Posted on 05/17/2003 12:34:33 PM PDT by Starbreed
I read somewhere that Stalin said: If I can turn the debate to motivation, I can win every time (paraphrased).
This was a mind-blower for me. It explains the Bush, Zealot or Panderer articles, the rationale for hate-crimes and gun laws, the reporter who asks,"how did you feel?" instead of "what did you do?". Even the ubiquitous "No Blood for Oil."
Canny Stalin knew that reading minds was a psychological guessing game and very satisfying for crooks who want to shift blame or teachers who say education should be fun. It protects the anti-Americans who claim they are not unpatriotic. They can read your mind but you can't read theirs.
Bush is results oriented and liberals fear this. He draws lines; he sees things as won or lost, black or white, good or bad.
Help me find the quote and disseminate it.
Starbreed
Motives are feelings, unknowable (to quote somebody or other), unprovable, emotional, ephemeral, changable, personal. If one acts on the motivation, the act is immutable, finite, and affects someone else.
Conservatives, understanding human nature, recognize that unworthy motivations exist. The measure of the moral person is the extent to which he responds to positive motivations and restrains harmful ones.
Liberals, changing the playing field, takes an act and thinks back to its motivation, which, because of its unknowableness, is wide open to speculation. The only evidence of motivation is from the one injured because the actor, of course, will conceal his real motivation (which only he knows). Thus, feelings are presented as proof of injury and their flavor indicates the motivation. Hence "water buffalo" becomes a racial slur not an exasperated cry for peace and quiet. If you are black and noisy, it is more righteous to turn the accusation against the accuser than to be quiet.
It is the unknowableness of motivation that is insideous and the importance it has assumed in judgement calls. Pain and suffering, hate crimes, consumer confidence, Arab opposition, the mere mention of perception being more important than truth, prognistication rather than reporting the news, school is fun, bosses hate employees.
Philosophically, this emphasis on how you feel and that it is the responsibility of someone else to keep you happy, is self-centered and self-justifying. We have the right to pursue happiness, not demand it. We have the right to exact compensation for provable material damage not (immeasurable) emotional damage. It is the excuse socialists use to redistribute life's lottery.
I am greatly concerned than none of my responders reached the same conclusion I did. Stalin has won post mortem.
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