The New Regressives ... Victor Davis Hanson

PJ Media ^ | 3 June 2014 | Victor Davis Hanson

[Rummyfan]

Today’s liberalism is about as liberal as the Hellenistic world was Hellenic — a glossy veneer over a rotten core.

In the old days, liberalism was about the means to an end, not the end itself. Since the days of Socrates, liberalism enshrined free inquiry, guided by inductive thinking and empirical use of data. Its enemies were not necessary organized religion — some of the Church fathers sought to find their salvation through the means of neo-Platonic cosmology and Aristotelian logic — or government or traditional custom and practice, but rather deductive thinking anywhere it was found.

[Rummyfan]

I don’t like most of the assigned readings that now pass for the university’s seminal texts of the liberal arts. But on the other hand, I don’t believe in triggers to warn students of what is inside a book. Otherwise, I might insist that universities put a warning on Rigoberta Menchú’s or Barack Obama’s autobiographies: “Trigger Warning: these are fictive accounts that rely on occasional invention and adaption and so do not, as the authors have claimed, reflect actual events.” Nor would I want a written trigger for the book flap of Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Team of Rivals, along the following lines: “Trigger Warning: Ms. Goodwin has admitted past plagiarism in her works, a fact that may be necessary to weigh when evaluating her present history.” Readers can determine for themselves to what degree past confessions of plagiarism should guide their own studies.

[AZLiberty]

Punch line:

In the spirit of changing words to reflect reality, I suggest that we call today’s liberals “regressives” — fundamentalists who are wedded to self-serving deductive doctrines that cannot sustain empirical scrutiny and exist mostly as fossilized theologies of the 1960s.

[justa-hairyape]

Like putting an All Natural sticker on a bottle of snake venom.

[haroldeveryman]

” fundamentalists who are wedded to self-serving deductive doctrines that cannot sustain empirical scrutiny and exist mostly as fossilized theologies of the 1960s.”

Why does Hanson call the left “regressives” when the more familiar term “reactionaries” would do just as well. Leftists love to use that word.

[okie01]

Why does Hanson call the left “regressives” when the more familiar term “reactionaries” would do just as well.

Because they prefer the term "progressives".

[nathanbedford]

Doctor Hansen makes two important points:

1) The Democrat Party has resorted to euphemism to mask the reality that their policies are otherwise unpalatable to Americans. He cites several examples to prove the point. The reason the Democrats have been forced into dissembling (to employ a euphemism for lying) is because…

2) They have abandoned logic (the inductive scientific method) for deduction from ideology.

For some years now I've been pointing out that we are confronted with two new blatant examples of leftists eschewing the scientific method for ideology, the Arab Street and the African-American "community." Doctor Hansen has cited, for example, the Green Movement which has become a refuge for communists and a secular religion. The point is that science is discarded in favor of propaganda, logic is abandoned, euphemism is needed to plaster over the hole driven into reason.

On a parallel track, the left is now resorting to other linguistic tricks to abandon reason for ideology. All of this has been laid out for us by Saul Alinsky, experimented for us by Cloward and Piven and reasoned out for us by The Frankfurt School. Now the Left under Obama and his leftists implement the scheme. Primary among other dark tools used by the left to paper over their ill-logic which is proving so unpalatable to so many Americans is to indulge in racism. This is my excuse once again to offer Nathan Bedford's first Maxim of American politics:

All politics in America is not local but ultimately racial.

[hosepipe]

Progressives have been about destroying America from the inside from the beginning..

They didn’t hide it but bragged about it.. it’s no mystery..

The only unusual thing is Republicans ALLOWED them to do it..

They allowed the schools to be made re-education camps..
They financed the progressive activities.. ON PURPOSE..

Newt even brags about being a progressive..

The BAD part is MOST republicans could care less..
Apathy and cowardice is generally a republicans attitude..

If you think otherwise.... you’re quite delusional..
OR ignorant about whats going on.. probably because you don’t care.. you know really..

[gattaca]

bump

[haroldeveryman]

“Because they prefer the term “progressives”.

Yeah, I realized that after I posted it. Clever put down By Hanson.

[hearthwench]

I have been calling “them” Regressives since O’Baloney got into power.

I am still surprised that no one has figured out that all the climate garbage is the Gummit figured out how to tax breathing. Duh!