So why is the left still angry? Glenn asks: “maybe it’s become a habit.”
“Become” a habit? It seems to me it’s an intrinsic feature of leftism, which is based on a permanent state of envy, class warfare and seeking “social justice” and “equality.” Which is why it is leftists (from Hitler to Stalin to Mao and Pol Pot) who have been responsible for hundreds of millions of violent deaths over the past century. You have to break the eggs to make the social-justice omelette through the collective will. It’s not individualists who do that kind of thing.
[Update late morning]
More evidence of lunacy on the left: hating Milton Friedman.
I’m sorry, but has Manamongst said anything so far beyond snide remarks and vague aloofness to suggest that he has a single leg to stand on?
I’m not certain if he doesn’t see the apparent irony of commenting in a post about leftist inadequacy and then proceeding to personify it in a most accurate fashion.
Swing and miss Josh, swing and a miss…way to personify what you thought you were labelling me as. Snide, I give credit where it is due. Unfortunately, you are what is breaking your party apart, don’t you have a gun to clean? Clearly reading anything outside of your relm/comfortzone is out of the question.
Love you man!
“No one is arguing that. Name one american conservative that has invented, not stolen. In the last…ever!!!”
Philo Farnsworth.
Rand: My point is that nationalism vs. internationalism is not the only important difference between Nazism and Stalinism; their respective attitudes towards race is another. It’s a simple fact that the Soviet Union was better about race than the Nazis (a very low bar), and it’s an embarrassing fact that they were arguably better than the U.S. as well (there was a much bigger gap between the lives of whites and blacks in the U.S. than there was between the lives of Jews and Gentiles, say, under Stalin).
On the whole, of course, Stalin’s regime was the worst in the 20th century, besting stiff competition from Hitler and Mao.
Touche Mike!!
And he had it stolen from him did he not?
I noticed this shortly after the election. Despite winning soundly, there remains some angry, bitter paranoia. My perhaps shallow, conclusion was that Obama no longer needed these people so he dropped them. They were leaderless and starting to panic.
However, I can’t really say that’s the problem now. They seem to be well supplied with talking points yet they’re still simmering with anger. I guess it’s just the natural state of things. JM Hanes made an interesting point with his analogy to the Iranian revolution. Maybe the angry allies need to be directed at the old Republican foes so that they don’t consume the Obama administration.
Or maybe it’s just the blogs. To be honest, a good portion of us, no matter the belief system, feed off of combative emotions here.
They were tea parties, not teabagging fests, but this illustrates my point of how each side tries to villianize the other by twisting words, ideas, passions etc… ad naseum.
And for every Glen Beck or Rush or Delay, there is a Begala , Carville, Sharpton for the other side to harp on about.
The only way I see out of this problem is to limit the power of the state and give it to where it belongs, to the individual (and where our founding fathers in their true wisdom but it), not to groups of individuals. Otherwise rights become ‘rights’, instead of protecting the right to speech , assembly , petitioning the government etc.. (rights that don’t cost anything to other individuals in the nation to possess) to ‘rights’ such as health care , education , housing , the right to not be offended etc…(rights that have to paid for with capital/freedoms taken from one individual to be bestowed on another by a ‘benevolent’ leader who will then pat themselves on the back for being so compassionate.
Giving power to the state over individuals is a trait of those who fancy themselves to be so much smarter / intelligent than the hoi polloi that elected them. Seems the truly wise (those who know what they don’t know a la Socrates) never seem to rise to power , funny that.
Managainst and doubled,
Actually, M. H., in my limited experience, entrepreneurs (the front-men for the biz) tend more liberal/socialist, while the inventors (the content men) tend more conservative. I always assumed this was more accounted for by the gregarious sales/management personality versus the more introspective engineering mentality.
But that’s just a notion. Where I think you do go wrong, M.H. and what doubled seizes on, is your idea of what makes a conservative. In my experience with US conservatives, only about, what, a quarter, are traditional/reactionary. The bulk of us are conservative about the only truly radical political idea ever.
The way I see it, Enlightment liberalism was a high-water mark that stripped the monarchy and other hierarchical statist systems of their power by positing that each and every citizen was fully empowered. Some classical civilizations had flirted with this by so empowering all the members of a class, but this was the first time anyone said equal potency for all.
This is what US conservatives, by and large, care about… preserving this most radical of ideas that if we simply trust to the good of our fellow citizens, whoever they may be, things will turn out for the best. The prices, policies, goals, what have you, established in common will typically be superior to the idea of any one of us.
It wasn’t long though before the dominant political idea, that some people deserve to lead while others should follow, reasserted itself. First Marxism and then socialism and then progressivism tried to take us back to the tired old ways of differentials of power across the populace. These paradigms were tricky because they played with themes of equality, but they most definitely represent us receding from our high-tide of radical equality.
So, I don’t see most US conservatives as hidebound traditionalists at all. More the opposite.
Manamongst Hussein, you undeservedly condescending, ignorant fool. If you want a perfect human inventor, you’ll need to walk with Diogenes. Since that wasn’t what you asked for, you ought to leave the goal posts alone, you twit. When Teddy started his trust busting, a gallon of kerosene was 8 cents, when he was done, it was 26. Rockefeller brought the price down. Who were the Robber Barons? Now unions want to do essentially the same economic damage to Wal-Mart. The left can’t abide economic prosperity
“That’s like saying well the only difference between clinton and obama was he started single payer healthcare and enslaved the entire white US population”
Not even close because you’re leaving out all the socio-economic similarities. State controlled industry, utilities, food production, entertainment and media. That’s the whole enchilada, not just health care.
Charlie says : “The way I see it, Enlightment liberalism was a high-water mark that stripped the monarchy and other hierarchical statist systems of their power by positing that each and every citizen was fully empowered. ”
Exactly correct. This was once known as liberalism , then renamed classical liberalism after the left saw that giving power to individuals didn’t further their goals of ‘utopia’ , leading to the classification ‘progressives’, who have nothing to do whatsoever with classical liberalism.
The progressives seem to really believe that if we could just get the ‘right/correct’ people in charge, pain and suffering would
cease to exist, but bad actors are not just in the private sector, they are everywhere, yes even in the halls of public service.
For example , from instapundit:
“Mr. Rattner’s high profile is nonetheless useful in drawing attention to the real story here, which is the growing evidence of corruption by officials who use their power over public pension funds to shake down private companies. This is the same political class that has been blaming banks for ‘greed’ in the financial crisis. The pension fund scandal exposes the myth of the superior virtue of the public and nonprofit worlds. Greed is universal. And the opportunity for corruption is enormous when political discretion is tied to vast sums of public money.”
I’ll leave you fools to discuss your versions of the evil liberalism. And Charlie I did ask for anyone to ste up and start naming inventors and no one could really name any…not that there aren’t any out there. But the point that I know that you all know I’m getting at is that Conservatives generally stifle debate and progress. Those guys that hassled Copernicus…clearly conservatives.
And Bill, I don’t recall asking for a perfect inventor. You conservatives think you can keep things static in time…that nothing ever changes. In one instance you seem intelligent to see that goal posts have been moved, but too dense to understand that Rand was the one that moved them with his all important take-aways. And the trust busting was not the cause of the Kerosene price rise…that is an extremely simplistic…Paultardic way to look at it all.
First hint genius:
By now Standard Oil controlled over 80 percent of the world’s refining and transportation. John D. Rockefeller was the most powerful man in the world.
Hint number two:
At this point in history the oil business was shifting from kerosene lamp oil to gasoline.
Robber Barrons is a term that came much earlier. But your wonderful Mr. Rockefeller was the poster boy facts are facts, sorry.
Angry, well ok that still doesn’t mean you could even carry her Tampon? She’s way to smart for the likes of you.
@Jim:
“It’s a simple fact that the Soviet Union was better about race than the Nazis (a very low bar), and it’s an embarrassing fact that they were arguably better than the U.S. as well…”
Really? How many minorities (blacks, in particular) actually lived in the Soviet system under their so-called system of ‘equality’. You may want to read a book by Robert Robinson called “Black on Red”. In 1930, at the age of 23, he emigrated to Russia for a job. When his contract expired, they would not allow him to leave. He was trapped there for 44 years. He can tell you all about Soviet “equal rights” for blacks.
They weren’t much better than the Nazis.
@hussein:
“I’ll leave you fools to discuss your versions of the evil liberalism.”
Sheeeeeit. By the time Obamessiah gets done taking this country to hell in a socialist handbasket, you’ll be squalking all about the evils of liberalism.
It’s simple, going back to the old liberal mantra: the personal is political. Ergo, all political disagreements are personal. If you disagree with a liberal about welfare or gay marriage, it’s not because you have compelling arguments but because you’re an a-hole. I have yet to meet a conservative who takes political disagreements as personally as liberals do.
“Angry, well ok that still doesn’t mean you could even carry her Tampon? She’s way to smart for the likes of you.”
Why are you fantasizing about Ann Coulter MH? She may be a it snarky but she is cerrtainly not angry.
“But the point that I know that you all know I’m getting at is that Conservatives generally stifle debate and progress. Those guys that hassled Copernicus…clearly conservatives.”
Except for the pasky fact that Modern Conservatives are the idealogical descendants of the Classic Liberals like Copernicus. It is the modern left that is descended from the angry pitch-fork weliding mobs of the supersticious.
doubled if you still can’t see the difference between George W. Bush and…about anybody else, then you’re not worth saving. Greed is universal, but why would I listen to you to learn about progress. you’re probably still denying what Rush and the bunch tell you to deny. You lose any kind of credibility for using the term “Utopia”, you can’t be that ignorant. Stop fighting what you think we are when you’re clearly not paid to think. How would a person that doesn’t have a liberal bone in his body even begin to understand liberalism…as it is in working American society. I could give a damn on how it is utilized in German, French or Dutch society. You just don’t get it. Don’t you understand when Rush and the lot tell you idiots that we’re heading to socialism, it’s only to scare your ignorant asses. I would not stand for a socialist society anymore than you would. Europe is stuck they can go back. But you people really have bought into to the point that is your only argument, you don’t critically study the working European societies because you don’t know how their governments work, and probably haven’t been there. You all are the people that go to another person’s country and don’t bother to embrace an inkling of their culture or language. Because mexicans come here and don’t embrace our’s that makes it ok…right?
“Except for the pasky fact that Modern Conservatives are the idealogical descendants of the Classic Liberals like Copernicus. It is the modern left that is descended from the angry pitch-fork weliding mobs of the supersticious.”
Mike Puckett that makes no sense I’m pretty sure you’re just talking and can not come up with a single pitchfork moment. I bet I can though in regards to conservatives. Terry Schiavo, Illian Gonzalez, Gay Marriage, Abortion (blowing stuff up means you’re angry right?). And if you can come up with an angry liberal moment, I guarantee you it was to secure an individuals rights (no not so you can buy another MP-40) civil rights, real freedoms, true life altering injustices. we get angry to secure and give rights to those who should already have them. You conservatives get angry to preserve someone elses lack of rights. You also get angry to keep things the way they were regardless of how many people it hurts.
And Mike P if you’re descendants from the Copernicus’ (without actually explaining how this is so). Please enlighten me on how Copernicus typified Conservative Thinking? Weren’t his ideas about progressing from the CONSERVATIVE static doctrines of the church? Do I need to walk you through why your assertion is ridiculous? Aren’t yall the religious ones? Words do mean things…and to steal a bit of a quote from the Mental giant Rand, “I don’t think that word (Modern Conservatives) means (want it to mean) what you think it means”
Now you’re just starting to make crazy things up…kinda like Instaputz and Boehner…lol
“And if you can come up with an angry liberal moment, I guarantee you it was to secure an individuals rights (no not so you can buy another MP-40)”
Yep, that French Revolution was a real barrel of monkeys!
Heaven forbid somone should resist your ilk with an MP-40 in the Warsaw Ghetto.
“And Mike P if you’re descendants from the Copernicus’ (without actually explaining how this is so). Please enlighten me on how Copernicus typified Conservative Thinking? Weren’t his ideas about progressing from the CONSERVATIVE static doctrines of the church?”
You are hung up on the word and cannot see past it. Modern Libertarians and Modern Conservatives are the spiritual heirs of Classical Liberalism.
Modern Liberls are anathema to the values espoused by Classic Liberals. You seek to destroy and limit individual liberties in the name of the glory of the state.
I was talking about Jeanne Garafolo, Old Ann, the one trick pony, she is not what I would call a thinker. She’s like the Dennis Rodman of the literary world.
What are they pimpin her books for on Pajama’s now 2 or 3 bucks?
Let this season be a learning season for your ilk. We learn that they literally gave Rush Limbaugh’s syndication away so as to have every AM station flooded with his noice machine. I wonder what we will find out was the payoff for Fox’s continued ratings success? If it’s from simply eyeballs on the TV set…more power to them. but something tells me something smells foul in Denmark.
The fact that Hitler was a racist zealot in no way subtracts from the fact that Fascism and Socialism are both Leftist doctrines. There is nothing inherent in Fascism that propels it towards racism or genocide. Until Mussolini was reinstalled as a compliant puppet by the Germans in 1943, there was no attempt made to expel or exterminate the Italian Jewish population. Jews were prominent in the high offices of the Italian Fascist party. As a proportion of European Jewry, Italian Jews were the second most likely to survive the war. Fascism is vile and totalitarian, but not necessarily racist. If there is a racist component, it more commonly surfaces in the eugenicist impulses which were a common feature of early C20th progressivism. Conservatism/Libertarianism, with their human-focused emphasis on sovereign individuality, are countervailing forces.
I think the process of feeding this Manamongst Hussein troll has hit diminishing returns. He clearly doesn’t know what he’s talking about (Copernicus was ‘hassled’ by conservatives? Hardly. He was a very senior and well-connected figure in the clergy and was encouraged repeatedly by the ecclesiastical authorities to publish what would become de revolutionibus. To the extent he was in hot water with the church hierarchy it was due to the apparent impropriety of his relationship with his housekeeper and his somewhat ambivalent attitude to the rising tide of Lutheranism.)
Well of course I would get hung up when you don’t bother to define what your Neo-definition is for your newest political personality. Is this like the moniker version of how Bush named initiatives (see Clear Sky initiative) to ultimately be the oposite of what is professed?
And words have accepted definitions…you guys are playing fast and loose with words. rand saw no problem with it and neither did you. My definitions check out with um…published books, not some BS you need a wonk at Cato to coin so you can reference it. The republican way, you don’t like what a term means change it to fit whatever the hell you boxed in about.
David it does if you use them to site examples of their congruency to our current form of Liberalism in the US…and we all know what this is about…it ain’t about pointing fingers and saying, ‘see those argry lefties like in europe’. No they are comparing them to the supposed angry pitchfork carrying left here in the US…which is silly anyway, why would we be angry?
I guess this is the arguments you form when you have no where else to turn.
He was a very senior and well-connected figure in the clergy and was encouraged repeatedly by the ecclesiastical authorities to publish what would become de revolutionibus. Say iit with me David…’that was a progressive and therfoore deemed too liberal in his views of religion/astronomy.
How about this, how about we pretend that you never even made a comment that silly and stop pretending that the clergy that persecuted him were the liberals and the that Copernicus was a conservative. because I see that Rand, rightfully so is not co-signing that resoundingly ignorant thought of yours. It must be a mental disorder.
“In March 1616, in connection with the Galileo affair, the Roman Catholic Church’s Congregation of the Index issued a decree suspending De revolutionibus until it could be “corrected,” on the grounds that the supposedly Pythagorean doctrine[32] that the Earth moves and the Sun doesn’t was “false and altogether opposed to Holy Scripture.”[33] The same decree also prohibited any work that defended the mobility of the Earth or the immobility of the Sun, or that attempted to reconcile these assertions with Scripture.”
“I didn’t say that killing people and being a raging racist were left-wing traits.”
You are too kind. I am willing to say that they ARE left-wing traits.
The roster of left-wing mass murderers is so illustrious that one needs to kill a million people just to gain membership to the club :
Hitler, Mao, Stalin, Pol Pot, Kim Il-Sung, Saddam Hussein, Milosevic
Less than a million killed = not even an member of the club.
Make no mistake – the modern left would gladly send Republicans and devout Christians to the gas chambers if they could. Do you doubt this? Ask them, and note how they dodge the question rather than clearly say ‘no’.
Manamongst,
Part of the problem here, as doubled has hinted at, is that terms like liberal and conservative are moving targets. You are using a definition of conservative based on temperament when you want to point to a kind of reactionary obstructiveness and refusal to yield to rational change* and then equating that to the commonplace meaning of people who are protective of a particular political/philosophical ideal.
As I tried to point out above, the ideal that most US conservatives are conservative about just happens to be the most radical, rational change-embracing philosophy of all time. Therefore, your claim that conservatives stifle debate and progress falls flat with me.
I have worked with several conservative inventors, that I knew to be conservative. Two in particular were pronouncedly conservative, both PhD scientists. One created the idea of and the first examples of glass metals, a technology which I have seen credited with an energy savings equal to 600 nuclear power plants (as of the early 90s) and the other a polymer chemist with a whole string of inventions under his belt, including the inks that can be imprinted on stretch fabrics without coming apart. I won’t give their names because they were colleagues rather than historical figures. I’m afraid I don’t begin to know the politics of most of the famed inventors.
* BTW, I’d be astonished if this kind of temperament conservatism you are pointing out were not equally represented on the Left.
I’ll leave you fools to discuss your versions of the evil liberalism.
Manamongst, you don’t even listen to yourself. Why are you still here?
Manamongst Hussein Says:
April 20th, 2009 at 12:50 pm
“I’ll leave you fools …” When, pray tell? You didn’t stop posting.
Rand Simberg Says:
April 20th, 2009 at 11:13 am
“[In re MH] Why are your posts so incoherent?”
If we’re forming a pool, I want “huffing too much weed killer,” please.
“In March 1616, in connection with the Galileo affair, the Roman Catholic Church’s Congregation of the Index issued a decree suspending De revolutionibus”
How was this ‘hassling’ Copernicus? In March 1616 he’d been dead for 72 years.
“The same decree also prohibited any work that defended the mobility of the Earth or the immobility of the Sun, or that attempted to reconcile these assertions with Scripture.”
“I did not have sex with that woman, Miss Lewinsky.”
Managainst,
If I were so inclined, I could come up with a bunch of silly quotes of people trying desperately to protect their power base, their narrative, their fantasy or what have you as it is burst apart. If you are trying to claim that Galileo’s tormentors are in any way representative of US conservatives today, that is just flat absurd.
Rand is essentially correct in his characterization of Hitler as a leftist. The reason why it’s so jarring to people is because Hitler and Nazism were the mortal enemy of Bolshevism. What people fail to understand is the reason for that animosity: they were competing systems who wanted to get to the same ends by somewhat different means.
People also get thrown by the virulent nationalism of National Socialism (I don’t know why, since the first word of the party’s name should be a clue! And the second word is “Socialism!”). Communism was characterized by a pretense of internationalism (hence the anthem “The Internationale”), which “distinguishes” Communism from Nazism. Remember, also, that, at first, Hitler and Stalin were content to divide Europe between each other. Also, Communist prisoners were the favorite trustees of the Nazis in their concentration camps (which were patterned after the Soviet Gulag that preceded them). When East Germany became a Communist state, it became heavily staffed with ex-Nazis, since the conversion was very easy. Stalin and Hitler were also subjects of personality cults, and both hated Jews. Stalin was planning his own “final solution” for Soviet Jews, but died before he could carry it out.
You should also know that the very radical right is Neo-pagan, as were the Nazis. Such people scorn Christianity and have a bizarre nostalgia for a pre-Christian barbaric state — not unlike Rousseau’s (a revolutionary, remember?) “natural state” of Man. Radical rightists are only defined as rightists out of convention, but I have seen them: form alliances of convenience with Black Muslims and Palestinian radicals, worship and support Muammar Khadaffi, and spew the same kind of Anti-Zionist venom as extreme leftist radicals. Competing collectivist systems can generally be characterized as being on the left, because the left-to-right continuum is not a straigh line, but a circle that joins at the extremes.
Right wing fascist dictatorships don’t fit this mold, although they are totalitarian and brutal. Pinochet’s rule evolved towards a modern Chile with a democratic, relatively free-market system. Even China hasn’t gone that far, because of it’s Communist rulers.
Oh, and last but not least: Google the “National Bolshevik Party”, and be prepared for a really rude shock: Look at their flags and emblems (and DO NOTE the NAME of the party?), and compare them to those of the Nazis. If THAT doesn’t convince you of what Rand and I are trying to tell you, nothing will.
Thinking about it, I don’t think it wise to classify Hitler as left or right, especially as practiced in the US. Rand has, of course, pointed out the numerous socialist policies in the Nazi party platform. And Hitler also had good connections to both the German military and private industry, which are traditionally considered right-wing these days. The bottom line is that Hitler and his cohorts hungered for power and they promised everything to everyone.
As I see it, the viewpoint to use here is not that socialist policies are inherently tyrannical though they are obviously authoritarian and much closer to that path than laissez-faire policies would be. But rather that gifts of socialist programs are part of the traditional fast-track to tyranny. Think about it, when Julius Caesar took over the Roman Republic, one of the first things he did was give alms to the poor and other charitable activities.
Further, as I have repeatedly pointed out, the presence of a socialist program grants considerable power to the government in two ways. First, people become beholden to the program either as recipients or administrators. Second, in order for the program to be viable, fraud and other “tragedy of the commons” abuses must be fought. That means some government agency gains that bit of power over people who use the service.
So to a would-be tyrant, socialist programs have these two advantages. They make for a good bribe, placating the populace while the tyrant seizes and maintains power. And they help amplify the power of government. More power is always useful for the tyrant.
Don’t waste any more time on this Hussein idiot. Ample evidence has been provided to support the facts that :
1) Hitler was left-wing (as are almost all genocidal dictators)
2) The modern Right is much more intelligent and productive than the modern Left.
A thinking person cannot dispute these, given the evidence provided here.
It is much worse to be a socialist than a racist. Even though both are traits of the Left……
Somehow, racism has become the dirtiest word, while socialism is looked upon as virtue. That is wrong.
Socialism is worse than racism.
Tullu at 7:02 am – Thanks.
The Left’s motto:
“I hate, therefore I am.”
Because they regard their hatreds as being just as self-validating as their anger. And they’re just as wrong.
TrollAmongstMen doesn’t want us to explore why the Left remains so angry, hence the attempts to divert us, though an endless series of lies, into arguments about whether Hitler and Mussolini were leftists.
Manamongst Hussein,
You might be making good points, but I cannot read your posts. Please work harder for your readers. I can’t tell whether the poor English is masking smarts, stupidity or, more likely, the muddling through we all do. Try short words and short sentences.
Tom DeGisi, aka Wince and Nod
Manamongst, I’m guessing that English is not your first language, because I’m finding your syntax hard to follow in that special “ran it through Google’s text translator twice” kind of way. Also, you must be new to the whole “I can say whatever I want on an American forum” kind of thing, because you don’t seem to know that someone who constantly calls his adversaries “you idiots” isn’t going to be taken very seriously.
He was trapped there for 44 years. He can tell you all about Soviet “equal rights” for blacks.
The Soviets did not let ordinary Russians leave either. My point wasn’t that the Soviets were nice, but that their crimes were not about race.
Meanwhile, in the U.S. in the 20th century we had different laws for blacks, pseudo-slavery (black men were picked up, accused of petty crimes, and sold as forced labor to corporations), lynchings, legally condoned terrorism, etc., all based explicitly on race.
They weren’t much better than the Nazis.
Are you serious? How many Jews or blacks do you think the Nazis would have let live for 44 years?
Man, it looks like a lotta people don’t have jobs and just sit around and post all day! Are you guys retired, or just on George Soros’s payroll?
I leave the last word to Matt Groening, who in a Simpsons episode that briefly flashed the Demmie and Reepub conventions showed the following two signs for the Donkeys:
We hate life and ourselves.
We can’t govern.
Selah.
Jeff Medcalf:
No offense, Jim, but the responses to your comments are typically reactions to you personally.
So why is that? Why respond to the commenter instead of the comment?
Tell it to the Jews, the Ukrainians (especially the Kulaks), and so forth.
The Soviets had Jews in the Politburo from the beginning, and Khrushchev was Ukrainian. Race by itself was no barrier to advancement.
“Kulak” is not a racial classification. Which is exactly my point: the Soviets slaughtered Ukrainians not because they were ethnically Ukrainian, but because of their class, or political leanings, or to demonstrate Soviet power.
Words are important, but actions are more telling.
True. If the Soviets had preached racial equality, but excluded racial minorities from leadership, subjected them to discriminatory laws, excluded them from government jobs, the Communist party, Red Army or Young Pioneers, sent them to death camps on the basis of race, etc., you’d have a point. But in actions as well as rhetoric the Soviets were a world away from the Nazis where race was concerned.
Wow, Rand post a blog about the Angry Left, and out comes a lefty to prove the notion. I found it hilarious that M. Hussein willfully admits ignorance just before he launches into name calling about pundits he apparently doesn’t like. Thanks, M. Hussein, for proving Rand’s point. It was nice having an example in the comments thread of the same post. Classic.
OK, I think the lesson that all normal people learned from this debate here today is that you CANNOT afford to let the left take your guns. Your life literally depends on it. Study the incremental steps taken by left-wing dictators like Hitler, Mao, Stalin, Kim-Il-Sung, Pol Pot, Saddam, Milosevic, and others, and make a mental note of how if the victim population had even modest armaments like handguns, they could have survived.
Today, the left is already saying that the population of America needs to be halved in order to protect the environment. Guess which half needs to go? They are rationalizing genocide for the ‘greater good’ as we speak.
Never let the genocidal left take your guns. Never let them take your guns.
As a former lefty and though it has been some time now, I agree with those saying the anger in discussion comes from not brooking any disagreement. This happens simply because any person who disagrees with the truths of new liberalism and the means to impose them (oh, and also that GW Bush, Karl Rove, Tom Delay, et al. are evil) must be a fool or an idiot or moron or all of these. Ridicule, shouting, using strong language, ad hominem, ignoring counterpoints, using a silly “handle” (this is a CB radio term from the 70’s) for your commenter name, and challenging people to name certain inventors can be effectively used to silence disagreement usually by frustrating the opponent. These techniques often come across as angry or unhinged. This is also one of Saul Alinksy’s recommended techniques, no? I guess in fora where everyone agrees this builds street cred but I now don’t see how. The name calling does nothing for me and reading some of the lefty blogs is intolerable.
Note to lefties: GW Bush and most elected Republicans at the federal level are irredeemably statist. They are more similar to you than to the tea partiers.
Those on the right would now understandably be showing anger for probably three key reasons. (1) Those they trusted to reduce the size of government, its expenditures outside of constitutional mandate and its related costs failed to do so. (Congressionally approved battles in the war on terror were expenditures within the proper scope of the federal government’s duties.) Instead, and to my great dismay, Republicans ultimately failed to control liberal congressmen perhaps thinking they could cater to the same ilk that vote in such people and did not roll back in any meaningful way the interference by the federal government in our economy or our lives or get rid of the goofy “affordable housing” off-balance sheet scheme in time. (2) Because disappointed Republicans stayed home and because the market belatedly discovered the frailty of the government-run / big bank-run housing inflation scheme, now we have people in power that are even more irredeemably statist than those just departed – and significantly more committed to transferring power and wealth from individuals to the government. Note to Republican office seekers: “We are not as bad as them” is not an effective vote getter. Without Ross Perot, would Bill Clinton have been elected? Lesson learned? (3) Finally, righties have to listen to these endless platitudes from liberals that are supposedly self-evident.
Some closing rallying cries:
No representation without taxation!
Don’t reward the profligate at the expense of the prudent!
It is not compassion to forcibly take money from one person to give it to another or to vote for people to do so especially if you are an intended recipient. It is the opposite. It creates a form of servitude.
Thanks Rand for the nice work! Jim