say differently.
FYI, there actuually exists now a great deal of data produced over the decades looking for signs or indications someone may be receptive to the will of the next and the next after that of these genocidal kooks looking for affirmation of their crazy ideals. Because with no followers, any and all “Hitlers” simply die the bitter old cranks they truly are .
Today we call then RWA-SDO personalities, or those engaged in what sociologist refer to as the “dominance-submissive authoritarian embrace”, an embrace almost always practiced by conservatuves and the usually (for themselves at least) less tradition bound, often amoral dominators whom both parties attract the other as though a homing device had somehow evolved in each others DNA.
No..Its those who believe their rather blatant lies told for personal gain yet construed to be in the best interest of these SDOs personalities (whom we now know) target almost reflexively that one group offer ing them back the least resistence and greatest loyalty once they establish their conservatuve credibility. And THAT…is surprisingly easy for someone intent on betrayal. Strong vision of the country, patriotic, traditional on social, sexual ethics loving, resists change merely for changes sake, and even then, what changes are made are made toward returning the country and people back toward a more simple, ethically superior, no-nonsense time when the strong survived abnd the weak perished…as they should.
Am I correct?
Anyway. a sample of the peer-reviewed journal literature,
“It appears that conservatism has pathological dimensions manifested in violence and distorted psycho-sexual development” (Boshier, 1983, p. 159). This is supported by a study conducted by Walker, Rowe, and Quincey (1993) in which there was a direct correlation between authoritarianism and sexually aggressive behavior. An investigation done by Muehlenhard (1988) revealed that rape justification and aggression toward subordinate individuals was much higher in traditional (conservative personality) than non-traditional personalities.” Change in the Conservative Personality Equals Change in the Offender with a Resultant Reduction in Recidivism: Parsons and Parsons. Okla. Corrections
“Conservatism is not the doctrine of the intellectual elite or of the more intelligent segments of the population, but the reverse. By every measure available to us, conservative beliefs are found most frequently among the uniformed, the poorly educated, and the less intelligent” (p. 38). http://www.doc.state.ok.us/offenders/ocjrc/95/950725C.htm.
Or this from a couple of DHS counter-terrorism profilers :
“A meta-analysis (88 samples, 12 countries, 22,818 cases) confirms that several psychological variables predict political conservatism: death anxiety (weighted mean r .50); system instability (.47); dogmatism–intolerance of ambiguity (.34); openness to experience (–.32); uncertainty tolerance (–.27); needs for order, structure, and closure (.26); integrative complexity (–.20); fear of threat and loss (.18); and self-esteem (–.09). The core ideology of conservatism stresses resistance to change and justification of inequality and is motivated by needs to manage uncertainty and threats therein. ”
http://terpconnect.umd.edu/~hannahk/Political_Conservatism_files/Jostetal2003.pdf
Hardly fits the image you created for yourself does n it? Though if you choose to read any of it you find the key to how it sems so completely reversed from what the research shoaw. Conservayuves very often engage in projecting what they dislike abouit their own selves onto others, finding relief through righteous indignation that at least they, are not as bad as Them. Of course this will give others a clearer insight into a personality that is seriously damaged and constantly in search of relief strategies from this world of child parent authoritarianism displaced as an adult who seeks approval from the most powerful and wealthy able to ingratiate themselves into their adult conservative “family”
Dead wrong.
First of all, if you’re such a scholar, how come you can’t even spell “conservative” correctly throughout your screed? Or are you just too lazy to use a spell checker?
Second, the definition of conservatism that you cite is not our definition. You have no concept of what we are all about, and you would be incapable of comprehending it anyway.
Third, people in academia have an intense leftist bias, simply because they know what side their bread is buttered on. They don’t get government grants for supporting a traditional, conservative, free-market perspective, so they twist the facts around to make everything come out in favor of more taxation, spending, and regulation. That is why the net contribution of academia has been negative for a very long time. “Peer review” by equally biased peers who indulge in groupthink is a meaningless rubberstamp.
Fourth, if you want to see the real contrast between conservatives and liberals, just look at the behavior of the Tea Party at their rallies versus that of the Occupiers. Q. E. D.
1389
There is only one fact that liberals (neo liberals in true terminology) do not and have NEVER understood. People are fallible. They are wrong most of the time, only through experience and reasoned approach, that they realize this. Since people are fallible, and and all systems that attempt to make a collectivist approach to anything, will therefore fail because people are not the same. They are fallible.
Attempt to explain this to a consummate liberal of today is like explaining to a 10th century person that global warming will kill everyone. Ain’t gonna happen.
Oh well, one thing I have to ask the liberals in our midst, why is it that the older the population gets, the more they become conservative. It is experience and knowledge that makes people tend to realize that fantasies the leftist envision, are exactly that, fantasies.
1389, found your site through Pajamas. Keep up the great work on information distribution.
“Be an information soldier in an army of one, where no one can follow; only lead.” David Kramer
First both conservatives and liberals have trouble spelling in our archaic irrational English spelling system.
Second, your definition of conservatism is those who see things as they are. Conservatives are actually those who resist change, which is a good thing in some circumstances and a bad thing in others.
Moderator’s note: Conservatives, like Ronald Reagan, Barry Goldwater, Newt Gingrich and the like are NOT examples of those “who resist change.” They are icons of conservatism, yet outspoken voices for change.
Third, consider that people in academia may have an intense leftist bias because in the words of Stephen Cobert “Reality has a conservative bias.” The more you know, the more you believe in, for example, evolution and global warming, as President Obama said he does.
Fourth, if you want to see the real contrast between conservatives and liberals, just look at the behavior of the Tea Party at their rallies versus that of the Occupiers. Q. E. D.
Perhaps the clearest evidence that conservatives excel in self-delusion is their inability to accept information that conflicts with an existing belief system aka religious, ideological. Admitting the truth, even when confronted with empirical evidence of it, is avoided by convincing themselves they are being lied to, even if it’s the very people society employs to go out and get first-hand evidence of what happened by recording back to us the actual words spoken by the actual people who witnessed the event. All this they deny as evidence of anything simply by telling themselves it came to them by way of liberal liars being in control of how the news is reported.
To pull this off, they must ignore the fact that media corporations, being money-making entities first and foremost, happen to be owned by conservative money moguls, run by boards looking to please conservative shareholders living in a nation that is politically, socially and economically right-of-center. They must also assume these media corps are ignorant of the fact that previous media attempts that actually were biased toward the liberal left (eg. Air America) resulted in dismal ratings, poor ad revenue, thereby affecting their ability to pay out dividends to the people who own the company.
For a conservative to somehow imagine, even for the briefest moment, that these media corps would tailor their news to have a liberal bias, is something that goes against the very laws that free-market capitalism is supposedly founded on, not to mention the fact that it simply makes no sense whatsover —–except perhaps as an excuse to get out of accepting news that contradicts their conservative beliefs.
Yet they do it.
Unlike the rest of us who seek out knowledge based first and foremost on whether or not it is actually true, they will turn to sources they already know are going to tell them what is acceptable as “the truth” among other conservatives. They worry very little about whether the source is qualified to speak on the matter, only that the person (or source) is also conservative. Hence their frequent use of pastors, policemen, TV pundits with only grade-school educations being used as a source of factual knowledge regarding the history of life on earth, or to refute, overturn and dismiss what is known and said by many thousands of PhDs speaking on climate, genetics, geology, and history…to name a few. Which brings up the second arm of their pincer attack on reality, dismissing academia.
Professors who spend their entire lives researching a topic, who use the very latest technologies in their quest to look into every conceivable aspect and angle of a topic, and who then release papers to journals that vet them for scientific integrity by noting whether their results are reproducible and the experiments themselves can be replicated by others, but whose results nonetheless show us all that the truth of something may be very, very different than what Oral Roberts or Ernest Angeley has been telling people about the age of the planet or the cause of homosexuality……well…..no problem. Conservatives again just tell themselves that it’s all made up by liberals hoping to get more money to do yet more research on a topic that flies in the face of everything we’ve commonly believed up to that point, including all those conservatives and capitalists in charge of funding allotments. Because we all know the best way to get funding is to tell Exxon or BP research departments to go to hell because the BIG money is in solar panels, right?
Right.
Media companies owned by conservatives? It is you who must be truly delusional. The rest of your comment is too incoherent for me to waste my time bothering to decipher it. It stands as evidence that modern-day liberals are all too often incapable of formulating, let alone expressing, a coherent thought.
In my recent post I said “in the words of Stephen Cobert ‘Reality has a conservative bias.'” I meant “Reality has a liberal bias” I hope the rest of the post is clearer with that correction.
I know Cobert meant it as a joke, but he also meant it, and I believe he is right.
As for the last paragraph, I copied it directly from you, since I believe it makes the liberal case better than the conservative case.
But don’t take my word for it. After all, they say all liberals lie.
We are posting your comment, but with our own editorial comments in italics.
Mr. 1389 1389 is a woman! The blog has made this clear from the start.
Gary Williams had it right and to paraphrase you “It stands as evidence that modern-day liberals are all too often incapable of formulating, let alone expressing, a conservative thought.” Note that I substituted the word “conservative” for “coherent,” because it appears that in your mind the two are synonymous. Not so.
We would NOT say so. Read Karl Marx. He is certainly coherent. We don’t agree with him, but he is coherent. Even Fidel Castro’s writings seem pretty coherent. Does that mean you think Karl and Fidel are “conservative”?
Your response makes Gary’s point. It’s such an article of faith with you that the media are liberal that you dismiss any claim to the contrary out of hand as a lie, characeristic of those evil liberals. You dismiss the evidence by saying “The rest of your comment is too incoherent for me to waste my time bothering to decipher it.”
The rules are pretty simple around here; follow them and we will post your comments. The admins here are well educated and well read, and are both published authors. If we find a comment to be incoherent, odds are most people will agree. If we screw up once in a while, well, we are still human.
I, on the other hand, found Gary’s comments quite coherent, biting, and to the point. He both formulated and expressed coherent thoughts that must at least challenge any intelligent conservative who takes the time to follow them.
Gary is very far from “coherent.” He MAY have some interesting points, but that does NOT make his rant “coherent.” He seems to be using the word “conservative” in different ways and trying to–very inartfully–twist this around to cast actual conservatives, as we understand them, in a negative light. To call Osama bin Laden a “conservative” in discussion about western politics is pretty meaningless.
The only thing I disagree with is the implication (whether he meant it this way or not) that the liberal media has a bias equivalent to the bias in the conservative media and that is the reason some of the liberal media, such as Air America failed. I believe the liberal media is far more objective than the conservative media and, to some extent, corrects the bias in the corporate media.
There really is not much in the way of “conservative” media in the US. Fox is the only major news outlet that presents some semblance of conservative/libertarian views. But, even there, the most popular guy, Bill O’Reilly, is a mixed bag. Sorry, Bill, but authoritarianism does NOT equal conservatism. Sean Hannity is better in some ways, but he, like Rush Limbaugh, are Lincoln lovers–far too concerned with fixing big government rather than replacing it. When you have someone who takes the 10th Amendment seriously–really seriously–to point of condemning the invasion of the South, we will concede that you have found a truly conservative media outlet.
Wow !!! Gary straight pawned 1389 on this thread. Ate 1389’s lunch !!!
Blog admin 1389 replies:
What are you, one of Gary’s sock puppets?
no – don’t know any of y’all. just callin it like I see it. your response was completely feeble and David explained why. George Zimmerman is probably your hero..
Blog admin 1389 replies:
I am not personally acquainted with George Zimmerman, nor am I any hero-worshipper. Jesus Christ is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. I recognize no other.
well I look forward to somebody attempting to counter Gary’s points, because he definitely shut down this thread.
Blog admin 1389 replies:
It certainly doesn’t seem that way to me. But then, we have better uses for our time than responding to trolls.
My apologies to Ms 1389 for thinking she was a Mr. Is 1389 the year your philosophy was formulated?
No, more like 34 AD.
I do not believe in original sin, but I do believe in evil. I think attributing original sin to all of God’s children is evil. Come to think of it, I don’t believe in God either.
Those are just your opinions, based on nothing other than your almighty self-importance and what you perceive to be your self-interest. You don’t respect my opinions; why should I respect yours?
I believe in the original definition of conservatism as resistance to change. In this sense people tend to get more conservative as they get older. But present-day “conservatives” actually want change big time. For example they want to sustain an unsustainable system of ever greater exploitation of the environment.
Conservatism is the preservation of traditional values. On the other hand, it’s the “green” eco-radical poppycock that has proven to be truly unsustainable. In practice, these organically-grown, low-carbon-footprint methods cannot sustain even themselves, much less a viable human population. It’s all neo-Ludditism that seeks to drive all but a tiny elite into destitution and starvation. If you think industrial development is “unsustainable” so therefore you want the rest of us to freeze in the dark, then I say: You first!
Certainly there are coherent people I disagree with. I think Karl Marx, for example, was a better man than his followers, but I think he had it wrong in a few places. I think he was onto something, however, with his idea that religion is the opiate of the masses.
Actually, these days, opium is the opium of the masses. Or maybe crack and meth. Marxism is the opium of the elites.
Do I pass the coherency test?
No. You are a waste of everyone’s time, including your own.
We have another long, rambling comment from someone who seems to think he owns the blog and wants to take us to task over one of 1389’s articles. Well, this guy has never given a dime to support the blog, while Blog Admin 1389 not only works here, but contributes more funds than anyone else. Because 1389 thinks this commenter is a complete and utter waste of time, I will be answering his comment on a line-by-line/paragraph-by-paragraph basis in italics.
– Blog Admin CzechRebel
Since I entered this blog through the backdoor, googling for “Why liberalism is wrong,” I did not know that 1389 was the date of a memorable victory of Christianity over Islam or that 1389 was a female (to the best of my knowledge, I never said otherwise).
You have both Serbs and historians rolling in the aisle laughing now. The Battle of Kosovo in 1389 A.D. hardly qualifies as “a memorable victory of Christianity over Islam.” Serbs feel that they lost the battle, considering that Prince Lazar and all of his top officers gave up their lives in that conflict. Historians are divided over which side – if either – technically won that battle, but to western historians, it is not all that memorable. The real significance of the battle is that the Serbian people – Orthodox Christians – dedicated themselves to God at that time. But then, I guess a self-professed liberal couldn’t possibly understand such a spiritual concept.
I also found your few simple rules for posting which, I am happy to say, are very much like my own standards.
The definition of coherency is somewhat subjective.
I see. As you are going around in circles now, maybe you just don’t know what the word “coherency” means. Actually, the word is coherence. Just a thought.
I often switch to another station when listening to Rush Limbaugh and I confess that my eyes glazed over after the first 1000 words of your opening essay in this board, but I don’t attribute that to incoherency. It’s just that I can only absorb opinions I disagree with in limited doses.
I must confess that I haven’t heard Rush in a few years. So, it may be my bad memory. But it seems to me that Rush is a somewhat conservative comedian who does take awhile to set up his jokes. That would not make Rush “incoherent.”
1389 Blog has numerous authors. Perhaps if you could be a bit more specific, we might be able to know who you think is being “incoherent.” A number of us are published authors. Some of us use our real names; others use noms de plume or noms de guerre. Not too many publishing houses and magazines publish incoherent authors. So, please be specific. Specificity is part of being coherent.
Perhaps if we all had the patience to hear each other out, we would be living in a more rational world.
You have gotten more than your fair share of “out hearing” here; so much so that we don’t really think you are living in a very rational world.
You say “If you don’t respect our opinions, why should we respect yours?” Actually it is your lack of respect toward the opinions of me and people with similar attitudes that has put me on the attack.
Sorry, Charlie, but it doesn’t work that way. There is plenty of drivel on the net for you to read; you don’t have to stop here. We are here–getting the great readership that we enjoy–because we ignore the nonsense and stick with the truth. There are some people who truly believe that all grass is purple. We toss their garbage right into the trash bin. We pay for the blog. It is OUR respect you have to earn. Pay up, shut up or play by our rules. I hope that’s simple enough for even a liberal to understand.
I got into your blog by googling “Why Liberalism is Wrong.” and I found “Why Liberalism is 100% wrong.” That 100% is what throws me.
1389 wrote the article and she has the right to give it whatever title she likes! Perhaps it is a bit of hyperbole. Perhaps she used it to get attention. I will grant you that some liberals actually know where the nearest public restroom is. (Excluded are the infamous Occupy mobs, whose toilet training is obviously faulty.) Arguably, if those liberals are right about at least one thing, they therefore are not technically 100% wrong. Find a dictionary; look up the word “hyperbole”; you will be a better person for it.
I give conservatives credit for being about 10% right and liberals about 90% right. I adjust those figures up and down to take account of what I consider rational statements from conservatives or irrational statements from liberals. This allows for a 10% overlap in like opinions.
You seem to be much better at simple arithmetic than you are at reasoning. Perhaps you could make better use of your time commenting on mathematics, rather than on philosophical and political matters. And you are certainly much better at simple arithmetic than you are at knowing right from wrong.
Of course I disagree with your characterization of the mainstream press as liberal.
You are right! The mainstream press is far left and not merely liberal. That is why surveys repeatedly show that the overwhelming majority of MSM journalists vote Democrat.
Individual journalists may be liberal, but their corporate bosses suppress stories they consider not in their interests.
Now you are wrong. Their corporate bosses tend to be even more liberal; otherwise, they would have never hired those individual liberal journalists in the first place.
I also disagree with your characterization of universities as suppressing valid conservative thought.
Hmm, I guess you have never been to a university, at least not within the past half-century or so. Those of us with university degrees have seen it first-hand. Anyone with a university degree who has failed to notice how much more liberal university professors are than the general public is not very observant. One would wonder if the university who gave such an individual a degree was even worthy of the title of “institution of higher education” – unless the adjective “higher” simply means “more intoxicated.”
I think Stephen Colbert’s faux lament that reality has a liberal bias is correct or, to put it differently, liberals are more in touch with reality than conservatives.
Liberals are so in touch with reality, living in the parents’ houses, spending their parents’ money, living without a care in the world. Then, they grow up. They have to get a job. They become responsible for their own lives. Then they turn into conservatives almost by magic. If only someone would just support those poor liberals and take all the responsibility for them. Then they would stay so in touch with reality . . . oh . . . wait a minute. Could it be the conservatives who tend to be more in touch with reality? Again, just a thought!
The more you learn about evolution and global warming, for example, the more you believe in them.
So, I guess you are admitting that both evolution and anthropogenic global warming (AGW) are religions and not actual sciences. Neither have been proven via the scientific method. Both are concepts that one must “believe in.” Your own words show that these concepts are your religion, or at least key tenets of your religion. You evolutionist and AGWers might as well just go ahead and decide what your holidays are and open some temples.
The buzz on the liberal talk shows I listen to is that the Republicans have their own network and there is no Democratic equivalent.
Liberal talk shows? They still exist? Who pays for them? Certainly they don’t have enough of an audience to sell enough ads to pay their own way. But then, that’s why we have “commie radio” a/k/a taxpayer-supported public broadcasting in the US, Canada, Australia, and the UK.
You may not be content with with the slant of Fox news, but millions of people are swayed by it, including many who do not even know it has a slant.
Fox is one of the few news organizations that tries to present multiple sides of the issues. It is the only one with enough conservatism/libertarianism to even be noticed. However, the conservative/libertarian side of Fox is so mild and diluted that it serves to keep millions of people from ever discovering what conservatism/libertarianism actually is.
If Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh are Lincoln lovers, that is one area in which we agree.
This keeps both Hannity and Limbaugh partly in the liberal camp.
I am a Lincoln lover too.
Karl Marx was a Lincoln lover, so why wouldn’t you be one? But don’t take my word for it. Go to this Marxist site: [LINK] Or pick up a copy of the book that carries his pro-Lincoln essays: [LINK]. This shows that Lincoln and Marx were two of a kind. This shows that Lincoln lovers like Hannity and Limbaugh have at least one foot in the liberal camp.
I believe if I had been voting in 1860, I would have voted Republican.
Most good American Communists did vote for him. It was the failed leftist revolutions of the late 1840s that brought these early Communists to the American shores. Those Communists inspired the new “Republican” party and threw in their lot with the Lincoln Administration and the Union Army.
Back then the Republicans were (in my estimation) the good guys. Since then the Republicans and the Democrats have switched places.
Yes, Captain Obvious! All you need to do is change the phrase “good guys” to “bad guys” and you have captured the sentiments of millions of unreconstructed Southerners.
You decry Lincoln’s decision to “invade” the South. But what was the alternative?
I am not much of a Beatles fan, but in this case, I have to concur with their catch-phrase, “All we are saying is give peace a chance.” LBJ had a chance to stay out of Vietnam. Hitler had a chance to refrain from invading Czechoslovakia. Lincoln–who had ONLY lost seven Southern States at that point–could have sent an ambassador to Montgomery, Alabama–the first Confederate capital – and “Let It Be.” (Thanks, Beatles!)
To replace our great nation with two weak nations, one slave and one free?
Don’t make me laugh! How can one liberal be so wrong in such a short sentence? Maybe 1389 should have entitled her article, “Liberals are normally about 200% WRONG all the time.” Nation? The United States is made up of many nations. It is not one single ethnic group. Today it is made up of 50 great countries that are called “States.” While there were considerably less than 50 of them in 1860, only seven of those States had left when Lincoln took office. It was ONLY after he threatened to invade those seven States that six more chose to leave. (Of course, the Lincoln government had a rump faction in Kentucky and another rump faction in Missouri who were able to create the fiction that those two States were still in his accursed Union.)
Chattel slavery was a dying institution in the Americas. Upon taking office, the new Confederate President, Jefferson Davis, wrote home to his wife, Varina. He was very excited because he knew that, come what may, either war or peace would bring the long-awaited end to chattel slavery in the South.
Do any liberals ever study history? Or do they just repeat what their liberal superiors (or college instructors, or perhaps elementary-school teachers) have told them to say?
The tenth amendment does not give states the right to nullify laws they disagree with or to secede from the union.
It most certainly does! Check out a guy named Thomas Jefferson. He was vice-president under President John Adams. He helped the States of Virginia and Kentucky nullify some of the unjust laws of the Adams Administration in 1798!
If you knew even a tiny bit of the history of New England, you would be aware that many New Englanders were ready to secede over the proposed statehood for Texas. A bill to secede was even introduced in one New England state legislature. There was no debate over whether or not a state could secede.
It is a myth that States do not have the right to secede. It only seems that they do not because the South lost the war. This is a clear case of “might makes right.” And, like most liberals, you seem to believe that it is might that makes right!
Do states rights take precedence over human rights:
States rights are the best way of preserving human rights! (That said, blog admin 1389 takes exception to the phrase “human rights” for many reasons, not least of which is her staunch refusal to allow the left to define the terms of this or any debate.)
freedom from involuntary servitude,
April 15 is fast approaching! Under the current US Tax Code there is a great deal of involuntary servitude. We work a good percentage of the year, just to pay those obscenely high federal taxes. In most cases, the bonded servants of the antebellum South actually got to keep and enjoy a higher percentage of the fruits of their own labor than we do now. The same is true of the serfs of medieval Christian Europe. That ought to make you stop and think!
the equal protection of the law,
What a crock! What a myth! The application of federal law is highly arbitrary and capricious. Favored classes of people receive special treatment from the US government now more than ever. It is just that, as time goes on, different people reap these ill-gotten benefits and different people are discriminated against. Absolute power corrupts absolutely, and centralization is keystone of absolutism. That is a lesson you liberals failed to learn from the former Soviet Union.
the right to vote,
As your good friend Joe Stalin used to like to say, “It is not who gets to vote that counts, it is who gets to count the votes.” Oh, yes, he knew a thing or two about governmental corruption! On our side of the pond, federal election laws and those federal amendments have done much to create and entrench serious election fraud. Democracy is, quite literally, the god that failed.
as guaranteed by the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments?
Let’s make that the alleged 14th Amendment. It was never constitutionally ratified, but rather, it was merely shoved down our throats by Secretary of State Seward’s decree.
I grew up in the South.
I guess that makes you a Scalawag!
I know that none of those amendments could have been passed if the Southern States had not been defeated in war.
The 13th Amendment was very popular in the South. With their Confederate-elected legislatures still in office, all but three Southern states ratified the 13th Amendment in record time. What you fail to realize is that many Southerners wanted to end chattel slavery, but that the “takings clause” of the Fifth Amendment would have made this politically impractical without another Constitutional amendment. On the other hand, the 14th was never properly ratified even after the Reconstruction-elected puppets took their seats in the Southern legislatures.
Yet I consider it a good thing that Lincoln prevailed.
OK, Mr. Warmonger! You have made your point!
Traditional values are worth preserving when they are correct.
Oh, so you are going to be judge of what is good tradition? I don’t think so. Not on our blog.
Respect for the environment is a traditional value of many of the native peoples the Europeans ran over in order to subdue the earth, destroying millions of species in the process. This tradition is unsustainable.
This is pretty rich! On one hand, you admit that one of your religions is evolution. Part and parcel of evolution is that species unable to compete go extinct. It is survival of the fittest. On the other hand, you blame these all-mighty European people for destroying “millions of species.” Assuming you are talking about actual species of life forms that were significant enough to discover and catalog in the first place, and not hypothetical species that just might have existed, your orders of magnitude are way off. If “millions of species” had gone extinct, we wouldn’t have any species left, now would we? As it relates to the public policy sphere, this tragic lack of skill in applied mathematics is called “innumeracy.” While we won’t concede to your religion of evolution, we will say that it is perfectly natural for some species to go extinct. And it seems like only yesterday that people were carrying signs reading, “Save the dinosaurs.” Grow up, please!
Global warming and the resulting climate change are a direct consequence of this tradition.
Now we are back to your other religion, global warming. Face the facts. While there is ample evidence that our climate has been changing from even before the time when life first began to exist on this Earth, there is absolutely no evidence that man-made activity has had anything to do with it. Unless you are trying to tell me that those poor dinosaurs went extinct because man made too much fire!
The principal that production must constantly increase is one that cannot continue forever.
Maybe; maybe not. Only time will tell. And given our God-given talents for creativity and innovation and improvements in quality, it is entirely possible for the total value of production to increase as long as humans live on Earth, even if the total tonnage of goods produced no longer increases.
People with a vested interest in “traditional” economy, such as oil billionaires, resist applying technology to replacing resources which must inevitably diminish in succeeding generations.
I have a great idea! Why don’t you set a good example by never using any more “fossil fuel.” Just stay home and keep off the Internet until windmills and algae can provide for your energy needs.
The choice between prosperity and environmental recovery (to the extent it is still possible) is a false choice. New technology takes time to develop and has many false starts, but it has the capability of producing great wealth. Failing to develop alternatives leads to the certainty of all of us ultimately freezing in the dark or sweltering in the sun.
Now that is where those nice billionaires come in handy. When they are ready to invest the capital to make your fantasy energy projects come into being, they will. Capitalism, and only capitalism, can make the viable technologies come to fruition. However, at the rate we are discovering new sources of “fossil fuel,” this may be a very long way off. It is too soon to know for sure, but it seems like one of your other religions, the Peak Oil theory, could be just as much of a false god as evolution, man-made global warming, and democracy have proven to be.
And thanks for proving 1389 right! You have been so close to 100% wrong that you have served to make her blog title relevant.
We are cutting about 90% of this comment. The commenter has gotten pretty far off the topic of this post. However, he did make two interesting points, so I will be answering those in italics.
– Blog Admin CzechRebel
I found several categories under your amusing Flame Warrior link that might seem to apply to me. The one I am displaying now is the atheist. I don’t intend to dwell on it, but since your original essay contains several religious references, my beliefs are relevant.
Well, I also found one that is like me, the Big Cat. Meow! 1389 has considered blocking you. We also have thought about the growing trend of charging trolls a fee to post their comments, as Zilla does. We are not taking any such drastic actions . . . yet! But, listen to the Big Cat. If you want to keep posting your comments, I offer the following suggestions:
1. Keep your remarks short! If you have an entire article to write, post it on your own blog, or join a forum somewhere that will allow you posting privileges. If not, just make your point succinctly so that we can deal with it in a timely manner.
2. Stick to things germane to the topic. Long essays on atheism don’t really fit in a discussion of whether liberals are right or wrong.
3. It seems that you don’t have much of a grasp of the definition of “coherence.” That is OK; English is a hard language. So, to avoid rambling all over the place, try reading our articles slowly and carefully. When you get to a part of the article that you either agree with or disagree with to the point where you want to make a comment, re-read it. Try to make your own point in as few words as possible. Then, compare your work to the part of the article and edit your proposed comment to cut out everything unrelated to the topic. After a little practice, the definition of “coherence” might dawn upon you.
The theory of evolution, by the way, is a scientific theory, not a religious premise. Science follows evidence to a conclusion; creationism starts with a conclusion and bends the evidence to fit.
No, the so-called “theory” of evolution is far from scientific. It is not the type of thing that science could possibly try to prove or disprove. The scientific method could not be applied. You would need to do an experiment, along with a control. You would need a new Earth. You would need hundreds of millions of years. You would need a control (whatever that would be).
Oh, they have “survival of the fittest.” They have evidence of extinctions and “new” species replacing the old. Yet, they have no proof that God did not create the new species. Of course, a “new” species may have just been a very rare species prior to the extinction of a competitive species. Again, we have no scientific proof.
The fact that many scientist believe in evolution, merely makes evolution the religion of those scientists. Those scientists are the ones who bend their evidence to fit their theory.
Problems with the theory of evolution are legendary. The 19th century Darwinism has been completely discredited. One of the first enemies of Darwinism was the development of the science of genetics. (It is so ironic that genetics, a true science, was discovered by a Christian monk!) Poor Charlie Darwin thought that the physical actions of animals could multiply their effects in following generations. Giraffes, he postulated, grew long necks by stretching to reach high branches, and that caused their offspring to have longer necks.
A belief that God created life does not rule out the possibility that much of what scientists call “evolution” did occur. Perhaps God created simple life forms and let them develop, the way a potter starts with a small piece of clay on a wheel and adds to it, eventually creating a complicated pot.
Just face it, both Christianity and evolution are religions. Some Christians believe in infant baptism, while others believe in believers’ baptism only. There is no science behind it. Likewise, there is no scientific evidence of evolution.
A note from Blog Admin 1389:
1389 Blog is a blog, not a forum; that’s why it is called a blog! A blog is primarily or entirely about the articles that it publishes, while a forum is all about conversation and debate among forum members. We’re the admins, we spend our own money here, so we get to decide the format and the focus of 1389 Blog.
If you are primarily interested in debating about science, philosophy, atheism, and the like, there are forums and online communities focusing on those topics that you could join. Be advised that other participants there may give you a run for your money!
Yes, 1389 Blog espouses a conservative point of view. And yes, we blog admins do what we can to promote and preserve Judaeo-Christian civilization, both on the blog and in real life. The main focus of 1389 Blog is the counterjihad, even though we sometimes do run articles about the political and economic scene in the Anglosphere, about cats, and so forth. We have no intention of spending large amounts of time and energy debating matters that have little to do with the counterjihad. If you are not aware of the power and danger of Islamic expansionism, then I would suggest that you start reading some of the other articles on 1389 Blog besides this one!
Our friend David Bain wants to add one last, long rambling, comment. He is raising some valid points. While we really do not want to let this blog become a wide open debate forum on evolution/creationism, democracy/republicanism/monarchism, constitutionalism/living-documentism, etc., we will address some of his issues here in italics.
Blog Admin CzechRebel
He asks:
For my own education only, I would like to follow up on these statements if you can give references.
You raised some points in response to the first of these posts which, if true, have interesting implications and consequences in particular that:
1. chattel slavery was a dying institution in the Americas.
Chattel slavery remains alive and well both in black Africa and parts of the modern Islamic world. However, it has completely died out in the west. Only Haiti can truly say chattel slavery ended via a war, the French Revolution.
During the 19th century, the economics of chattel slavery were not working well in the Americans. In 1776, all 13 colonies destined for independence allowed chattel slavery. However, the less prosperous northern colonies were frequently unable to provide for unneeded bonded servants, and often left them out in the cold to freeze and starve. Recent discovers of slave cemeteries in New England have dramatically shown this to be the case.
In the more genteel, more Christian, and much more prosperous South, bonded servants were given life-long care, medical, housing, food and clothing, etc. There was a raging debate at the time over whether bonded servants were an economic benefit or merely a status symbol in the paternalistic “peculiar institution”. As a matter of fact, free labor proved to be much cheaper and more expendable. An interesting example is the fate of Irish immigrants/Irish Americans. They were given dangerous jobs which the valuable African-American bonded servants were not allowed to do.
Many Southerners sought to emancipate their bonded servants in a humane manner. Both George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were good examples of this practice. Had it not been for his crushing debt, Jefferson probably would have freed anyone wanting to leave. Even so, his bonded servants were loyal to him.
For further reading, we recommend the works of the twin brothers, Ronnie and Donnie Kennedy.
The South Was Right! and Was Jefferson Davis Right? are but two examples of their work. Some of their works were jointly authored; others were authored each of them separately. We also recommend the Pulitzer Prizing winning book, Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery by Fogel and Engerman. There are a lot more that will show that the peculiar institution bore little resemblance to what your public school teacher told you. (No, I am not an apologist for chattel slavery; but rather, a respecter of historical truth.)
Seriously, without any further research, can you honestly say that you could possibly imagine chattel slavery existing in today’s America? Or even 50 years ago? We doubt that even 100 years ago–the eve of World War I–chattel slavery could possibly have survived.
2. Thomas Jefferson helped the States of Virginia and Kentucky nullify some of the unjust laws of the Adams Administration in 1798!
It is hard to imagine that this one has been censored out of our history books! John Adams served one term as a very unpopular President. He and his Federalist Party passed the Alien and Sedition Acts. Thomas Jefferson’s Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions makes a strong argument in favor of nullification.
While I cannot think of any particular treatise on this, it popped right up on a Yahoo search. Every good work supporting the Southern side of the war mentions it. It is a basic concept that anyone versed in the 10th Amendment can help you with.
But, I guess when your “public schools” are really propaganda arms of the federal government, the propagandists MUST leave out the things that cannot possible be defended.
3. the 14th amendment was not passed legally.
There are several good 20th Century works showing this to be the case. Two articles in the magazine
US News and World Report are amongst our favorites. The first was September 27, 1957 and the second was January 26, 1970. Both articles were written by David Lawrence. I am pretty sure the Kennedy brothers address this as well. There is a radical book on the Constitution called The Crumbling Wall Against Tyranny that explains it well. Again, an Internet search quickly finds this data too.
The bottom line here is pretty simple. The War Between the States was really a war against the rights of States and individuals. With those who fought to preserve both of those rights defeated, and the occupation forces entrenched in the South, “ratification” for the 14th Amendment was sought, sometimes literally, at gun point. Even the carpetbaggers and newly-freed slaves who held office in Southern legislatures at this point, saw the danger here. Many northern States objected as well. Even will all the heavy-handed federal pressure, it never got the required 3/4 of the States to ratify it. This is fairly simple arithmetic. You can do it yourself!
You bracket democracy with evolution and global warming as false religions. What is the alternative do democracy? Republicanism?
Well, the republican form of government–promised in Article V, Section 4 of the Constitution–is one of the alternatives. In fact, one of the major objections to ratifying the Constitution was that is could lead to democracy. If you were to boil down the premises of the Federalist Papers to one sentence, it might be, “We promise that this Constitution will not bring about democracy.” The march from democracy to dictatorship is very quick. That is how the world got both Napoleon and Hitler.
Monarchies, for the most part, have worked out pretty well also. You see, when governing is a “family business,” a dictatorship is not so quick to break out, because each monarch feels the obligation to hand down a viable country to his heirs. I know that sounds a bit odd these day, but look at the history of mankind. Kingdoms tend to remain stable. Democracies tend to be become dictatorships. Republics work pretty well, as long as you have well-informed, men of good will, running those republics. So, don’t be too quick to sell short the historically most stable and effective form of government.
I’m also wondering about your thoughts on how one would objectively measure bias in the media and in universities.
We cannot “objectively measure bias.” That is an oxymoron. We all have our biases, and it is good to try to be as objective as possible. The funny thing is that when we try to be as objective as possible, our biases often change.
That said, as long as the government regulates the airwaves, we will have a built-in pro-government bias. As long as the government finances education–which includes guaranteeing student loans–educational institutions will have a pro-government bias. And in the media, surveys show that the vast majority of media workers identify themselves as liberals and vote Democrat.
If one candidate is intelligent and articulate and the other is a boob, do the media have an obligation to make the two candidates appear equal?
In 2008, the media made an inarticulate boob into the Democratic Presidential nominee, who had nothing going for him besides moneyed backers and the ability to read a teleprompter, in spite of the fact that virtually every other Democrat officeholder in the country would have been more qualified and more capable of doing the job. Likewise, the same media gave us a wacky left-leaning Senator from Arizona as the Republican nominee, when every other person in the Republican field would have been a much better pick. So, we had the battle of the bozos, Obama v. McCain. Had the media been fair and balanced, those two would have most likely been also-rans, mere footnotes. So, our media is already so far off base that I am not too sure what to do with your hypothetical question.
If one position is backed by science and the other is backed by money, are the media obligated to give the two positions equal time?
We all know the media follows the money. The question is, “what do you mean by science?” In the 18th century, the scientific method was all the rage. Somewhere we got the idea that if we call something “science,” it “automagically” becomes proven via the scientific method. Too bad we don’t teach the scientific method in schools any more. If we did, people would have some idea what the word “science” means, and could tell good science from bad.
Are universities obligated to hire one creationist professor for every evolutionist?
A truly private university should be able to hire whomever they want to hire. Of course, that means no government funding and no government-guaranteed loans. But, when you are spending our money, it is a different thing. While we are certainly NOT recommending they do so, you raise an interesting point. I guess that if an institution of higher learning truly wanted to be seen as trying to be objective, they would have to do so. We would much prefer not to have government funded universities.
You did exclude my rationale for my atheism. See http://www.users.drew.edu/~jlenz/whynot.html.
Yes, we did. We really don’t want our blog to become a does-God-exist forum.
If there is no God, there is no reason for a jihad and no reason for a counter jihad based on another religion, such as Christianity.
I think you just refuted the concept of atheism in that one sentence better than most Christians can! Since no god would mean there would be no jihad/counterjihad, therefore God exists. Very good!
It reminds me of that “idiot’s guide to religion” bumper sticker where the word “coexist” is spelled out with a symbol from each religion such as Muslim crescent for the letter “c” and the Christian cross for the letter “t.” (If you read the other articles on 1389 Blog, you would already be aware of this.) There are various takeoffs that point out the silliness of that sticker, including a much more relevant sticker that shows the Islamic crescent attacking the others.
While a world full of peaceful atheists might not start a holy war, a single zealot could. More to the point, the Muslim world is not about to let you continue to be an atheist in peace! That said, history doesn’t show most atheists to be all that peaceful. Ever hear of a group of a devoted band of atheists known as “Communists”?
The theory of evolution is not a religion. It does not demand the blind faith that religion demands.
Yes, it is, and yes, it does! As a mere theory, evolution is a remote possibility. However, where are the competing theories? Where are the experiments that tend to prove or disprove it? Religions, and only religions, can give take-it-or-leave it dogma. In the 21st Century, that is what evolution is: a take-it-or-leave-it dogma.
It simply holds that, just as farmers and dog fanciers select the qualities they desire, nature selects what variations are passed on to the point that past species became present species and present species will become future species.
Farmers and dog fanciers select–a cognitive choice made by a creator–good qualities. That is a part of a theory known as Intelligent Design. Making the quantum leap that “nature” can select is certainly not very scientific. We know that if an organism is not fit for its environment it will die out. But, we cannot really go any further than that and still be anywhere near the scientific realm, unless–oh dear–we do one of those experiments. So, how are we coming along at building the new Earth for our controlled experiment?
He [Darwin] was wrong about the source of variation, believing that acquired characteristics are passed on.
But, being a religion and not a science, the dogma needed to be fixed. Why can’t we leave it as “Darwin was wrong” and chalk it up to experience? The next time we have a half-bake theory that seems to explain who we got here, demand prove via the scientific method or label it as what it is, a religion!
Gregor Mendel launched the science of genetics, which ultimately replaced this notion with mutations.
The science of genetics refutes Darwinism, plain and simple.
Nature removes the abundance of harmful mutations from the gene pool while concentrating the rare beneficial genes, which ultimately lead to new species.
If you want to even get close to calling this “science,” we need some sort of an experiment here that will tend to prove or disprove the theory of a “beneficial” mutation. Is there even one that you know of?
If evolution is not a science because experimentation is not possible, then astronomy is not a science.
Astronomy is a field of both science and exploration. Most of the experiments that I am familiar with are done by physicists, as astronomy and physics are so closely related. Evolution, on the other hand, is a theory, at best, within the field of biology.
Yet through observation alone we have discovered the contents of stars, measured the size and age of the universe and discovered hundreds of planets beyond our solar system.
You are speaking of the non-experimental, observational aspect of astronomy. We don’t just believe that the stars are there, as we just believe evolution happened.
The sciences of evolution and genetics have worked hand in hand to create breakthroughs in the history of life on earth.
What “breakthroughs”? Evolution is, at best, an totally unproven theory. At worst, it is a religion. We have no clue why life on earth has changed.
Scientists are not prophets to be either believed implicitly or shunned as charletons and fools.
When they actually use the scientific method to prove or disprove their theories, this is true. When they just tell us to trust their theories, it is hard to say what they are.
We can admire the brilliance of the lapsed Anglican Charles Darwin and the catholic monk Gregor Mendel and acknowledge their limitations at the same time.
Charles Darwin was quite the fiction writer with a very vivid imagination. Gregor Mendel was both a monk and a scientist. Wow, God and science working in tandem, what a concept!
Not long ago, evolution denial was the perfect litmus test for scientific ignorance.
We are not sure what you are saying here. The famous lawyer, Clarence Darrow, once argued that evolution and creationism should be taught side by side. Funny thing, he was an ACLU liberal and, if memory serves me correctly, an agnostic, if not an actual atheist.
Unfortunately we have a whole new crop of “creation scientists” who are intelligent, articulate, and wrong.
Well, if evolutionists can call themselves “scientists,” why can’t creationists? Until we get some experiments, both creationists and evolutionists are neither right or wrong. They just believe in opposing theories.
They use the very complexity of organisms such as the human eye as evidence against evolution. Yet they propose that these structures originated from something even more complex: an intelligent designer.
Let’s see. We have automobiles. Did they evolve or were they created by an intelligent designer? So, am I to believe my car evolved and that a more complex auto manufacturer does not exist?
They have not proved that this designer exists and if they did, they would have to explain where he/she/it came from.
It seems that the creation does tend to prove that a Creator exists. Why you would think that they need to explain how this Creator came into existence is beyond me. Perhaps this Creator has always existed. It is certainly a possibly that a man of science could not rule out!
There is abundant proof for evolution.
All the claims against it fail on deeper analysis.
Spoken like any religious zealot! We are not interested philosophical or religious “proof.” If you want to call it “science,” we need to use the scientific method.
I have no idea whether “evolution” occurred or did not occur. If it occurred, it does NOT in any way conflict with the Orthodox Christian faith. True, some Evangelicals are challenged by the theory of evolution. That is really too bad. David Bain is obviously a man of deep faith. Too bad he cannot see his faith would be better placed in God than in evolution or atheism.
Please, if you do post in the future, try to keep it to one topic per post. Is that too much to ask?
Gary Williams!
When you completely mischaracterized Hitler as a conservative, and then listed off all these bogus “proofs” for that, I disregarded everything you had to say after that. Bill Maher and George Carlin notwithstanding, the historical facts show otherwise. Fascism was a child of progressivism, and the American progressive/liberal/leftist was as impressed by Mussolini and Hitler as they were of Stalin. It is typically only after the atrocities of the left are exposed to the world, that the modern liberal will turn tail and run from his former objects of affection.
So whoever it was that said you “shut this thread down”…. all I can say is WOW! Yet another example of liberal arrogance whitewashed thinly over a massive bulwark of ignorance.
1389, I’m here to back you up. You did a good job. History bears you out. Note to liberals: History is not last week’s Bill Maher show, or Michael Moore’s last movie.
@Jonathan,
Thanks very much, I appreciate your support!
I notice that the admins of the site seem to have a patronizing and condescendingly disrespectful attitude towards someone who challenges their views, and when then rebuffs the opposing view, gets very hostile and arrogant about it.
Very enlightened and good natured indeed.
I’m a moderate myself, and was curious why Liberalism was considered wrong.
This article has not been convincing, because it is based on a premise of morality, a subjective issue based on the culture of a country and region, that any idea proposed by Liberalism was an inherent evil.
It’s a very laughable statement because to tie an idea to a belief structure denies it the responsibility of criticism, constructive and otherwise. Scrutiny, counter ideas, are all important in debate.I also find it a bit arrogant to state that 18% of the U.S Population who identifies with Liberalism to be evil people.
Its just unfortunate to see such magnificent arrogance and holier-than-thou attitude permeate any logical debate.
@Leo,
1389 Blog is OUR BLOG. CzechRebel and I are the admins. If you don’t like our attitude, nobody is making you read it.
1389 Blog is a BLOG, not a debate forum. We may debate people when we have the time and we feel like it, but we are under no obligation to engage in debate with you or anyone else. There is no point in debating with someone who has no facts or logic to bring to bear, only complaints about our attitude.
We don’t give a rat’s patootie about whether you, or anybody else, consider us arrogant, condescending, holier-than-thou, et cetera. The blog isn’t about the admins. It’s about the counterjihad, and it’s about what the non-Muslim world must do in order to roll back Islamic expansionism. We have to believe in something valid, and your moral relativism is no defense against anything.
Liberals have proven themselves to be our enemies for many reasons, not least of which is that the left is using Islam and the Muslims as a weapon against our Judaeo-Christian heritage, and, in fact, against the entire civilized world. In that regard, the liberals have a tiger by the tail and they don’t even realize it. As happened in Iran and more recently in Egypt, the liberals are the first to be liquidated when imams and mullahs attain power.
You aren’t actually a moderate – your comment is all based on moral relativism, which is the keystone of the liberal world view. To put it bluntly, if your ideology cannot succeed by any standards whatsoever, then down with the standards! That’s what our article is all about, and if you were to let its message get through to you, then you would have to rebuild your entire world view from scratch. Since you liberals lack the courage to do that, you call us names and complain about our attitude.
And yes, evil is real. Pretending evil isn’t real won’t make evil cease to exist – it merely makes one powerless to resist it.
“The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist.”
Editor’s note: This commenter must have wanted to find out how many rules of our comment policy he could violate. We will spare you most of the actual text. Feel free to check the comment policy so you can follow along.
1. We exclude incoherent rambles. This was probably the longest incoherent ramble that we have ever had.
2. Dalton slipped in a number of inappropriate ad hominem attacks. I suspect that he might need to use a dictionary to figure out what that means.
3. We make it crystal clear that we feel no obligation to give “equal time” to any of our opponents, and we specifically mention “leftists.”
4. Likewise, we make no bones about that fact that this is NOT a forum. If you want to bash conservatism, go to Blogmocracy; they would love it. They live to fight. 1389 and I might even go and fight with you there, if we have time. But NOT here! Is that clear?
5. We don’t publish unfounded allegations and Dalton made more than a few.
6. The rule is one topic per comment. If you have multiple points, make multiple comments. You can even choose an article that is actually on point. Going through Dalton’s original text, I detected 17 different topics, or, at least, 17 attempts to address a topic. Some were germane to the blog post, some only remotely related, and some – who knows.
7. We end our comment policy with this statement: “Finally, if you think you might be too drunk to comment, you are too drunk to comment!” While I am in no position to give Dalton a breathalyzer test, it sure looked as though he was not with us. Maybe drugs, maybe dementia, but the lights are on and nobody seems to be home.
Well, Dalton, congratulations – you may have set a record for violation 1389 Blog Comment policy.
Now for the few words of his lengthy post that are fit to print under the blog policy:
i hope you all have a very great day and life. Respectfully,
Dalton
You too, Dalton.
CzechRebel Blog Admin
I’m going to keep this short.
My head hurts.
By the way @1389 , your blog is a joy to read (even when the back and forth arguments make my head explode.)
FYI – I’m conservative, and please…no one write me a book arguing to me that my head doesn’t hurt.
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